JEAN VANIER R.I.P.
JULY/AUGUST 2019
BULLYING: CAN IT BE ERADICATED?
NET MINISTRIES IRELAND
Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic
WHY I BELIEVE IN CELIBACY BY MARRIED PRIEST JOSHUA WHITFIELD
PADRE ON THE RIVER KWAI
THE BRAVERY AND HUMANITY OF FR PETER MULROONEY CSsR
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION? LISTENING TO THE INNER SELF
www.redcoms.org Redemptorist-Communications @RedComsIreland �2.50 �2.00
IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 I'M A MARRIED CATHOLIC PRIEST WHO THINKS PRIESTS SHOULDN'T GET MARRIED Ordained as an Anglican, Fr Whitfield and his wife joined the Catholic Church just as they were expecting their first child. He is now a married Catholic priest who reflects here on the spiritual value of celibacy. By Fr Joshua J. Whitfield
18 LIGHTING A FIRE IN YOUNG PEOPLE NET (National Evangelisation Teams) Ministries first came to Ireland in 2004 with one team. Today its seven teams reach over 20,000 young people. Five teams work in parishes, the other two on retreats and vocations. By Susan Gately
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22 PADRE ON THE RIVER KWAI Fr Peter Mulrooney CSsR volunteered for service as a chaplain to the British army during the Second World War and saw active service in Burma. He was later assigned to the Philippines after the war. By Frs Emerardo Maningo and Noel Gartlan CSsR
26 BULLYING The aggressive behaviour that repeatedly causes injury and discomfort to another. By Anne Kerrigan
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28 CATHERINE DE HUECK DOHERTY Despite her apparently Irish name, she was a Russian convert to Catholicism who combined a passion for justice and service of the most deprived By Mike Daley
32 WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION? Spiritual direction is not something reserved for an elite. The old Irish term for someone who performed this ministry was Anam Chara or ‘Friend of the Soul.’ A ‘soul friend’ helps us to listen to the mystery of God in our lives. By Brian Glennon
OPINION
REGULARS
11 BRENDAN McCONVERY
04 REALITY BITES 07 POPE MONITOR 08 SAINT OF THE MONTH 09 REFLECTIONS 35 PRAYER CORNER 38 TRÓCAIRE 40 UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 43 GOD’S WORD
17 JIM DEEDS 31 CARMEL WYNNE 42 PETER McVERRY SJ
REALITY BITES DEATH OF JEAN VANIER FRANCE
INNOVATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF VULNERABLE PEOPLE
Jean Vanier was born a Canadian citizen in 1928, the fourth of five children. His father, Georges Vanier, was Governor General of Canada from 1959 to 1967. Jean entered the Royal Navy College in Dartmouth, England, in 1942 at the age of 13. In the middle of the Second World War, he embarked on an eight-year career in both the British navy and later the Canadian navy – an experience that shaped him. In 1950 he chose to leave the Canadian navy and began a time of searching for meaning and of deepening his faith. At the end of 1963, he found work in a small institution that welcomed about 30 men with intellectual disabilities. Visiting a psychiatric hospital in Paris, he met Raphaël Simi and Philippe Seux, and was deeply affected by their suffering. He decided to buy a little house near the Val Fleuri for himself and his new companions. That was the beginning of L’Arche. Today, it is made up of 154 communities spread over five continents, with 10,000 members. In addition to many international honours, Jean Vanier was awarded the 2015 Templeton Prize for his innovative understanding of the central role of vulnerable people in the creation of a more just, inclusive and humane society. He was also the founder, with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, of the Faith and Light (Foi et Lumière) communities made up of persons with an intellectual disability, their families and friends, who meet together to share friendship, pray together, and celebrate life. Jean Vanier died on May 7, 2019 at the Arch Community of Trosly-Breuil in France where he had spent the latter years of his life. Present at his funeral was Philippe Seux, one of the two first members of l’Arche. The Gospel of the Mass, the Washing of the Feet, was read by a sight-impaired deacon from a Braille lectionary. During the offertory procession, leaders from La Ferme Welcome Centre carried a broken pot as a "sign of the vulnerability that allows the light to pass through". A leader of the Ugandan community brought bread and grapes in reference to "the meal table that unites us". Brother Alois, the prior of the Taizé ecumenical community, carried an "icon of friendship" showing Christ with his hand on the shoulder of his friend. More unexpected was a bowl of oranges, which commemorated the playful orange peel fights Vanier liked to start at the end of a meal.
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COURT DETERMINES RIGHT TO LIFE FRANCE
THE RIGHT-TO-DIE DEBATE
A French court has ordered doctors to resume life support for a quadriplegic man whose case has become central to the right-to-die debate in France. Doctors had begun switching off life support for Vincent Lambert, 42, on May 20, in the light of an earlier court ruling. M. Lambert has been in a vegetative state since a 2008 motorcycle accident. The case showed up strong REALITY SUMMER 2019
divisions both within his family and in wider French society. His wife had asked for his feeding tubes to be withdrawn, while his parents insisted he be kept alive. His mother, Viviane, 73, greeted the ruling as "a very big victory" in her struggle to maintain her son's life support. "They are going to restore nutrition and give him drink. For once I am proud of the courts," she said.
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MILITARY PILGRIMAGE FRANCE
THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN...
More than 12,000 soldiers from over 40 countries attended the 61st Annual International Military Pilgrimage to Lourdes from May 16-21. The International Military Pilgrimage began in 1958, the centenary of the Lourdes apparitions. The theme of this year’s pilgrimage was 'Seek peace and pursue it'. The programme includes Masses in many languages, a sporting programme as well as the usual Lourdes events such as the candlelit procession and visits to the baths near the Grotto. Throughout the pilgrimage, military bands parade through the streets of Lourdes, and the soldiers from different nations are encouraged to get to know one another. Some of the groups include members who have been seriously injured in the line of duty. Not all the pilgrims are Catholic. Major Brian Minietta, a Methodist chaplain in the US army, was invited to join the pilgrimage. “I got to pray for people – even though I can’t offer the sacrament, I still got to lay hands on people and pray for them,” he said. “And so, it’s easy for me to overcome our differences.” He compared the experience of going into the baths to baptism: “There's that significance of we need water to survive, water cleanses us. I went into that experience open to however the Lord was gonna work through the usage of water.”
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GOVERNMENT DEMOLISHES CHURCH
CHINA
INCREASED TENSIONS BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE
The Chinese authorities have demolished a large Christian church, further increasing tensions between religious groups and the Communist Party. The People's Armed Police used dynamite and excavators to demolish the Golden Lampstand Church, which has a congregation of more than 50,000, in the city of Linfen in Shanxi province. According to the Christian advocacy group, ChinaAid, they planted explosives in an underground worship hall to demolish the building which cost nearly $2.6m in contributions from worshippers in one of China's poorest
regions. In an earlier attack on the church in 2009, police and hired thugs smashed the building, seizing Bibles and arresting church leaders who were given prison sentences of up to seven years on charges of illegally occupying farmland and disturbing traffic order. It is estimated that there are 60 million Christians in China, many of whom, like the Catholic 'underground church' which remains loyal to Rome, worship in independent congregations like the Golden Lampstand. Many Christians, Buddhists and Muslims also worship in state-sanctioned assemblies. continued on page 6
REALITY BITES FINANCIAL CRISIS LOOMING The number of Germans who pay a stateadministered 'church tax' to the Catholic Church or the country’s largest Protestant group is expected to be halved by 2060, according to researchers at the University of Freiburg. The expected decline can be predicted on the dwindling number of baptisms, the number of people who have departed from formal religious enrolment of, and a decrease in Germany’s overall population, which is expected by 2060 to be reduced by 21 per cent. The German state, like some other European countries, collects a tax on the tax of church members (Kirchensteuer), which it returns to their respective denominations .The tax is calculated as an additional 8 per cent of the total tax (not income) paid by the individual and it has constituted about 70 per cent of the annual income of the Catholic Church which is used to service other obligations such as its
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commitment to the Third ICELAND World ((for example Misereor, the German FINLAND SWEDEN equivalent of Trócaire). Taxpayers have the option DENMARK of opting out of the church GERMANY tax by notifying the state authorities that they have AUSTRIA SWITZERLAND HUNGARY left the religious group in which they are enrolled. If ITALY they do, they lose the right SPAIN to claim as of right the PORTUGAL services of their church for events such as marriages COUNTRIES THAT PAY CHURCH TAXES and funerals, although the church may continue to provide them. In 2017, president of the German bishops’ conference, has the church tax generated $13.5 billion for religious said the report represents a call to evangelise. "The groups in the country. The predicted decline would church is always about sharing the gospel, even lead to major budget problems for the Catholic under changed circumstances, and for me the study Church in Germany. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, is also a call for mission."
ARCHBISHOP ACCUSES WEST OF INDIFFERENCE The Catholic Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, Mgr Bashar Warda, has appealed totheUKGovernmenttoprovidedirectaidtoChristiansandotherswhohavesuffered genocide in Iraq. The Redemptorist archbishop, who made his noviciate in Dundalk, begged western governments to provide urgent help to prevent persecuted minority faith groups from dying out in their ancient homelands. At a meeting ng in the House of Commons organised by Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the archbishop said UK “engagement” was vital if his people are to recover from “one of the darkest moments in our long history”. Iraqi Christians numbered more than 1.5 million before 2003 : latest reports say that, following the ISIS genocide in 2014-17, Christians are now down to well below 150,000. Arrchbishop Warda said that during their occupation of ancient Christian villages in the Nineveh plains, ISIS militants came close to destroying “the beating heart of our community”. He said that, with the notable exception of Hungary, western governments had failed to match words of sympathy with action and reported slow progress in the task of rebuilding schools and medical care, and declining security.
Archbishop Bashar Warda meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt
REALITY SUMMER 2019
TERMINALLY ILL SEMINARIAN ORDAINED Fr Michael celebrating his first Mass in hospital
Brother Micheal Los, a member of the Sons of Divine Providence congregation in Poland, was diagnosed in April this year as suffering from an acute form of cancer that would end his life in a short time. Michael desperately desired to receive Holy Orders and celebrate at least one Mass as a priest. With the approval of Pope Francis, he made his final profession in his religious community, and the following day, May 24, 2019, he was ordained to the orders of deacon and priest in the same ceremony conducted by the bishop of the Warsaw-Praga diocese, Marek Solarczyk, at his bedside in the cancer ward of a Warsaw hospital. Before those in attendance left, Fr Michael was able to give them a blessing. The following day he celebrated his first Mass.
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POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS FEMALE DEACONS: DEADLOCK?
POPE TO POLITICIANS: DO SOMETHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
Asked about how the commission he had established in 2016 to investigate the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate was progressing, Pope Francis said that there was no unanimity from the commission, but he urged continued study of the question. He was speaking to journalists on his return flight from Bulgaria in May. Among the disputed points he mentioned was disagreement over the formula that was used in the ordination of deaconesses and whether it carried sacramental weight, and what function those female deacons might have had. Historically, it is known that they helped bishops perform services involving women, such as baptisms and anointings, and in case of marital separation, deaconesses were sent to the couple’s home to examine the woman’s body to see if there were signs of physical abuse. As for their role in modern times, Pope Francis said “there is no consensus for an ordination in the same form as men. Some say there is doubt, others say let’s go forward. Either way, don’t be afraid to study.” The commission has been able to find many points of agreement, but consensus is still a long way off. Commenting on the pope’s remarks, writer and theologian Dawn Goldstein suggested that there were two main blocs in the commission. One “believes the Church must consider whether the ancient formula for ordination of a deaconess contained within itself the seeds of what we now understand as the theology of the male diaconate today,” particularly whether deaconesses in the early church fulfilled sacramental roles such as preaching and assisting in the celebration of the Eucharist, in order to reinstate the practice today. The second group might argue that, regardless of the historical details, the church has a certain freedom to change without compromising the intentions of either Jesus – who chose only male disciples to fulfil those functions associated with the altar – or the church from its earliest origins.
