Aid to the Church in Need
MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
Being God’s Mercy in the home
BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
Aid to the Church in Need
MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
CONTENTS PAGE On being God’s Mercy in the Home.................... J F Declan Quinn...............................1 Mother Teresa and the Art of Living..................... Fr. Martin Barta..................................2 Teaching the Art of Living in Ghana..................................................................................4 The Catechism as a ‘Handbook for Life’.........................................................................6 Cuba – Beyond the Spiritual Wasteland..........................................................................7 Peace grows from the Family.............................................................................................8 Forming Young People, Stopping Poverty......................................................................9 A Loving Family.......................................................... Amy Oliver....................................... 10 The Great Mission of the Family............................ Pope Francis................................... 14 Vibrant Families, Vibrant Faith............................... Mary Eberstadt............................... 16 A Reflection on Marital Joy..................................... Pope Francis................................... 22 Breaking the Law to save his Son.................................................................................. 24 Our Father.................................................................... Pope Francis................................... 26 Children are never a ‘Mistake’............................... Pope Francis................................... 28 Carrying the Message of Mercy............................ Johannes Freiherr Heereman........ 32
Editor: Jürgen Liminski. Publisher: Kirche in Not / Ostpriesterhilfe, Postfach 1209, 61452 Königstein, Germany. De licentia competentis auctoritatis ecclesiasticae. Printed in Ireland - ISSN 0252-2535. www.acn-intl.org
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ON BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME A chairde,
ope Francis never ceases to invite all the faithful to become God’s merciful hands. In this the Holy Father knows that we are all sinners and are always in need of God’s and of each other’s mercy. He also knows that the only way we are going to receive mercy is if we ourselves are merciful. To be merciful in Pope Francis’ lexicon is to be loving.
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Of course we first learn about how to be merciful and loving in our families, be they regular or irregular, complete or broken, stable or unstable. St John Paul II would often remark that ‘the future of humanity passes through the family’, a truth which is so obvious that it is often over-looked and disregarded. Is it not the case that we frequently take our families and family life for granted? For example ask yourself: Over the past seven days...
It is Pope Francis’ way to keep inviting us to examine ourselves and to always challenge us to do better because he knows that… each of us can do better, all of us are a ‘work-in-progress’ and every one of us is in great need of
God’s Grace if we are fulfill the great dignity God has conferred upon each of us.
In all of this Pope Francis emphasises the need for prayer and for good works (i.e. prayer in action). He also knows that it is in our homes, our families whatever state they are in, that we begin to learn ‘the art of living’. It is an art which takes a lifetime to perfect and one which requires constant practice. And here we all know that the more we practice the better we become.
Beir Beannacht
Have I done anything special for a family
member?
Did it cost me much in time and atten-
tion?
Could I have done more and did not? Could I have done what I have done
better and did not?
Tomorrow will I do it again and this time
do it better?
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ire) PS. The World Meeting of Families is due to be held in Dublin 22-26 August 2018. Let us pray for and prepare for the success of this great Church initiative in the certain knowledge that ‘the future of humanity passes through the family’.
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BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
MOTHER TERESA AND THE ART OF LIVING Dear Friends,
other Teresa has become an icon of charity for our times. Right back in 1959 Father Werenfried van Straaten, the founder of ACN, visited
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Mother Teresa in India, and he was one of the first people to make her known throughout Europe, together with her community of the Missionaries of Charity, in their work for the poorest of the poor. Today there can be few people who have not heard of this ‘saint of the slums’ as some have called her.
‘Today the world has been turned upside down. There is so much hatred, so much killing, so much unhappiness, because the world of love, of peace and joy has been broken in families’. So Mother Teresa complained sadly.
She saw the absence of love and commitment in the family as the real In 1985 the then UN Secretary-General and greatest poverty that needed to welcomed Mother Teresa in front of the be tackled. Without the tenderness, the forgiveness,the mutual plenary assembly of respect, the loyalty and the United Nations with these words: ‘I do not The deeds of love are the willingness to serve selflessly, which is think there is any need to deeds of peace learned and practised introduce her. She does above all in the family. within the family, there not need any words; she can be no peace in the needs deeds. The best I world. The welfare of can do is to pay her the society depends on the health of the fitting tribute of saying that she is more important than I am, more important than family. all of us.
She is the United Nations. She is the peace in the world.’ Yes, indeed, the deeds of love are deeds of peace – that is something that Mother Teresa often insisted upon. And love begins at home.
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It is in the home, in our own families, in our own society and in the workplace, among those nearest to us, that the genuineness of our love is put to the test. Mother Teresa was convinced that loving those closest to us was the way to change the world.
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For her the home was a place that needs to be characterised by three defining qualities: understanding esteem and consideration
very day life offers many opportunities of practising this fundamental way of expressing love, through simple, unostentatious gestures. We need to learn how to be a source of joy for one another. That is not as simple as it sounds, and the family can also be a place in which people inflict deep wounds on one another. But Mother Teresa was convinced that by praying together every difficulty can be overcome. If the family members cannot find time for God, then they will not find time for one another either.
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'Today there is so much hatred, so much killing, so much unhappiness, because the world of love, of peace and joy has been broken in families’ Mother Teresa
‘I pray for you, that you may continue to sow peace and brotherly love, for the glory of God and the good of mankind.’ So Mother Teresa once wrote to ACN. With the help of her prayers and your generosity, dear friends, we will continue this work of brotherly love.
With my grateful blessing on you all.
Father Martin M. Barta, Spiritual Assistant
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BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
TEACHING THE ART OF LIVING IN GHANA
he population of Africa is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. By 2050, four in every ten Christians will be African. This continent will determine the future of the world’s religions – for Islam too is growing faster here than anywhere else in the world.
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Ghana is a very youthful country. Half the population is aged under 16. And in the diocese of Yendi in the north, the population is growing faster than the national average. Catholics are a minority here. Islam is dominant in the region, while traditional African religions still exercise a powerful influence. The boys are needed to work in the fields, the girls to work at home. There is a widespread shortage of electric power in the country, and a shortage of books as well.
