Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

11.00: Christine O'Halloran, (Anniv).
6.30: Una & Michael Beatty, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Recently I found a 'Duty List' for Easter week, 1968 here in the Augustinian in Galway. Confessions for Spy Wednesday, April 10th began at 9.00 am and ended at 9.00 pm. Three named priests were 'Hearing' at all times, with one on standby for an expected 'rush' at Lunch Break and Evening.

That is now forty years ago. We would expect much to have changed in that time. But did we expect things to change so radically? For example, we had no Confessions on Spy Wednesday this year. And nobody noticed! And that, surely, is the point! Shades of 'God is missing but not missed!' In the United States, Catholic reported in October 2005 that the most common reason Catholics give for not going to confession "is that they feel uncomfortable confessing their sins to a priest." Contrast that with self-help groups, where members readily seek out the help of others who "know what I'm going through" and can offer concrete advice or support.

For some time, church leaders have been asking where the queues have gone. Instead they should have been asking why were the people there in the first place. It is helpful to remember that the ritual is not the sacrament. The sacrament is reconciliation. The ritual has varied greatly over the centuries. The ritual of Confession as we know it today was unknown for many centuries in the Church. But sacramental reconciliation (in whatever form) was a constant feature.

Many of us were instructed with the Maynooth Catechism, or a modified version of same. We learned that to be guilty of sin one must act with 'clear knowledge and full consent'. It was an easy, comprehensible presentation of what Thomas Aquinas called "impediments" to human freedom. For some reason, the wisdom of Aquinas did not take root. Instead, many people confessed too much! In the minds of many adult Catholics, 'clear knowledge and full consent' were no longer active parts of the equation. Irrational 'guilt feelings' were mistaken for moral culpability.

Today, many Catholics understand that they do not need to mention acts for which there is little or no subjective guilt. They focus instead on attitudes and patterns. Many experience reconciliation through twelve-step programs, counselling, psychotherapy, and spiritual direction. In A.A., the examination of conscience is far more detailed than the your average confessional 'examen'. And the firm purpose of amendment is far more serious than a perfunctory wish that things may get better! The focus here is more in keeping with the practice of the early church: people doing penance so that they might be reformed in the image of God. Who is to say no sacrament is present when this reconciliation happens between baptized people?

The long lines at the confessionals will never return. This leaves a gap, obviously. We stand in the same position as the Christians of the early Middle Ages: the older form of reconciliation is dying out, and what shape the newer form will take is not clear. In the meantime, reconciliation is taking place daily, and in a variety of forms. We must not get fixated on ritual. The Church must now think outside the box, literally!

-Dick Lyng

'VENGEANCE IS MINE!'

'Enough is enough', says Mohammed Al Fayed.

He might still harbour reservations about the verdict of the inquest jury - gross negligence by a driver who'd been drinking and by pursuing paparazzi. But for the moment, after all the allegations of high-level plots and elaborate cover-ups, after the exposure of private letters and the most intimate personal details, he's letting his campaign rest. But is this the end of the story, I wonder? Whether or not he pursues any of his outstanding legal actions, Mr Al Fayed is still looking for a more satisfactory verdict, a more definitive outcome. And he's now opting for the highest possible court of appeal. 'I am leaving the rest for God to get my revenge,' he says.

It's the voice of a grief that still rages ten years on, and however unfounded the particular theories which fire it, there will be many who've been unable to come to terms with the sudden loss of a son or a daughter who'll identify with the despair beneath the cry.

It's understandable, but dangerous, too, because the answers we seek aren't always available. Bitterness nurtured, caressed, can warp a life. And it might not be too wise to assume that God will be willing to dole out the vengeance we can't deliver.

Not least because it begs the question whether a God who is just has any interest in revenge as we might understand it. Certainly the Old Testament has a lot to say about divine judgment: nations are punished, individuals get their comeuppance. And the process is sub-contracted, so that the next of kin is responsible for avenging shed blood: to prevent an anarchy of reprisal, it's to be an eye for an eye, not a head for an eye.

But there's also an awareness that absolute justice is impossible. The innocent suffer, the guilty prosper. That can produce the defiant faith of a suffering Job or the despair of the writer of 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity': life's futile. Gradually it leads to the conviction that while we sometimes reap what we sow here, for an ultimate reckoning and righting of wrongs we have to look beyond life as we know it.

But where does revenge figure in the calculation? I know that I have to look to the Jesus who said: 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' And on the cross where he soaked up an ocean of bitterness, he promised paradise to a criminal and cried 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.' Doesn't sound like divine vengeance. Rather it's the language of the original Good Friday Agreement. Like the one whose anniversary is being marked today, that first Good Friday doesn't put everything right. There's a great deal of pain involved, and a willingness to make costly sacrifice. But it points to a solid hope of new beginnings, to the way of resurrection. God handles revenge by taking it on himself, and he, too, says, 'No more. Enough is enough.'

-Rev. Roy Jenkins.

'Good Counsel Triduum'

April 23, 24 & 25

Devotions each evening at 7.30 Feast Day Mass, Saturday, April 26, at 11.00

Triduum Director:

John Hughes, OSA

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