Pope Francis with indigenous people from the Amazon region
If the world is to win the fight against climate change, its leaders must stop profiting from fossil fuels that threaten the survival and well-being of the planet and its inhabitants, Pope Francis said. He was addressing a Vatican conference, 'Climate Change and New Evidence from Science, Engineering and Policy', sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Among the issues it discussed was the fulfilment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a list of 17 major commitments that the world’s nations and UN agencies will be asked to pursue until 2030. The attendance included finance ministers from around the world. The pope said that the current crisis is “caused by a confusion of our moral ledger with our financial ledger". “We live at a time when profits and losses seem to be more highly 7 valued than lives and deaths, and when a company’s net worth is given precedence over the infinite worth of our human family,” he said. He also met Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Kayapo indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon region, to discuss the Synod of Bishops of the Amazon, which will be at the Vatican in October. According to the Vatican spokesperson for the conference, this meeting was proof of Pope Francis’ special interest in the Amazonian people and their environment, as well as to his commitment to safeguard our common home.
POPE AUTHORISES PILGRIMAGES TO MEDJUGORJE Pope Francis has authorised pilgrimages to Medjugorje by Catholic dioceses and parishes. Previously, pilgrimages could only be organised in a private capacity, usually by a lay person. Responding to journalists' questions about the announcement, the acting director of the Holy See Press Office, Alessandro Gisotti, made it clear that the papal authorisation did not imply recognition by the church of any particular events said to have taken place there. Gisotti continued that the Holy Father’s decision was prompted by the considerable flow of pilgrims to Medjugorje and the
abundance of spiritual fruits that have sprung from it. In June 1981, six visionaries who were then children or young people claimed to have daily apparitions of the 'Queen of Peace', always at the same time in the afternoon. Three of them, Vicka (who lives in Medjugorje), Marija (who lives in Monza) and Ivan (who lives in the United States but often returns home), claim to experience daily visions still wherever they are. A fourth visionary, Mirjana, says that she receives an apparition every month, while the remaining two claim to have an apparition once a year.
REDEMPTORIST SAINT OF THE MONTH BLESSED VASYL VELYCHKOVSKY 1903-1973
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It is not often a bishop is ordained in a hotel room, but this was the unusual setting for the episcopal ordination of Vasyl (Basil) Velychkovsky. In Catholic and Orthodox Churches where there are married clergy, young men often follow their fathers and grandfathers into the priesthood. Vasyl was one of these. He was born into a priestly family in Stanislaviv in the Western Ukraine on June 1, 1903. His father was an assistant priest at the cathedral where Vasyl was baptised. The family soon moved to the village of Shuparka in the Chernobyl province. Here Vasyl was raised and educated, mainly by home schooling. In 1911 during a Redemptorist mission in his grandfather’s parish in Probizhnia, young Vasyl was dedicated to the Mother of God. Throughout his life he always believed that he was under the protection of her loving care. After the war, Vasyl completed his secondary school studies and entered the Major Seminary of the Greek Catholic diocese in Lviv. He was ordained deacon by Metropolitan Andrij Sheptytsky, head of the Ukrainian Church, but shortly afterwards, he left the seminary for the Redemptorist novitiate in Holosko in 1924. He was ordained to the priesthood on October 9, 1925. After a short spell of teaching in the juvenate or minor seminary, his superiors recognised his gift for preaching and assigned him to the parish mission band. He worked with groups of Orthodox in the Polish-Ukrainian border area who wanted to join the Greek Catholics. His sensitivity to the slight differences between the two churches earned him great respect and affection. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Russians occupied Western Ukraine. Blessed Vasyl was then in Stanislaviv serving in a thriving Redemptorist mission church. His heart went out especially to the poor country folk that came to the city to earn a living. In 1940, on the feast of our Mother of Perpetual Help, he organised a procession of some 2,000 people to implore Our Lady’s protection for the city. He was arrested, but so great was popular support for him, that he was soon released by the Soviets. Metropolitan Sheptytsky sent him to another part of the Ukraine, then under German control. On August 7, 1945, the Soviets arrived at the monastery in Ternopil (Chernobil) to arrest him. For almost a year he was kept in a KGB prison in Kiev where he underwent interrogation and torture. He was sentenced on June 26, 1946 to die by firing squad. He was kept on death row for three months, but he used the time to prepare his fellow prisoners for death and administered the sacraments to them in secret. When his name was finally called, he was told his sentence was commuted to ten years hard labour. He spent most of it in coal-mines within the Arctic Circle of Siberia. At the end of his sentence, he was sent to Lviv where he helped organise the underground church. His tiny apartment became the centre of church life as he celebrated the liturgy, instructed converts, trained young men for the priesthood and even re-organised the religious sisters, whose convents had been closed and whose professions had been declared invalid by the Soviet state. In 1959 Rome appointed Fr Vasyl as bishop of this underground church, but there was no bishop in Ukraine to ordain him. In 1963, Archbishop Josyf Slipyj was released from 18 years of Soviet labour camps and sent to Rome. He phoned Fr Vasyl to come to meet him in Moscow. There, in his hotel room, he secretly ordained him bishop. In 1969, Bishop Vasyl was arrested once more. He was accused of anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to three years in prison. There he underwent chemical, physical and mental torture. A dying man, he was released in 1972 and told he was exiled from Ukraine. His Redemptorist brothers of the Ukrainian rite in Canada invited him to come to them. His stay was short. Overcome by the tortures and drugs administered to him in prison, he died a martyr’s death on June 30, 1973. He was beatified by St John Paul II in 2001 along with 27 other Ukrainian martyrs, including four of his Redemptorist confrères. Brendan McConvery CSsR REALITY SUMMER 2019
Reality Volume 84. No. 6 July/August 2019 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, St Joseph's Monastery, St Alphonsus Road, Dundalk County Louth A91 F3FC Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)
Editor Brendan McConvery CSsR editor@redcoms.org Design & Layout David Mc Namara CSsR Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Accounts Dearbhla Cooney accounts@redcoms.org Printed by Nicholson & Bass, Belfast Photo Credits Shutterstock, Catholic News Agency, Trócaire,
REALITY SUBSCRIPTIONS Through a promoter (Ireland only) €20 or £18 Annual Subscription by post: Ireland €25 or £20 UK £30 Europe €40 Rest of the world €50 Please send all payments to: Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, St Alphonsus Road, Dundalk County Louth A91 F3FC 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.
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REFLECTIONS It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love
The longest journey is the journey inwards, of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
GRAHAM GREENE
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD
I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. CS LEWIS
In a hundred years’ time if Christians are identified as people who do not kill their children or the elderly, we will have done well. STANLEY HAUREWAS
The harder I push, the more I find within myself. I am always looking for the next step, a different world to go into, areas where I have not been before. It's lonely driving a Grand Prix car, but very absorbing. I have experienced new sensations, and I want more. That is my excitement, my motivation. AYRTON SENNA
We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it. HENRI NOUWEN
To convert somebody, go and take them by the hand and guide them.
It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
ST THOMAS AQUINAS
ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS
First let a little love find entrance into their hearts, and the rest will follow.
Nothing else is required than to act toward God, in the midst of your occupations, as you do toward those who love you and whom you love, even when busy.
ST PHILIP NERI
I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. ALBERT CAMUS
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. CS LEWIS
A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.
BL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
CARL GUSTAV JUNG
JANE AUSTEN
Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life. GREGORY PECK
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. JRR TOLKIEN
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From Redemptorist Communications
UNITY PILGRIM The life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR
When Limerick-born Redemptorist priest Fr Gerry Reynolds first arrived in Belfast in August 1983, it was to a city starkly divided by conflict and violence. His instinct to reach out to those who were suffering, on both sides of the community, would develop into a lifelong devotion to the cause of peace and Christian unity. Through the friendships of the Cornerstone Community and the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship, his involvement in secret talks with republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, and the setting up of the ‘Unity Pilgrims’, Gerry would play a crucial role in the Northern Ireland peace process. He believed the church could be ‘God’s peace process in human history’, and that dialogue and friendship would open hearts to the mutual understanding and trust that are the foundations of true peace. Above all, Gerry was a pilgrim, struggling in his faith, journeying with his sisters and brothers, and always striving towards the goal of Christian unity, one small step at a time. This book draws on Gerry’s own words and writings, and the recollections of his family and friends, to uncover the story of this gentle priest, pilgrim and peacemaker.
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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR
CARING WITH GOD FOR GOD’S CREATION
The
sudden wave of support for the Green Party in the local and European elections both in the North and the South last month took most commentators by surprise. It probably should not have been such a surprise, given the extensive exposure to the climate agenda in the media and the dramatic wave of student strikes from the South Pacific to the North Atlantic initiated by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to draw attention to the state of the world. The scientifically measured assessment that global sea levels could rise far more than predicted, due to accelerating melting in Greenland and Antarctica, painted a picture of disaster for a sea-girt nation like ours, where the ocean is within easy reach of even the most inland regions. One of my favourite psalms is Ps 104 (103). It begins: “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.” It is a reminder that our Jewish-Christian faith takes as its starting point the creation story in which the first humans are given the earth in trust in a covenant between the creator and his creation. That psalm however has an interesting history behind it. A hymn, very close to it in sentiment, and sometimes even in wording, was discovered painted on the wall of an Egyptian tomb dating from more than 1,300 years before Christ. It may then be at least 400 or 500 years earlier than our psalm. It is ascribed to Pharaoh Akhenaten, father of the better known ‘boy pharaoh’ Tutankhamen. Akhenaten was a religious reformer who attempted to replace the cult of Egypt’s
many gods with the worship of a solar disc, representing the one creator God who keeps the earth in being. He is in awe of the miracles of human life and its beginnings: You are He who creates the humanchild in woman, who makes seed in man, Who gives life to the son in the body of his mother, who soothes him that he may not weep, a nurse [even] in the womb. You give breath to animate everyone that you make. When he comes forth from the body . . .on the day of his birth, you open his mouth in speech, you supply his necessities. All created things owe their existence to God: Humans, all cattle large and small, all that are upon the earth, that go about upon their feet. All that are on high, that fly with their wings. The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt; you set everyone in their place you supply their necessities. People of faith begin, not with a nervous fear that the world is falling apart, but with admiration for the beauty and order in which it has been created and which needs to be sustained by their stewardship: “God saw that it was good, and indeed, it was very good!” The last book of our specifically Christian story, the Book of Revelation, ends with a vision of “a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (Rev 21:1). We do not know how or when the first world will come to an end, but that is no excuse to treat the present world carelessly or with contempt for its creator. The Jesuit poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, wrote a poem, God’s Grandeur, just as the 19th century industrial revolution and urbanisation were disfiguring the face of the earth. He saw how
“all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.” Yet, as a believer, he knows that “for all this, nature is never spent” and God would renew his creation: “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings." Faith in the creator is not an excuse for doing nothing. Rather, it should give greater commitment to maintaining the beauty of creation. We cannot reverse global warming on our own account, but there are many ways we can make a contribution. We might take public transport rather than the car, especially when going into urban areas where you need parking space. We could keep some reusable non-plastic bags handy for use when shopping. We could drink chilled tap-water rather than the expensive plastic bottled kind: did you ever stop to think of the carbon footprint of each bottle of water, especially when it is imported from a French or Italian spa? If methane from flatulent cattle is a bigger issue for global warning than was thought, is there something to be said for rediscovering the Catholic tradition of abstinence from meat at least once a week, and discovering the value of fruit and vegetables?
Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor
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C OVE R STO RY
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REALITY SUMMER 2019
I'm a married
CATHOLIC PRIEST who thinks priests shouldn't get married ORDAINED AS AN ANGLICAN, FR WHITFIELD AND HIS WIFE JOINED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH JUST AS THEY WERE AWAITING THEIR FIRST CHILD. HE IS NOW A MARRIED CATHOLIC PRIEST WHO REFLECTS HERE ON THE SPIRITUAL VALUE OF CELIBACY. BY JOSHUA J. WHITFIELD 13
My
wife and I, we have four children, all younger than seven. Ours is not a quiet house. A house of screaming and a house of endless snot, it's also a house of love, grown and multiplied every few years. In a house of little sleep, my hobby these days is simply to sit down; fellow parents know what I mean. Ours is a perfectly normal family, "normal" understood, of course, in relative terms. It's both exhausting and energizing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It is the form and gift of my life, my family. But here's what's strange about us: I'm a Catholic priest. And that is, as you probably know, mostly a celibate species. CELIBACY OR MARRIED? Now the discipline of celibacy, as a Christian practice, is an ancient tradition. Its origins belong to the very mists of early Christianity: to the deserts of Egyptian monasticism, the
wilds of ancient Christian Syria and to Luke's gospel. For priests, celibacy has been the universal legal norm in the Catholic West since the 12th century, and the de facto norm long before that. Saint Ambrose in the fourth century, for example, wrote about married priests, saying they were to be found only in "backwoods" churches, certainly not in the churches of Rome or Milan. Yet there have always been, for good reasons, exceptions made, particularly for the sake of Christian unity. The Eastern Catholic Churches, for example, many with married priests, have since early modernity flourished in the Catholic Church. Likewise, for me, a convert from Anglicanism. I'm able to be a Catholic priest because of the “pastoral provision� of Saint John Paul II, which was established in the early 1980s. This provision allows men like me, mostly converts from Anglicanism, to be ordained priests, yet only
after receiving a dispensation from celibacy from the pope himself. The Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in the United States, established by Pope Benedict XVI to provide a path for Anglican communities to become Roman Catholic, is another instance of the church making an exception, allowing for the same dispensations from celibacy to be granted to priests. But these are exceptions made, as I said, for the sake of Christian unity, because of Jesus' final prayer that his disciples be "one". They do not signal change in the Catholic Church's ancient discipline of clerical celibacy. IN FAVOUR OF CELIBACY Now you might be surprised to know most married Catholic priests are staunch advocates of clerical celibacy. I, for one, don't think the church should change its discipline here. In fact, I think it would be a very bad
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Fr Joshua J. Whitfield
idea. Which brings me to my particular bĂŞte noire on the subject. I get that I'm an ecclesiastical zoo exhibit. On my way to celebrate Mass in Saint Peter's in Rome a few years ago, fully vested in my priestly robes, I had to push my boy in the stroller through that ancient basilica as we made our way to the altar. He had a broken leg, and Alli had the other kids to manage; and so there I was pushing the kid and the purse through Saint Peter's, wide-eyed tourists' mouths agape at the sight. It is indeed quite a sight, a life outside the norm.
your children?" they'll ask in whispered tones as if it's something scandalous, as my kids hide underneath my vestments as if it's something normal. A zoo exhibit as I said, but I'm happy talking about it, it's not a problem. It's just us: Fr Whitfield, Alli and all the kids. A perfectly normal, perfectly modern, joyful Catholic family. A MARRIED CLERGY? But beyond the adorable spectacle, it is the assumptions which follow that frustrate me.
On my way to celebrate Mass in Saint Peter's in Rome a few years ago, fully vested in my priestly robes, I had to push my boy in the stroller through that ancient basilica as we made our way to the altar Even in my own parish, visitors will sometimes sheepishly step forward with curious and concerned questions. "Are those REALITY SUMMER 2019
They are very few, of course, who refuse to accept me. Hardened idiosyncratic traditionalists who think they know better
than the tradition itself sometimes call it a heresy. This of course is nonsense; to which, when such rare criticisms reach me, I always simply invite them to take it up with the pope. He's the one they should argue with, not me. Most of the time, however, people see me as some sort of agent of change, the thin end of some wedge, some harbinger of a more enlightened, more modern church. Being a married priest, they assume I'm in favour of opening the priesthood to married men, in favour too perhaps of all sorts of other changes and innovations. This too is an assumption, and not a good one. Laity who have no real idea of what priesthood entails and even some priests who have no real idea of what married family life entails both assume normalizing married priesthood would bring about a new, better age for the Catholic Church. But it's an assumption with little supporting evidence. One need only look to the clergy shortage in many Protestant churches to see that opening up clerical ranks doesn't necessarily
bring about spiritual renaissance or growth at all, the opposite being just as likely. But more importantly, calls to change the discipline of celibacy are usually either ignorant or forgetful of what the church calls the "spiritual fruit" of celibacy, something largely incomprehensible in this libertine age, but which is nonetheless still true and essential to the work of the church. Now being married certainly helps my priesthood, the insights and sympathies gained as both husband and father are sometimes genuine advantages. But that doesn't call into question the good of clerical celibacy or what my celibate colleagues bring to their ministry. And in any case, it's holiness that matters most, not marriage or celibacy. But beyond answering all these scattered arguments, what gets overlooked are the actual reasons people like me become Catholic in first place, as well as the actual reason the Catholic Church sometimes allows married men to be ordained. And that's Christian unity, to say it yet again.
When you see a married priest, think about the sacrifices he made for what he believes to be the truth. Think about Christian unity, not change. That's what I wish people would think of when they see me and my family. We became Catholic because my wife and I
MARRIED PRIESTS AND CHURCH UNITY Because the Catholic Church believes Christians should be united, it sometimes makes exceptions from its own, even ancient, disciplines and norms, in my case celibacy. My family and I are not test subjects in some
Laity who have no real idea of what priesthood entails and even some priests who have no real idea of what married family life entails both assume normalizing married priesthood would bring about a new, better age for the Catholic Church. But it's an assumption with little supporting evidence believe Catholicism is the truth, the fullness of Christianity. And we responded to that truth, which meant (as an Episcopal priest at the time) giving up my livelihood and almost everything I knew. And just as my wife was pregnant with our first child.
Fr Youssuf of the Maronite Church with his wife Amira. Fr Youssef did part of his theology course in Maynooth.
sort of trial run put on by the Vatican to see whether married priesthood works. Rather, we're witnesses to the church's empathy and desire for unity. That's what we married priests wish people would see, the Catholicism we fell in love with and made sacrifices for. And it's a sacrificial life, one my whole family lives, my wife probably most of all. We've never been busier, never more exhausted, but we've also never been happier. Even my kids make sacrifices every day for the church. It's hard sometimes, but we do it, and joyfully; one, because we've got a great parish that gets it, and two, because we're in a church we love and believe in, not a church we want to change. And that's the thing: I love the church. We married priests love the church, our families love the church. That's why we made such sacrifices to become Catholic. And it's why we love the tradition of clerical celibacy and see no conflict at all with that and our serving as married priests. As Thomas Aquinas said, the church is circumdata varietate, surrounded by variety, a variety bound by charity and truth that only the faithful can see clearly. Pope Francis' comments in Germany on the prospect of permitting married Catholic men to become priests don't bother us. Because we understand him, and we belong with him in this tradition of charity and truth. This is the necessary mysticism of it, the mysticism
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without which it cannot be understood, and the mysticism many pundits upon this subject know nothing about. And it's also why the church could change its discipline tomorrow, contradicting everything I've just written, and it wouldn't matter. Because again, I love the church, and I appreciate its deeper reasoning. I don't judge the church by the light of popular opinion or even my own opinions, but rather I judge popular opinion as well as my own by the light of the church's teaching. That is, I give the church my obedience, that reviled ancient virtue, a virtue difficult to understand these days. Yet it's the only one whereby to think about things of the church. So that's us, the Whitfield family: noisy, beautiful, Catholic and complex. And go ahead and throw newspaper columnist in there too, that's not normal either. Yet somehow it all works, and we have faith that it'll somehow keep working. That's about as much sense as I can put to my life, at least as
much as I ever could make of it. But really, it's up to the church to make sense of it, not me. My job simply is to be me, a father, a husband, a priest, and faithful as I can be. And in that, I both fail and succeed every day, more times than I can count. Just like you.
Joshua J. Whitfield is pastoral administrator for St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and a frequent columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He is the author of The Crisis of Bad Preaching: Redeeming the Heart and Way of the Catholic Preacher (Ave Maria Press, 2019). His webpage is www.fatherjoshuawhitfield.com
Is your marriage stressed, unloving or cold? Have you stopped sharing how you feel with your spouse? Retrouvaille is a programme to help at all stages of married life. Improve communication, learn tools and skills for a happy marriage. Learn to blend differences into a mutually satisfying relationship. Recover your marriage from separation or divorce.
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COM M E N T WITH EYES WIDE OPEN JIM DEEDS
TOUGH TIMES PASS: LOVE ENDURES
MEMORIES OF A DAY OUT WITH A GRANDFATHER ARE A LESSON IN THE LOVE THAT DOES NOT NOTICE THE OBVIOUS "Are you sure, granda?" "Yes. A man on a galloping horse wouldn't notice." A man on a galloping horse wouldn't see it. That was an old Belfast saying you would say to someone who was embarrassed about how they were looking. Sure, it might look bad, but a man on a galloping horse going by wouldn't see. Fair enough. The only problem was that most people were not the fabled man on a galloping horse. It was a summer day in July 1978. That day had started out well. My granda had picked me up from my parents' home and together we had travelled to Newcastle, County Down, in his little Mini car. I don't remember the journey. I was seven and some of the details are hazy. However, I do remember that we spent a lovely day in the small seaside town. Newcastle was, and is, a haven for those tired of city life or, as it was back then, a break from the troubles that were wreaking havoc in our city. We went to the amusement arcades with their dodgem cars, arcade games candy floss. Then we went to have ice cream together. My granda was my hero. I hung on every word he said. He told me about Belfast in the 'old days' which would now be veritably prehistoric days! I learned about the shipyard and about the blitz of WWII and about life in the tightly knit community of the Lower Falls in the early part of the 20th century. I held his hand as we walked, and
the world felt right. Until... We went down to the shoreline to have a paddle together. The cold water bit at our feet and demanded our high pitched 'ooohs' and 'ahhs'. My granda would have been 58 at the time. He was tall and fit, with wavy dark hair and tremendous balance. I was seven, with the same wavy dark hair, but not the same balance. One wave came a little stronger to the shore than the previous ones and knocked me over. I fell on my bottom and soaked my shorts. We laughed and laughed as my granda lifted me from the bubbling surf. He carried me away from the water as I remember. We sat further up on the stony beach. My granda had rolled his grey pinstriped trousers up well beyond his knees and now rolled them back down. He put on his grey socks and black shoes, dusted down his grey pin-striped suit jacket and stood in front of me, the picture of neatness and class. I sat disheveled in a puddle of salt water. "I'm soaking, granda."
"Yes, you are." Both of us masters of the bleeding obvious. "What will I do?" "Do you have pants on?" "Yes." "Grand. Take those shorts off then." "Off?" "Yes, sure you've got pants on. I'll put the shorts over that bench there and we'll go for a walk for ten minutes while they dry." OK. A couple of points here. This was 1978. In other words, this was the 1970s. Most things in the 1970s were brown, beige or variants thereof. My coat that day was a beige raincoat that could be folded and zipped into itself. My tee-shirt was a brown one with yellow trim. And then there were the pants. Yes, the pants. They were the opposite of the tee-shirt; yellow with brown trim. And my granda wanted me to take my shorts off and walk about in these y-fronts. In front of people. "Are you sure, granda?" "Yes. A man on a galloping horse wouldn't notice." "... OK."
And so, on that day in 1978 in Newcastle, County Down, I learned a lesson about the power of love. Its power was far more forceful than the potential embarrassment of walking around without my shorts in that busy seaside town filled, as it was, with holiday makers. It was more powerful than the knowledge that I was the only kid there with yellow y-fronts displayed for all those holiday makers to see. I took my granda's hand and off I went. I can't say it was easy. I can't say that I didn't feel a bit embarrassed. It wasn’t, and I did. But I did it because I loved him and would do anything for him. I was able to do it because I knew he loved me too and his love for me outweighed everything else. Holding on to him was enough to get me by. Without having to speak in a complicated way, my granda taught me something of the importance of love and as I grew I realised he was also showing me something of the depth of love God must have for each of us, his children of whatever age. God holds us in our falling and in our embarrassment. He holds us when we are ridiculed. He holds us when me mess things up. He holds us because he loves us. And as my granda showed me that day in Newcastle in 1978, tough times pass, love endures. Belfast man Jim Deeds is a poet, author, pastoral worker and retreat-giver working across Ireland.