For Bishop Vincent Sowah Boi-Nai the answer is clear: the young must be instructed more thoroughly in the Christian ideals. Not only for the sake of the future of the Church in Ghana, but above all ‘to offer support for the educational mission of families’ (Amoris Laetitia, 279) and so that Christians living in this difficult social and religious environment can live and enjoy the freedom of the children of God. Together with his catechists and some spiritual communities, the bishop has worked out a formation programme for 500 young people. It will cover two years and is intended to help them avoid the dangers and temptations both of the many different sects and of the modern consumer society, and to say ‘no’ to drugs, to continue with their schooling, reduce the number of
An integral formation of character – teaching prayer and communicating knowledge.
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teenage pregnancies, cut down youth crime and develop a healthy sense of self-worth… In short, a character-building exercise that points the way towards the future. In particular, these young people are being taught virtues such as: honesty, loyalty, a spirit of sacrifice, solidarity.
In addition they are; learning to pray, learning to help, and during these two
years also
learning to apply the practical principles
of the Catholic faith.
nly in this way can they be credible witnesses. And the other thing that is clear to Bishop Vincent is this: ‘the evangelisation of young people is best carried out by young people themselves.’ This is about an integral formation of character, in te spirit of what Pope Francis has written: ‘To foster an integral education, we need to renew the covenant between the family and the Christian community’ (Amoris Laetitia, 279).
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This is something of a model project, and one that builds for the future at a modest cost. It is not often we can achieve so much good with so little money! •
MOTHER TERESA is one of those saints who lived and exemplified mercy, to the point of making it her personal mission. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, being merciful means actively endeavouring to help the person suffering. In this sense she is an example for us, and for this we say ‘Thank you’. Father Werenfried, himself a man of action, discovered her in India and remained united in friendship with her all his life. Pope St John Paul II and Mother Teresa worked together to spread mercy. And he later beatified her. Mother Teresa was supported in her mission of mercy from the Catholic faithful, who followed her with countless gifts for the poor and needy, knowing, just as she herself said, that ‘the only thing that can overcome poverty is sharing with one another.’ •
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BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
THE CATECHISM AS A ‘HANDBOOK FOR LIFE’ he Bible is the revealed word of God. It tells us of the relationship between God and man. In it we find every feeling and emotion experienced by our human-condition - suffering, love, hatred, humility, arrogance, lust, hunger, greed and betrayal.
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The Catholic Catechism is the book that tells us how to understand the Bible and live and die by its word. For the Catechism is a ‘Handbook for life’, a summary of the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the Church - and there is a great need of it, above all in countries facing major political crises and social upheavals. Like Venezuela, for example, which today suffers one of the highest crime rates in the world, together with food shortages and violent unrest. Amid all the confrontation it is
the Catholic Church that is appealing for peace, above all to the younger people. Her message is one of love and hope, and she is conveying this message through a prayer book, designed to complement the now widely-read youth catechism, YOUCAT. Bishop Jaime José Villarroel of Carúpano in northeast Venezuela has asked our help. He already has the ACN Child’s Bible, and the Rosary booklet, but the current crisis is causing confusion to many G now O DevenOled F some young people and has L people to a crisis of O faith. TheV bishop’sE aim is to tackle this, with the help of his catechists, through a major catechetical campaign. For this he needs the books of the YOUCAT series.
These young people in Carúpano already love the Child’s Bible – now they are waiting to get hold of the YOUCAT.
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supplying him and his neighbouring diocese with over 10,000 copies of the YOUCAT, the YOUCAT Prayer Book and also the YOUCAT Confirmation Book. They will be distributed personally by the sisters and lay catechists in all 33 parishes to the participants in their prayer circles and faith-based learning centres. Keeping a firm grip on the Child’s Bible – now he just has to learn to read...
In the past they would have printed these themselves, but paper is now scarce in Venezuela and books in general have become prohibitively expensive on account of the galloping inflation. And so we are
The Catholic Church in Venezuela has already withstood many crises, thanks to the courageous women and men who have remained faithful to the Word of God and E who knew and lived this Word. Today this Word – the Good News of the Gospel – is as urgently needed as ever by the people of • Venezuela.
CUBA BEYOND THE SPIRITUAL WASTELAND The regime in Cuba is slowly opening up. But, almost 60 years of communism have left behind areas of spiritual wasteland, despite the efforts of the Church. For the catechists, like those here in the diocese of Santa Clara, it is often a matter of starting again, right from scratch. And so their missionary work, especially among the children, starts with telling stories about God. The ACN Child’s Bible is especially suitable for this, and the demand for it reflects this. The Cuban bishops’ conference is asking us for 18,000 copies. The worldwide publication figures for the Child’s Bible have now exceeded 50 million copies in 175 languages! •
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BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
PEACE GROWS FROM THE FAMILY he diocese of Karonga in Malawi is desperately poor. There are few proper roads, too few schools and medical centres, and three people in every five live on less than a dollar a day. Generally speaking, the time from January to April is a season of hunger.
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Poverty and hunger drive many people to shocking practices that reflect this desperation. Kupimbira is the name of one of these unfortunate customs, whereby poor families have to ‘pay’ the rich by ‘marrying’ their young daughters – often still children – to wealthy older men. For example, 13-year-old Maria was forcibly ‘married’
Reconciliation under the African sun. At a table, or under a tree, what matters is to come together in harmony.
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by her father to a 78 year old man from the neighbourhood. It is traditions such as these that Pope Francis has in mind when he writes in Evangelii Gaudium (69) that ‘It is imperative to evangelise cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel…Each culture and social group needs purification and growth.’ It is precisely this purification of traditional culture, through the message of love, that the young diocese of Karonga is seeking to achieve during this Year of Mercy. There is so much to do: a number of Catholics are being drawn to the assemblies of the sects, while polygamy, belief in witchcraft, alcohol abuse and the exploitation of widows – in order to acquire their inheritance – are widespread practices. All these things lead to conflict and enmity, often to decades-long feuds between and within families and clans. And so reconciliation, education and enlightenment against superstition and dialogue between and within families are among the priorities of the programme. None of this will overcome the underlying poverty, but it will help the people to deal with the issues in a Christian manner. For as St John Paul II has said, ‘It is from the family that peace will grow for the human family.’ We have promised our support for this young diocese in its programme for promoting peace and reconciliation. •
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FORMING YOUNG PEOPLE, STOPPING POVERTY
or many young people in Burma (Myanmar) the alternative is unspeakable – drugs, human trafficking and destitution. But the summer camps bring hope to many.
