Reality May 2016

A SIMPLE PLAN CREATES HOPE IN THE DESERT

WOMEN ON THE MARGINS GOOD SHEPHERD SISTERS & THEIR OUTREACH MINISTRIES

A WOMAN OF 1916 AND HER DEVOTION TO MARY

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

MAY 2016

FAREWELL MARIANELLA SAYING GOODBYE TO THE FAMOUS REDEMPTORIST DUBLIN BASE

THE VISION OF EASTER 1916 CAN THE VISION OF EASTER 1916 INSPIRE THIS GENERATION?

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We are all sinners but God heals us with an abundance of Grace, Mercy and Tenderness Pope Francis

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IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 FAREWELL TO MARIANELLA The Redemptorists say farewell to their house in Rathgar after almost a century

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

17 FAREWELL TO THE REDEMPTORIST OF MARIANELLA A tribute to the Marianella community at the final Mass

By Elsa Browne

21 A WOMAN OF 1916 AND OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP One woman’s devotion made it the favourite Marian image of many involved in the Easter Rising

By Margaret Ryan

12

23 THE VISION OF EASTER 1916 Can the vision of Easter 1916 inspire this generation of Irish men and women?

By Dr Padraig Corkery

26 WHEN DID WE SEE YOU HUNGRY? An unusual meeting opens the way to thinking about how we will be judged.

By Mike Daley

28 THE FATHER OF GENETICS: GREGOR MENDEL A priest working in a monastery garden laid the foundations of modern genetics

By Susan Gately

23

32

32 HARD TIMES A young man raises some questions about Catholic education.

By Seán Hurley

36 WORKING WITH WOMEN ON THE MARGINS The social justice message of the Good Shepherd Sisters

By Tríona Doherty

40 MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM A simple programme in the Turkana desert region that changed people’s lives dramatically

By Catherine M Waking’a

OPINION

REGULARS

11 BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

04 REALITY BITES

20 DAVID O'DONOGHUE

07 POPE MONITOR

31 CARMEL WYNNE

08 FEAST OF THE MONTH

43 PETER McVERRY SJ

09 REFLECTIONS 44 UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 45 GOD’S WORD

REALITY BITES CATHOLICS ON THE INCREASE

17.8% TOTAL

22.6% 10.9%

48%

17% 0.8%

4

VATICAN CITY

1.27 BILLION

According to the recently published Pontifical Year Book, the number of Catholics in the world increased during the nine years between 2005 and 2014 from 1,115 million to 1,272 million. That is effectively 17.8 per cent of the world population, as compared to 17.3 per cent in 2005.

The largest increase was in Africa (41 per cent), where there has been a population growth of 23.8 per cent. Asian Catholics are also proportionately more numerous than the national population increases (20 compared to 9.6 per cent). The Catholic population of Europe was slightly ahead (2 per cent) of the overall population. In Oceania population growth (18.2 per cent) was greater than the increase in the number REALITY MAY 2016

of Catholics (15.9 per cent). In 2014, the total of baptised Catholics by continent was •Africa (17 per cent), •America (48 per cent: still the continent with the highest number of Catholics), •Asia (10.9 per cent), •Europe (22.6 per cent) •Oceania (0.8 per cent) The number of priests, diocesan and religious during the period 2005 to 2014, increased by 9.381 from 406,411 to 415,792.

In Africa and Asia there was an increase of 32.6 per cent and 27.1 per cent respectively, whereas Europe saw a decline of 8 per cent, and Oceania a decline of 1.7 per cent.

Permanent deacons continued to increase in number, from 33,000 in 2005 to 44,566 in

2014 (33.5 per cent increase. They are more numerous in North America and Europe (97.5 of the total) while there are very few are deacons in Africa and Asia.

There was a slight decline of non-ordained male religious, from 54,708 in 2005 to 54,559 in 2014. Again, the decline was most marked in America (- 5 per cent), Europe (-14.2 per cent) and Oceania (-6.8 per cent), while increasing in Africa (+10.2 per cent) and in Asia (+30 per cent). Women religious in Europe and America declined from 70.8 per cent to 63.5 per cent, while in Africa and Asia there was an increase from 27.8 to 35.3 per cent. The strongest increase in seminarians was in Africa (+30.9%), and Asia (+29.4%), while Europe and the Americas registered a decline in numbers of 21.7% and 1.9% respectively.

N E WS

DEATH OF MOTHER ANGELICA ALABAMA

THE FEISTY AND OUTSPOKEN NUN

Mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) one of the world's largest religious media operations, died on Easter Sunday, 27 March 27 at the age of 92. She had been partially paralysed following a stroke in 2001. EWTN reaches 230 million viewers through programmes in English and several other languages. This was a remarkable achievement for a cloistered nun, a Poor Clare of Perpetual Adoration, and for which she was awarded the “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice” cross

by Pope Benedict XVI. Described as “feisty” or “outspoken,” Mother Angelica was often a figure of controversy in the U.S. church. In 1997, for example, she publically criticised the pastoral letter of Cardinal Roger Mahony on the Eucharist on her television show, alleging that its teaching about the real presence of Christ was ‘confusing’, and adding, "I'm afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolutely zero.

And I hope everyone else's in that diocese is zero."

Born on April 20 1923, Rita Rizzo had a difficult childhood. She was raised by her mother when her father abandoned the family. "We lived in rat-infested apartments”, she said, “Our life was so hard. I was interested in survival, so I didn't do well in school. It's hard when you're hungry and cold to study." She entered her convent in 1944, taking the religious name of Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

She broke into the media world by writing what she called "mini-books" on moral and inspirational themes. Their popularity attracted media attention, and she promoted them on television talk shows.

These appearances convinced her of the power of television in spreading the message. She began by renting studio space to produce videotapes of her talks, but parted from the company that owned it when it broadcast a movie she considered blasphemous. She started out on her own with a broadcasting licence, funds of $200 and little knowledge of TV production in a converted garage on the grounds of the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery. Its daily broadcasts were carried by three cable systems. In 1998, Mother Angelica stepped down as the head of EWTN. Outspoken and humorous, Mother Angelica was driven by a lively faith that used the media to spread the Gospel.

“You see,” she once remarked, “God expects His people to do the ridiculous, so He can do the miraculous.” She also founded a community of friars, Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word, for the work of the media.

Mother Angelica

5 Mother Angelica during a TV recording in 1992

In repose at the the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, Alabama

Actor Jim Caviezel pays his respects at the funeral mass

continued on page 6

REALITY BITES HOMELESS OPERA SUPPORTERS OF ANGLICAN BISHOP DEFEND HIS REPUTATION SINGERS Bishop George Bell was Anglican bishop of Chester

6

Cr i t i c s h av e p r a i s e d a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion over Easter presented by homeless people.

It was staged at Manchester’s Campfield Market and featured a new finale by the Catholic composer Sir James MacMillan, with words written by the homeless themselves. Lasting for an hour, it was directed by an award-winning British filmmaker Penny Woolcock. Ms Woolcock said her two greatest passions are opera and working with homeless people. She spent eight months on the streets of London making a film about homelessness.

For the Easter production she worked with Streetwise Opera, a company that seeks to change the lives of the homeless by giving them the opportunity to participate in opera. In Manchester sleeping rough has doubled over the last year. Two members of the cast said the opera has made a massive difference to their lives. “It’s like a big dream come true,” says Matt Reed; while Danny Collins says that, for the first time in many years, his friends and family are proud of him.

In her blog, Ms Woolcock said some of those performing were still sleeping rough “but they still make it in every day”.

Almost everyone, she said, was “struggling with both mental and physical frailties and some with addictions, and they are still giving their all. It is immensely moving and I am in awe”.

REALITY MAY 2016

from 1929 until his death in 1958. During the war, he was a prominent ecumenist, critic of some of his own government’s policies and friend of the young German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the postwar years he promoted better relations between Germany and Britain. His reputation was so high that he was honoured with a commemoration as a holy person in the Calendar of the Anglican Church.

In September 2015, the Church of England paid £15, 000 to a woman who alleged she had been sexually abused by Bell. A group of senior church figures, including academics, lawyers and politicians have, however, written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, calling on him to apologise to the family of Bishop George Bell and to launch an investigation into the process that led to his “public denigration.” They allege that the

Bishop George Bell

Church failed to make adequate enquiries before issuing the apology and making the payment.

In a statement the George Bell Group alleged that “The valuable reputation of a great man, a rare example of self-sacrificing human goodness, has been carelessly destroyed on the basis of slender evidence, sloppily investigated.”

BECOMING THE ADOPTIVE PARENTS OF TRIPLETS

Sebastien, Sophie-Elisabeth and Sydney Campbell

Cari and Kevin Campbell had their triplets baptised at the Easter vigil in their parish of the Resurrection, Dubuque, Iowa. A 35-year-old attorney, Cari Campbell contacted a friend from law school when she saw a message on her Facebook page asking for people to help in an emergency adoption situation.

Cari made contact and learned that her friend's mother was the pastor in a prayer group at a

Christian clinic in Oregon. A woman attending the clinic was pregnant with triplets, but was planning to have an abortion if she couldn't find someone to adopt all three of the children together. Several people were ready to adopt one baby: no one who was prepared to take all three. The Campbells, who have no children, put their names forward in an attempt to put the abortion on hold. The pregnant woman phoned

them the night before she was due to abort the babies, and said, “If you'll take them, I won't do it.” They agreed to do it, realising what an enormous responsibility they were taking on and began to prepare themselves to parent three newborns. The babies, two boys and a girl, were born ten weeks premature, but were otherwise healthy. It was a few weeks before the Campbells were able to take the babies home. Their local parish has been very supportive to them as they have gone through the adoption process. “We went through a time for about a week and half in January when we faced some legal drama, and we weren't sure if the adoption was going to go through or not. It was a really trying time,” they recalled. “We really leaned on our faith and the prayer group at our parish to get through it. They were wonderful.”

N E WS

POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS POPE AND THE MIGRANTS

© Courtesy of Limerick Leader

POPE BLESSES ICON FOR IRISH TOUR After the public audience in St Peter’s Square on 16 March last, Pope Francis blessed a copy of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help which will go on tour of Ireland during the months of April and May. The icon was presented to the Holy Father for blessing by Fr Seamus Enright CSsR, director of the pilgrimage.

POPE’S POPULARITY According to an opinion poll by WIN/Gallup, Pope Francis is the most popular international leader. The survey, based on 1,000 people in 64 countries, puts the popularity of the Pope above US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders. Pope Francis achieved a net score of +41 (the difference between favourable and unfavourable opinions) which put him 11 points ahead of the next person on the list, President Obama, who achieved +30.

Those polled were asked: “Irrespective of your own religion, do you have a very favourable, somewhat favourable, somewhat unfavourable or very unfavourable opinion of Pope Francis?” Five out of 10 respondents (54 per cent) hold favourable views, compared with 12 per cent unfavourable. The Pope was held in highest regard in his native Argentina, North America and Europe. Portugal has the highest number of individuals with a positive view of the Pope, followed by the Philippines. In terms of the religious affiliation of the respondents, Roman Catholics view the Pope most favourably, followed by Jews and then Protestants. Only 28 per cent of Muslims and 33 per cent of Buddhists see Francis in a positive light, but most of the Muslims and Buddhists surveyed had not heard of him. The majority of those professing themselves atheists or agnostics viewed him favourably.

Pope Francis continued what has now become his custom of celebrating the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper with its rite of washing the feet outside of the Basilica of St John Lateran. This year he visited a refugee centre at Castelnuovo di Porto thirty miles north of Rome. Eight men and four women had their feet washed. The y included an Italian Catholic, three Eritrean Coptic Christians, four Catholics from Nigeria, three Muslims from Mali, Syria and Pakistan and a Hindu man from India. Only a relatively small number of the 892 asylum-seekers living at the shelter attended the mass, and many of the seats were left empty. In his homily, Pope Francis likened Judas' betrayal to those "behind" Brussels terror attacks which killed 31 and injured 270. The betrayers, he said, “are manufacturers, arms dealers who want blood, not peace; they want war, not brotherhood.” He also said, "Today, at this time, when I do the same act of Jesus washing the feet of twelve of you, let us all make a gesture of brotherhood, and let us all say: 'We are different, we have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and sisters and we want to live in peace.”

The pope continued to draw attention to the plight of refugees during the other Holy Week celebrations. The meditations for the outdoor way of the Cross at the Colosseum had a refugee theme. During his traditional Easter 7 message, Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world), he said that migrants often met “rejection from those who could offer them welcome and assistance.”

The message was delivered amid tight security in St Peter’s Square, following the Brussels bombing earlier in Holy Week. He said: “The Easter message of the risen Christ invites us not to forget those men and women seeking a better future or the even more numerous throng of migrants and refugee, fleeing from war, hunger, poverty and social injustice.” All too often, he said, “these brothers and sisters of ours meet along the way with death or, in any event, rejection by those who could offer them welcome and assistance.”

The Holy Father prayed for Syria and mentioned also recent attacks in Brussels, Turkey, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Iraq.

FEAST OF THE MONTH ST CARTHAGE OF LISMORE MAY 14

TH

There

8

was a Bohan family living in my native Kiskeam when we were children. One of the boys joined the De La Salle Brothers and was given the name Carthage, after the saint of Lismore. We called him “powder and shot”. When home on holidays, Carthage carried a fowling piece strapped to his bike, but the prevailing opinion around Kiskeam was that when Cart spent a day shooting on the mountain, the bird population suffered no casualties. Taur Mountain, north-west of Newmarket town and the scene of Cart’s fowling expeditions, is also known as the Bocaura, a name deriving from the both or cell once the residence of Carthach, alias St Carthage.

The parentage of Carthage was Kerry through and through, his father being a scion of the Ciarraighe Luachra sept and his mother of the Corca Duibhne. Like other youngsters around Castlemain where he was born in the late 6th century, he started life as a buachail bó, a herdsman. From early years he showed interest in the monastic life, and as a 19th century writer put it, “The youth being extremely comely, had certain declarations conveyed from young maidens, and those offers were intended to estrange him from a celibate’s life.” However, Carthage was not diverted from his ambition, and after exploring life in a number of monasteries, both on the local and national scene, including a stint under St Comgall of Bangor, he finally settled at Rahan in the old kingdom of Meath.