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LIGHTING A FIRE IN YOUNG PEOPLE NET Ministries Ireland
NET (NATIONAL EVANGELISATION TEAMS) MINISTRIES IS A YOUTH MINISTRY PROGRAMME SPECIALISING IN SCHOOL AND PARISH MINISTRY. IT FIRST CAME TO IRELAND IN 2004 WITH ONE TEAM. TODAY IT HAS SEVEN, REACHING OVER 20,000 YOUNG PEOPLE. FIVE TEAMS WORK IN PARISHES, THE OTHER TWO ON RETREATS AND VOCATIONS. 18 BY SUSAN GATELY
When
I talked to Tony Foy, CEO of Net Ministries Ireland, via Skype, there was a sacred atmosphere. Ted Andrews, a young Canadian missionary who gave four years of his life to NET Ireland, was about to be laid to rest in Canada. At the NET headquarters in Ballybofey, Donegal, the Irish community had gathered for Mass to remember the man whose short life had such impact. Ted became known through Liveline in December 2017, when a fellow patient also undergoing chemo for cancer, impressed by his faith and family, contacted the programme. Liveline presenter Joe Duffy interviewed Ted at length. Was he angry with God for allowing the illness? “This happens to people,” replied Ted,
REALITY SUMMER 2019
Emilie
then aged 26. “We have a loving God but bad things still happen and we won’t know [why] until we get to know our maker. This last week and a half [since diagnosis] I’ve really felt Jesus’ presence in my life.”
MISSION TO YOUNG PEOPLE NET Ministries is a Catholic youth ministry programme specialising in school and parish ministry. When it arrived in Ireland in 2004, it had one team of missionaries. Today it
has seven, reaching over 20,000 young people. Five teams work in parishes, two others on retreats and vocations. A NET team is made up of five to eight young people who train in mission (including
19 child protection) for six weeks, before going on ministry. Each missionary gives one to two years of their life. They fundraise to cover a portion of their expenses (for the Irish €4,500).
Ruby and Tammie
There are two generations of people there already who have no idea of the content of their faith so you have to light a fire within them first before they are ready for catechesis Tony Foy from Ballybofey is CEO of NET. During our Skype call, he gives me a virtual tour of the premises – from the office pods where volunteers work on admin and finance, to the large meeting room where the Mass for Ted Andrews has just concluded. There is a huge demand for
the enthusiastic missionaries, currently numbering 47, from 10 countries including Ireland. He tells me his greatest joy is seeing young people come to faith. IN THE FIELD On a cold, windy Friday in April, I go to meet one of the parish
teams in Booterstown, Dublin. The mission team, made up of five young adults, has been here since September. They will leave in June to be replaced by a new team in September. “It has been overwhelmingly positive in terms of their impact, not just with youth but in the parish as a whole,” says Fr Gerry Kane PP of Booterstown. The team, dressed in their blue NET ministry sweatshirts, are preparing for ‘Light Fever’ – a period of Adoration in the
church. The porch doors are thrown open. Lanterns and fairy lights lead a path to the altar and Jesus Eucharist in the monstrance. Emilie from Ohio quietly sings and plays guitar. Joseph (USA) does adoration. Tammie (Ireland) and Ruby (Canada) are on the street inviting passers-by to come in and light a candle. In the church porch, Samuel (New Zealand) hands out the tea-lights. Within an hour, 35 people have come in, laying lights on the altar step. Barbara Clancy wanders in with her two children. “You are always
G O D 'S S U R P R I S E S II
Joseph with Barbara Clancy and family
Ted Andrews The Foy family
A week in the life …
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Monday – day off / Skype home. Tuesday – Meeting with PP, First Holy Communion classes, Confirmation class, friends for dinner. Wednesday – Early morning Confirmation class (interdenominational school), team prayer, shopping, class preparations, Youth 2000 prayer meeting. Thursday – With parishioners in pastoral centre. Female college students in evening / men soccer Friday – 'Light Fever' in church (Adoration), Junior youth group (13 – 15) in evening. Saturday – Parish and community events. Senior youth group (16 to 18) in evening. Sunday – Children / Family Mass 10.30am. Parish / community events. in a rush. Being invited to light a candle, with no ulterior motive, is nice. We said a prayer. This is different to Mass. It encourages the children more seeing young people.” Fr Gerry Kane agrees. Youth evangelises youth, he says. He sees much investment in catechesis where the real need is evangelisation. “There are two generations of people there already who have no idea of the content of their faith so you have to light a fire within them first before they are ready for catechesis.” In the parish hundreds are preparing for the sacraments of initiation. “Were ten of them at Mass last Sunday?” he asks. “It’s heartbreaking.” So REALITY SUMMER 2019
he’s investing in people, in NET. LIFE IN COMMUNITY Living together in a house nearby, the NET team has a full weekly schedule involving personal prayer, Mass, classes, retreats, youth and prayer groups and parish events, in addition to normal day-to-day tasks. While with NET, they observe a ‘dating fast’. If you fall for a co-worker, you have to bottle it until after you have finished your time. Quite a few couples have married through NET. Ruby says “honestly – not dating is not difficult!” Th e N E T ap p ro a ch to evangelisation is to grow alongside people. “Being
missionaries doesn’t mean we know everything. I’m never done working on my relationship with God. We are here to grow with people and together build up that community,” says Ruby, Numbers coming to the voluntary groups they run are small - twelve in one group and seven in another - but she is not fazed by this. We are not in the numbers game, she says. “Even if we bring that one person closer to Jesus, this whole year is worth it for me.”
In the parish they have become a much loved presence. “They engage,” says parish secretary Therese O’Donoghue, pointing to the way they interact with the senior citizens each week over tea. Sam from Christchurch, New Zealand, who came to faith through a strong experience of Confession during a retreat when he was 18, has learnt “how to interact with people from all walks of life and just to see Jesus in each person and every
The Story of NET •1980 - Mark Berchem in Minnesota begins NET training 12 young adults to travel around in a van giving high school retreats. •1982 – the name NET – National Evangelisation Teams – officially adopted inspired by Jesus command: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). •From 1985, NET spreads to Canada and then to Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Guam, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Germany, Uganda, Ireland and Scotland.
Sam talking with children
effect. “People have been saved from suicide,” says Tony Foy. “A girl in Meath said she was going to commit suicide on that exact day but the ‘Netters’ coming into the school made the difference. That’s what makes me do what I do.”
Susan Gately is the author of God’s Surprises – the New Movements in the Church, published by Veritas. She is a regular contributor to Reality.
situation. Definitely my faith has grown a lot stronger.” What makes him happiest is the personal relationships that have developed over the year in the parish and the schools. “One guy, aged 15, came to the youth group and said he ‘absolutely hated it’.” But he continued to come. “From
a very shy guy not sure where to go with his faith, he comes to all our events now, three or four times a week and he’s told us that we have literally changed his life.” Most of the growth is slow – two by two, heart to heart, but sometimes even a day-long retreat can have a profound
In Ireland •Five parish teams in Cork city, Castlebar, Letterkenny, Meath and Dublin. •Road Team – giving youth retreats in schools. In the 2017/2018 academic year, they ran around 60 retreats, typically spending two days in each school. •Vocations Team – in partnership with religious orders, the team work in schools doing retreats, and allowing religious the opportunity to tell young people about their lives.
For further information go to netministries.ie
A Redemptorist Pilgrimage Visiting the sites associated with St. Alphonsus & St. Gerard in Southern Italy Saturday May 16th to Saturday May23rd 2020. Based at the Caravel Hotel in Sant’Agnello, Sorrento (Half Board) Cost: €1,095.00/ £985.00 per person sharing. Places are limited so early booking is advised. Group Leaders Fr Seamus Enright CSsR and Fr Dan Baragry CSsR For further details contact Claire Carmichael at ccarmichael@redcoms.org Tel: 00 353 (0)1 4922488
Beautiful Sorrento
F E AT U R E
Padre On The River Kwai AN IRISH REDEMPTORIST CHAPLAIN IN WARTIME BURMA
BARELY TWO YEARS ORDAINED, FR PETER MULROONEY CSsR VOLUNTEERED FOR SERVICE AS A CHAPLAIN TO THE BRITISH ARMY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. HE SPENT MUCH OF HIS ACTIVE SERVICE IN THE JUNGLE OF BURMA. HE WENT TO THE PHILIPPINES IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE WAR, AND SPENT THE NEXT 65 YEARS THERE, WINNING AFFECTION ESPECIALLY FOR HIS HUMANITY AS A CONFESSOR AND SPIRITUAL GUIDE. BY EMERARDO MANINGO CSsR AND NOEL GARTLAN CSsR
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Redemptorist Chaplains in World War II. Left to right: Peter Mulrooney, Daniel Cummings, Joseph Tronson, Luke Hartigan
Although
it was made more than sixty years ago, The Bridge on the River Kwai remains one of the classic films about the Second World War. The British Film Institute has chosen it as the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century. Life in the jungles of Burma
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(today known as Myanmar) for the allied soldiers who took part in the war was a great deal more difficult than has been depicted in the film. A Tipperary-born Redemptorist spent nine long months in the jungle north of Rangoon as chaplain to the British army. After the war he went to the Philippines, and
spent the rest of his life there, apart from occasional holidays in Ireland, until his death at the age of 94. FROM ROSCREA TO RANGOON Fr Peter Mulrooney was born in 1912 about four miles outside the town of Roscrea.
His family home was the last house of the parish, and although strictly speaking in County Offaly, Peter considered himself a Tipp man. Like his two brothers and one sister, he attended primary school in Kinnity. A Redemptorist mission was conducted in his home parish when Peter was a teenager. One of the missioners, Fr John O'Brien CSsR, asked Peter in the confessional what he would like to be, and Peter said, "I would like to be a priest." John wasted no time in seeing a likely prospect for his own congregation and asked him, "What about joining the Redemptorists?" Peter said "Fine." Arrangements were soon made to have him begin his secondary education in the Redemptorist college or juvenate in Limerick. From there, he went to Dundalk for his noviciate and was professed in 1934. Studies for the priesthood followed in Esker, County Galway, and he was ordained in 1939, just as the Second World War was beginning. Although Ireland was neutral during the war, many Irish priests served as chaplains to minister to the needs of Catholic soldiers in the British army, many of whom were Irish born, as well as second or third generation Irish born in England or men from traditionally Catholic parts of Britain like Liverpool, Lancashire or parts of Scotland. Several young Irish Redemptorists volunteered to serve as chaplains, including Peter. Fr Peter was assigned first to the AntiAircraft Brigade in London for a year. The entry of Japan into the war at the end of 1941 meant that the Allies had to include Asia as another front and so Peter was transferred to Northern India where he spent another year. Although chaplains were non-combatants, they were required to take training in firing a .38 calibre revolver, using tin cans for target practise.