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Poverty is everywhere present in Burma, but especially among the Christian families of the ethnic minorities. Many people are forced by poverty to move constantly, in search of work, but this often leaves them in still deeper destitution. The Catholic archdiocese of Taunggyi is trying to put a stop to this vicious spiral of poverty by means of a formation programme for children and young people, during a summer camp. ‘Otherwise, they have no opportunity to really know and understand their religion and
draw new hope from it’, says Father Tarcisio. He has 300 young people signed up for his summer camp, from nine separate parishes. ‘Many of them no longer see any point in their lives; the destitution stifles all the hope in them’, he adds. In fact the experience of these summer camps, with their mixture of prayer, discussions, teaching, personal warmth and mutual help, has already led to a number of conversions – a real source of hope for the Church in Burma. However, last year the diocese had to abandon the idea of the summer camp, since it simply could not afford the cost. This year, with help from ACN, that will not have to happen again. •
Praying for the future – their families’ and their own. The school and summer camp open many hearts to faith.
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A LOVING FAMILY
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or the first seven years of his life Jonathan Bryan was trapped. Unable to speak or move, the only way he could communicate with the outside world was by the flicker of his eyes, the odd smile and occasional jerky arm gesture. After being starved of oxygen in the womb when his mother was in a horrific car crash, the little boy was ‘locked-in’ to his body. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy, one doctor even urged his parents Chantal and Christopher to end his treatment – and therefore his life – warning them that Jonathan may never run, walk or even recognise them. Later, teachers at his special school dismissed him as a lost cause, preferring to focus on sensory play rather than spending time trying to communicate with him on an intellectual level. But his parents felt differently. They refused to believe that there wasn’t a keen intelligence lying behind the bright eyes of their beautiful son. Now, after years of dogged persistence, Chantal has developed a way of communicating with Jonathan finally releasing him from a life of silence. It was an astonishing breakthrough that led former social worker Chantal to realise what she had suspected 1 Adapted and edited from an article in The Mail on Sunday, 3 July 2016 2 These boards, which cost up to €150, are commonly used by speech and language therapists.
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Amy Oliver1 all along: that Jonathan, who is permanently confined to a wheelchair, has a fully functioning mind capable of complex thought. Chantal had started to teach Jonathan letters, phonics and numeracy for an hour every morning from the age of seven. Then, aged nine, his mother taught him how to spell using a Perspex spelling board featuring colour-coded letters of the alphabet.2 Jonathan’s first board was simple. He would move his eyes to look at a particular part of the board – indicating whether he wanted a noun, adjective or verb and would then laboriously choose from more than 100 words Chantal had painstakingly printed out and colour coded. At first, progress was slow, with Jonathan having to learn how to read, write and spell. Two weeks in, Chantal began to wonder if he fully grasped the task. But rather than abandoning the project, she took advice from a specialist who suspected Jonathan was simply bored and encouraged her to make the process harder for him. On the spelling board he uses today, Jonathan can slowly spell out any word he wants. It worked. Within weeks he was spelling out full words. The real breakthrough came, however, when Jonathan and his mother had been arduously writing a story about pirates.
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‘About half way through he spelled out the word “myriad”,’ Chantal recalls in wonderment. ‘It was certainly not one of my pre-printed words or a word I thought he knew,’ she says. ‘It was a beautiful moment. That was the point he found his own voice. I realised I could ask him anything. My husband Christopher and I had tons of questions but we had to be careful. I asked what he didn’t like. He said having his face washed. You can’t underestimate how wonderful it is to be able to have a conversation with someone you love so much and in some ways know so well.’ oday, Jonathan is now able to say whatever he wants. He has three boards with spelling, punctuation and numeracy – there’s even a hashtag for his social media posts. He has started a blog called ‘eyecantalk’; entered a short story to a BBC competition; writes poems; and has even produced an autobiography.
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He attends mainstream school every afternoon where he is one of the top pupils in his class for maths and is determined to help other children like him – there are 30,000 in the UK with cerebral palsy – to learn how to communicate. Not bad for a boy who has, for much of his life, been living with the label ‘profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD)’ and was essentially written off.
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BEING GOD’S MERCY IN THE HOME
Chantal explains that Jonathan has had several life-threatening episodes. After being ‘unlocked’ and able to communicate, he described to her a near-death experience in which he’d ‘visited Jesus’s garden’. ‘He could run fast, talk and climb trees,’ Chantal says. ‘His little sister, Susannah, asked whether there was a loo. Jonathan said he didn’t know, he didn’t need to go. He said he didn’t meet Jesus but is very much looking forward to doing that when he goes back.’ t was January 2006 when the family’s lives were changed for ever. Chantal had been 36 weeks pregnant when another car crashed into theirs while they were en route to a pub lunch in Oxfordshire. Remarkably, bar some severe bruising, they were unharmed, but the impact caused a placental abruption. Chantal started bleeding and Jonathan was slowly robbed of oxygen.
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In hospital his heartbeat suddenly dropped and he was delivered via emergency caesarean section. Later, at Bristol Children’s Hospital, a technician said Jonathan’s MRI brain scan was one of the worst he had seen. ‘It was pretty catastrophic,’ Christopher, 40, says. ‘They said he would have mild to severe cerebral palsy. That he may not run, walk, sleep, laugh, see, hear or recognise us.’
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Chantal and Christopher, who is a vicar, faced a decision about whether to carry on with treatment, but after seeing Jonathan lying helpless in his cot they decided to give him a chance. ‘There is a photo of him in an incubator before he goes into the MRI scan,’ Chantal recalls. ‘There was something in his eyes imploring me.’ He was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy, and, before a kidney transplant when he was three, was having regular dialysis. A post-transplant infection caused severe lung damage. He will need to wear an oxygen tube to breathe for the rest of his life. ‘There were moments in the first year when we wondered if we’d done the right thing,’ Christopher says. ‘But then you start to see a personality emerging.’ Jonathan’s life expectancy is difficult to gauge. ‘He could get an infection and go within the next six hours,’ Christopher says. ‘We’ve been living on a knife-edge for ten years.’ This becomes clear today when Chantal starts the process of packing Jonathan back into the family’s specially adapted van after he’s cheered on Jemima at her preschool sports day. Chantal notices Jonathan looks blue and that the oxygen in his tank has run out. She springs into action. He can go only a few minutes without. The carer struggles to free a second tank from its holder. Chantal calmly assists, returns and plugs Jonathan back in. Crisis averted.