Here, he not only founded a monastery, but spent the next forty years of his life there. In fact he would have remained there until death, were it not for being driven out “by the jealous and ungrateful men of Meath.” To make matters worse, he was banished “when the strength of his arm was weakened and the vigour of his mind diminished.” Such an insult to the saint has gone down in Irish hagiographical lore as one of the three evil things for which certain ‘saints’ of Ireland were responsible; the other two being the shortening of the life of St Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, and the banishment of Colmcille to Iona.

The reasons for the expulsion of Carthage and his community from the kingdom of Meath are likely to have been of both a civil and religious nature. Carthage was a Munsterman living in Northern Ui Neill territory at a time when the kingdom of Munster had expansionist ambitions.

That was enough to discomfit the civil authorities.

The religious grounds, however, were immediate and more emotive. By Easter, 635, the Paschal Controversy, the dispute concerning the dating of Easter, was at breaking point, having already torn the heart out of the Irish and British Church for a considerable time. In the early 7th century missionaries were sent from Rome by Pope St Gregory the Great to convert the English. When the Irish and British missionaries labouring at the same task came in contact with ‘the Roman Mission,’ they found they did not celebrate Easter on the same date, because Rome had moved on to a more accurate method of calculation ,while the Irish and British churches continued to follow the old ways.

At the Synod of Whitby in 664, the English church fell into line with the revised Roman way.

The southern half of Ireland had conformed to the new ways early in the 7th century, but the very powerful monastery of Iona and its cohort of monasteries mostly in the northern half of the country (the Ui Neill territory), held out against the change. The dispute turned bitter and the likelihood is that Rahan, having adopted the new dating of Easter, paid the price by being expelled from the kingdom of Meath.

Having fled south into Munster, the monks enjoyed refugee status until eventually Carthage got permission to make a new foundation at Lismore in the Deci country of Waterford. The whole experience may have hastened the death of Carthage; but his new foundation took on a life of its own, becoming in time an important centre in southern Ireland, second only to Clonmacnoise in learning and holiness.

John J. Ó Riordáin, CSsR

REALITY MAY 2016

Reality Volume 81. No. 4 May 2016 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651 Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)

Chair, Redemptorist Communications Seamus Enright CSsR Editor Brendan McConvery CSsR bmcconvery@redcoms.org Design & Layout David Mc Namara CSsR dmcnamara@redcoms.org General Manager Paul Copeland pcopeland@redcoms.org Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Administration & Accounts Michelle McKeon mmckeon@redcoms.org Printed by Nicholson & Bass, Belfast Photo Credits Catholic News Service, Shutterstock, Jack Hickey and Br Anthony McCrave CSsR REALITY SUBSCRIPTIONS Through a promoter (Ireland only) €18 or £15 Annual Subscription by post: Ireland €22 or £18 UK £25 Europe €35 Rest of the world €45 Please send all payments to: Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin D09 X651 ADVERTISING Whilst we take every care to ensure the accuracy and validity of adverts placed in Reality, the information contained in adverts does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Redemptorist Communications. You are therefore advised to verify the accuracy and validity of any information contained in adverts before entering into any commitment based upon them.

When you have finished with this magazine, please pass it on or recycle it. Thank you.

REDEMPTORIST COMMUNICATIONS Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin D09 X651 Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Email: sales@redcoms.org Web: www.redcoms.org

REFLECTIONS By all means, marry.

If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men and women.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

Marriage is the bond between a person who never remembers anniversaries and another who never forgets them.

OGDEN NASH

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

BERNADETTE DEVLIN

BL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

SOCRATES

All of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God’s justice permits creation to punish humanity.

To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.

The usual masculine disillusionment is discovering that a woman has a brain.

MARGARET MITCHELL

MICHELANGELO

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods.

Cuir síoda ar ghabhar ach is gabhar i gcónaí é. (Put silk on a goat and he’s still a goat) IRISH PROVERB

PLATO

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Sin is actions that harm us. Lying harms us. Abortion harms a woman – it’s a tremendous mental attack, and physical, sometimes. But we seem to get that muddled.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

JEREMY IRONS

GEORGE ELIOT

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

WINNIE THE POOH (AA MILNE)

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Be careful to be gentle, lest in removing the rust, you break the whole instrument.

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

ST BENEDICT

God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE CHRISTIANS OF PAKISTAN

After

the restraints of Lent and the solemnity of Holy Week, the Christian population of Lahore, especially families with small children, gathered on Easter Sunday evening in the local Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park to relax and celebrate the festival. This was an especially attractive place for families with children, as it had an amusement area with swings, a train and other attractions. Suddenly, an explosion rent the air. Within moments, there were bleeding and dying bodies strewn throughout that part of the park. Seventy-two people, including children, died in the attack, and several hundred were seriously injured.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a hard line Taliban faction and the use of a suicide bomber had allowed him to mingle with the crowd. According to reports, their spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, stated: “It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter. It’s our message to the government that we will carry out such attacks again until Islamic sharia law is imposed in the country.”

This was not the first time the Christian population of the country had been targeted.

In September 2013, a similar Taliban attack involving two suicide bombers, killed 75, including women and children, and injuring more than a hundred as the congregation left All Saints’ Church in Peshawar, one of the oldest Catholic churches in the state. In Lahore in March, 2015, Sunday morning attacks on two Christian churches left 14 dead and more than seventy injured.

There are 3.8 million Christians in the Pakistani population of 192 million which makes it a very small minority of less than 2% in a population that is overwhelmingly Muslim. About half of the Christian population is Catholic and is concentrated around the cities of Karachi and Peshawar. The majority of

the Christians are poor, but in an earlier era, a relatively wealthy Catholic minority required schools, often staffed by Irish religious, such as the Presentation Sisters, and of such excellent quality that they attracted Muslim pupils.

Following the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan was a largely secular republic within the British Commonwealth that guaranteed equality of treatment to all its citizens. That began to change in the mid 1970s, however, when Pakistan became an increasingly Muslim confessional state. Under the constitution, Christians cannot become president or prime minister and certain posts in the administration of justice are closed to them. The so-called anti-blasphemy laws have been particularly restrictive, since a report of blasphemy by a Christian can be used to settle scores in disputes about property or land. Most of these charges of blasphemy go unreported in the West. Others have attracted some media attention, such Asia Bibi, who was sentenced to be hanged in 2010 and is still awaiting the results of an appeal, or the case of a young illiterate Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, with other mental difficulties, who was accused of blasphemy for burning pages from a book containing verses from the Qu’ran.

Clement Shahbaz Bhatti was a Catholic politician and minister of state who made no secret of his opposition to the blasphemy laws and their use against his fellow Christians.

He was assassinated on his way to his office 2011. Fearing he might meet such a fate, he had made a video to be released on the occasion of his death. In it, he said, "I believe in Jesus Christ who has given his own life for us, and I am ready to die for a cause. I'm living for my community ... and I will die to defend their rights.” The bishops of Pakistan have requested the Pope to name him as a martyr.

In concentrating our attention on the plight of Christians in the Middle East, it is easy to lose sight of the fate of this fragile minority with so few resources of its own. Perhaps the memory of the Irish men and women, religious sisters and brothers especially, but also those who served with the British army and civil service in the Indian sub-continent and contributed to the Church’s life there, might remind us that we have bonds with the Christians of Pakistan, and that the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Karachi bears the name of our national apostle?

Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor

11

C OVE R STO RY

FAREWELL 12

LAST JANUARY, REDEMPTORIST CO M MU N I C AT I O NS MOVED ITS OFFICES FROM MARIANELLA, ORWELL ROAD, DUBLIN TO A NEW ADDRESS IN SANTRY. THE FOLLOWING MONTH, THE REDEMPTORIST COMMUNITY DEPARTED FROM MARIANELLA AFTER ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR REALITY MAY 2016

The

Redemptorists at the beginning of the twentieth century were unusual among religious orders in not having a community or church in Dublin. The four great orders of friars - Dominican, Franciscan, Augustinian and Carmelite – had roots in the city going back to the Middle Ages. Following Catholic Emancipation in 1828, newer orders began to arrive in the country, especially under Paul Cullen, who became Archbishop of Dublin in 1852. Cullen embarked on a reforming agenda, sometimes known as ‘the devotional revolution,’ for which he enlisted the help of religious. Passionists, Oblates and Rosminians arrived in Dublin in 1840s and ‘50s.

When the Redemptorists came to Ireland in 1851, Cullen was anxious to keep them in Limerick.

According to Fr Joseph Prost, the Austrian leader

of the first mission, Cullen hoped they might “help bring about a renascence of religious observance among the relaxed Franciscans and Dominicans” in the city, as well as counteract the excessive nationalism and independence of spirit of the local bishop, John Ryan, and his clergy.

HOUSE HUNTING IN DUBLIN By the end of the nineteenth century, the Redemptorists were established in Limerick, Dundalk and Belfast. Some years earlier, they had begun to search for a Dublin home for the preparatory college, or juvenate, lodged in a wing of the Limerick monastery since its foundation in 1884. Large houses were examined in such Dublin locations as Kilmacud, Booterstown and Dundrum, but to no avail.

TO MARIANELLA 13

Fr Patrick Griffith wrote to Archbishop Walsh of Dublin in 1895, advancing the arguments for a Dublin foundation. The Archbishop was inflexible however: while Redemptorists were welcome to preach parish missions in the capital, there was no question of opening a house, still less one with a public church attached.

TO UNIVERSITY IN DUBLIN Hope for a breakthrough came with the foundation of the National University of Ireland in 1908. The university question had been one of the most divisive of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Schools, such as Blackrock College, had developed a system of retaining students after their secondary course and preparing them for the examinations set by the Royal University of Ireland, a purely

Redemptorists were welcome to preach parish missions in the capital, there was no question of opening a house, still less one with a public church attached

examining body which had no provision for teaching.

Fr Thomas Walsh, director of the juvenate, and his colleague, Fr Patrick Hartigan, prepared some senior boys for the First Arts examinations of the Royal University. The college’s small numbers made this practical only for the few gifted students in the final year. When the National University was founded, he presented his superiors with a far more radical plan – to give students the possibility of taking a full university degree before the noviciate and studies for ordination.

To his surprise, Fr Walsh got permission to establish a branch of the juvenate in Dublin as a residence for students attending University

College. The support of his superior general, Patrick Murray, a Donegal man, was more lukewarm however: Fr Murray expressed the view (perhaps even the hope?) that the Dublin venture would not be a success.

Fr Walsh and six students found a temporary residence in Harcourt Street in time for the opening of the 1910 academic year. A

C OVE R STO RY

MARIANELLA TIMELINE 1851

The Redemptorists came to Ireland Cardinal Cullen wanted them in Limerick to raise the tone of religious life and to counteract what he regarded as the “excessive nationalism” and independence of spirit of the local clergy.

They sought unsuccessfully to transfer their preparatory college in Dublin in the late 19th century.

1910

Fr Thomas Walsh and six students take up temporary residence in Harcourt St as a hostel for university students attending University College.

Later that year, they move to Chessington, on Highfield Road, naming it Marianella after the country residence of the Liguori family.

1919

The community transfers to Faunagh, on Orwell Road.

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The name Marianella is brought with them.

1928

Ceased being a hostel for university students Becomes the residence of a small community of parish missioners.

1963

Becomes the home of Redemptorist Publications.

1965

Permission to build a new house of studies for theological students is granted.

1968

The new house is blessed on the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, June 27, and the students arrived the following August.

1973

Marianella Pastoral Centre isestablished in January.

1974

The first Mass was celebrated in the Chapel, dedicated to the Holy Spirit, on September 10.

2008

The Pastoral Centre closed.

2016

The last public Mass was celebrated in Marianella on January 31.

REALITY MAY 2016

short time later, the Redemptorists bought Chessington on Highfield Road, renaming it Marianella, after the birthplace of their founder, St Alphonsus, near Naples.

MARIANELLA – THE TITANIC CONNECTION Marianella was home to the students and a small community of missioners, but it soon became evident that space was inadequate.

A house called Faunagh on Orwell Road came on the market in February 1917. It was bought two years later and the name of Marianella was transferred to it.

According to the 1911 census, Faunagh was owned by George Pomeroy Colley, a 45 year old Protestant, whose household numbered eight persons, in addition to his wife, one small child and a younger brother. The servants included a butler, a chauffeur and six women servants. The Colleys belonged to a distinguished line that had done service to the Empire, and his sister’s daughter was the well-known Anglo-Irish writer, Elizabeth Bowen.

George Colley’s younger brother, Edward, was a civil engineer. During the Klondike Gold Rush, he opened a mining brokerage firm in Vancouver. He was returning to Canada after a holiday at Faunagh on board The Titanic and died in that ship’s tragic end.

Mrs Edith Colley was a member of the Finlay family, who owned a large estate in Clondalkin. Both her brothers died in World War I, so Edith inherited the estate, and the Faunagh that became the first Marianella

Mrs Edith Colley of Faunagh

Colleys vacated Faunagh, clearing the way for the Redemptorists.

THE OLD MARIANELLA The educational experiment of Marianella as a university hostel for young men ended in 1928. Still without a public church, the house continued as a residence for a community of missioners.

In 1932, it hosted a particularly large gathering of Redemptorists, thus proving the need for a house of some size in Dublin.

The event was Ireland’s first Eucharistic Congress. Forty-three priests from all the Irish communities, and many from England, were

Construction of the new residence, circa 1967

THE NEW MARIANELLA The time eventually came to transfer the theology students to Dublin. Within a short time of being appointed Provincial in 1964, Fr John Whyte consulted an architect about the feasibility of building on the Marianella site.

The brief was for a building to hold eighty Redemptorists, including fifty students, with ten additional guest rooms. Permission to build was granted by Archbishop McQuaid in January 1965.

News of the new foundation was not greeted with unanimous approval. Some were opposed in principle to moving the students to Dublin. Others believed that building costs would cripple a province, already financially stretched by building two retreat houses and supporting three foreign missions. Whyte’s predecessor as provincial had boasted of opening a new house each year of his nine years in office, either in Ireland or its three missions in the Philippines, India or Brazil.

The first handful of Redemptorists took possession of the new house in June, 1968, and formally blessed it on the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual

Forty-three priests from all the Irish communities, and many from England, were squeezed into the house, while the students occupied a large tent on the grounds squeezed into the house, while the students occupied a large tent on the grounds.

Thirteen extra altars were erected in every nook and cranny to enable the visitors, as well as a dozen other priests staying nearby, to say daily Mass. Two Redemptorist bishops attended, Archbishop Carmine Caesarano of Aversa, and Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky of the Ukraine, who died a martyr in 1959 and was beatified in 2001.