The Japanese army invaded Burma in 1942, intent on using it as an overland route to reach India. Rangoon, the capital, fell to the Japanese in March. The resources of the British army were stretched almost to breaking point, but it was essential to prevent any further advance of the Japanese towards the border of India. INTO THE JUNGLE A special unit of the British Army, commonly known as the Chindits, was established by General Orde Wingate, and Peter was assigned to it. Unlike the young soldiers, Peter had received no physical training to equip him for jungle warfare. Although he spoke little of those days, two of his comrades in arms have recorded in the regimental
journal their reminiscences of Peter, and their appreciation of his humanity and sense of humour. Within a few days of arrival in Burma, Peter was climbing steep hills covered with dense jungle. They marched in single file along narrow tracks. Every man, including the padre, carried enough drinking water for 24 hours and a heavy pack containing a blanket, a ground sheet and five days’ rations. They marched for an hour and 40 minutes at a time, then for 20 minutes, rested themselves and attended to the mules carrying the ammunition and radio equipment. Exhausted, Peter sometimes dozed off to sleep during the rest period. By the time they reached their first objective, a narrow valley containing a road and a railway line vital to
23
He was cheerful, philosophical, had a good sense of humour and never complained continued on page 25
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the Japanese army, Peter was very well known and popular. According to the writer, “He was cheerful, philosophical, had a good sense of humour and never complained. He had even overcome his ‘sleeping sickness’!” The Japanese tried very hard to dislodge them from this position, and considerable heavy fighting ensued, often at night and at close quarters. The same writer describes Peter during these periods of fighting: As a non-combatant, Fr Peter could have stayed quietly in comparative safety in his dug-out. But this was not his way. At considerable risk, he would walk about, help with the wounded and give a personal example of quiet courage. One night, when fighting was particularly fierce and there was a risk of the block being overrun, he was faced with a dilemma. A shadowy figure he did not recognise suddenly called to him, ‘Phone Command Post and tell them to put down mortar fire on Section A’. The figure then disappeared. Fr. M went to the nearby field telephone which was connected to command post and said, ‘This is Fr Mulrooney speaking. I've just met someone with a message for you.’ ‘Yes, Father,’ Command Post replied, ‘what did he want?’ Fr. M answered by saying, ‘Would it be mortar fire?’ Command Post asked, ‘Did he say where?’ Fr. M replied, ‘Would it be Section A?’ There was a short interval during which the mortars fired, then the telephone rang again. He answered saying, ‘Fr. M speaking,’ and Command Post enquired if the mortar strike was on target. Temporarily forgetting his non-combatant status, Fr. M replied, ‘Aye, you've done grand. I can hear them screaming! Word of Peter’s action spread quickly among the men, and only added to the esteem in which he was held by officers and men. He was affectionately known throughout the Brigade from then on as "the wicked priest". Sometimes, the soldiers joked with him, saying “I'll write to the Pope about you, Father!” Another of his colleagues, the medical officer Dr Edward Cullen, was a native of Limerick, and returned to his native city after the war as a doctor, and welcomed Peter on his visits to Limerick. He wrote of him:
As M.O. of the First Lancashire Fusiliers - a Column of Mike Calvert's 77th Brigade in the Long-Range Penetration Group, I and Peter were destined to look after the medical and spiritual needs of a tough, but happy, yet jungle weary bunch of Lancastrians. Peter, however, could not restrain himself to the R.A.P. area, but was constantly to be found at the front of the Column, comforting our lads and with not a care of the many Japanese snipers concealed in very high teak trees who posed a constant threat to our progress, slow as it was in the dense jungle. Unfortunately, I had to evacuate our Church of England Padre and so it was left to Peter to officiate at the many non-Roman Catholic funerals which he did with a deep religious fervour, and saying to me "Sure what difference does it make?" I still have a copy of the New Testament he gave me as we left Burma - it is a souvenir which I still treasure. Peter spent nine months in the jungles of Burma. Both these men put on record their disappointment that Peter never received formal recognition for his service. He was proposed for the DSO (Distinguished Service Order), a decoration seldom given to a noncombatant like a chaplain. Dr Cullen wrote of his disappointment that Peter had never received official recognition for his many heroic acts ,”but I know, deep down, that his bravery will be long remembered and even more deeply appreciated by at least one unit of the of the XIVth (Forgotten) Army.”
suffered through the Japanese occupation. For the next 40 years, he gave missions in almost every parish in Cebu and elsewhere in the islands. As in his army days, he was respected and loved by priests and people. As vice-provincial of the Cebu Vice-Province from 1956-1964, he oversaw a time of great expansion for the Redemptorists in the Philippines. Fr Sean Purcell CSsR says that Peter was no starryeyed idealist. “He had both feet firmly planted on mother earth. He recognised what was good, noble and inspiring in human behaviour. But like the sniffer dogs at airports, docks and bus terminals, he had a nose which enabled him to discern foolishness from afar. But he was able to accept fools – perhaps not always gladly – and be gracious to them. Indeed, he generally had excuses for such foolishness.” This sense of humanity could be seen especially in his commitment to the sacrament of reconciliation. “He realised that here we stand on holy ground. The deepest level of our lives is where we are relating to God. And it is an amazing privilege given to us as confessors that we can enter this sacred arena. I have talked with Peter about hearing confessions and counselling. I would say he had great patience. He treated penitents with a lot of understanding. He aimed always at giving them encouragement; the will to continue making efforts; the hope that they will be able to carry out God's plan in their lives. He had a strong realisation that we are all sinners and because of this he could never be severe or harsh in any way in the confessional.” Peter’s wisdom won him the respect of bishops and others in authority who sought his advice. Preaching the homily at his funeral on September 11, 2006, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu said “When I arrived in Cebu on August 26 1981, Fr Peter Mulrooney was already ‘an institution’ known and loved by the high and low of Cebu society; not so much for the sermons he gave as for the confessions he heard. He was never seen on our streets for protest demonstrations, but he was always heard in our parishes, big and small, far and near, for holy retreats, and bible reflections.”
PETER THE CONFESSOR Fr Peter was demobilised in January 1946. By April he was on his way to the Philippines with eight other Redemptorists to relieve the men who had
Fr Noel Gartlan is an Irish Redemptorist who has spent many years in the Philippines. Fr Emerardo Maningo is a member of the Province of Cebu and studied theology in Cluain Mhuire, Galway
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F E AT U R E
BULLYING
“BULLYING IS A FORM OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR IN WHICH SOMEONE INTENTIONALLY AND REPEATEDLY CAUSES ANOTHER PERSON INJURY OR DISCOMFORT.” (AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION WEBSITE, 2014)
BY ANNE KERRIGAN
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In
February, 2014, the American National Football League (NFL) issued a report concerning alleged abuse (apparently verbal) within the Miami Dolphins football team locker room and even on the football field itself. The report was revelatory as well as distressing. This particular story really resonated with me, because it had suddenly become very personal.
REALITY SUMMER 2019
It seems that a young man, Jonathan Martin, claimed that he was being constantly harassed by other Miami Dolphin team members, and that this bullying was causing him mental anguish. He ultimately left the team and signed himself into a psychiatric hospital for treatment. The NFL report corroborated Mr Martin’s story. I wonder how the team management could have allowed
this persistent bullying and sophomoric behaviour to continue. Allowing this cruel, unacceptable conduct in the locker room and even on the field is a flagrant dereliction of their duties and responsibilities. Mr Martin should not have experienced the horrific abuse meted out to him by some teammates, and tolerated by others.
bullying. There are public awareness campaigns which address such behaviour and its negative effects, but these campaigns are still in their infancy. The books and the talk shows will help to raise public awareness of the problem, but it will not eradicate it.
young people. These actions set a tone which seems to indicate that bullying is acceptable within a civilised society. While Sarah is specifically vulnerable because of her diagnosis of autism, we are all vulnerable in one way or another. Our humanity makes us fragile.
In any public venue, whether a school, a business or even a house of worship, the leadership has a moral obligation to set standards of behaviour which respect the integrity of all I am a grandma who has an autistic granddaughter, and I always fear that some mean, thoughtless, ignorant person will bully her. Sarah is only ten years old, and she would be unable to defend herself. Therefore, she faces the possibility of serious emotional or physical harm. I worry when Sarah is in school because I know that children are immature, very often lacking sensitivity and proper understanding of the negative impact of bullying, and as a result, they may bully another student. Every day, I pray that God will send someone to protect her if needed. Then, when I heard of the NFL bullying incident and the sophomoric behaviour of adults and their management personnel, I wanted to call a team meeting and yell at them all, telling them how their actions hurt others, ultimately putting people like my granddaughter at risk! They were all guilty because they were contributing to the creation of a cultural atmosphere in which it is acceptable to belittle others.
NOT JUST THE YOUNG In a recent newspaper article concerning senior citizens, an elderly man mentioned that he still recalls the pain he experienced as the result of being bullied when he was young. Perhaps each of us can recall a similar painful episode in our own lives. Yet, the scourge still continues. Schools and workplaces have tried to set standards for behaviour, attempting to move beyond overt
CANNOT BE TOLERATED I believe that the toleration of this dysfunctional locker-room atmosphere just paves the way for others to be bullied, including my very vulnerable granddaughter. Many young people look to the football players as role models. This NFL bullying which has been tolerated and even encouraged by silence, represents a very large group of inappropriate role models. I believe that these situations also arise in the entire world of sports, including soccer, hockey, rugby, baseball, and hurling, to name just a few. When adults are in a public setting and they bully or allow bullying to happen, that sends a horrific message to our
I feel that the home environment is the first line of defense against bullying, but if this does not happen and the bullying behaviour encroaches into the mainstream, then the obligations fall onto the rest of us. These situations are not limited to the world of professional and/or amateur sports. I feel that in any public venue, whether a school, a business or even a house of worship, the leadership has a moral obligation to set standards of behaviour which respect the integrity of all. There is also a responsibility on the part of the person who witnesses any bullying activity to attempt to stop it or to report it. We are all affected by the successes as well as the failures of others. As the poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” An African proverb tells us that, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Sometimes, it also takes a village to protect a child. I need all of you to help protect my Sarah. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Sir Edmund Burke, 1729-1797, Irish statesman, author, orator, politician, and philosopher.
Anne Kerrigan is a registered nurse. She also has a Masters degree in Theology from the local Roman Catholic seminary on Long Island, NY. She is the mother of five (one deceased) and the grandmother of eight. She has been married for 60 years to her grammar school sweetheart.
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CATHERINE
American Catholic Converts
DE HUECK DOHERTY
DESPITE HER APPARENTLY IRISH NAME, SHE WAS A RUSSIAN CONVERT TO CATHOLICISM WHO COMBINED A PASSION FOR JUSTICE AND SERVICE OF THE MOST DEPRIVED WITH A THIRST FOR GOD IN SOLITUDE BY MIKE DALEY
It’s 28
a little morbid, but when she was in the United States Catherine Doherty ended all her lectures talking about death…and judgment… the final judgment. I don’t know if it won her any friends, but Catherine was serious about communicating the truth of Jesus Christ. “Sooner or later,” she said, “all of us are going to die. We will appear before God for judgment. The Lord will look at us and say, ‘I was naked and you didn’t clothe me. I was hungry and you didn’t give me anything to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me a drink. I was sick and you didn’t nurse me. I was in prison and you didn’t come to visit me.’ And we shall say, ‘Lord when did I not do these things?’” At this point, Catherine would pause for effect, then loudly say, “When I was a Negro and you were a white American Catholic.” That’s when, she always would add, the rotten eggs and tomatoes would start to fly. Who was this person who made Matthew 25 her life’s mission statement? REALITY SUMMER 2019
FROM EAST TO WEST Catherine de Hueck Doherty was born Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine on August 15, 1896 in tzarist Russia, seemingly a world away from her future social justice leanings. She was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church shortly after birth. Given her parents’ aristocratic roots, Catherine’s upbringing was one of wealth and privilege. Due to her father’s government position, Catherine spent much of her childhood abroad experiencing life in Turkey, Greece, Egypt where she was taught by the Sisters of Sion, and France. All the while she was developing an awareness of the poor. At the age of 15 Catherine married her first cousin Baron Boris de Hueck taking the regal title of Baroness. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, their 'honeymoon' was short-lived however. They both served at the Russian front; Boris as an engineer and Catherine as a Red Cross nurse where she was decorated for her bravery. By the beginning of 1917, things had become very unstable
economically, militarily, and politically in Russia. By the end of year the Romanov dynasty was over and the Bolsheviks would usher in a Communist revolution. Catherine’s life was soon in danger as well. Reuniting with Boris, they fled to Finland hiding in a pigsty along the way. Starvation was a constant threat. Along the way she prayed to God, “If you save me from this, in some way I will offer my life to you.” From there they went to England where she was received into the Catholic Church on November 27, 1919. Eventually they settled in Canada where their son George was born in 1921. For Catherine the next few years entailed a series of low paying jobs, the collapse of her marriage to Boris, and the struggles of single parenthood. Alone in New York City working as a sales clerk, one day a woman approached Catherine and asked if it was true – her harrowing story of escape from communist Russia. What followed next was an invitation to join a lecture bureau sharing her story across North America.