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Back at the family’s four-bedroom rectory, Jonathan is given a milk formula through a feeding tube in his stomach. After a quick session on his bipap ventilator – a full face breathing machine rather than a tube in his nose – his next stop is his village school, five minutes up the road. Next September he will go to his local secondary school. He recently went to an open day and answered some maths questions quicker than those aged 14 in Year 10. It is quite a remarkable difference from even a year ago when he was still attending special school. It had worked well at first. ‘There were lots of lovely sensory activities, which were great,’ Chantal says. But it soon became clear Jonathan would not be taught how to read or write. Marion Stanton, an
expert in children’s complex communication issues who had been seeing Jonathan, then suggested Chantal try to teach him letters, phonics and numeracy at home. Jonathan started attending Stanton St Quintin Primary School every day from last September and his parents were delighted to discover that the other children treated him just like any other pupil. Back at the family home, I ask his mother about the future. ‘The future is one day at a time and no more,’ Chantal says. ‘Last week Jonathan had a very high temperature and was on his ventilator. This week it is lower. But you can’t spend your time worrying. • Every day is a gift. Jonathan is a gift.’
Jonathan’s loving family.
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THE GREAT MISSION OF THE FAMILY Pope Francis3
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he Incarnation of the Son of God opens a new beginning in the universal history of man and woman. And this new beginning happens within a family, in Nazareth. Jesus was born in a family. He could have come in a spectacular way, or as a warrior, an emperor. No, he is born in a family. God chose to come into the world in a human family, which He himself formed. He formed it in a remote village on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Not in Rome, which was the capital of the Empire, not in a big city, but on its nearly invisible outskirts, indeed, of little renown. The Gospels also recall this, almost as an expression: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (Jn 1:46). Perhaps, in many parts of the world, we still talk this way, when we hear the name of some areas on the periphery of a big city. And so, right there, on the outskirts of the great Empire, began the most holy and good story of Jesus among men. And that is where this family was. Jesus dwelt on that periphery for 30 years. The Evangelist Luke summarizes this period like this: Jesus ‘was obedient to them’; — that is, to Mary and Joseph. And someone might say: ‘But did this God, who comes to save us, waste 30 years there, in that suburban slum?’ He wasted 30 years! He wanted this. 3 Adapted from Pope Francis’ General Audience Wednesday 17 December 2014
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Jesus’ path was in that family — ‘and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man’ (Lk 2:51-52). It does not recount miracles or healing, or preaching — He did none in that period — or of crowds flocking. In Nazareth everything seemed to happen ‘normally’, according to the customs of a pious and hardworking Israelite family. They worked; Mary cooked and did the housework. Joseph, a carpenter, taught his son the trade. ‘But what a waste, Father!’ God works in mysterious ways. But what was important there was the family and this was not a waste! They were great saints: Mary, the most holy woman, immaculate, and Joseph, a most righteous man... the family. We are certainly moved by the story of how the adolescent Jesus followed the religious calendar of the community and the social duties; in knowing how, as a young worker, He worked with Joseph; and then how He attended the reading of the Scriptures, in praying the Psalms and in so many other customs of daily life. The Gospels, in their sobriety, make no reference to Jesus’ adolescence and leave this task to our loving meditation. Art, literature, music have taken this journey through imagination. It is certainly not difficult to
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imagine how much mothers could learn from Mary’s care for that Son. And how much fathers could glean from the example of Joseph, a righteous man, who dedicated his life to supporting and protecting the Child and his wife — his family — in difficult times. Not to mention how much children could be encouraged by the adolescent Jesus to understand the necessity and beauty of cultivating their most profound vocation and of dreaming great dreams. n those 30 years, Jesus cultivated his vocation, for which the Father had sent Him. And in that time, Jesus never became discouraged, but increased in courage in order to carry his mission forward.
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Each Christian family can first of all — as Mary and Joseph did — welcome Jesus, listen to Him, speak with Him, guard
Him, protect Him, grow with Him; and in this way improve the world. Let us make room in our heart and in our day for the Lord. As Mary and Joseph also did, and it was not easy: how many difficulties they had to overcome. They were not a superficial family, they were not an unreal family. The family of Nazareth urges us to rediscover the vocation and mission of the family, of every family. And, what happened in those 30 years in Nazareth, can thus happen to us too: in seeking to make love and not hate normal, making mutual help commonplace, not indifference or enmity. It is no coincidence, then, that ‘Nazareth’ means ‘She who keeps’, as Mary, who — as the Gospel states — ‘kept all these things in her heart’ (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). Since then, each time there is a family that keeps this mystery, even if it were on the periphery of the world, the mystery of the Son of God, the mystery of Jesus who comes to save us, the mystery is at work. He comes to save the world. And this is the great mission of the family: to make room for Jesus who is coming, to welcome Jesus in the family, in each member: children, husband, wife, grandparents.... Jesus is there. Welcome him there, in order that He grow spiritually in the family. •
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VIBRANT FAMILIES, VIBRANT FAITH Mary Eberstadt4
he dramatic decay of Christian belief and practice, especially in Western Europe, is by now a familiar fact—so much so that it has become common practice to refer to parts of the continent as ‘post-Christian.’