The house was beginning to show signs of ageing. Its spacious grounds made it an ideal location for other uses. Permission was sought to open a retreat house in 1948, it was granted, but not for the Marianella site.

In declining the offer, the provincial, Fr John Treacy had tentatively opened the question of a house for theological students, should the recently opened house of studies in Galway prove too small.

Refectory of the first Marianella

Help. The students, twenty-five in number, arrived at the end of August.

A PLACE OF STUDY Marianella had been conceived as a house of studies according to the traditional model where the entire theology syllabus would be taught by a small faculty of Redemptorist professors to Redemptorist students. That model was already crumbling. The forecast of fifty students in theology had seemed reasonable in 1964: four years later, it was only half of that number, and the signs were that it would decrease further. Marianella

Liguori House being built at the back of the old Marianella

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C OVE R STO RY

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survived as an independent faculty of theology for just the first two years of its life.

A new solution had to be sought. While many orders had united in a common institute of philosophy and theology in Milltown Park, the Redemptorist chose to join forces with the Spiritans at Kimmage Manor. Eventually this became the Kimmage Institute of Theology and Cultures in 1993 until it finally united with Milltown in 2003.

No longer obliged to train candidates for ordination and with a whole storey of rooms to spare, theological education in Marianella was poised for a fresh turn. The profound changes following the Second Vatican Council, made it imperative to provide some kind of in-service training, especially for religious and clergy. The Marianella Pastoral Centre was set up in January 1973. The first residential course in pastoral counselling was delivered in February, 1974. The following year, the first three month renewal course was held. Marianella continued to provide REALITY MAY 2016

a rich offering of courses to priests, religious and laity from all over the world for more than thirty years until declining numbers of religious, still of an age to benefit from an intensive renewal course, and the rising cost of residential programmes forced it to end its programmes in 2008.

A PLACE OF PRAYER When the Redemptorists took possession of ‘the new Marianella’ in 1968, it had no chapel.

Various rooms did temporary duty, sometimes depending on the number of worshippers.

Once a stable local congregation began to attend daily Mass, the assembly hall became the usual place of liturgical assembly.

Fr Joseph Tronson, the rector, clung resolutely to his conviction that a religious house needed a proper and well-ordered place of worship. In August 1972, the provincial chapter approved the building of the chapel. Designed by Louis Peppard, building began in October 1973 and it was completed in time for a meeting of

European Redemptorists in September 1974, when the General, Fr Joseph Pfab, blessed it and celebrated the first Mass on 10 September.

The chapel, like the house, was dedicated to the Holy Spirit and this was the theme engraved on the windows of clear glass that gave light to the church. The clear windows also enabled worshippers to observe the changes of light throughout the day and the seasonal changes in the wonderful array of trees planted by Marianella’s earlier owners.

The last part of Marianella to be built, the chapel was also the last part of Marianella to be at the service of the people of God. The last public Mass was celebrated on Sunday, 31 January, 2016. Many, both Redemptorists, co-operators and staff, will miss the chapel as a ‘tent of meeting,’ formed by its enormous beams of laminated timber.

Brendan McConvery CSsR is editor of Reality and author of The Redemptorists in Ireland (1851 – 2011).

FAREWELL TO THE REDEMPTORISTS OF MARIANELLA

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THE L AST MASS IN MARIANELL A WAS CELEBRATED ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 2016. THE MARIANELLA SUNDAY EUCHARIST GREW OUT OF THE REDEMPTORIST COMMUNITY MASS. THOSE WHO ATTENDED FORMED A COMMUNITY OF FAITH THAT INCLUDED THE REDEMPTORISTS. THIS BRIEF ADDRESS WAS GIVEN BY A REGULAR MEMBER OF THE CONGREGATION AT THE END OF THE FINAL MASS.

BY ELSA BROWNE

If

I could presume to speak on behalf of the congregation here, I would like to say a few words of gratitude to the Redemptorist Community of Marianella.

It is hard for us to believe that you are really going, even though we’ve known it for many months, but haven’t we been blessed, privileged, to have had the benefit of your wisdom and learning for so long. If we have been moaning and groaning

to you about leaving, it is only because we love you all so much, we don’t want you to go.

This church has been like a cocoon for us, where, on a good day, we can leave our worldly concerns outside and enter a place where we feel so comfortable and welcome. How often we have heard that word “Welcome. All are welcome. ”I think we have a very strong sense to that welcome when we enter Marianella.

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fleshed out your homilies with background knowledge about the times they were written and the people they were written for. You have interspersed your homilies with stories about your parents, your brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and we like that. We don’t know why we like it, but we like it!

And when things have been really difficult for the Church, you have stood here before us every week and that must have been hard, but you maintained your dignity and our respect.

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But it is not the bricks and mortar, or the wood or the windows that creates that very special atmosphere. It is the community who live here and can I say, the whole worshipping community as well?

But it is for your homilies that you will be remembered

REALITY MAY 2016

the most, you and the other Redemptorists who have spent time in Marianella. You have asked us to look deeper into the Gospel texts for other meanings.

You have challenged us to think and think again. You have asked us what these texts are telling us about our lives today. You have

The constant theme has been the love of God and the love of one another and with that, you have reminded us of our obligations to the poor and the needy. You have told us that we too are missionaries and we will remember that when you’ve gone, so may be your work here will live on. One way or another, I know that you have made a lasting impression on our lives and we are better people because of you.

So what else are we going to miss? Well, the big church festivals like the Easter Vigil ...

Lighting the paschal fire in the garden, with the added excitement of wondering if the whole thing will explode and take off, And processing through the garden ... and singing And incense and lighting candles ... and singing And splashing us with holy water ... and singing And Holy Thursday and the Washing of Feet Good Friday and the reading of the Passion and the veneration of the Cross Early morning 7.30 Mass during Lent ... and no singing!

And Christmas Midnight Mass ...and singing And Brother Anthony and Brother Nicholas

St Patrick’s Day and shamrock and Emails from the saint himself The Annual Novena ... and singing Slide shows of religious art and poetry And sporting events All Ireland Finals and Liverpool

Football Club and Munster Rugby All these things we will remember and miss.

But things never remain the same. We don’t want things to change but that is not the way life works.

You are now leaving and facing new challenges and, we hope, new opportunities and you know all our prayers go with you.

And if it happens that you can find a way to celebrate Mass for us from time to time locally, we will come, we will be there and you will hear us because ... we will be singing!

So I will end, calling to mind the many who have prayed in Marianella over the years, all of us who have gathered here together regularly to pray the office, to pray Mass together, let us give thanks to God as we pray “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” And so let us applaud one another in thanksgiving for all the blessings we have received.

19 Elsa Brown is a near neighbour and friend of the Redemptorist Community of Marianella and a reader at Sunday and feast day liturgies.

C OM M E N T THE YOUNG VOICE DAVID O’DONOGHUE

1916 TODAY AND THE DROUGHT OF DREAMING

THE LEADERS OF THE EASTER RISING WERE IN THE MAIN YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN. WHAT MESSAGE MIGHT THE CENTENARY OF THE RISING CONVEY TO YOUNG IRISH MEN AND WOMEN TODAY?

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This is the kind of column I would ordinarily begin with a colourful “100 years ago…” call back, but let’s be frank, it seems you can’t turn around lately without being reminded that it is the centenary of the 1916 Rising. It’s splashed all over our computers, televisions and newspapers and our year thus far has extended, thinkpiece by thinkpiece, into one large and protracted conversation about what really happened on that day in 1916, what it meant to the Irish state the failed uprising would eventually bring to birth, and what it means to the modern Ireland. In this maelstrom of contending opinions and differing narratives, I can’t help but feel that there is one astounding factor that has been little explored.

Many of those who led the Rising, from Pearse to Plunkett, were very young at the time they stormed the GPO. Today, at a time when adolescence seems to extend to sometime in the early 30s, they would hardly be considered adults. But these young men and women struck out daringly to realise a dream that so many viewed as mad and foolish and ended up changing the destiny of Ireland for good or ill. They realised the “terrible beauty” that would, years later, birth an independent nation that many would have thought impossible to achieve at the time. They clung to mad notions of freedom and equality and REALITY MAY 2016

dared to take action that would at first cause ridicule that would then segue into support. And to me, more than anything, it is the youth of so many of the Rising’s participants that amazes me.

One hundred years on, it’s a difficult time to be young in Ireland. Steady employment seems like an increasingly distant fantasy, mental health among young people has at last become a talking point, only to be slashed down in these times of economic recession and many of us have had to flee our families and communities in an attempt to scratch out a living in far flung shores. Rent is rising and home ownership seems almost a laughable fiction at this stage while many college graduates struggle in low-paying internships in the vague hope that it might get them somewhere. We as a generation feel broken and lost and directionless. And ordinarily this is a moment when we might start believing in something; some transcendent ideology that might take the form of anything from Christianity to Republicanism, some grand narrative that converts our powerless into a feeling of power and boundless possibility.

But it’s not happening.

A century ago, in a time of suffering, young people enjoyed those greatest of youth’s luxuries: optimism and idealism. They

became revolutionaries or missionaries and were attracted to the idea of devoting their lives to some higher power or purpose that could cast them as vital contributors in a celestial struggle, small embers raging together against the darkness of stagnation, oppression and injustice. A hundred years on and life is still difficult for the youth of Ireland, as it so often seems to be in our history, but we no longer have that transcendental purpose to grasp on to. Though we will celebrate the dreamers of the 1916 Rising this year, we will not imitate them.

Among young people and society at large there is a great scepticism reserved for those who tie themselves to some transcendent principles like sailors tied to masts in uncertain and stormy seas. Organised religion dwindles amid many valid criticisms but nothing rises up to replace it, much as hardcore republicanism seems a relic of some bygone age and yet we still lack a movement to fill that void. We young people exist with a great thirst for change and a desire to right wrongs but in an environment where there is a drought of dreaming; shuffling through the rough sands of struggle and injustice with our mouths parched for some satisfying drink we cannot name. What few causes we have are carried out from behind a glowing screen, the invisible network of smartphones

taking the place of the tangible community and connection of real social movements and belief systems. What the generation of 1916 wouldn’t have given to have such technology as we have, and yet it seems often to have undermined us, as its cavalcade of advertising makes us increasing sceptical and cynical about the world around us. We seek a national identity in online lists that tell us about the “12 Fizzy Drinks only Irish People enjoy”.

It is not the length of years that I feel separates Irish young people of today with those who stormed the GPO in 1916. It is instead how alien they seem to us now, with their mad notions and passionate ideals and belief they could truly change society.

As we young people are beaten down so often with article after article that calls us “spoiled” and “entitled” I would love to see us capture the fire that burned in the hearts of the young one hundred years ago and set our own weary souls alight.

David O'Donoghue is a freelance journalist from Co. Kerry. His work has appeared in the Irish Catholic, The Irish Independent, and the Kerryman. He is the former political editor of campus.ie and holds an abiding interest in all things literary, political and spiritual.

JUBILEE OF OUR MOTHER OF PERPETUA L H E LP

A WOMAN OF 1916 AND OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR

THE IMAGE OF OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR WAS WELL-KNOWN IN IRELAND BEFORE 1916, BUT THE GOLDEN JUBILEE OF ITS RESTORATION PROBABLY SET MORE IN THE PUBLIC EYE. ONE 21 WOMAN’S DEVOTION MADE IT THE FAVOURITE MARIAN IMAGE OF MANY INVOLVED IN THE EASTER RISING.

BY MARGARET RYAN

In

1916, Nell Humphreys was a woman who, according to her daughter Sighle’s account during an RTÉ radio interview in 1980, was only interested in rearing her three children, tending to her garden and saying her prayers. She was arrested shortly after Easter Week 1916 when the family home at 54 Northumberland Road, was pointed out to British soldiers as a house of rebel sympathisers. The British army held her in a horse box for two days in the RDS, Ballsbridge. She was allowed to go home, under guard each night, so she could sleep in her bed but she was sent forward for questioning at Richmond Barracks.

MOTHER OF A TEENAGE REVOLUTIONARY Nell at this time was forty-five years old. A Kerry woman by birth and a member of the distinguished O Rahilly family, she had been left a widow with three children at the age of 32. During Easter Week 1916, Nell’s brother, Michael Joseph,

‘The O’Rahilly’, and her eldest son Dick, just 18 at the time, had gone to the GPO to take part in The Rising. On Easter Monday, April 24th, Nell went from her home to the GPO in an attempt to persuade Dick to come home. That day, nine children, six civilians, eleven rebels, twenty-eight military and three police officers were shot and fatally wounded in the centre of Dublin. Nell Humphreys’ quest was unsuccessful, for Dick refused to come home with her.

Undeterred, however, she got up the following morning and went to the nearby Poor Clare Colletine Convent on the Simmonscourt Court Road in Ballsbridge. There she got medals of the Mother of Perpetual Succour from the nuns, along with prayer leaflets. She set out once more to the GPO. She explained to Padraig Pearse that, if her son and her brother were to be killed in the Rising, then two families would be left without a man. Dick had been a pupil in Pearse’s school,

St Enda’s, in Rathfarnham, so the rebel leader knew the mother to be a formidable woman, with whom he once had words because she had taken Dick out of his school. Pearse persuaded his former pupil to go home with his mother. They made their way home through the fighting and gunfire, but Dick commented that he would have been safer in the GPO! MEDALS IN THE GPO Nell handed over her supply of medals and leaflets of the Mother of Perpetual Succour to Pearse to give out to his men in the GPO. Years later, members of the O’Rahilly/Humphreys family met men who said that they still had the medal she gave to Pearse for them in the GPO. Devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour was in the news in 1916. That year saw the fiftieth anniversary of reception of the icon by the Redemptorists. Our Lady under this title and it

JU B IL EE O F O U R MOTH ER OF P E RP E TUAL HELP

was celebrated by the Irish Redemptorists in all their churches. Nell’s cousin, Fr Con Mangan, was a Redemptorist and an ardent Nationalist. Professor Eóin Mac Néill, a founder of the Gaelic League, who was well known to Nell, had contributed an article on the picture’s links with Ireland to the jubilee brochure (reprinted in the April 2016 number of Reality).