THE GOSPEL WITHOUT COMPROMISE In a short time, now as a successful speaker, all the luxury that seemingly had been lost returned. Riches to rags back to riches. Yet, Catherine was still unsettled. The words of Jesus haunted her: “Sell all you possess, give it to the poor, and come– follow me!” The invitation to voluntary poverty–back to rags–was all the more startling since it took place right as the Great Depression was beginning in the 1930s. With the encouragement of Toronto’s Archbishop Neil McNeil, after providing for her son George, Catherine sold all her belongings and went to live and to work in the slums of Toronto. Her lone apostolate soon attracted followers and became Friendship House. Accepting an invitation from the Catholic interracial pioneer, Jesuit Father John LaFarge, Catherine moved to New York and opened a Friendship House in Harlem in 1938. Other locations followed in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon. Her counterpart in New
York City was none other than Dorothy Day whose Catholic Worker movement was taking shape at the same time. Prior to his entrance into the Cistercians, the Catholic convert and later world famous monk Thomas Merton stayed with Catherine at Friendship House. Catherine’s book, The Gospel Without Compromise, speaks to her vocation as a lay Catholic: “Christians are called to become icons of Christ, to reflect him. But we are called to even more than that. Ikon is the Greek word for ‘image of God.’ We are called to incarnate him in our lives, to clothe our lives with him, so that men [and women] can see him in us, touch him in us, recognize him in us. When we don’t live the gospel without compromise, or try to, we are skeletons. People do not care to deal with skeletons. The gospel can be summed up by saying that it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinar y, exp l osive , revolutionary law of Christ’s love.” BACK TO THE EAST: MADONNA HOUSE In 1940, while being interviewed for a story, Catherine met Eddie Doherty, a noted American journalist. A relationship blossomed. Her previous marriage to Boris having been annulled, the two wed in 1943. Disagreements over the direction of Friendship House and her reputed authoritarian style of leadership led Catherine and Eddie back to Canada in 1947. They settled in the small, rural village of Combermere, Ontario thinking it would be a quiet retirement. It was here, though,
“It is understood that since the reason for entering the poustinia is one of listening to God in prayer and fasting, the first act of the poustinik is to fold the wings of his intellect and open the doors of his heart. The Russians would say: Put your head into your heart and try to achieve a deep and profound interior silence. It is then, when one is deeply silent, that God begins to speak. …Someone might say, ‘All this sounds very mystical.’ There is a difference between what the East means by mystical and what the West means. I think the East would call normal many things that the West might term mystical. If you are in the poustinia and God knocks on your door and speaks to you, that doesn’t sound mystical to me, it sounds quite normal. He said he would speak to us.” Catherine died on December 14, 1985. Her community lives on though with over 200 members and foundations throughout the world. Catherine’s cause for canonisation in the Catholic Church is currently under consideration.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty
miles away from any big city or big problems, that Catherine’s Eastern Christian spirituality would bear fruit. Rather than an end or retirement, it was a new beginning. While serving the needs of the people around her, Catherine’s vision took shape. Eventually, a community composed of laymen and women, and priests formed. A newspaper was started along with a training centre as well.
A central feature of Catherine’s spirituality and a hallmark of Eastern Christian spirituality is the idea of poustinia. It is the Russian word for 'desert'. At Madonna House, Catherine set aside a single room where she sought to encounter God through solitary prayer and fasting. In her b o ok Poustinia : Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, Catherine explained the concept further:
Mike Daley is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, Ohio where he lives with his wife June, and their three children. His latest book, co-edited with Diane Bergant, is Take and Read: Christian Writers Reflect on Life’s Most Influential Books (Apocryphal Press: Berkley, 2017.)
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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE
WE KNOW NOT THE DAY NOR THE HOUR
THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF OUR LIVES, INCLUDING THE MOBILE PHONE, MEANS THAT WE HAVE LESS PERSONAL CONTACT WITH NEIGHBOURS WHO LIVE CLOSE BY. Every time that Met Éireann issues a serious weather warning, the media invites people to check up on their neighbours, to look in on people who don’t get out much or who are elderly. During Storm Emma last year our Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, voiced his fears that people could be found, dead in their beds, in isolated areas as a result of the bad weather. There is an unsp o ken assumption that people are bound to have local knowledge, that they will be able to identify at-risk neighbours. In rural communities this may be so, but in towns and cities where the community spirit has died, people often don’t know their neighbours. In a society where a significant number of people have long commutes to work there is little time for social interaction. In families where mum and dad need to work to pay the mortgage, babies are usually minded in crèches and later on supervised in after-school clubs. Tired parents who collect children on their way home from work have little time to socialise or interact with their neighbours. I live in a small housing estate that was built in the 1970s. I’m still friendly with neighbours who moved in when the houses were new. A small number of the original residents who still live here are now retired. The once vibrant community spirit that existed when most of us had young children is long gone. As our children got older and
moved to secondary schools, opportunities for women to work outside the home were beginning to open up. Many who went back to work did not socialise with new residents. Some young mothers with small children, who lived on our road, decided to organise a street party. Apart from wanting to get to know their neighbours their goal was to see if the nowdefunct residents' association could be resurrected. There was a huge response and the party was a great success. As people arrived at the local green, they were invited to put on a name badge that was colour-coded. Even though there are only four roads in the estate, The Close, The Lawns, The Grove and The Avenue the coding was both helpful and necessary. It allowed people who lived on the same road an opportunity to introduce themselves to neighbours they had never met. It was necessary because a surprising number of residents didn’t recognise by sight, neighbours who lived two or three doors away from them.
At the street party I spoke to neighbours for the first time, who lived five doors away from me, for over 10 years. I don’t know if you find this shocking. I did. People who did not recognise a neighbour by sight could accurately match the colour, make or model of their cars to the correct house numbers. The harsh reality of modern life is that people are so time-poor that some don’t know the names of the people who live next door. The advent of mobile phones has changed a once-common practice. People no longer drop in uninvited for a cuppa or connect through borrowing a cup of sugar. The very genuine fear of being perceived as crossing a line or disrespecting someone’s privacy, creates a dilemma for any person who is worried about reporting someone they have not seen or been in contact with for a couple of days. I know how difficult this can be from my own nightmare experience.
My late sister Margaret and I talked several times a week. If both of us were busy we’d text to set a time for a long chat. She had a full life, played bowls most days, swam regularly and met her friends in the pub. She loved living in an inner suburb on the south side of Dublin. It had the friendliness and the atmosphere of a village street where neighbours looked out for one another. The week she died I left two voice messages asking her to telephone. It was so unusual that she didn’t text or ring me back that I told my brothers I was uneasy. One believed she was visiting a childhood friend who was terminally ill, forgot her phone and would call back. That same day a concerned neighbour, who hadn’t seen her for three of days, contacted the Gardaí. They went into her house and found she had passed away. It would be difficult to underestimate the importance of good neighbours. When serious weather warnings are issued, good people who have concerns about a neighbour or relative can be fearful of overreacting. Media guidelines on the steps to take if you are worried during a storm or at any other time would be helpful. We know not the day nor the hour when early intervention could save a life. 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
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION?
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IS NOT SOMETHING RESERVED FOR AN ELITE. THE OLD IRISH TERM FOR SOMEONE WHO PERFORMED THIS MINISTRY WAS ANAM CHARA OR ‘FRIEND OF THE SOUL.’ A ‘SOUL FRIEND’ HELPS US TO LISTEN TO THE MYSTERY OF GOD IN OUR LIVES. BY BRIAN GLENNON 32
"God
comes to us disguised as our life" (Paula D’Arcy). This is a lesson that is not always welcomed. Our life is what we are presented with and through it we experience God. Karl Rahner tells us that "The very commonness of everyday things harbours the silent mystery of God and grace." God is present to us in the ordinary, everyday experiences of our life. Spiritual direction is about a space where these experiences can be listened to, a sacred space where you can hear yourself share, hear your joys and sorrows, hear your dark and light sides as you open up in trust, with a spiritual director.
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The very practice itself of putting your experiences into words for your director brings clarity to your mind and heart. This listening facilitates the telling of your life’s tales, and this telling bears the opportunity and the invitation to set you free. The term ‘spiritual director’ is the time-honoured name for this ministry in the Catholic Church. It is also called spiritual guide/mentor/ companion. It is certainly not the case that one is directed; it is more about you finding direction yourself rather than being given direction. I prefer to use the terms (spiritual) companioning and (spiritual) companionee, as they are the ones I like most and
33 in which I was trained. Companioning is about creating a place of quiet, where you are helped to awaken to the Mystery in your life, the God mystery that approaches you in the ‘commonness’ of everyday life, and to respond to that awakening. This response leads to greater inner freedom and also to greater and more authentic relationships and commitments in your life. We live in an age where listening is a rare experience, where everyone wants to talk and even if listening you are already composing your answer! This sacred listening is about seeing and honouring the sacred mystery of the soul of another. It is witnessing this mystery unfolding and reflecting it back in a spiritual companioning
session. These sessions are usually once a month and for an hour and there is a fee. During that time your companion will listen deeply, reflect back what you share and feelings that are expressed, ask exploratory and clarifying questions, maybe challenge you gently, honour where you are at and allow silence where appropriate. Needless to say the space is one of sacred confidentiality. For Thomas Merton "The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a person’s life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, which is
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what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul" (Spiritual Direction and Meditation, 1960, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, p 16). This is the work you do in spiritual companioning with the help of your companion. This is the work of letting go of some masks that you wear a lot of the time and is the road to being real and grounded, authentic and whole. After all, are you not in the last resort responsible for what you want to be and do? You may find yourself hearing your own dilemmas with greater clarity or looking at alternative perspectives. You may have a habit of ignoring significant pieces of your own life story, things staring you in the face, and when you are in the trusting space of companioning you may choose to learn to explore these and to find and speak your unique truth. It is about getting what is inside outside. All of this invites you to change and in that context to remember the words of Blessed John Henry Newman: "To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often." You might experience that quite a lot in spiritual companioning. An essential ingredient of companioning is openness to the truth. By telling your life story in truthfulness you will experience a call to grow in wholeness/ holiness like you have never experienced before. It is liberating. This journey is taken completely freely by you and is never demanded by your companion. By developing a profound trust in the relationship, a companion helps create safe conditions for truth telling. You might of course resist this unmasking, this call to authenticity, this truthfulness, this
false front that has been acquired, unfortunately, as a result of religious malformation" (p 40). If you are that person perhaps your challenge will be an invitation to grow spiritually and humanly, to grow in openness, risk and transparency and possibly learn to enjoy some fun, some relaxation and how to waste time! Your companion should have already walked this very path themselves! Barry and Connolly (The Practice of Spiritual Direction, Revised and Updated, Harper One, 1982, p 8) define spiritual direction as "help given by one believer to another that enables the latter to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship". Paying attention is central to companioning. How much attention do you pay to your life as it unfolds in your presence? Remember "God comes to us disguised as our life". So God’s personal communication to you might be through a myriad of experiences (not
This sacred listening is about seeing and honouring the sacred mystery of the soul of another awakening. Thomas Merton says that this may be because of your previous religious formation: "(The director’s) heart is contracted by a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that there is no way of breaking through and setting free the real person who remains buried and imprisoned under the REALITY SUMMER 2019
spiritual and secular, just experiences) and this calls for your attention. Mindfulness and being attentive are key to being open to the experience of the mysterious ‘Other’, in the very ‘commonness’ of everyday life. This definition puts relationship at its core. It is not about ideas or teachings, it is about relating to the Mystery breaking through. Your companion’s nonjudgemental stance, their acceptance of you just as you are (things not often experienced) help enormously with this relationship. And then, of course, there is the invitation to live out the consequences of the relationship! This is where change, integration and transformation come in! What might be the change, the consequences of the relationship? Transformation has to do with your life style, your prayer style and your relationship style. Are you becoming more a person of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and selfcontrol"? (Gal 5:22-23). Simplicity in many things might tell you that you are on the right path. Are you becoming more forgiving, less controlling, committed to issues of justice and equality in your immediate circle and the wider world/planet? Is your prayer life becoming more real, more grounded, more silent, more directive of your lifestyle? Spiritual direction might be the exciting beginning of a whole new way of life! Spiritual directors become members of the All Ireland Spiritual Guidance Association (AISGA), and you can find a list of directors and other helpful information on their website www.aisga.ie You could also look up www. anamcharadastraining.com
Brian Glennon is a retired Religious Education teacher. He is involved in the ministry of spiritual direction with Anamcharadas Training and is a member of AISGA. He is the author of Eucharistic Ministers, A Handbook; Columba Press, 2012
Praying with the Rosary – The Fourth Glorious Mystery prayer corner
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The Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into Heaven Assumption of the Virgin by Veronese 1585-1587
THERE IS NO BIBLICAL WITNESS TO THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR BLESSED LADY, YET THE LITURGY AND ART OF THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCHES BEARS WITNESS TO THE BELIEF THAT MARY BY HER DEATH SHARED IN A SPECIAL WAY IN HER SON’S RESURRECTION. IN AN IMAGINARY DIALOGUE WITH POPE PIUS XII WHO PROCLAIMED IT AS DOGMA, FR WADDING HELPS US TO SEE ITS MEANING FOR FAITH. BY GEORGE WADDING CSsR
prayer corner
A
disciple of Jesus was our imaginary witness in the first three Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. Now he must make way for others to give witness. There is no direct evidence in Sacred Scripture regarding the death or assumption of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. For this we move to another sphere of theology known as the Development of Doctrine and call upon different witnesses – the ancient Fathers of the Church, theologians East and West, and the faith of God’s people. It is a doctrine over which there was a parting of the ways between Reformation theology and the longstanding tradition of the Latin and Oriental Christian Churches. We ask Pope Pius XII to be our witness in this mystery.