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To offer one example of current trends, data from the European Social Survey, in the words of social scientist David Voas, show that ‘each generation in every country surveyed is less religious than the last’ and that ‘although there are some minor differences in the speed of the decline (the most religious countries are changing more quickly than the least religious), the magnitude of the fall in religiosity during the last century has been remarkably constant across the continent.’5
In addition to being post-Christian, some parts of this landscape are notably antiChristian. Some observers have used the term ‘Christophobic’ to capture the vehemence with which some Europeans have come to renounce the influence of Christianity on the Western present and past.6 In some countries, laws that once discriminated in favour of Christians now discriminate against them.7 Nor is this true only in Europe, but across the Western world—including the United States. A growing number of Western individuals greet the milestones of life with no religious framework at all. They are born without being baptised; they have children without being married; they contract civil marriages instead of religious ones; they darken church doors infrequently. It is true, as is
4 Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. This essay is adapted from her book, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularisation (Templeton Press, 2013) and first appeared in CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, volume 36, number 03 (2013). It has been mildly adapted for publication in this edition of the Mirror. 5 David Voas, ‘The Rise and Fall of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe,’ European Sociological Review 25, 2: 155–68. 6 The term ‘Christophobia’ is commonly attributed to Joseph Weiler in his book Una Europa Cristiana (Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro Sa, 2003). See also George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 7 In Great Britain, to give one emblematic example, in 2011 a Pentecostal couple was barred from giving foster care by a judge who cited their Christian beliefs on homosexuality as ‘inimical’ to childrens’ well-being. See ‘Christian Foster Couple Lose ‘Homosexuality Views’ Case,’ BBC News, February 28, 2011. Available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-england-derbyshire-12598896. Similar collisions between traditional Christian teaching and changing views of Christianity have occurred within the past few years, and organizations have accordingly sprung up to track such incidents. According to Gudrun Kugler, for example, lead author of a 2011 Report on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, published by the Austrian non-profit group Observatory on Intolerance against Christians (Europe), ‘Studies suggest that 85% of all hate crimes with an anti-religion background in Europe are directed against Christians….We also notice professional restrictions for Christians: a restrictive application of freedom of conscience leads to professions such as magistrates, doctors, nurses and midwives as well as pharmacists slowly closing for Christians. Teachers and parents get into trouble when they disagree with state-defined sexual ethics.’ The report is available online at http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu / fileadmin/ user_upload/ Press_ Release_ Report_2011_English_01.pdf.
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also sometimes noted, that there are important exceptions to this general rule of decline.8 Even so, most data confirm what the eye can see plainly: the societies of the advanced world, are more secular than they used to be.9 So what happened here? How did the Western world go from being one that widely feared God to one that in some places now widely jeers Him? We can begin to approach that question by correcting the public record and noting, first, what did not happen: secularisation has not spread for the reasons most commonly supposed. Therein lies an important tale. or a long time, secular social science and secular thinkers have held to one broad storyline about why people stop believing in the Christian God. According to that storyline, secularisation is a function of increasing education, material well-being, sophistication, and reason. The idea, as the British writer Kingsley Martin put it pithily, is that ‘rationalism has argued the Church out of existence.’10
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8 For a particularly engaging account of Christianity’s vibrancy elsewhere, see, for example, John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009). 9 See, for example, ‘Nones, on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation,’ The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 9, 2012. Available online at http://www.pewforum. org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx 10 Kingsley Martin, Critic’s London Diary: From the New Statesman, 1931–1956 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1960), 130.
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As a corollary, it also has been widely believed that less- educated people are more likely to believe in the Christian God, and better-educated people, not so much. This was the stereotype rather flagrantly displayed, for example, in a somewhat notorious piece in the Washington Post in 1993 that described the followers of leading American evangelicals as ‘largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.’ 11 Everyone ‘knows’ these things, yet few people, especially those advancing these notions as explanations for the weakening of Western Christianity, seem to know the empirical truth. In fact, data abounds that testifies to the opposite fact; that is, that Christian religiosity at times has been more concentrated in the upper classes than in the lower, and more likely among the educated than among those less so.
Consider Victorian England. British historian Hugh McLeod has performed fine statistical work on historical London between the 1870s and 1914. One correlation he emphasises is that ‘the poorest districts thus tended to have the lowest rates of [Church] attendance, [and] those with large upper-middle-class and upper-class populations the highest.’12 istorian Callum G. Brown, another expert on the numbers, makes the same point about religiosity in Britain during those years, that contrary to common wisdom, ‘the working class were irreligious, and that the middle classes were the churchgoing bastions of civil morality.’13
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Much the same pattern can be found in the United States today—and it is one more pattern subversive of the idea that economic and intellectual sophistication are somehow the natural enemies of Christian faith, or that personal enlightenment and sophistication explain secularisation and the decline of Christian religion.14 A major book published in 2010 by sociologists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, called American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, also concludes from the data about religiosity among educated people that ‘this trend is clearly contrary to any idea that religion 11 Michael Weisskopf, ‘Gospel Grapevine, Displays Strength in Controversy over Military Gay Ban,’ Washington Post, February 1, 1993. 12 Hugh McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (London: Croom Helm, 1974), 28–29. 13 Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, 149. 14 Putnam and Campbell, 253.
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is nowadays providing solace to the disinherited and dispossessed, or that higher education subverts religion.’ Similarly, in research summarised in another wide-ranging recent book on American social class called Coming Apart: The State of White America, political scientist Charles Murray uses data from the General Social Survey to show that the upper 20 percent of the American population were considerably more likely than the lower 30 percent to believe in God and to go to church. Among the working class, 61 percent—a clear majority— either say they do not go to church or believe in God, or both; among the upper class, it is 42 percent. Related findings on religion and social class have also been documented independently by sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox. Wilcox
has documented the ‘faith gap’ between the better and less educated. Americans with college degrees are more likely than those with high school diplomas alone to attend church on Sunday. oreover, the statistical likelihood of attending church varies inversely with the social ladder from bottom to top: ‘The least educated have experienced faster rates of decline than even the moderately educated, and they began at an even ‘lower’ starting point…meaning the gap between the least educated and most educated is even larger than the one between the moderately educated and most educated.’15
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The implication of these perhaps counterintuitive findings for secularisation theory itself is profound. If religion were indeed Marx’s ‘opiate of the masses,’ then one would expect to see the opposite of the social pattern than the one that actually obtains. As a written report for msnbc.com put the matter pithily in a piece summarising Wilcox’s work, ‘Who Is Going to Church? Not Who You Think.’16 Yes, there are 15 Andrew Cherlin, Matthew Messel, Jeremy E. Ueker, and W. Bradford Wilcox, ‘No Money, No Honey, No Church: The Deinstitutionalization of Religious Life among the White Working Class,’ in Religion, Work and Inequality, ed. Lisa A. Keister, John McCarthy, and Roger Finke, vol. 23, Research in the Sociology of Work (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2012), 227–50. 16 Brian Alexander, “Who Is Going to Church? Not Who You Think, Study Finds,” msnbc.com, August 21, 2011.
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pockets of the elite today where secularism is the unquestioned coin of the realm, and where religious believers are in a minority— Ivy League campuses, certain subgroups of scientists, and academics generally.17 But the big picture in the United States today—as in Victorian England of yesterday—is that the reality of who believe and practice Christianity is the social and economic opposite of what is commonly supposed. These and other examples drive to a single important conclusion: Christianity does not wax and wane in the world in the way the common storyline says it does, because Christian socioeconomic patterns of belief do not look the way the theory says they should. o what factors besides social class and education might explain the momentum of Western secularisation? Consider some tantalising evidence almost wholly overlooked in secular theories about one other institution whose fate would seem inextricably bound up with that of the churches: the family.