From their home, Nell and her family witnessed the Battle of Mount Street Bridge. Her daughter Sighle, then aged 17, described in later years of her experiences on that day: In a few moments a small band of soldiers with rifles at the ready rushed into the kitchen but on finding only the cook, my young brother and myself, they lowered their rifles. We must have said something to each other because one exclaimed to the other, ‘Blimey, they are speaking English.’ I then asked them, ‘why where do you think you are?’ They were little more than school boys and they told us they thought they were in Flanders!

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DEAD IN ACTION On Friday, 28 April, Nell’s brother, The O’Rahilly, was shot in Moore Street leading a party of men from the burning GPO. Nell Humphreys went alone to the morgue to identify his body and arranged for his temporary burial in Glasnevin cemetery. before she was arrested.

She described the event in a letter to her sisterin-law, Norah, a nun in Australia: Well, I cycled into town with my cousin, the Carmelite Rector in Clarendon St, and after passing numerous sentries and riding over heaps of broken glass we got to the Morgue.

There was Michael stretched out on a stand.

He was even honoured there, all the others were lying on the ground and he did look fine, Nora. His head thrown back, he had a very high forehead and he looked as brave and peaceful as ever a warrior sculpted in marble on a tomb.

Nobody but myself saw him, and ‘tis a pity. If Nannie could only have had that impression for her life, it would have made up for much...

Nannie (Nancy), wife of The O’Rahilly, was six months pregnant at the time with their son, Rory.

The burial of The O’ Rahilly in Glasnevin Cemetery was beginnings of that cemetery’s Republican plot.

Dick, meanwhile, against his mother’s wishes, REALITY MAY 2016

sneaked back to the fighting in the GPO later in Easter Week. He was arrested after the Rising and sent to Wakefield Military Prison in Yorkshire where his mother visited him. He was released in the general amnesty of 1917.

A CHANGED LIFE As a result of the events of Easter Week, Nell Humphreys’ whole life changed. Prior to the Rising, she had been a cultural nationalist at the head of an Irish speaking home. Now, like many other women, she had became involved in the struggle for Irish Independence, as did her sister Anno O’Rahilly, her sons Dick and Emmet, her daughter Sighle and her sister-in-law, Madame O’ Rahilly. She joined Sinn Fein and Cumann na mBan. She had not actively contributed to the organisation and fighting in the 1916 Rising, but she later said that it could have been “the best organised universal Rising that was ever in Ireland.”

She was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol and the Female Convict Prison Mountjoy in 1916 on the charge of rebellion.

To celebrate the first anniversary of the Rising, Masses were held in many churches around Dublin at Easter 1917. In a letter to Nell, Constance Markievicz expresses the impossibility of attending all the masses to which she had been invited.

“Dear Mrs Humphreys. Many thanks for your note. I am very anxious to attend the mass at Mt. Argus and will do my best to be there… I will bring my bicycle and try to be back in time”.

According to Sinead Mc Coole in Easter Widows these Masses “became a focal point for people who wished to support the cause; many young men dated a radicalization of their views to their attendance at the masses for the dead leaders” STILL PROMOTING DEVOTION Throughout the War of Independence, Nell Humphreys carried with her everywhere her devotion to the Mother of Perpetual Succour.

The Irish Volunteer, Ernie O’ Malley recounts in one of his letters that “One night in 1917… our Captain stopped the drill and said ‘There is a lady, a sister of The O’Rahilly, about to inspect the parade and if I see a smile on any of your faces, God help you when she leaves’…. Mrs Nell Humphreys came into the room and gave each of us a medal of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour… It was hard to keep

from laughing as our Company was a ‘tough’ one.”

In November 1917 Nell Humphreys became involved in Cumann na dTeachaire, a group that stemmed from Cumann na mBan, who sought to get equal rights for women, as included in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Aiming towards this Cumann na dTeachaire selected possible candidates for membership of the Sinn Fein Ard Chomhairle. Nell and her sister Annie O’ Rahilly were chosen, among others, as delegates.

They failed to get equality of representation on the Ard Chomhairle, however, for in the general election of 14th December, 1918 only two women candidates were put forward by Sinn Fein - Winnie Carney in Belfast and Constance Markievicz in Dublin, who also was appointed as Minister for Labour in the First Dail.

In July 1919, Lord French, the Lord Lieutenant, banned the Gaelic League, Sinn Fein, Cumann na mBan and the IRA. The following Easter Sunday, the house of Madame Nannie O’ Rahilly was raided by British forces. Nell’s son, Dick, was arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy where he went on hunger strike. On Easter Sunday 1921, Nell’s house was raided and her younger son, Emmet was arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy. Both sons were released before the Civil War began in Ireland in June 1922.

During this time, Nell Humphreys designed and built a new family home at 36 Ailesbury Road. It was frequently used as a meeting place for the Dail Eireann Cabinet, IRA Headquarters staff and Republican Courts. Among those who attended these meetings were President De Valera, Cathal Brugha, Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Arthur Griffith and Harry Boland. Nell had incorporated into her plans for the house a secret room to hide men ‘on the run’ as well as several under floor secret drawers to hide documents important to the revolutionary movement.

Tipperary-born Margaret Ryan works in adult education in Dublin prisons in the areas of literacy, computer literacy, history, pre-release programmes and distance education. She has a particular interest in the life and career of Nell Humphreys.

COMM U N I T Y

THE VISION OF EASTER

1916

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WHAT VISION OF A NEW IRELAND INSPIRED THOSE WHO TOOK PART IN THE EASTER RISING OF 1916? HOW MUCH OF THAT VISION WAS ACHIEVED AND HOW CAN IT CONTINUE TO INSPIRE THIS GENERATION OF IRISH MEN AND WOMEN?

BY PADRAIG CORKERY

continued on page 24

COMMUNITY

In

recent months there has been a lot of interest and debate on the Easter events of one hundred years ago. The print media in particular have produced some wonderful accounts and new information concerning those turbulent weeks in the history of Dublin and Ireland.

document promise? From the outset, it is important to acknowledge that the Proclamation did not set out to give a detailed account of the new Republic it proclaimed. It presented its audience rather with a sketch, painted in broad strokes, which identified core values and principles that were to be at the heart of the new Republic.

It might be of interest and useful to Reality readers to reproduce the core of the Proclamation’s vision of the new Ireland it hoped to initiate; ‘The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally --‘.

Any objective examination of Irish society today would have to admit that a lot has been achieved in the past 100 years in making concrete the vision of the Proclamation.

Any honest appraisal of our journey from the vision of the Proclamation to the reality of Irish society today, however, must also acknowledge that progress was painfully slow in certain areas and is glaringly incomplete in others

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Public discussion in the media, including the letter pages of the daily newspapers, has ranged from the ethics of the rising itself (whether it fulfilled the criteria of the ‘just war theory’) to a debate on the characters and personalities of the principal agents in the Easter drama. There have also been some wonderful photographic exhibitions on early 20th century Dublin and the impact of the rising on its people and infrastructure.

Television dramas on this period in Irish history have also engaged the imagination and interest of a significant number of people both young and old. The past year has also witnessed the publication of a wide range of scholarly books dealing with, amongst other things, the legacy of the Rising, the identity and circumstances of the children who died during the Rising and on the role of religious themes in the writings and speeches of some of the principal figures of that period. And there is much more planned - in print, theatre, academic conferences, reenactments, religious ceremonies - for the remainder of this historic year.

THE VISION OF THE PROCLAMATION This short piece will focus on the vision of a new Ireland contained in the Proclamation and ask whether the vision contained therein has been achieved or, indeed, surpassed.

What kind of a society did this short REALITY MAY 2016

As Irish citizens today, we experience greater levels of personal freedom and opportunities for development than our counterparts a century ago. We are also better educated and enjoy a better standard of living; more disposable income, more comfortable homes, greater access to travel and more leisure time.

Through the democratic process we control our own destiny as a society by contributing, in an ongoing way, to the shaping of Irish society. We are also a more open and pluralistic society than that of a century ago as reflected in the changing identity of the growing cohort of ‘new’ citizens.

A COMMON TASK Successive generations of politicians have, by and large, enabled this new social and economic reality by working honestly and diligently towards building up the common good of Irish society. There have, of course, been well documented breaches of this spirit of service by a small number of individual politicians, but that experience has been very much the exception. Successive generations of politicians not only guided this economic and social advance but also succeeded in

maintaining societal peace and stability in the face of several decades of terrorism and mayhem linked to the clash of identities and aspirations in Northern Ireland.

Any honest appraisal of our journey from the vision of the Proclamation to the reality of Irish society today, however, must also acknowledge that progress was painfully slow in certain areas and is glaringly incomplete in others. The Proclamation’s vision of equality, for example, is only slowly being realized.

The full inclusion of women in the political realm and in the upper echelons of industry, the academy and the legal profession is still a work in progress. The relationship between the Travellers and the settled community is still marked by exclusion, deprivation and hostility. The recognition of the rights of sexual minorities is, also, still a work in progress.

Furthermore the recognition of civil liberties, particularly in the area of sexual freedom, was a difficult and torturous journey. In the early decades of the state’s existence, the Catholic Church, with the acquiescence of senior politicians, insisted that civil legislation should not conflict with the Catholic Church’s understanding of morality. This had its impact on the content of legislation on, amongst others, the opening of public houses on Sundays and the sale of contraceptives. The Constitutional prohibition on divorce, in force till 1987, also reflected a particular understanding of the relationship between civil legislation and distinctively Catholic morality.

A landmark statement by the Catholic Bishops in 1973 recognized that the legislator was not bound by the content of Catholic moral teaching per se but was rather bound to promote the common good of Irish society. Over the following decades legislators introduced legislation that has expanded the zone of personal freedom.

FALLING SHORT OF THE VISION On a more critical note, many elements of Irish society today directly and radically contradict the vision of the Proclamation.

Despite recent progress, we are still a very

unequal society. Access to education and health care in particular are problematic.

We have a growing number of people ‘on the margins’, to use a now familiar phrase of Pope Francis. Poverty and social exclusion are realities that still blight and crush the lives of too many of our citizens. Homelessness and unemployment are facts of life for so many of our people. Social campaigners, like Peter McVerry SJ, have consistently kept this reality before us. They remind us that exclusion and marginalization are intergenerational realities that continue to thwart the lives and futures of so many individuals and communities.

The growing electoral success of ‘left wing’ politicians is a tangible testimony to the unrealized nature of the Proclamation’s aspiration to create ‘equal opportunities to all its citizens’.

Looking at the document from this vantage point of our history one is struck by its inward focus on Ireland. There is no attention paid to how the new republic would relate to the larger world beyond itself. This omission is, of course, completely understandable, given the context of the document’s origin.

Since then this dimension of life – how we as a society relate to other peoples and nations – has developed significantly. Irish peace keepers have played a very significant role in some of the most troubled areas of the world, particularly over the past thirty years. In these conflict zones, they have made significant contributions in the defence of human rights, the protection of vulnerable minorities and the creation of conditions conducive to human flourishing, societal peace and stability.

Since the Proclamation we have also played a significant role in the movement towards great European integration and cooperation.

Indeed, many would argue that Ireland had played a role which belies its size in the shaping and executing of the European project. Likewise Ireland’s commitment to the alleviation of poverty and the transformation of people’s lives in the developing world has

been significant. This is clearly seen both in the commitment of the Irish Government to humanitarian causes and also in the wellrespected work of agencies like Trocáire and Goal. These agencies of course are funded, staffed and enabled by the Irish people’s commitment to global human solidarity.

This commitment to global human solidarity has, in recent years, focused attention on care of the environment as an issue of justice. Mary Robinson, amongst others, has graced the world stage with distinction working for the globalization of human rights and the protection of our common home. It is true to say, I think, that Ireland has taken her place ‘among the nations’ as an important and credible voice in the international discourse on human rights, environmental justice and conflict resolution.

By its very nature the Proclamation, with its lofty aspirations of justice, inclusion and

It would be a truly fitting celebration of the Proclamation if we allowed its vision to unsettle and inspire us to action equality is a document that should always inspire us to do more and to become more as a people and society. To date as a society we have responded reasonably well to its vision but there is still a lot to be achieved both in terms of our relationships within Irish society and our solidarity with others and with creation itself. It would be a truly fitting celebration of the Proclamation if we allowed its vision to unsettle and inspire us to action.

Dr Padraig Corkery teaches moral theology in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare

25

Q U E ST I O N S TO JESUS 7

WHEN DID WE SEE YOU HUNGRY? AN UNUSUAL MEETING OPENS THE WAY TO THINKING ABOUT HOW WE WILL BE JUDGED

BY MIKE DALEY

Approaching 26

the traffic light, I hoped it would stay green, allowing me continue on my hurried way home. There was another reason as well. Just up ahead a large African American woman was approaching cars trying to get their attention.

She was waving and talking loudly as they passed. I didn’t want to be bothered by her either. I hoped the light would give me that excuse. It didn’t cooperate.

As she approached the car, I tried not to make eye contact with her. She leaned in though, and knocked on the window. I don’t know why I did it but, with some measure of hesitation and regret, I put the window down. “Hi,” she said.

“I was wondering if you could take me up to the store for some food and sanitary napkins?”

I knew where she wanted to go. It was just up the street, a few minutes out of my way.

But alarm bells literally were going off in my head. For whatever reason, I unlocked the door and let her in the car. As she got ready to sit down, I saw that my papers and computer were there. She said that she’d hold them, but I politely declined. For the duration of the trip I awkwardly sat with them on my lap.

NOT REALLY A STRANGER In the course of our initial conversation it

REALITY MAY 2016

appeared that there were some mental health issues with her. She told me her name, then she asked for mine. She thanked me for picking her up and pointed up the street to where she needed to go. Nervously, I complied. In due time, she questioned me about what I did. “I’m a teacher,” I replied. “Where do you teach,” she asked. “St. Xavier High School,” I responded.

“My son goes there,” she said enthusiastically.

“Really?” I answered in both pleasant surprise and disbelief. “What’s his name?”

When she told me her son’s name the distance between us just melted. Having had him in class the past two years, I knew him well. He’d told me much about his family, especially his grandmother. But not a word about his estranged mother. Now I knew why. How quickly though, fear and hesitation turned to relationship and connection. By that point, we reached the store and said goodbye to one another.

Since then a scripture verse keeps playing over in my head: “Lord, when did we see you…” (Mt 25:31-46). I’m convinced that I not only met my student’s mother, but Jesus in disguise or, actually, right in front of me.

JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS Like so much of scripture, what should unsettle us doesn’t. Not even the possibility of eternal

fire! In the Gospel of Matthew’s account, prefacing the story of Judgment are three stories emphasizing the virtues of watchfulness and preparation—the Faithful or the Unfaithful Servant (24:45-51), the Ten Virgins (25:1-13), and the Talents (25:14-20). Simply put, we’ve been warned.

Assembled before the Son of Man are the nations of the world. Like a shepherd, the king is ready to divide the flock into sheep and goats; those worthy of eternal reward or punishment. What is the standard of Judgment?

For Catholics it should sound very familiar— feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; welcome the stranger; and visit the sick and imprisoned. Throw in “bury the dead” and you have the corporal works of mercy.

In their defense, they respond, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?” The king replies, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did [or did not] for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Engagement, connection, relationship with the poor is the standard; surprisingly, religious knowledge and personal morality are nonexistent.

To the degree that I serve the impoverished and underprivileged, and, more importantly, see Jesus in them, is the degree to which I’ll be judged. Frankly, I’m a little worried.

THE BODY OF CHRIST This past summer, I went on a mission trip to Detroit, Michigan. By the time I was born in 1968, a year after the riots, Detroit was known as a city you moved out of, not into. We moved out of state on my ninth birthday, so it had been close to four decades since I’d returned. I wanted to keep an open mind, but one statistic overwhelmed me: the 1950 census listed the city’s population just under 2 million, today it’s around 680,000.

One morning we drove to St. Dominic’s Outreach Centre. Looking from the freeway, I saw firsthand what I’d only read and heard about—burned out buildings, empty houses, vacant lots. A feeling of hopelessness could easily set in. Yet, in the midst of this decay, I met people committed to bringing about rebirth.

Walking in to St. Dominic’s one sign said it all.

An old First Communion plaque hung on the wall. It was the silhouette of a young child with the words: “The Body of Christ.” Understaffed and overwhelmed, the staff of St. Dominic’s

is serving a group of people that I too often have great difficulty including in the Body of Christ—the homeless, the unemployed, and low income, working poor.

Perhaps most beneficial were words shared at one of our nightly reflections. One student told of how earlier in the day, the pastor at the soup kitchen said, “Are we going to solve and fix these people’s problems? Probably not. But we have to respond to them. Care for them. Listen to them. And feed them.”

In their book, Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God, Denis, Shiela and Matthew Linn, the authors, share a story of giving a retreat centered on the Day of Judgment from Matthew’s Gospel. It was to a group of women religious.

At one point during the retreat, the sisters were asked if they’d ever fed the hungry or sheltered the homeless. Of course, they said. “You’re all sheep,” the retreat leader happily replied. Then they were asked if they had ever failed to visit a prisoner or clothe the naked. Regrettably, but honestly, they had. “You’re all goats,” was the

response this time. As an awkward feeling of discomfort emerged, one sister blurted out: “I get it! We’re all good goats!”

Following this realization, in the book Spiritual Questions for the Twenty-First Century, Diana Hayes, professor of theology at Georgetown University, asks the question, “Why am I here on this earth at this time and place?” Hayes responds: “To help bring about God’s kindom by recognizing and, more importantly, by affirming my co-createdness with all of humanity and thus the presence of God in all with whom I come into contact.”

Matthew’s story of Judgment is a stark reminder to a comfortable Christian like myself of God’s preferential option for the poor. In meeting them, I meet Jesus. The more I know them, the better I know Jesus. In the end, though, they no longer stay “the least”—“the poor”—but become brothers and sisters.

Mike Daley is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, OH where he lives with his wife June, and their three children. His latest book is Vatican II: Fifty Personal Stories (Orbis).

SEEK A NEW DIRECTION

EXPLORE RELIGIOUs SISTERS OF CHA RIT Y

The Love of Christ urges us on – as Sisters of Charity we continue to live a journey of loving service in the Spirit of our Foundress Mary Aikenhead who spent her life in love serving ‘God’s nobility the suffering poor’.

The rest of your life is starting now – Is God inviting you to share in this same journey of loving service as a Sister of Charity, as a friend of Mary Aikenhead or as volunteer in one of our services?

Take the first step and contact Sr. Rita Wynne on 086 343 4448 or email ritawynnersc@eircom.net

You can also get more information on our website www.religioussistersofcharity.ie

Science and Faith are often placed in opposition to each other. In fact nothing could be further from the

FATHER OF GENETICS: HOW A PRIEST, WORKING IN A MONASTERY GARDEN IN WHAT IS TODAY THE CZECH REPUBLIC, LAID THE FOUNDATIONS FOR THE SCIENCE OF GENETICS

BY SUSAN GATELY

The 28

Augustinian canon regular, Gregor Mendel, was an unlikely candidate for scientific greatness, yet the modest monk from Brno is called the “Father of Genetics.”

Born in 1822, Mendel came from a long line of professional gardeners. His father was a peasant farmer, and they lived in Heinzendorf in Austria, (now Czech Republic). Spotting his exceptional ability, his parents sent him to a secondary school in Troppau, but aged sixteen, his life changed when his father was crippled by a falling tree. He now had to earn his own living. He tried private tutoring, but with his stilted command of the Czech language, he found it hard to attract pupils. Burdened by financial stress, work and study, his health broke down twice, and he spent a total of 17 months in bed, while pressure mounted on him to work the family farm. Eventually his

STUDENT AND MONK In college at Olmutz, he studied physics and maths, appreciating the significance of mathematics as applied to the study of other sciences. He gave no signs of a religious vocation, but when a teacher recommended him as a candidate to a monastery of Augustinian canons, Mendel jumped at the opportunity. He wrote "My circumstances decided my vocational choice."

Mendel entered the monastery of St Thomas in Brno (the capital of Moravia) in 1843, and took the name Gregor. Its superior, Abbot Napp wanted the monastery to be a community of scholars following the motto of St Augustine -'from knowledge to wisdom'. Monastic life was a balm to Mendel. "Its regularity provided ease and comfort to a man who had spent his first twenty one years in a thicket of uncertainty," writes Robyn Maranz Henig, in her biography, The Monk in the Garden: The lost and found genius of Gregor Mendel.

He embarked on his theological studies, revelling in the research and teaching of his fellows. Over time, he took over the monastery's 'experimental garden'.

On completion of his studies, he was

The gentle monk had quietly opened the door to genetics without making a fuss although he knew the importance of his discovery younger sister, Theresia, offered her dowry to pay for his tuition, and his brother in law took over the farm. Mendel would gain an education.

REALITY MAY 2016

assigned work as chaplain in a local hospital, but overcome by fear and shyness, he once again became very depressed.

His sympathetic Abbot sent him to act as substitute teacher. He excelled at teaching, but failed the two exams needed to give him proper certification. He undertook further studies in Vienna, but failed the exams again, this time collapsing from nervous distress. He would not sit another exam.

Meanwhile, the single minded monk worked in the monastery garden, studying heredity. Scientific thought at the time said hereditary traits in the offspring of any species were merely the diluted blending of the "parent's" traits. Mendel began by studying the offspring of mice, but his bishop felt this was "too vulgar an undertaking for a priest," so he stopped. Later he said "I turned from animal breeding to plant breeding. The bishop didn't understand that plants also have sex!"

THE BEGINNING OF GENETICS From 1856 to 1863, Fr Gregor patiently cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants, mostly pea plants, working with seven characteristics: height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour.

He cross-fertilized plants with opposite characteristics—tall with short, smooth with wrinkled etc. After mathematically

SCIENCE AND FAITH SERIES truth. Some of the greatest scientists have been Catholics, and among them a number of Catholic priests. In this series we tell some of their stories.

GREGOR MENDEL analyzing his results, he reached two important conclusions. The first was the “Law of Segregation”, which establishes that there are dominant and recessive traits passed on randomly from parents to offspring. When plants bearing a yellow pea, for example, were bred with plants bearing a green pea, their offspring was always yellow. In the next generation, however, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1:3.

To explain this, Mendel coined the terms “recessive” and “dominant” in reference to certain traits. Here for example, green peas were recessive, yellow peas dominant.

Through his studies, he could show that the traits of successive generations were

Mendel's garden plot in the monastery of Brno

inherited in certain numerical ratios and fixed laws of nature governed heredity.

His second discovery, was the “Law of Independent Assortment,” which established that traits were passed on independently of other traits from parent to offspring (colour and shape, for example, were not linked).

Mendel proposed that heredity followed basic statistical laws. and all living things had such traits.

In 1865 he presented his findings to the Natural Science Society in Brno. No-one said a word. There were numbers everywhere, ratios and mathematical equations. "I'm sure people were barely paying attention.

They didn't understand the idea of applying physical and mathematical sciences to biology," comments Hedwig. The Society published Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids in 1866. Mendel ordered 40 reprints of his paper, but he seems to have made little effort to publicize his findings.

THE ABBOT Two years later, he was elected Abbot of his monastery. He stopped teaching and his experiments in the garden and devoted much of his time to administration. He still studied bees and his other great love - meteorology. In 1877, with his support, the first weather forecasts in central Europe were issued for farmers in Moravia.

When Mendel died, aged 61, he was quite isolated from his contemporaries because of his refusal to pay a monastery tax.

An obituary described him as a "benefactor to the poor," a "promoter of science" and an "exemplary priest". Crowds accompanied his

coffin to the cemetery, yet no one realised the value of his scientific work. The gentle monk had quietly opened the door to genetics without making a fuss although he knew the importance of his discovery. "My scientific studies have afforded me great gratification and I am convinced that it will not be long before the whole world acknowledges the results of my work."

It actually took over thirty years. In 1900 three botanists independently duplicated Mendel's experiments and results, only to discover that an unknown Augustinian monk from Brno had already discovered the fundamental laws on inheritance.

While Mendel did not imagine any material determining agent (gene), he nonetheless "laid the foundation for the modern science of genetics defining the fundamental rules for dominant and recessive traits that apply to all plants and animals," says J. Lee Sedwick.

Suan Gately is author of God’s Surprise - the New Movements in the Church, published by Veritas and is a regular contributor to Reality

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

OVER-INVOLVED GRANDPARENTS

ADULT CHILDREN, CAUGHT BETWEEN THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE AND THE FEELING OF INDEBTEDNESS TO PARENTS, CAN SOMETIMES FIND IT HARD TO MAKE THEIR OWN WAY AS PARENTS WITH CONFIDENCE. Isn’t it sad when grandparents inadvertently fall into the trap of using their adult children to fill their own emotional needs?

Under the illusion that they are loving, caring and generous they discourage their adult children from being the independent people they want to be.

Family relationships are vitally important because the way we learn to relate inside our family of origin has a big impact on how we parent and make friends.

Childhood is the time when the foundations for life are laid and they are laid by the adults who have charge of bringing up children.

Parents tend to do to their children what was done to them. Most parents start out intending to be the most loving parents they can be. There is no formula to tell them how to make childhood wonderful for a child. In an effort to make up for a deprived childhood some parents show love by being overindulgent.

Nothing is too much or too good for their pampered child.

Parents who go out of their way to take care of everything that will keep a child happy become enmeshed in their child’s life.

The problem for adults who were over-indulged as children is many develop a lasting sense of indebtedness. As adults they continue to feel they owe their parents.

Children develop self-esteem by learning to master tasks. They

grow in self-confidence when they learn they can deal with success and overcome failure.

A healthy sense of self-worth is developed as young people recognise and appreciate what they achieve through their own work and efforts.

Indulged children can be smothered by the approval they are given by over-positive parents.

It’s difficult to believe that too much praise and encouragement can be damaging. Undeserved accolades can give a child an inflated sense of achievement that does not reflect their true ability. This can make a child appear arrogant or superior and set them up to be snubbed by their peers.

Self-esteem is damaged when children are protected from the disappointment of losing.

Adults who grow up with the belief that they deserved better treatment are burdened with a heavy sense of entitlement.

Unable to cope with the lack of recognition their parents taught them to expect, they will often blame their parents for the distress caused by unrealistic expectations.

When a child’s sense of selfworth is linked with parental approval, love has to be earned.

Parents who expect a child to make them proud often see their child as an extension of themselves. Behind the positive intention of being a supportive parent is the unconscious

need to meet their own unmet desires and unfulfilled hopes for recognition and achievement.

Many grandparents believed the myth that parents know best. Out of love and the desire to be seen as a good parent they make decisions about what everyone needs. Quoting the voice of experience they offer unwelcome streams of endless advice and give adult children unwarranted suggestion about the right way to do things.

The spoiled child who was given everything s/he desired is likely to grow up with a sense of entitlement, a passive expectancy of being treated as special and the belief that his or her needs deserve priority.

People who grow up in a family that shows love through giving gifts and material possessions frequently have diminished relationship skills. They find it hard to be sensitive to the emotional needs of others. Some can even feel overwhelmed by a partner or child’s need for closeness and affection.

In an ideal world every parent would have the skills to give every child unconditional love.

Every young person would have a wonderful, magical, happy childhood; live in a safe, protected environment; be encouraged to build selfconfidence and self-worth as they develop their own interests and talents.

In the real world parents

cannot give to their children what they lack in themselves.

It takes courage and insight for adult children to recognise how the over-involvement of grandparents may not be love and has the potential to lead to major problems in their couple relationship.

It is incredibly hard for adult children who are caught between the desire for independence and the feeling of indebtedness to parents for whom nothing is too much trouble. It is difficult to enter adulthood wanting to feel independent but guilty about what that would do to your parents.

What it means to show love needs to be redefined when boundaries have to be set for grandparents who are enmeshed and overinvolved in the lives of their adult children. People who feel loved for who they are have the freedom to be independent and never experience pressure to meet the emotional needs of a parent.

Carmel Wynne is a life and work skills coach and lives in Dublin. For more information, visit www.carmelwynne.org

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F E AT U R E

HARD TIMES NOW A THIRD LEVEL STUDENT, A YOUNG MAN LOOKS BACK ON HIS LEAVING CERT AND RAISE SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT CATHOLIC EDUCATION.

BY SEÁN HURLEY

32

“Now,

what I want is, Facts.

Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be

to Facts, sir!” Thomas Gradgrind, Hard Times The bone chilling opening words of the rationalist schoolmaster in Charles Dickens’ novel “Hard Times” spring to mind as I reflect on my time spent as a Leaving Cert student.