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PROCLAIMING A DOGMA Reader: In your Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, of November 1, 1950, you defined Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven as a dogma of faith. What precisely did you say? Pius XII: What I said was: We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. Reader: That phrase, ‘having completed the course of her earthly life’ – isn’t it a rather long-winded way for saying ‘after she died’? Pius XII: Not to a theologian, it isn’t. Reader: How do you mean? Pius XII: I left open the question of whether or not Mary actually experienced death before being taken up into glory. No strong tradition had emerged concerning this aspect of the mystery. If anything, what evidence there is would seem to favour the theological opinions REALITY SUMMER 2019
that she did die in the Lord and was buried and, in the likeness of her Son’s resurrection, her body did not decompose but was gloriously assumed intact. But that’s theological opinion, not a matter of faith… Perhaps, I should call your attention to other carefully constructed phrases in that statement of mine which you may have missed… Reader: Please do! Pius XII: I said ‘assumed’ not ‘ascended’. Mary, a mere creature, redeemed by her Son, was ‘taken up’ into heaven by divine power, and did not ‘ascend’ as Christ did through the divine power within himself. When I said she was taken up ‘body and soul’ I simply meant that her ‘total person’ was glorified. Also, I didn’t say ‘heaven’ as if she was taken to a place; she was taken into ‘heavenly glory’ – that mysterious state of existence beyond the limits of space and time, in the intimate presence of the triune God and her risen Lord and Son. WHERE DID THE DOGMA COME FROM? Reader: Thank you Holy Father! How did you come to define this dogma? Did you just wake up some morning and decide you wanted to honour Our Lady in this way? Pius XII: Goodness no! The doctrine of Our Lady’s Assumption has been part of our Christian consciousness from early centuries. In my Apostolic Constitution which you have just referred to, I quote from many saints and scholars through the centuries who taught and defended this doctrine. In our own time it has come much more into the limelight. Particularly so since Pius IX solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. These two privileges of Mary are most closely bound to one another. Christ overcame sin and death by his own
death, and we, who are ‘born again’ through baptism, have conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not grant to the baptised the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the good and pious Christians are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to their own glorious soul. However, God willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body. Sinless like her Son and closely associated with him in his work of Redemption, she also was spared bodily corruption and was taken directly to heavenly glory with him. So, as I said, since the definition of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, there has been an increasing clamour for a formal definition of her bodily Assumption into glory. Reader: How do you know this? Pius XII: Both before my time and during my time as pope, individual petitions came flooding into the Holy See. Also petitions from heads of local churches and from a considerable number of the Fathers of the First Vatican Council. Over time such petitions grew in number and in urgency. Crusades of prayer for this intention were organised. Many outstanding theologians eagerly carried out investigations on this subject either privately or in Catholic universities. National and international Marian Congresses were held in many parts of the
Catholic world and... Reader: Thank you, Holy Father, we get the message. Pius XII: Just a moment if I may… There’s one more very important point… So clamorous were the petitions and voices reaching us here in the Vatican that I personally wrote to all the Catholic bishops in the world asking them: "Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?" Reader: And…? Pius XII: They gave an almost unanimous affirmative response to both these questions. This overwhelming agreement between the church’s ordinary teaching and the conviction and faith of the bishops and the faithful assured me that the bodily Assumption of God's Mother into heavenly glory could be defined as a dogma of faith… Sorry now! That’s a rather long answer to your question. THE FALLING ASLEEP OF THE MOTHER OF GOD Reader: Thank you, Holy Father! It is most helpful. One last question, if I may… Do the Eastern Rite Churches honour Mary under this title? Pius XII: They do, but they have a different name for it. As early as the fifth century, the Christians of the East were already celebrating a feast called the 'Memorial of Mary'. It was like the feasts of the martyrs which celebrated their 'birthday into heaven'. This eventually came to be called the koimesis or dormitio of Mary, her falling asleep. This expressed the deep faith of early Christians in the resurrection of the body which falls asleep in death. During
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the reign of Mauricius Flavius (582602) the feast of Mary’s Dormition was decreed to be celebrated on August 15 throughout the Byzantine Empire. After this, preachers began to speak more clearly about her bodily Assumption. Rome adopted the feast during the seventh century and under my predecessor Pope St Adrian I (772-795), the title Assumption replaced Dormition. It is still called the 'Dormition or Falling Asleep of the Mother of God' in the East. In the Byzantine Liturgy for August 15, the troparion or hymn says: “In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the Living God and, by your prayers you will deliver our souls from death.” Now, before I finish, let me switch
roles from historian back to bishop and teacher. Back in the 15th century the Renaissance artist Masaccio painted a fresco of The Holy Trinity in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. Underneath it he painted a tomb with a skeleton on top of it and a memento mori (remember you must die) inscription: "What I once was, you are now; what I am now, you one day will be." That was intended to frighten people into repentance. Place these same words on the lips of Mary, however, and the message would be a source of hope and joy. Imagine her looking down from her place beside her Son and saying: 'What you are now, I once was; what I am now, you one day will be. Only stay faithful and do whatever he tells you!" Reader: Thank you, Holy Father!
In the Byzantine icon of the Dormition, Mary is laid out on her deathbed. Her son holds her body wrapped in a shroud but looking like a newborn baby. By her death, Mary was reborn into the Kingdom. Fr George Wadding CSsR is a member of the Redemptorist Community at Dun Mhuire, Griffith Avenue, Dublin. He is the author of Praying with St Gerard, the Family Saint (available from Redemptorist Communications).
Ennismore Retreat Centre
Sunday 7th – Saturday 13th July Mystery of Love : a universe cradled in the Trinity. Scripture tells us the love of Christ extends to ‘all things’ (Col. 1:20), gathering the whole of creation into the life of God, ‘so that God may be all in all’ (I Cor. 15). Benedict Hegarty, O.P. Cost €440
Sunday 14th – Saturday 20th July “Choose whom you will serve” (Josh. 24) In this reflective retreat, we will focus on opening ourselves to the invitation to discipleship of the heart. Stephen Cummins, O.P. Cost €440 Sunday 21st – Saturday 27th July Never too Late to Laugh … Hope and humour in a wobbly church ! Joe Kavanagh, O.P. Cost €440
ST DOMINIC’S
Sunday 4th – Saturday 10th August Lost and Found (Luke 19:10) In the life and mission of Jesus, God seeks and saves the lost, and that includes each one of us! We experience once again the joy of being found by God, and the response we are called to give. Gerard McCarthy, SVD Cost €440 Sunday 18th – Saturday 24th August Ignatius and Pope Francis: A Contemplative Look Guidance for prayer with special reference to the influence of St. Ignatius Loyola. Integrating the spirituality and ministry of Pope Francis Donal Neary , SJ Coat €440
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 E-mail: info@ennismore.ie www.ennismore.ie
www.ennismore.ie
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The ‘Heartbeat ’ of Trócaire TYRONE-BORN SALLY O’NEILL WAS A MEMBER OF TRÓCAIRE WHO WAS ACTIVE ON THE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE SCENE FOR ALMOST 40 YEARS. AFTER HER RETIREMENT FROM THE ORGANISATION, SHE CHOSE TO REMAIN IN LATIN AMERICA. BY DAVID O'HARE
Former
TrócairestaffmemberSally O’Neill was described as a “remarkable worker for justice” by President Michael D Higgins at a memorial Mass in Maynooth recently.
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The Dungannon woman, who was a stalwart of Trócaire for 37 years, was tragically killed in a car crash in Guatemala in April which also claimed the lives of Ana Paula Hernández, a fellow human rights worker from Mexico, Ana Velásquez, a Guatemalan
human rights advocate, and the driver, Daniel Tuc. “She was the greatest gift that Ireland gave to the Latin world in contemporary times,” President Higgins said. President Higgins was among the hundreds of colleagues, friends and family including former President Mary Robinson who gathered to celebrate the life of Sally O'Neill. CHAMPION OF THE POOR "Sally was a champion of the poor in Latin America for decades," said Caoimhe de Barra, Trócaire's CEO. "Her legacy is a powerful one of which we are all very proud and we have announced the launch of the 'Sally O'Neill Leadership Development Programme' which will help shape future leaders around
Michael D Higgins (who was then a TD) on a visit to El Salvador to investigate reports of a massacre in the village of El Mozote. They were initially refused entry into the country but were eventually granted access. They uncovered evidence of a massacre of civilians and their report from El Mozote made its way onto the pages of the international media, including the New York Times and Washington Post. Sally worked in Ethiopia during the famine in the mid-80s and played a central role in Trócaire’s response to the famine in Somalia in the early 1990s, establishing its programme in Gedo, which still operates today.
women's empowerment and human rights." Caoimhe de Barra said, "Sally was much beloved by communities and human rights activists throughout Central America. She dedicated her life to improving the lives of others. Her legacy will live on through the thousands of people whose lives she helped to improve. “We were heartbroken by the news of Sally’s tragic death. Sally was the heartbeat of Trócaire for almost 40 years. She was a truly remarkable person. Trócaire was only five years old when Sally joined. Sally built the foundations of the organisation. She embodied our values and through her courage and commitment to human rights touched the lives of so many people. “I was with Sally in Guatemala a few weeks before she died. Despite having officially retired, she remained a driving force for human rights in Central America. Her drive, passion and commitment was as strong as ever.” “Our hearts go out to Sally’s family, particularly her children Roger, Rhona and Xio, and her husband, Roger. Although we still cannot believe she is gone, we know that she left an incredible footprint on the world.” FROM TYRONE TO HONDURAS A native of Dungannon, County Tyrone, Sally joined Trócaire in 1978 and dedicated her life to working
RECOGNITION The President of Ireland appointed her to HighLevel Panel for the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad in 2012, and she was awarded the Hugh O´Flaherty Humanitarian Award in 2011. In July 2017 she was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Law degree by the University of Ulster. Following her retirement, Sally O’Neill continued to work in a voluntary capacity as a facilitator with prisoners and migrants in Honduras, where she lived. As well as her ongoing work with human rights organisations in Central America, she lectured in Development Studies in the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras in Tegucigalpa.