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Social science has roundly established that vibrant families and vibrant religion go hand in hand. Conversely, not living in a
family means that a given individual is less likely to be found in church. As Wilcox has summarised the data, ‘The recent history of American religion illuminates what amounts to a sociological law: The fortunes of American religion rise with the fortunes of the intact, married family.’18 Similarly, the late sociologist Steven L. Nock observed in his 1998 book, Marriage in Men’s Lives, that ‘changes in the number of children in the married couple’s household have large consequences for men’s church attendance…With each additional child, men increase their attendance at services by 2.5 times per year.’19 More families and more children, in short, means more God. Similarly, to summarise other statistics, marriage increases the likelihood of belonging to a religious organisation—whereas cohabitation, by contrast, has what three researchers have called a ‘strong, negative effect on the probability of religious activity.’20 Unmarried people without children are less likely to go to church than are married people, or married people with children. A married man with children, for example, is over twice as likely to go to church as an unmarried man with no children. Once
17 See Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), 206. 18 Bradford Wilcox, “As the Family Goes,” First Things 173 (May2007). Wilcox also suggests three reasons for “why churchgoing is so tightly bound to being married with children”: because they find other couples like themselves in churches—that is, those navigating family life; because children “drive parents to church” in the sense of encouraging them to transmit a moral/religious compass; and because men are much more likely than women to fall away from church on their own. 19 Steven L. Nock, Marriage in Men’s Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1998), 100. 20 Ross M. Stolzenberg, M. Blair-Loy, and Linda J. Waite, “Religious Participation in Early Adulthood: Age and Family Life Cycle Effects on Church Membership,” American Sociological Review 60 (1995): 94.
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again, where there is more marriage, there is more religion; where there is less, ditto. ut why does there appear to be such a tight connection between church-going on the one hand, and married people with children on the other? The prevailing storyline has no insight into that question, because it ignores the institution of the family except to regard family change as a footnote to religious decline. But there is another and radical way of looking at these same statistics that I believe sheds new light on Western secularisation. Why should we not believe the reverse is true instead—that there is something about being married, or having children, or both, that is making the adults in those situations more inclined toward Christianity in the first place?
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If such does indeed turn out to be true—if family decline is in fact the unseen engine of religious decline—then a whole new chapter in the study of Western secularisation demands to be opened up. In brief, what the connection between family and faith goes to show is that Western religious decline is not—pace secular thinkers—inexorable; the ebb and flow of Christianity throughout history by itself refutes as much. But those who would reverse that decline need to look more closely at what has happened to the natural family, and what might be done to restore it. In sum, there appears to be more going on in the relationship between faith and family than has been dreamed of by secular philosophers, and a • great deal more to explore.
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A REFLECTION ON MARITAL JOY Pope Francis21
n marriage, the joy of love needs to be cultivated. When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, it holds us in thrall and keeps us from experiencing other satisfactions. Joy, on the other hand, increases our pleasure and helps us find fulfilment in any number of things, even at those times of life when physical pleasure has ebbed. Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the word ‘joy’ refers to an expansion of the heart.22
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Marital joy can be experienced even amid sorrow; it involves accepting that marriage is an inevitable mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief,
satisfactions and longings, annoyances and pleasures, but always on the path of friendship, which inspires married couples to care for one another: ‘they help and serve each other’.23 The love of friendship is called “charity” when it perceives and esteems the ‘great worth’ of another person.24
21 Extracted and Adapted from Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia paragraphs 126 to 130. 22 Cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 31, art. 3., ad 3. 23 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 48. 24 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 26, art. 3.96 25 Ibid., q. 110, art. 1. 97
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Beauty – that ‘great worth’ which is other than physical or psychological appeal – enables us to appreciate the sacredness of a person, without feeling the need to possess it. In a consumerist society, the sense of beauty is impoverished and so joy fades. Everything is there to be purchased, possessed or consumed, including people. Tenderness, on the other hand, is a sign of a love free of selfish possessiveness. It makes us approach a person with immense respect and a certain dread of causing them harm or taking away their freedom. Loving another person involves the joy of contemplating and appreciating their innate beauty and sacredness, which is greater than my needs. This enables me to seek their good even when they cannot belong to me, or when they are no longer physically appealing but intrusive and annoying. For ‘the love by which one person is pleasing to another depends on his or her giving something freely’.25 The aesthetic experience of love is expressed in that ‘gaze’ which contemplates other persons as ends in themselves, even if they are infirm, elderly or physically unattractive. A look of appreciation has enormous importance, and to begrudge it is usually hurtful. How many
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things do spouses and children sometimes do in order to be noticed! Much hurt and many problems result when we stop looking at one another. This lies behind the complaints and grievances we often hear in families: ‘My husband does not look at me; he
acts as if I were invisible’.
‘Please look at me when I am talking to
you!’. ‘My wife no longer looks at me, she only has eyes for our children’. ‘In my own home nobody cares about me; they do not even see me; it is as if I did not exist’. Love opens our eyes and enables us to see, beyond all else, the great worth of a human being.
The joy of this contemplative love needs to be cultivated. Since we were made for love, we know that there is no greater joy than that of sharing good things: ‘Give, take, and treat yourself well’ (Sir 14:16). he most intense joys in life arise when we are able to elicit joy in others, as a foretaste of heaven. We can think of the lovely scene in the film Babette’s Feast, when the generous cook receives a grateful hug and praise: ‘Ah, how you will delight the angels!’ It is a joy and a great consolation to bring delight to others, to see them enjoying themselves. This joy, the fruit of fraternal love, is not that of the vain and self-centred, but of lovers who delight in the good of those whom they love, who give freely to them and thus bear good fruit.