Throughout the last two years, the absorption

Sympathy quickly turns to anger as I ponder how the education system and media have allowed these simple exams swell into the golden calf of society today of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick REALITY MAY 2016

and processing of Facts has become my raison d’etre. Many nights, I have spent hunched over my desk, with my brow furrowed, as I

attempted to decipher the mystery that is the Modh Coinníollach and or the black hole that is Suspense accounts. Facts have been exalted to such an esteemed position in our education system, to the extent that the closest thing we get to catechism classes every week, is our physics teacher’s weekly discourse on the “Holy Trinity” that is Newton’s three laws of motion. For us students, the “Promised Land” consists of the Leaving Cert exam hall where we’re given the chance to regurgitate these endless reams of Facts.

Whilst admitting, that I personally relished the challenge of the Leaving Cert and that I wrote the last paragraph with a hint of sarcasm, it is no joke to say that a high percentage of students

in this country see the Leaving Cert as the beall and end-all. This to me is a very worrying thought. I like to think that I was sheltered from the brunt of the Leaving Cert hysteria due to the strong Catholic faith that I have been gifted with.

At the end of the day, it helped me to put into perspective that the Leaving Cert is only a set of the exams and nothing more. However, for a lot of my classmates who don’t hold the same conviction of faith, the Leaving Cert can seem like a lot more malevolent process. For many students, results day is akin to Judgement Day with the CAO playing the role of the omnipotent being. But unlike Christ who is infinitely merciful and just, the CAO is a cruel judge bestowing courses upon people by virtue of the points

they garnered, non-withstanding the effort they put in. Often it is a mere 5 points which is the difference between ecstasy and despair. My heart goes out to students who fall into a spiral of depression on failing to obtain their course and to those who feel they are defined by the grades they receive.

However, this sympathy quickly turns to anger as I ponder how the education system and media have allowed these simple exams swell into the golden calf of society today. The Leaving Cert has been given so much saturation by media coverage in recent years, it is difficult for students to avoid falling into the trap of viewing the exams as a god in itself. The book “Hard Times” which I mentioned above, is a harrowing tale of the damage that an education system can wreak on the youth in particular, when Facts are given celestial status (to the extent Dickens feels the need to capitalise the word) and when ideals such as faith and creativity are treated as taboo. Dickens illustrates the perils of such a system through the cataclysmic downfall of the principal’s son and daughter from ideal archetypes of the system to a felon on the run and a stunted emotional wreck respectively.

Once Gradgrind (quoted above) realised the calamitous effect his ideology was having on his children he was immediately contrite and realised that from then on his now debunked facts and figures must always be subservient to “Faith, Hope and Charity”. Catholic schools in Ireland today would do well to heed Dickens advice, indeed it is a grave responsibility and if I may I’d like to venture a few suggestions about how these theological virtues can be fostered and cultivated.

CHARITY “If I… have not charity” says the Apostle, “I am nothing”. Since it’s the greatest of all virtues, charity is the natural place to begin. In the consumer driven, individualistic society we live today, where corporate multinationals rule the roost, charity can often seem in very short supply.

And for that reason it is increasingly vital that it is fostered in schools. I have to admit my school has done a stellar job in imbuing this virtue in their students. Countless times over the past six years, I’ve been moved by the schools response in the

face of tragedy. This charity could manifest itself through a spontaneous fundraising drive in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake to a Hail Mary recited on the intercom on hearing of a personal tragedy that has struck one of the students in the school. The school also has a proud tradition of enlisting transition years into community work and I also am personally in debt to the school for giving me the means to serve as a volunteer on the Lourdes pilgrimage last year. Along with promoting academia, charity must be at the heart of all Catholic schools FAITH A common neurosis which I believe spreads across the majority of Catholic schools on this isle today is the prevalence of inept faith formation. Apart from the occasional Mass or perhaps a one day retreat in fifth year, any talk of faith or belief is firmly cordoned off. For many schools the superficiality of a school’s Catholic ethos becomes apparent during “Religion” class (and I emphasise the air quotes). Instead of learning about the truths of the Catholic doctrine, students are taught a politically sanitised, banal morality where nothing is right or wrong and where relativism is key. Whilst subjects such as prayer are off limits, I’ve sat through many religion classes listening to teachers exhort the uses of contraception.

Despite being a practising Catholic, there’s many times I wished I attended a nondenominational school as it would excuse me of the burden of having to sit through such “Religion” classes. Before proponents of these classes argue I’m an exception to the rule, it’s interesting to note that the atheists and agnostics of the class harboured a similar disillusionment as these classes impinged on the amount of time we had available for something more worthwhile, such as our extra subject Applied Maths.

With the vultures circling over the devolvement of Catholic schools, it’s clear we’ve reached the Rubicon regarding Catholic education in Ireland as we know it. The passing of the gay marriage referendum and the recent lobbying by Amnesty International for a repeal of Ireland’s abortion laws mean it is more vital than ever for teachers to proclaim the beauty of the Catholic faith. If

33

F E AT U R E

schools are not prepared to pick up their cross and follow Christ through teaching the hard truths such as the unborn child’s right to life and the truths about human sexuality contained in Humanae Vitae, I think they would be best served to devolve

local o your Look t r parish o press r details fo n i bullet on’s visit to c I e of th rea your a

their Catholic ethos.

Teachers may be tentative to do this on the grounds that they may expect a backlash from parents or even the government but the bottom line is, it’s the students that count. To quote Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the hunger he sees in young people for a more authoritative church voice in education, particularly regarding sexualityThey will be quick to say, 'By the way, we want you to know that we might not be able to obey it. . . . But we want to hear it. And in justice, you as our pastors need to tell us, and you need to challenge us.'’

Students are taught a politically sanitised, banal morality where nothing is right or wrong and where relativism is key HOPE Whilst the challenges that Catholic schools face may seem insurmountable, it is important to remember that as Christians we must always be people of indefatigable hope. I believe that if we have constant recourse to Our Lady and the other patrons of education in Ireland it won’t be long until hope becomes airborne again in our schools.

And whenever that happens, maybe the Leaving Cert won’t seem like such a big deal after all.

Seán Hurley is a third level student from Tralee, Co Kerry.

Follow the Icon Coming to a Cathedral near you!

Celebrating 150 years with the Redemptorists Blessed Pope Pius IX presented the Icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorists for veneration in their newly-built Church of Sant’Alfonso, Rome in December 1865. It was much in need of restoration so it was April 26th 1866 before it was solemnly installed there. The Holy Father gave the Redemptorists a mandate: they were to promote devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help throughout the world. Just over a year later, the first copy arrived in Mount St Alphonsus, Limerick.

To celebrate this Jubilee year, the Icon will visit all the Redemptorist communities and the 26 cathedrals in Ireland, beginning Limerick on April 4th and ending in Belfast on May 15th 2016. Watch the local press or Reality magazine for details or go to: www.followtheicon.ie for information of its visit to your cathedral.

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Goodbye

to Pain!

St Columban

Missionary Extraordinaire by John J. Ó Ríordáin C.Ss.R.

The

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Loss of Memory can affect nations as well as individuals. Through the publication of his attractive booklets Fr John J. Ó Ríordáin, CSsR nourishes the ‘nation’s memory’, his latest contribution being St Columban, missionary extraordinaire Ireland’s greatest missionary. Columban made such an impact on Continental Europe in the 6th century that he is still remembered there with admiration and wonder. He died at Bobbio near Milan in 615 AD, and next year, his 1400th anniversary, is being celebrated widely on the Continent. We are invited to celebrate at home too; not only for personal reasons but also for the sake of national health! Ó Ríordáin’s booklet is well within people’s reading range; and at €3 it is probably within their financial range as well.

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A RESOURCE FOR THE YEAR OF MERCY JOURNEYING WITH JONAH –THE STRUGGLE TO FIND YOURSELF By Fr Denis McBride CSsR In this new book Fr Denis has chosen to explore the character of Jonah – a somewhat unlikely hero. The prophet Jonah is a sympathetic partner, albeit a curious one, to help us review our lives. Although a believer in God, Jonah struggles to come to terms with the awful strangeness of God’s choices, particularly God’s mercy; he grapples to find his true self and purpose in life; he tries to flee from the presence of God; he is angry when he finds that God is not angry but all-merciful. Jonah is offered to us as an unusual teacher – awkward, reluctant, disobedient, opinionated, fearful, flighty: the prophet who remains stubborn to the end. But his story celebrates the beauty of the indiscriminate mercy of God, a message for our time.“ There is one constant in the book of Jonah: Jonah’s belief that God’s indiscriminate mercy extended to the pagans of Nineveh is not only inappropriate but incomprehensible: Jonah is scandalised by God’s mercy. Our minor prophet has to learn as we all do, that mercy is indivisible: we cannot plead for mercy for ourselves and then deny it to others.”

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WIT N E S S

THE SOCIAL JUSTICE MESSAGE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD SISTERS

BY TRÍONA DOHERTY

36

Sr Jane Murphy In May 2015 Sr Jane Murphy undertook a 10,000 ft skydive in Kilkenny after a 150km motorbike ride from Cork, to raise funds for the Good Shepherd Services in Cork

WORKING WITH WOMEN ON THE MARGINS It’s

all in the name. The mission of the Good Shepherd Sisters is simply to be a presence of Jesus the Good Shepherd in the world. The members of the congregation in Ireland take this calling very seriously, with their activities focused on reaching out to the

REALITY MAY 2016

most vulnerable and abandoned people on the margins of our society.

With the compassionate Jesus as their role model, the Sisters are involved in a number of ministries, with a particular focus on women who are victimised, suffer from addiction,

who are at risk of homelessness or in need of assistance. “We carry the name of the Good Shepherd – that image of Jesus reaching out to the lost and the most abandoned,” says Sr Jane Murphy, Mission Leader with Good Shepherd Services in Cork.

St Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

One person is more precious than the whole world The vision of the congregation’s founder, St Mary Euphrasia Pelletier (1796-1868), is never far from their minds – “One person is more precious than the whole world”. It is this ethos that underpins all their work, firmly rooted in an awareness of the infinite worth and dignity of each person they work with.

Their areas of involvement include ministry to girls, women and children who are homeless; support for victims of domestic abuse; providing sheltered accommodation for vulnerable groups; working with women in addiction and recovery; supporting women affected by prostitution; and work with refugees and asylum seekers. Individual sisters also work in parish and youth work, counselling, spiritual direction and youth work, and prison and hospital chaplaincy.

Edel House

ACCOMMODATION AND SUPPORT IN CORK One of the most comprehensive services founded by the congregation is in Cork city, where Good Shepherd Services (GSS) has provided accommodation and support to vulnerable women and children for over 40 years. More than 700 women and children, who are supported each year, are homeless or at risk of being homeless, through a full range of supports from emergency to long-term accommodation, as well as the necessary supports to help vulnerable women and their families on the path to independent living.

The services are open and available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so they are always available to assist teenaged girls, women and children in times of crisis.

Sr Jane Murphy is Mission Leader with Good Shepherd Services in Cork. This journey began for Sr Jane in 1983 when she first met a Good Shepherd Sister and quickly became a volunteer in Edel House, then a night shelter which provided emergency accommodation for women and children. “The service was set up 44 years ago in 1972, and as new needs emerged new responses were added,” she explains.

Jane worked with an insurance company for over 13 years before she joined the Congregation. She said she was inspired by the Sisters living out of the Christian message of hope founded on God’s love for humanity. Sr. Jane’s involvement has taken her from being a volunteer, to joining the Congregation, to being Director of Services,

Sr Bridie O'Driscoll pictured during last May's fundraising events

and her current role is Mission Leader. She says: “Each Christian ministry has a purpose or mission. Our mission is: ‘Through trusting relationships we help women and children who are vulnerable to homelessness to live more fulfilled and self-sufficient lives’. We begin with our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each person. We approach each person with compassion, gentleness, acceptance and respect. We are here to help, not to judge. Since the well-being of the person is intimately linked to that of the family, we seek to serve people in the context of the family and the society in which they live. Our relationship with the person we serve is at the heart of how we work.

Developing that relationship of trust and confidence is essential to our effort in helping her to bring about change in her life. We want everyone working in our service to feel part of this wider purpose, part or our mission”.

Sr Jane continues: “While we work in a Christian ministry, it is not necessary that everyone with whom we work must be Catholic, or Christian, or even a believer.

We ask only that those with whom we work respect the Christian nature of our collective activity, and accept our ethos and how we do things, when working with us. We work with those in great need. Our work is demanding.

Completing the daily routine, or resolving the latest crisis, often leaves little left of our

37

W IT N E S S

Sr Jane Murphy pictured with Sr Colette Hickey, who founded Edel House as part of Good Shepherd Services over 40 years ago

resources. Amid these demands, we can forget our mission and ethos.”

Edel House in Cork’s Grattan Street is a residential centre for women and children who are homeless, offering both emergency and medium term accommodation. It can currently accommodate up to nine families and 24 women, and a plan for a new development allowing each woman a single room is due to commence shortly.

In addition to Edel House, the service also provides long-term accommodation

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If you have a kind heart, two hands and two feet, you have no problem fitting in here

for vulnerable women in Baile an Aoire (the town of the Shepherd) located in Montenotte and both emergency and planned accommodation for teenage girls aged 15-19 years in Riverview in the North Mall, Cork.

Also part of GSS is a training and education centre called Bruac Eile in Redemption Road, which facilitates the development of social and life skills with education and training for 16-35 year old girls and women. This supportive environment assists especially

those who have had difficulty in mainstream education, or who left school without a qualification.

Supporting all other services is an Aftercare Team, which assists people who are homeless, to move into sustainable housing and achieve independent living. This team works as an integral part of the overall Good Shepherd Services, in partnership with other agencies.

They recognise that, while good quality housing is an important part of the solution, ongoing advocacy and support to access appropriate services is just as crucial.

“It is great when a woman or family get housed but the vulnerability that led to her becoming homeless very often will still be there and that vulnerability demands our support,” says Sr Jane. “Our support is needed for the long run, for her journey along the path to self-sufficiency. She can pick up the phone to us at any time, we will help her, we are ambitious for each girl and woman we encounter. Our wish is that she would

THE DOOR of MERCY The new ‘Jubilee of Mercy’ announced by Pope Francis is of great significance. Drawing from his biography, his motto, interviews, homilies, and messages, here we learn how Francis sees himself as a pilgrim in need of mercy. Further, we are all pilgrims, called to pass through the ‘door of mercy’ opening before us in this Holy Year. In a world that sits lightly to love and forgiveness, where many feel they are beyond forgiveness, this is an invitation to start out on a personal journey to discover what mercy truly is.

