Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) Nellie & Pat Lydon, (Anniv).
11.00: Michael Leonard, (Anniv).
6.30: Gerard Gilmore, Cross St. (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Thirty years ago this week, on March 24th 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was shot dead as he celebrated Mass. He was the first bishop killed at the altar since St. Thomas à Becket in 1170.

His death had been ordered by a US-backed 'death squad'. He had been appointed archbishop in 1977 because he was deemed to be a conservative upholder of the status quo. He was appointed at a time when a tiny wealthy elite dominated that small Central American state. In his three short years as archbishop, he gradually grew in stature as a formidable 'champion of the oppressed'. Days before his murder he told a reporter:

You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. But they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.

Born in 1917, the 60-year-old Romero was a compromise candidate as archbishop; he was the proverbial 'safe pair of hands' at a dangerous time. He was then elected as leader of the Bishops' Conference by his conservative fellow bishops. He was judged to be predictable, an orthodox, pious bookworm. He had been know to criticise those Liberation Theologians who had thrown in their lot with impoverished peasants. But an event would take place within three weeks of his appointment as bishop that would transform the ascetic and timid Romero into a raging New Testament prophet.

Romero's close friend, Fr. Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit defender of peasants' rights, was murdered along with two parishioners. That night Romero went to view the bodies. There he experienced a profound conversion: "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, 'If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path'". At the funeral Mass the following day, he left the poor peasants in no doubt as to where he himself now stood. He stated in his homily:

"God needs you, the people, to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation."

With one exception, all the Salvadoran bishops turned their backs on him; they complained secretly to Rome about his 'political activities'. Unlike them, Romero had refused to ever attend any government function until the repression of the people ended. Rome put great pressure on him to relent, but he held fast, and kept his promise to the poor. On March 24th, an assassin's bullet succeeded where Rome failed. Romero was silenced forever.

Over 50,000 people attended Romero's funeral, among them Bishop Casey. Again, during the funeral, the security forces opened fire on the congregation, killing over 20 mourners, and injuring hundreds. With that, El Salvador was plunged into civil war, ending only in 1992, after tens of thousands of deaths.

John Paul II named Romero 'Servant of God.' But his own people, the poor of El Salvador, canonised him long ago. They flock to his tomb in their thousands. Even in death he remains an inspirational figure.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Great Interest

Holy Week & Easter, 2010

Traditional Confessions:
Holy Thursday: 11.00-12.30; 4.00-6.00.
Good Friday: 11.00-12.00; 6.30-8.00
Holy Saturday: 11.00-1.00; 2.30-3.30; 5.00-6.00

Penitential Services: (Fr Lyng)
Spy Wednesday 8.00
Holy Saturday 4.00

Easter Ceremonies:
Monday, 28 March: Sedar Meal, 8.00. (Tickets for this function have all been sold). (Rev'd Patrick Towers)
Holy Thursday: The Lord's Supper: 8.00. (Fr. Whelan)
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross: 12.00.
The Lord's Passion: 3.00. (Fr. Foley)
Tenebrae: 8.00. This is an ancient monastic service and we have adapted it to our circumstances here. It lasts about 40 minutes.(Fr. Foley)
Holy Saturday: Easter Vigil: 9.00. (Fr Lyng) (There will be a rehearsal for this ceremony on Spy Wednesday night at 9.00, after the 'Amnesty'.)

HELP!: As you may conclude from the above programme, this will be quite a busy week. So we appeal to as many of you as possible to 'come on board' and to help out in whatever capacity you wish. It need not necessarily be in a public role. There are lots of 'behind the scenes' jobs to be done.

RECONCILIATION SERVICE: There is a special 'Reconciliation Service for Easter' in the Sacred Heart Fathers' conference centre, Croi Nua, Taylor's Hill, on Wednesday night next, March 31st at 8.00.

That Pastoral Letter

The days when Ireland's identity was inseparable from its religion may well be over, and the sexual-abuse crisis delivered the coup de grâce. But in the wake of the Pope's unprecedented yet criticised apology to the Irish people for the scandal, can there be any hope of renewal and a change in its clerical culture?

On Saturday morning when the Pope's pastoral letter was released, I was at home in County Kildare. As I listened to it on the radio, I was struck by the letter's forthrightness and by a grace in its language exceptional in a document from the Vatican. Benedict XVI's apology to the victims of abuse by Irish priests and Religious was unflinching and it properly excoriated the leadership of the Irish Church that has brought it to its present sorry state.

Predictably, perhaps, listeners to RTE's early coverage were unimpressed by the Pope's words. The apology was not enough, one caller said. Another demanded a full audit of cases of abuse of children by priests in every Irish diocese. A third complained that it was a bit rich to blame the scandals on a deficiency in people's faith - that the failure was the institutional Church's own. Then the programme took a break for the midday Angelus bell, a reminder that Irish Catholicism, whatever its travails, remains deeply rooted and ever present in our culture.

But a generation has grown up in Ireland knowing nothing except a carousel of church scandal and apology, quickly followed by new and more deeply damaging revelations. For almost 20 years, priests in parishes have struggled to frame words of apology to their Sunday congregations for the misdemeanours of their clerical colleagues. In the aftermath of particularly appalling sex crimes committed by Brendan Smyth, the late Cardinal Cahal Daly was booed on RTE's Late Late Show. If there was a moment that marked the end of deference in Irish Catholicism, this was it.

Despite everything, 87 per cent of Irish people still say they are Catholic, according to the latest census, even if the sense of Catholic identity is weakened for many. I'm struck on my visits home by the numbers of people at Sunday Mass, still over half the population. But look more carefully and the congregations are mostly middle-aged, with fewer young adults. There are almost no children or teenagers. The young are lost to Catholicism and the ominous truth is that the Church in Ireland could implode within a generation.

If there any consolations in the present moment, it is the realisation that the Irish Church was not an exception in world Catholicism, that Irish Catholicism was not a unique case of sexual neurosis and that the scandals did not arise from a culturally specific flaw in the play of Catholicism with the Irish psyche. The truth is that our Church had to face up to its problems before the Church in many other countries, under the cosh of a public opinion insistent on the full story being told.

-Brendan McCarthy in The Tablet, 27 March, 2010.

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