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On the other hand, joy also grows through pain and sorrow. In the words of Saint Augustine, ‘the greater the danger in battle the greater is the joy of victory’.26 After suffering and struggling together, spouses are able to experience that it was worth it, because they achieved some good, learned something as a couple, or came to appreciate what they have. Few human joys are as deep and thrilling as those experienced by two people who love one another and have achieved something as the result of a great, shared effort. • 26 131 Augustine, Confessions, VIII, III, 7: PL 32, 752.98
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BREAKING THE LAW TO SAVE HIS SON
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he Pickering family from Texas is celebrating a miracle. With doctors about to turn off a life support machine keeping George Pickering’s son alive, a desperate and armed George intervened, determined his son would live. 2015 was an eventful year for George Pickering II and his son George Pickering III. George Jr. has made a full recovery after being in a coma. With doctors set to turn off his life support machine, his father stepped in. Upon hearing that doctors had given up hope, a drunk and armed George Sr. marched towards the Tomball Regional Medical Center in Houston, Texas, determined to make sure his son was given more time to make a recovery, even if it meant
he would spend time in jail. So George Sr. barricaded himself inside with his 27-yearold son as he managed to hold off police, before something amazing happened. ‘Towards the end of the standoff, which was about three hours long, he felt his son squeeze his hand,’ the family’s lawyer Phoebe Smith told the Press. ‘At this time, the SWAT team had already opened the door to the critical care room and he had surrendered to the police, but he surrendered knowing his son had squeezed his hand,’ she added. George Jr. had fallen into a coma after suffering a stroke in January. Doctors had declared him brain dead, while George II’s ex-wife and other son made the decision to turn off the life support machine.
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owever, there was one person who was not going to give up hope.
‘The SWAT team had their own doctors and when they entered into the critical care room, they saw that my client’s son was not brain dead because he was making eye contact, was following their commands and they were completely amazed at this,’ Smith added. 27 https://www.rt.com/usa/327077-family-coma-hospital-texas/ Published time: 25 Dec, 2015
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The Pickerings’ family lawyer also praised the courage and determination shown by George Sr. ‘The amazing thing was that my client was right and that his son did survive. When you see him now, he is a picture of health. I don’t think he would have survived but for the fact that his father slowed the process down.’ After feeling signs of life from his son, George Sr. peacefully surrendered to the police. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 months’ prison time. ‘There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it. It was love, it was love,’ George III told a local Radio Station. ‘The important thing is I’m alive and well, my father is home and we’re together again.’ •
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OUR FATHER
Pope Francis28
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he Gospel of Matthew (6:7-15), informs us that ‘The disciples had asked Jesus a few times: “Master, teach us to pray”’. In fact, they ‘did not know how to pray, and they saw that John’s disciples prayed, so they asked Jesus’. For his part, the Lord ‘is clear and simple in his teaching: “First”, he says ‘when praying, in prayer, do not waste words as the pagans do: they believe that they are heard because of their many words”’. Perhaps Jesus had in mind the prophets of Baal who, on Mt Carmel, cried out in prayer to their idol, to their god. The priests of Baal prayed, jumping from side to side,
and carved engravings: no, this is a waste, a waste of words; this is not prayer. The pagans, Jesus tells us think that they will be heard for their many words, as if they were magic words. This is why Jesus advises: ‘Do not be like them, God does not need words’, because ‘your Father knows what you need even before you ask him’. Jesus sets aside this prayer of words, of only words, and says: ‘Pray then like this’. Thus, in a word: ‘Father’, Jesus tells us precisely the space of prayer. Indeed, God knows what we need before we ask; this Father who listens to us in secret, in secret, like Him, Jesus recommends that we pray in secret. The Father, gives us precisely the identity of children. Therefore, when I say ‘Father’ I am going to the roots of my identity: my Christian identity is being a child and this is a grace of the Spirit. In fact, no one can say ‘Father’ without the grace of the Spirit. ‘Father’ is the word that Jesus used in the most significant moments: when He was full of joy and emotion: ‘Father, I praise You because You reveal these things to children’. Or when He is weeping at the tomb of His friend Lazarus: ‘Father, I thank You because you have heard Me’. And again, in anguish, in the final moments of His life: 28 Extracted and adapter from Pope Francis’ MORNING MEDITATION IN THE CHAPEL OF THE DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE, Thursday, 16 June 2016 by L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly ed. in English, n. 25, 24 June 2016)
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‘Father, if it is possible that this cup pass away from Me, let it pass’. Then, when everything is finished, He says, ‘Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit’. In short in the most signifi- cant moments, Jesus says: ‘Father’; this is the word that He uses most. This is the way of prayer and this, I would say, is the space of prayer. ithout feeling that we are children, without feeling that we are His children, without saying ‘Father’, our prayer is pagan, a prayer of words. It is certainly good to pray to Our Lady because she is a very beloved daughter of the Father. The same applies to the angels and saints who are all beloved by the Father and who intercede for us. But ‘Father’ is the cornerstone of prayer. If you are not able to begin the prayer by saying the word ‘Father’ with your heart and your voice, the prayer will not do.
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Praying like so means to feel the Father’s gaze upon us and to feel that the word ‘Father’ is not a waste like the words of the prayers of pagans, but that it is a call to the One who gave me the identity of a son. This is precisely the space of Christian prayer — ‘Father’ — and in this way we all pray, with all the saints and angels in the awareness that we are children with a Father who loves us and knows all of our needs. •
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CHILDREN ARE NEVER A ‘MISTAKE’ Pope Francis29
n completing our reflection on children, who are the most beautiful gift and blessing that the Creator has given to man and woman, we must now sadly speak about the ‘passions’ which many of them endure.
many children abandoned on the streets) and neither is their ignorance or their helplessness, so many children don’t even know what a school is. If anything, these should be reasons to love them all the more, with greater generosity.
From the first moments of their lives, many children are rejected, abandoned, and robbed of their childhood and future. There are those who dare to say, as if to justify themselves, that it was a mistake to bring these children into the world. This is shameful. Please let us not unload our faults onto the children.
How can we make such solemn declarations on human rights and the rights of children, if we then punish children for the errors of adults?
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Children are never a ‘mistake.’ Their hunger is not a mistake, nor is their poverty, their vulnerability, their abandonment (so
Those who have the task of governing, of educating, but I would say all adults, we are responsible for children and for doing what we can to change this situation. I am referring to ‘the passion’ of children. Every child who is marginalised, abandoned, who lives on the street begging with every kind of trick, without schooling, without medical care, is a cry that rises up to God and denounces the system that we adults have set in place. And unfortunately these children are prey to criminals who exploit them for shameful trafficking or commerce, or train them for war and violence. But even in so-called wealthy countries many children live in dramatic situations that scar them deeply because of crises in the family, educational gaps and at times 29 Saint Peter’s Square, Wednesday, 8 April 2015.