We are pilgrims, called to pass through the “door of mercy” in this Year of Mercy. In a world where many feel beyond forgiveness, let’s start out to discover what mercy truly is.

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“It is a privilege to live where we are and be in this role. I love what I am doing, it is very fulfilling and rewarding.”

Sr Bridie has been working with the Services since returning from the Missions in 1996. She spent many years in Asia – Vietnam during the war, and among other places Thailand and Hong Kong.

“If you have a kind heart, two hands and two feet, you have no problem fitting in here,” she says.

“The people here teach us as we live among them. We visit the Freshly baked brown bread in Bruac Eile Training Centre homes and the sick, have time for become self-sufficient and our commitment the children, are available to listen and talk and be involved in the parish. Kindness and love is to lasting change.” go a long way, and the children don’t forget.”

AT THE HEART OF THE COMMUNITY Sr Jane lives with another sister, Sr Bridie CHALLENGING STRUCTURES O’Driscoll, in the heart of the community on Having campaigned for a number of years the north side of Cork, in an area where there to improve the accommodation in Edel are many social issues. Their living arrangements House, Good Shepherd Services were enable them to be visible in the community and recently allocated Government funding to get to know the people they work with as under the Capital Assistance Scheme to well as make themselves available to those in begin its redevelopment. The new building will facilitate a dramatic improvement in the need of help.

“We are very much accepted and welcomed accommodation offered, where single women here. We try to be present to people as they currently share rooms and families have to live are. People share their difficulties with us, and in a small space where they must cook, eat sometimes we can’t do anything but listen, and sleep.

Good Shepherd Services also work closely but we are often able to make connections and direct the person to help,” says Sr Bridie. with HSE, Tusla, the Local Authority and Cork Education and Training Board to assist women in this area, and funding comes from these statutory agencies. Unfortunately, fundraising is also necessary to maintain the Services and so very many fundraising events, including an annual church gate collection prior to Christmas, shopping centre collections, etc, are necessary to make ends meet.

Conscious of the importance of challenging the systems and structures which condemn some people to marginalised lives, Good Some Christmas gifts donated for women in Edel House Shepherd Services are members

of the Cork City Homeless Forum, Cork Social Housing Forum and other local networks. The aim of these groups includes raising awareness of social and affordable accommodation issues, advocating with statutory agencies, and lobbying the Government to enhance accommodation provision. GSS is also calling on the Government to incorporate the right to housing into the body of Economic, Social and Cultural rights.

SUPPORTING WOMEN AFFECTED BY PROSTITUTION The Good Shepherd Sisters were also involved in the foundation of Ruhama, an organisation that works to support women affected by prostitution.

Ruhama reaches out to, and provides support services for, women affected by prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation, and offers them opportunities to explore alternatives to prostitution. The Good Shepherd Sisters are represented on the board of directors.

Ruhama also works to change public attitudes, practices and policies which allow the exploitation of women through trafficking and prostitution.

One of Ruhama’s main campaigns at present is calling on the Government to criminalise the purchase of sex. They are members of the Turn off the Red Light campaign which aims to end prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland.

A HEART FOR THOSE ON THE MARGINS “Has God given you a heart for those on the margins?” is the question posed to those who might be considering a vocation with the Good Shepherd Sisters. Challenged and inspired by the suffering and distress in the world, members of the congregation witness to the hope that another reality is possible for humanity. Their social justice model places the Gospel values of human dignity, human rights and compassion at the heart of everything they do.

For more information on the Good Shepherd Sisters in Ireland, see www.goodshepherdsisters.com.

Triona Doherty is a journalist with the Advertiser newspaper group and is a regular contributor to Reality

39

D E V E LO P M E N T I N ACTION

MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM

Turkana Lake

FOLLOWING THE DROUGHT OF 2011, TRÓCAIRE HELPED ESTABLISH A PROGRAMME IN THE TURKANA DESERT REGION THAT CHANGED PEOPLE’S LIVES DRAMATICALLY.

BY CATHERINE M WAKING’A

Turkana 40

County is an a r i d a re a i n north-west Kenya which has experienced significant drought in recent years due to climate change. Most of the people living there are pastoralists, relying on livestock for survival, and they have to trek long distances in search of water and pasture.

Following the devastating drought in East Africa in 2011, Trócaire established a recovery project, with funding from Irish Aid, Caritas New Zealand and St Vincent de Paul in the areas of Turkwell and Turkana Central.

The project aimed to reduce the need for

humanitarian assistance in the area, by increasing resilience in the face of climate change and improving the livelihoods of the local population.

GREENHOUSES AND WATER In Turkwell, five greenhouses were established, supporting 50 households. The target group was comprised of vulnerable pastoral and agro-pastoral community members, whose livestock and livelihoods were severely affected by drought in 2011.

The project has also provided communities Greenhouses in Turkana

REALITY MAY 2016

with safe water for human consumption, through the construction of shallow wells and safe water storage tanks. The water from the shallow wells is used by households that used to travel long distances to collect water, and at times were forced to consume unclean, unsafe water from the Turkwell River.

The greenhouse project faced some initial challenges, with traditional communities learning completely new ways of farming and cooperative working. The Diocese of Lodwar, with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), conducted several complementary training sessions on soil management, fertility, crop management, marketing and savings, seed distribution, and has supported farmers to manage the greenhouse committees in the most effective way.

The greenhouse farmers now focus on growing high-value crops like spinach, tomatoes, capsicum (peppers), kales, eggplants and various vegetables that are consumed in homes across Turkwell. Some of the crops produced in the greenhouses are sold in nearby markets, and their proceeds used to buy additional food for the community.

TURKANA

LEARNING NEW SKILLS The project has also provided communities with safe water for consumption, through the construction of shallow wells and safe water storage tanks. Water from the shallow wells is used for human consumption by households that used to travel long distances to collect water and at times had to consume unclean, unsafe water from the Turkwell River.

Esther Aboi, a farmer in the project, says the greenhouses greatly contributed to improved livelihoods and says that community members now have food and consistent income. She says: “We don’t go to sleep hungry and depend on wild fruits like we have done before”.

The farmers are optimistic that, with additional training on greenhouse farming, they will continue to increase their crop yield. They are also working with the Diocese of Lodwar to improve their access to markets to sell their produce.

Esther Aboi again: “If we can access better markets and increase sales, we will educate our children and change the face of Turkana County. We are encouraging more farmers to form groups and benefit from similar initiatives which help eradicate the culture of dependency.”

Now, the farmers are looking forward to exchange visits and study tours on greenhouse farming – to foster intercommunity learning and motivation.

Catherine M Waking’a is Communications Officer in Trócaire East Africa’s office in Nairobi Esther and Napei in the greenhouse

If you would like to donate to Trócaire, please go to

www.trócaire.org to find out the various ways you can help their projects

41

Breaking the Word in May 2016 www.proclaim.ie

Please pray for the Redemptorist Teams who will preach the Word and for God’s People who will hear the Word proclaimed this month in:

St. John’s Kilkenny Novena (3rd – 11th May 2016) Novena preached by Brendan Keane CSsR and Denis Luddy CSsR St. Gerard’s Parish (Antrim Road, Belfast) Solemn Novena (9th – 17th May 2016) Novena preached by Johnny Doherty CSsR and Niamh O’Neill Handsworth Novena (14th – 22nd May 2016) Novena preached by Derek Meskell CSsR and Kevin Browne CSsR Priorswood (Dublin 17) Novena (14th – 22nd May 2016) Novena preached by John Hanna CSsR and Sarah Kenwright Foxrock Novena (Co. Dublin) (16th – 24th May 2016) Novena preached by Ciaran O’Callaghan CSsR and Kieran Brady CSsR

SUMMER

Accepting mission bookings for 2017

Ennismore Retreat Centre

7th May - €55 Mental Health, Spirituality & Well-Being 10.30am-4.30pm Professor Patricia Casey & Martina Lehane Sheehan 21st May - €55 10.30am-4.30pm Day of Reflection Fr. Donagh O’ Shea OP

28th May - €55 10.30am-4.30pm Living, Loving, Learning - The Sacred Path of Relationships Martina Lehane Sheehan 5th – 9th June Res - €385 ”The Word was made Flesh” Fr. Stephen Cummins OP.

12th June Res - €400 “Blessed are the gentle the call to live with Compassion and Acceptance ”- Mathew 5:4 Martina Lehane Sheehan

ST DOMINIC’S

4th – 8th July Res - €385 The Eucharist. Mystery of Life.

Fr. Benedict Hegarty OP. 10th – 15th July Res - €460 Centering Prayer.

Sr. Fionnuala Quinn OP. 22nd – 24th July Res-€165 Non/Res-€100 Prayer & Healing Retreat Fr John Keane 28th Aug – 1st Sept Res-€420 Non/Res-€300 “Call to Personal and Global Transformation” Conference with Edwina Gately

New Holistic Christian Spirituality Programme commencing Autumn 2016

Ennismore Retreat Centre is set in 30 acres of wood, field and garden overlooking Lough Mahon on the River Lee. It’s the ideal place for some time-out, reflection and prayer.

For ongoing programmes please contact the Secretary or visit our website Tel: 021-4502520 Fax: 021-4502712 E-mail: ennismore@eircom.net www.ennismore.ie

COM M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

HOMELESSNESS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

IN IRELAND TODAY, WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A HOUSING EMERGENCY, AND EMERGENCY MEASURES ARE NEEDED TO ADDRESS IT. DOES THAT INCLUDE COMPULSORILY PURCHASE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY THAT MAY BE SUITABLE FOR HOUSING?

A

major obstacle to th e el i m i nati o n o f homelessness today in Ireland is the perceived dominant role of private property in our Constitution and legal system.

Eliminating homelessness has two dimensions: one is housing those currently homeless and on the social housing waiting lists; the second is preventing more and more people, and families, from becoming homeless.

HOUSING To provide homes for those who are homeless or on the social housing waiting list requires houses. Building houses takes several years from the planning stage to completion. Those who are homeless cannot wait several years.

Everywhere you go, you see empty houses boarded up, most of them privately owned. When I walk out my front door, within 30 seconds I pass three houses which have been boarded up for at least three years. There are tens of thousands of boarded up houses in this country.

Compulsory purchase orders should be made on houses which have been boarded up for at least one year and where the owner has no plans to restore them to residential use. This, of course, interferes with the right to private property and will be fiercely resisted and appealed to the highest level in the courts.

But Ireland today has a homeless and housing emergency, and emergenc y measures are needed to address it. We can compulsorily purchase private property (land) when it is required for road building.

This emergency is far more serious and fundamental to Ireland’s future than motorways.

Compulsory purchase orders is not a route that conservative governments like to go down, as the right to private property is almost an absolute dogma for them. However, this would provide immediate access to houses which are urgently needed.

PREVENTION Unless we take measures to prevent more people, and families, falling into homelessness, we are running up an escalator which is travelling downwards. Every single day for the past two years, an average of five people became newly homeless. The number of families becoming homeless has jumped from 7 or 8 families every month in 2012 to over 200 families in January and February of this year. The vast majority of these are being evicted from the private rented sector, either because they cannot afford to pay the increasing rents being demanded, or their homes are being repossessed by the financial institutions when

they, or their landlord, fall into mortgage arrears. At the end of 2015, there were 36,300 principal dwelling homes and 15,064 landlords’ houses in mortgage arrears of more than 2 years, and 47,402 mortgages held by vulture funds, of which 13,913 were in arrears of more than 2 years. Unless action is taken now, most of these homes will be repossessed and the occupants evicted. This is a situation beyond crisis.

We need emergency legislation preventing the f inancial institutions and vulture funds from evicting those who are living in these homes, when their properties are repossessed. This would involve local authorities o r h o u sin g a s s o ciati o ns compulsorily purchasing the properties and allowing the residents to continue living there but paying a rent to the local authority or housing association.

For those who face eviction because of escalating rents, we need rent control, whereby rent increases are limited to the consumer price index. Both of these measures interfere with the right to private property but are measures which are justified by the common good.

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION Does the Constitution prohibit such interference with private property? There is a lot of

evidence which would say no.

For example, the Report of the Committee on the Price of Building Land, 1973, (the ‘Kenny Report’), recommended that, in order to limit the rising cost of housing, local authorities should be empowered to cap the amount of compensation for compulsorily acquired land in designated areas at a level equal to existing use value plus 25%.

This recommendation was never acted upon, ostensibly on the grounds that such interference with the rights of property owners might run foul of the Constitution, despite the fact that the recommendation was made by a High Court Judge!

However, in 2004, an allparty (from the far right wing to the far left wing) Oireachtas Committee Report on Private Property in the Constitution, set up to look again at the Kenny Report, unanimously concluded that the property rights provisions of the Constitution are far from absolute and that sometimes even far-reaching interference with such rights can be justified by reference to the common good.

It can no longer be presumed that the Courts will set the right to private property above the principles of social justice or the requirements of the common good. The obstacle is political mindsets.

43

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE THE END OF ALL THINGS EARTHLY FAITH PROFILES OF THE 1916 LEADERS REVIEWED BY BRENDAN McCONVERY The End of All Things Earthly. Faith Profiles of the 1916 Leaders Edited by David Bracken. Dublin: Veritas, 2016

This

44

short book of less than one hundred pages gives us profiles of the religious stance of each of the sixteen executed leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, along with a general introduction and a brief essay on their religious sense. The contributors are both established historians with experience of reaching and teaching history at university level and archivists who handle every day the raw material of history. The result is a calm, and deceptively illuminating, work that attempts to put into a reasonable perspective an aspect of the Rising that has been overstated, misunderstood, and sometimes quite deliberately marginalised as irrelevant in the increasingly secularising Irish society which was conceived in the Easter Rising of 1916.

That there was a tendency towards what one of the contributors to this book terms as the ‘secular sanctification” of the men commemorated in this book, especially in the educational world of independent Ireland cannot be denied. They were all fitted into a literary genre of the ‘martyrology.’