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inhuman living conditions. In every case, their childhood is violated in body and soul. But none of these children are forgotten by the Father who is in heaven! Not one of their tears is lost! Neither is our responsibility lost, the social responsibility of people, of each one of us, and of countries. nce Jesus rebuked his disciples because they sent away the children whose parents brought them to Him to be blessed. It is a moving Gospel narrative: ‘Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people; but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and went away.’30 How beautiful is this trust of the parents and Jesus’ response.
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30 Mt 19:13-15..
How I would like this passage to become the norm for all children. It is true that by the grace of God children in grave difficulty are often given extraordinary parents, ready and willing to make every sacrifice. But these parents should not be left alone. We should accompany them in their toil, and also offer them moments of shared joy and light-hearted cheer, so that they are not left with only routine therapy. When it comes to children, no matter what, there should be no utterance of those legal defence-like formulas: ‘after all, we are not a charity’, or, ‘in private, everyone is free to do as he or she wishes’, or even, ‘we’re sorry but we can’t do anything’. These words do not count when it comes to children. Too often the effects of a life worn down by precarious and underpaid
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work, unsustainable hours, bad transport rebound on the children.
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hildren also pay the price for immature unions and irresponsible separations: they are the first victims; they suffer the outcome of a culture of exaggerated individual rights, and then the children become more precocious. They often absorb the violence they are not able to ‘ward off’ and before the very eyes of adults are forced to grow accustomed to degradation. Also in our age, as in the past, the Church sets her motherhood at the service of children and their families. To parents and children of this world of ours, she bears the blessing of God, motherly tenderness, a firm reproach and strong condemnation. Children are no laughing matter. Think what a society would be like if it decided, once and for all, to establish
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this principle: ‘It’s true, we are not perfect and we make many mistakes. But when it comes to the children who come into the world, no sacrifice on the part of adults is too costly or too great, to ensure that no child believe he or she was a mistake, is worthless or is abandoned to a life of wounds and to the arrogance of men’. How beautiful a society like this would be! I say that for such a society, much could be forgiven, innumerable errors. Truly a great deal. The Lord judges our life according to what the angels of children tell him, angels who ‘always behold the face of the Father who is in heaven.’ 31 Let us always ask ourselves: what will the children’s guardian angels tell God about us? • 31 cf. Mt 18:10.
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YOUCAT The YOUCAT, an abbreviation of Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, is a version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is specifically tailored in language, presentation and format towards the youth of the Catholic faith. Originally published in 2011, the year of World Youth Day in Madrid, it was created in order to meaningfully engage with Catholic youth that they may better understand and defend their faith. The YOUCAT book is truly a global publication and is available in over 30 languages.
youcat.org GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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CARRYING THE MESSAGE OF MERCY Dear Friends, ruly, the Spirit blows where He wills. I was able to witness this at first hand when we were received in audience by the Holy Father to mark the launch of our campaign for the Year of Mercy. The Pope looked tired. But at the word mercy, the life sprang into his eyes.
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He positively radiated, the spark of enthusiasm instantly kindled. From deep within him came the urgent yearning that people might finally understand just how greatly God loves us, how infinitely wide open are the arms of the merciful Father. I have never seen such intensity as this before.
This man is a blessing and a mission for the Church in our time. Following his predecessor, who so wonderfully encapsulated the profound truth that God is Love, Pope Francis is now telling us how to convey this love to others. Each of us can play our part. First of all in our own lives. His apostolic letter on the ‘Joy of Love’, ‘Amoris Laetitia’, is full of practical suggestions for our daily life. And then, after this, we must all get behind this Pope and carry the message of mercy into the world – into this world so full of need.
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
WHERE TO SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION FOR THE CHURCH IN NEED Please use the Freepost envelope. Aid to the Church in Need,
info@acnireland.org
If you give by standing order, or have sent a donation recently, please accept our sincere thanks. This MIRROR is for your interest and information.
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I GIVE WITH LOVE...
...BLESS YOU AMDG
Giving with love As usual, I opened the envelope and simply set it aside on the kitchen bench. My giving started with compassion but somewhere those feelings were lost. I was happy to give but never really interested in those I was helping, and I told myself: Its okay, you’re giving, you’re being ‘charitable’. ‘What kind of person am I, who donates freely but with indifference, without love?’ So I took the Mirror and prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries, reading a paragraph after each Hail Mary and contemplating Christ’s Passion in relation to the stories in it. I read though the entire issue with love for all those in it, both the suffering and those called to serve them. Now I very much look forward to receiving your next issue. With my gratitude and blessings.... A benefactress in Australia
Dear Friends, As a result of your prayers, your contributions and the works of our project partners throughout the world such as Bishop Jaime José Villarroel in Venezuela, we are able to help millions of poor souls live lives in dignity in the face of evil. Thank you for joining with us in our efforts to be God’s Mercy, His Missionaries of Joy and of Hope as we struggle together daily to carry the divine light of God’s Face to every dark and forgotten corner of our broken world. Be assured that God does not forget those who are His hands of Mercy in this fallen world. In Christ,
For the faithful Christian martyrs I pray privately and celebrate Holy Mass with the parish for the Christian martyrs in Iraq, and I want to send you this small offering for their sakes. The marvellous fidelity of these Christians will be a light for those enslaved by the powers of darkness, who spread terror and death among so many innocent and defenceless people. I also pray for the perpetrators, for God’s mercy upon them. A priest in Portugal
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ire)
WE ARE CALLED TO BE MISSIONARIES OF JOY
THE DEEDS OF LOVE ARE DEEDS OF PEACE - ABOVE ALL IN THE FAMILY. ACN Spiritual Assistant
‘The family is where we first learn to relate to others, to listen and share, to be patient and show respect, to help one another and live as one.’
Pope Francis, Apostolic letter Amoris laetitia, 276
With the Holy Father in Rome – loving and approachable.
THE MIRROR IS AVAILABLE TO READ AT ACNIRELAND.ORG
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MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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Cuan Mhuire 1966-2016
Being God’s Mercy in the home
16 - 5
Being God’s Mercy
Holding up Jesus to the World The Medicine of Mercy
Christian Persecution and Forgiveness