Several of them were, without any doubt, devout men, marked by the style of Catholic piety that had been shaped by the peculiar style of Irish Catholicism in the aftermath of the Great Famine. Several of

REALITY MAY 2016

them, for example, were total abstainers, or at least very moderate in their use of alcohol, and regular communicants according to the standards of the day, when daily reception of the Eucharist by the laity was a comparative innovation (encouraged by decree of Pius X in 1905, just over a decade before the Rising) and monthly communion more likely to be the norm even for the devout. Young Con Colbert, twenty-eight years old at the time of his death, appeared to live by the maxim ‘first serve God, then your country.’ According to Joseph McMahon, the author of the chapter entitled ‘Ascetic Revolutionary’, he surrendered his desire for marriage and a family in his commitment to the cause, not wishing to bring sorrow on a wife and children.

The personal religious history of others were much less conforming.

Thomas MacDonagh, a onetime candidate for the missionary priesthood, had more or less abandoned the practise of religion and undergone a period of intense spiritual searching, so that by the time of his marriage to Muriel Gifford (whose sister Grace wedded Joseph Mary Plunkett hours before his execution), he could say “Muriel and I are of the same religion, which is neither Catholic or Protestant, or any other form of dogmatic creed; neither of us ever go to church or chapel, but for the sake of several

things and people, we are willing to conform for a marriage ceremony.”

James Connolly was probably more influenced by Karl Marx than Catholicism, and admitted that it had been many years since he had attended his duties. Tom Clarke and Seán Mac Diarmada were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who had distanced themselves from the Church over its attitude to Fenian movement.

According to one account, Clarke rejected a confessor who made his repudiation of his part in the Rising a condition for absolution: “I was not sorry for what I had done: I was not going to face my God with a lie on my tongue.” He seems however to have accepted the ministrations of the Capuchins and received the sacraments before his execution.

Despite his estrangement from the Church, MacDiarmada seems to have retained a simple faith that rekindled in his last days: “by the time this reaches you, I will, with God’s mercy, have joined in heaven my poor father and mother as well as my dear friends who have been shot this week. They died like heroes, and with God’s help, I will act throughout as heroic as they did.”

While the clergy of the Dublin diocese and the Capuchin friars of Church Street ministered to the men in the GPO and in their prison cells, there were still pockets of resistance in the Church to their Republican

ideals. If one priest presented the offer of confession to Clarke in a way that he could not accept it, the more benign theology of the friars presented no obstacle either to him, MacDiarmada or Connolly, and possibly some others, receiving absolution and holy communion.

The same friars accompanied them to the execution yard and recounted the dignity with which they met death. On the other hand, Cardinal Bourne of Westminster insisted that Roger Casement be required to make a declaration of public sorrow for any scandal he may have caused by his acts public or private. Casement refused, aware that this would be tantamount to admitting he was guilty of every rumour of which he stood accused.

Fortunately, it was discovered that Casement’s Catholic mother had taken the precaution of having all her children baptised privately as Catholics, so the chaplain was able to minister to him as just another Catholic who had requested the sacraments. Cardinal Bourne would refuse to receive the remains of Terence McSweeney, who died on hunger strike in 1920: they were received instead by Archbishop Amigo, of the neighbouring diocese of Southwark.

Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR is editor of Reality

GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH MAY

01 SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

THREE GIFTS FROM JESUS Jesus’ words to his disciples at the last supper have been described as his last will and testament. In today’s Gospel, he makes three bequests to his Church – the Word, the Spirit and

the gift of peace.

A sign of how much we love Jesus is how well we keep his Word. That does not simply mean keeping a copy of the bible on your bookshelf. The Word is more mysterious and more powerful than that. Words draw us into relationships. A husband and wife who never speak or who never listen to one another, will never become friends, no matter how much they do for one another and for their children. Keeping the Word of Jesus means first of all learning from the Gospel who he is.

Jesus promises that those who keep his Word will find that God – Father, Son and Spirit – will come to make their home with them. For John, this is the deepest reality of Christian life. The believer is no longer alone. In the silence or the darkness, God is always there with them.

PASSING ON A MISSION St Luke has the distinction of having written two accounts of the Ascension. The first ASCENSION is today’s Gospel and the second, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, is our first reading. The Gospel one was probably written first and expanded as the introduction to the Acts. Acts states that the ascension occurred some forty days after the resurrection, in order to link two important Jewish feasts, Passover and Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, with the story of Jesus. Luke depicts the time between resurrection and the coming of the Spirit as a privileged time of Jesus’ presence with the disciples, when he often comes to them at table, a reminder of the importance of the Eucharist as the place we meet the Risen Jesus.

MAY

08

The second gift of Easter, and probably the greatest of all, is the Holy Spirit. John’s favourite name for the Spirit is ‘advocate.’ It is hard to grasp all the senses that word, paraclete, in its original Greek may have had for him. It can mean someone you can summon for help, a faithful friend who will stand alongside you when times get rough. It can mean a comforter, or someone who prays for you or even a lawyer who will plead your case in court. John emphasises something else about the Spirit. The Spirit is the great teacher, who reminds disciples of all that Jesus has said to them. When we are in a hurry, we are more likely to forget things. Remembering the story of Jesus needs time. It also needs peace and quiet. Jesus’ third Easter bequest is peace. He knows that the disciples who have shared the last meal with him will eventually be called to suffer for him. The peace he promises them is not the same sort of peace that the world gives: his peace is peace of heart that comes from knowing you are trying to walk faithfully in the way of love.

45

Today’s Readings Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 : Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23: John 14:23-29

Today’s Gospel begins with the appearance of Jesus to the disciples. Jesus begins by outlining their future mission. With the energy of the resurrection and the Spirit, they are to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins, ‘beginning from Jerusalem’. The Ascension is not a feast of farewell and emptiness: it is a celebration of mission and at the heart of the mission is the liberating message of forgiveness.

Luke goes on to describe the Ascension itself. The village of Bethany is about two miles from Jerusalem on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Defeated by his own son, King David left Jerusalem by the Mount of Olives, weeping for the loss of Jerusalem, his capital (2 Sam 15:30). Jesus, the Son of David, takes the same route, this time as a king who has completed his task, and whose capital, Jerusalem, will be the starting point of a new beginning in the story of salvation.

The Ascension itself is told more sparingly than in the Acts: as Jesus blesses his disciples, he is taken up to heaven from their sight.

According to the Old Testament, some other humans had also been taken up into heaven, notably Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11).

Their Lord’s departure does not fill the disciples with anxiety. Instead, they return to the Holy City and frequent the temple ‘praising God.’ Luke’s Gospel began in the temple with the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Zachary. It also ends in the Temple, as the Church moves into the next stage of its story as the community that will continue the mission of Jesus in prayer and service.

Today’s Readings Acts 1:1-11: Ephesians 1:17-23 : Luke 24:46-53

God’s Word continues on page 46

GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH

COME, HOLY SPIRIT Pentecost was originally a Jewish feast, Shevuot or the “Feast of Weeks.”

It occurs 50 days (seven PENTECOST weeks) after Passover, and SUNDAY commemorates the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.

For Christians, it commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit. The three readings in today’s liturgy remind us of very different aspects of the Spirit

as experienced by the Christian community, and recorded by three of its most creative theologians, Luke, Paul and John.

Acts describes the dramatic coming of the Spirit. The Spirit comes without warning. A powerful wind shakes the house and fire comes to rest on the heads of the apostles. These are typical elements of an Old Testament theophany or story of God’s self-revelation. What is new is the reference to speaking foreign languages.

Pentecost was a pilgrimage feast, and Luke lists

THRICE-BLESSED THREE IN ONE The Trinity is a mystery, MAY but it is a mystery that comes from the depths of knowing who God is. In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells TRINITY the disciples that he has SUNDAY many things to say that would be too much for them to take in but the Spirit will lead them to the complete truth. It took the Church almost three hundred years after this to find a way to speak about God in the language of the Trinity. Despite all that, it is still not easy for us to speak about God. The great truth about God in the Old Testament was that he communicated with human beings. He was active in their history through the Spirit that communicated the divine Word through the Law and the Prophets. The great truth

about God in the New Testament is that God took on human form in Jesus. The Church’s doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is first of all a community of three persons who love one another, who communicate with one another. A genuine community is open to others. It is not locked in on itself. The place where we experience most deeply the truth of the Trinity is at the table of the Eucharist when bread and wine, the gift of the Father in creation, are transformed into the lifegiving body and blood of the Son through the action of the Holy Spirit.

If it took the Church three hundred years to find a way of speaking about the Trinity, then it takes us a life-time to find a way to speak about God from our own experience of love, of joy, of fragility and brokenness. Just as Jesus tells his disciples that the Spirit of Truth will not add anything new to his teaching,

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the nations whose members have gathered in Jerusalem. They are virtually unknown today, but they stretched from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Pentecost is the original“Mission Sunday” – the day in which we remember that the Good News is meant to transform the world Paul in Romans 8 emphasises that our deepest experience of the Spirit often comes in prayer, when we recognise who exactly is this God in whom we believe and whom we address as ‘Abba.’

John emphasises the Spirit’s role as defender, or paraclete, of believers when they are challenged to give witness. The Spirit will stand alongside them as the gifted and eloquent ‘senior counsel’ acting in their defence. The paraclete is, along with Jesus and the Father, the indwelling Spirit who brings believers into a deeper intimacy with God. That is the Spirits’ second role, to promote that sense of unity based on the mystery of God’s love for us. The Spirit’s third role is to be the community’s memory, continuing to remind it of the sayings of Jesus.

Today’s Readings Acts 2:1-11: Romans 8: 8-17: John 14:15-16, 23-26

the same Spirit leads us to understand our own truth about God. The early Irish Church was fascinated by the Trinity, and found many reminders of it in daily life: Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there, Three joints of the finger, yet only one finger fair, Three leaves of the shamrock, yet only one shamrock to wear, Frost, snowflake and ice, all in water their origin share, Three persons in God, yet to one God alone we make prayer.

Today’s Readings Proverbs 8:22-31: Romans 5:1-5: John 16: 12-15

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 4, MAY 2016

A GENEROUS GIFT The short introductory verse at the beginning of today’s reading makes three important points. Jesus made the crowds welcome, he talked to them about the Kingdom of God and he cured those who were BODY AND BLOOD in need of healing. It is a lovely summary of the three OF CHRIST important aspects of the work of Jesus – welcoming, preaching and healing.

As the sun sinks down in the sky, the disciples are beginning to get worried. Jesus seems to have forgotten that a crowd of people, especially one with many restless children, will soon be needing of food. They were probably even more aghast at his answer – ‘give them something to eat yourselves.’ Their provisions of five small rolls and a couple of dried fish are not enough even to feed the twelve of them and their teacher. Describing the same scene in his own Gospel, John adds that it would take almost the entire year’s wages to feed a crowd of more than five thousand! Jesus simply tells them to split the people up in groups of about fifty as though preparing for a banquet.

When the food is brought to Jesus, he does four things – raises his eyes to heaven, blesses them, broke them and handed them to the disciples to be distributed to the crowd. It is no accident that these words have been included in the Eucharistic prayer which is said at each mass. Luke and the other gospel writers want us to see this scene repeated in the Eucharist. We no longer receive a piece of bread and fish but the body and blood of the Lord. At the end of the gospel, we are told that when everyone had eaten as much as they wanted, the disciples were able to fill twelve baskets from the scraps remaining. Scripture scholars call stories like this or the marriage feast of Cana ‘gift miracles’ That is to say, they remind us that our God is a generous God who does not give in half measures.

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SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 2 ACROSS: Across: 1. Spared, 5. Erased, 10. Abraham, 11. Plumber, 12. List, 13. In-box, 15. Ulna, 17.

Day, 19. Collie, 21. Alaska, 22. Beatify, 23. Orwell, 25. Temple, 28. Ash, 30. Pair, 31. Pumas, 32.

Tomb, 35. Soprano, 36. Amazons, 37. Attila, 38. Indigo.

DOWN: 2. Parasol, 3. Ruhr, 4. Demand, 5. Employ, 6. Aqua, 7. Embalms, 8. Garlic, 9. Errata, 14.

Baptism, 16. Bible, 18. Flyer, 20. Eel, 21. Aft, 23. Oppose, 24. Whippet, 26. Prolong, 27. Emboss, 28.

Aurora, 29. Hawaii, 33. Taxi, 34. Yard.

Winner of Crossword No. 2 John O’Byrne, Graiguenamanagh, Co.Kilkenny.

ACROSS 1. A gallows. (6) 5. Europe's second largest river. (6) 10. Medieval Christian knight. (7) 11. Extremely wicked or evil. (7) 12. Part by which a blade is held by a handle. (4) 13. Skilled stone worker. (5) 15. Largest island of the Inner Hebrides. (4) 17. Short Pharaoh. (3) 19. A priest or religious leader. (6) 21. Pulled hard suddenly. (6) 22. The are traditionally made by chandlers. (7) 23. Author of 'Little Women.' (6) 25. Ag. (6) 28. May I have this vegetable? (3) 30. Unsolicited Email about a canned pork product. (4) 31. South American cord and balls missile.

(5) 32. A self-contained part of an education course. (4) 35. The Chrysanthemum Dog. (4-3) 36. Refusing to be persuaded to change one's mind. (7) 37. Famous Hun. (6) 38. Roman writing utensil and computer accessory. (6)

DOWN 2. Extremely large. (7) 3. An Irish statement containing a logical absurdity. (4) 4. This Hatter is a possible source of danger. (6) 5. A ruler with absolute power. (6) 6. Crazy seed in a hard shell. (4) 7. The most populous city of Thailand. (7) 8. Stationary electrical interference. (6) 9. Strip placed as a guide for the even application of plaster or concrete. (6) 14. Timekeeping apparatus for daytime use only. (7) 16. Early inhabitants of Scotland. (5) 18. Isolated area of vegetation in a desert. (5) 20. A small domesticated carnivorous mammal. (3) 21. Word used to express consent or agreement. (3) 23. Evaluate, appraise. (6) 24. Ancient horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle. (7) 26. Pacific island nation. (7) 27. Turn around on an axis. (6) 28. Large African ethnic group. (6) 29. Long-tailed parrots. (6) 33. Small case for holding needles, cosmetics, and other articles. (4) 34. The mother of Jesus. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.4, May 2016 Name:

Today’s Readings

Address: Telephone:

Genesis 14: 18-20: 1 Cor 11:23-26: Gospel: Luke 9: 11-17 All entries must reach us by May 31, 2016 One €35 prize is offered for the first correct solutions opened. The Editor’s decision on all matters concerning this competition will be final. Do not include correspondence on any other subject with your entry which should be addressed to: Reality Crossword No. 4, Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651

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