with the poor, the marginalised and victims of human rights abuses. She retired from Trócaire in April 2015 after 37 years of service. She worked primarily on Trócaire projects in Latin America but she was also involved in providing famine relief in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s and established Trócaire’s programme in Somalia in the early 1990s in response to a famine there. Prior to her retirement, she was Trócaire’s head of region for Latin America based in Honduras. Throughout her career, Sally worked on the David O’Hare works in the Trócaire Office in Belfast, his native city. frontline during some of the most significant global President Higgins signs the condolence book humanitarian crises. She worked in Central America at a time when civil wars were being fought in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She oversaw humanitarian aid to more than two million refugees in the Central American region during those conflict years. Sally led delegations of politicians and bishops to Central America, so they could see the suffering, translating for Archbishop Oscar Romero six weeks before he was murdered. In 1982, she accompanied
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UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
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Freedom from Evil Spirits: Released from Fear, Addiction & the Devil By Pat Collins CM Paperback 244 pages Dublin: Columba 2019 €10.99 - €12.99 ISBN: 9781782183525
Those
who are interested in or would like to learn more about the inner healing and deliverance ministries will find in Fr Pat Collins’ book wise, pastoral guidance. The author has three inter-related sections in his book: Freedom from fear; Freedom from addictions; and Freedom from oppressive evil spirits. He provides easy-to-follow spiritual, theological and psychological commentaries as he discusses each of these sections. His reflections are based not just on his theoretical knowledge, but also on his personal experience of ministering to people in need of inner healing or deliverance. This book will be welcomed by all those who minister in today’s church which Pope Francis has famously described as “a field hospital after battle” where the primary duty is “to heal the wounds”. Many zealous ministers in the “field hospital” today, however, still don’t
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pray with the 'patients' for inner healing or deliverance. They may spend a long time listening to their stories, which is always pastorally necessary, but never take the next step of praying with the sufferer asking the Lord to heal the inner wounds. There are two common reasons why good ministers are hesitant about praying for healing with those who need healing or deliverance. First, they don’t believe that Christ expects them to lay their hands and the sick and pray for them. Yet Jesus says “These are the signs that will be associated with believers….they will lay their hands on the sick who will recover” (Mark 16:18). Second, they have no experience of this kind of ministry and may never have read anything about it. I would urge them to make praying with the sick and the broken-hearted part of their normal ministry and to study at some depth this book by Fr Collins. It is easy to read, and it will prepare them for a fuller ministry in the "field hospital” of the church. As we move into the future, with the declining number of active priests, we need to revolutionise our understanding of pastoral ministry and help lay ministers to assume their rightful role as bearers of the good news of salvation and the healing power of Christ. Every parish could have pastoral teams of laymen and women who are open to the Spirit and willing to serve in the "field hospital “of the Church. The Holy Spirit works through all the baptised. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks very clearly about this ministry of healing: “Healing the wounds of sin, the Holy Spirit renews us interiorly through a spiritual transformation. He enlightens us to live as “children of the light” through all that is good and right and true” (para. 1324). Healing is the restoration of wholeness. That is why parishes today need pastoral teams of laymen and women who have been trained to listen, to discern, to pray and to accompany members of the parish who have big struggles in life. Fr Collins has provided a valuable, practical handbook for this training. James McManus CSsR
The Preacher and the Prelate: The Achill Mission Colony and the Battle for Souls in Famine Ireland By Patricia Byrne Paperback, 258 pages Merrion Press 2018 €14.95 ISBN: 9781785371721
Achill
today is linked to the mainland by a bridge, and each summer draws tourists and artists to explore its wild beauty. In the 19th century, it was more remote, more poverty stricken, and especially in the frequent famines of the 19th century, hunger and disease carried off hundreds of the population. The title of this book pitches two eminent churchmen against each other. The name of Archbishop John McHale is familiar from the church-state controversies of his time, and has given his name to a GAA stadium in Castlebar. Church historians know him as one of the few Fathers of the First Vatican Council who believed it was not expedient to proclaim the doctrine of papal infallibility. Less familiar is Edward Nangle, an Evangelical Protestant clergy man. Signs of a revival of Protestant Evangelical fervour were first seen in the estates of Lord Farnham in County Cavan in 1827. It embraced not only members of the Church
BOOK REVIEWS BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR AND JAMES McMANUS CSsR
of Ireland, but also the Catholics of Farnham’s estates who defected in large numbers to Protestantism. Farnham claimed that more than 400 had converted in the previous three months. This was the era in which Daniel O’Connell was leading the fight for Catholic Emancipation. Some of its opponents saw in the conversions in Cavan the signs that the time was ripe for the 'Second Reformation' which would finally accomplish what the ‘First Reformation’ had been unable to do, namely, to wean the Irish country people from the false doctrines of 'Popery'. Among the techniques favoured by the proponents of the Second Reformation was the creation of mission colonies in some of the most remote and poorest parts of Ireland, where converts would be formed into communities and provided with food, clothing, education and trades. Achill was one of the chosen battle-grounds, and its apostle was to be Edward Nangle. Born in
1800, he belonged to the first Protestant generation of an important Meath family who began his ministry close to the Farnham estates. With his pregnant wife Eliza, he departed for Achill in 1831 and established a colony for converts near the village of Dugort. A Catholic reviewer finds it hard to be dispassionate about Nangle and the Second Reformation, which has attracted the label of Souperism, or bribing starving Catholics to join Bible classes for food. For the Nangles, and especially for Eliza, Achill was a harsh place to which they were led by a religious vision. It is not for his silence that Archbishop McHale won the nickname 'the Lion of the West'. In the same year that Nangle arrived, McHale had already written to the plight of the people of the West in the face of yet another failure of the potato crop, and he knew there was something rotten about the landlord system on which so much of the life of the Irish countryside
was based. He would later encourage the Sisters of Mercy and the Franciscan Brothers to make foundations in Achill to counteract the massive inroads Nangle had made. There is little trace today of Nangle’s colony, beyond a few small mission churches that survive and are only used in summer time when tourists provide viable congregations. Only a minority of Protestants shared the aspirations of Nangle and Farnham, yet their work, which ultimately failed, coloured relations between the churches for many years. Patricia Byrne is to be commended for a genuinely readable book that attempts to make sense and put a human face on this sad period of our history. Towards the end, she raises the intriguing question of whether the two protagonists might have met with some civility on the island in their declining years. Brendan McConvery CSsR
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COMMENT REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ
PRIVATE RENTED RIP-OFF
MANY OF THOSE IN THE 'SQUEEZED MIDDLE' ARE CAUGHT IN A TRAP. THEY ARE WORKING HARD BUT DUE TO THE HIGH RENTS THEY PAY, THE FRUITS OF THEIR LABOUR ARE BEING PASSED ON TO LANDLORDS.
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homelessness crisis is never out of the media, and rightly so. However, there is another crisis which rarely gets much attention, and that is the crisis facing those who are working and living in private rented accommodation. Their income is too low to qualify for a mortgage but too high to be eligible for social housing. They are part of the 'squeezed middle'. Their only option is private rented accommodation regardless of the cost. It is recognised that people should not have to pay more than 30% of their income on their housing, in order to maintain a reasonable lifestyle, but surveys have shown that 20% of those in private rented accommodation are paying over 40% of their income on rent, 10% are paying more than 60% on rent, and 5% are paying 75% on rent. They have no other choice, they are caught in a trap. They are working hard but the fruits of their labour are being transferred to those who own property. It is a modern day version of slavery. They will find it very difficult even to move to a cheaper apartment or house, as the demand for private rented accommodation far exceeds supply. As rents continue to rise, (in Dublin, where rents are already outrageously high, they are projected to rise by a further 17% over the next three years) many will find their situation untenable and will be forced
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to move out, perhaps back to live with their parents, or into homelessness, with the resulting trauma for the family, and their children. LOSING DEPOSITS An added problem for those who have to move out is recovering their deposit. Threshold, the advisory body for private rented accommodation, receives more than 1,000 complaints each year from tenants who have their deposits – either one month’s or two months' rent – unjustly retained by the landlord. There is a strong incentive for rogue landlords to retain the deposit: to recover it, the tenant will have to appeal to the Residential Tenancies Board, which is underresourced and has a waiting list, and their decision may then be appealed by the landlord to a tribunal. If the tenant does not follow through on this stressful and time-consuming process, the landlord gets to keep the deposit. The worst that can happen to the landlord is that
they have, eventually, to give it back. The failure to return a deposit can make the difference between someone being able to afford a new tenancy or becoming homeless. Tens of millions of euros in deposits is being illegally retained by landlords, often belonging to people of modest income. In 2015, the Government brought in legislation which allowed for the creation of a deposit retention scheme, which exists in the UK and other countries. Under this scheme, a deposit would be held by the Residential Tenancies Board and returned at the end of the tenancy, once the landlord and tenant agreed. Disputes would be arbitrated by the Board. This would prevent landlords from illegally withholding deposits. The interest on the deposits held was to pay for the scheme. However, with interest rates now almost zero, or even below zero, the scheme has been scrapped. The majority of landlords are law-abiding, responsible
landlords who legitimately seek to make a profit from their assets. Some are in serious financial difficulty and are unable to pay the mortgage on their property despite the high rents being received. However, there are also a lot of rogue landlords who give all landlords a bad name. These rogue landlords are only interested in maximising their income with the least effort or expense. They often provide poor quality accommodation and do no repairs to the property, knowing that the tenant is afraid to complain for fear of being evicted and becoming homeless. They often demand 'top-ups' to the official rent, which the tenant has no choice but to pay out of their already stretched income. Renting in Ireland is an expensive and insecure housing option in which many people are forced to live and which the government promotes. While other European countries have a high proportion of their population in private rented accommodation, this sector is much more highly regulated and the regulations are enforced. People have security of tenure and rent increases are tightly controlled. Rip-off Ireland is thriving, with some people getting very wealthy through imposing misery on others.
For more information or to support the Peter McVerry Trust: www.pmvtrust.ie info@pmvtrust.ie +353 (0)1 823 0776
GOD’S WORD THIS SUMMER THE MISSION OF THE SEVENTY-TWO While all three synoptic Gospels tell of sending the twelve on mission 14TH SUNDAY IN (Mark 6:7-13, Matt 10:5ORDINARY TIME 42, Luke 9:1-6) only Luke describes a mission by seventy (or seventy-two, in some versions) disciples. The great American scholar, Fr Raymond Brown suggests that might be a preparation for the Acts of the Apostles, where the Twelve pass on the missionary baton to newcomers, like Barnabas, Paul and Silas. The task of announcing the coming of
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SO WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR? The trigger to the parable is JULY a lawyer’s question about how to inherit eternal life. Jesus does not answer the TH SUNDAY IN 15 question directly: instead, ORDINARY TIME he tells a parable. The road from Jericho to Jerusalem climbs almost 3,500 feet in 20 miles or so. It leads through desert country which is notorious as a haven for bandits. The first two people to arrive on the scene belong to the Jewish religious establishment. Jesus’ audience would probably have guessed why they passed on: contact with a corpse would have rendered them ceremonially unfit for temple service. At this stage, there is a slight surprise. A Jewish audience would not have expected much from a hated Samaritan. They were the inhabitants of what had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and after the return from the Exile, they kept their distance from the temple. Like the other two, "he saw him and..." The hated outsider is immediately moved to compassion. This is the turn of the screw of the parable. If the religious officials’ response was cold and motived by their ritual concerns, the Samaritan acts in the light of the prophetic warning to Israel: "For I desire perfect love and not sacrifice, knowledge
the Kingdom is not confined to the Twelve: it is the work of the whole church. The number seventy-two may be an echo of the number of nations given in the Greek Septuagint translation of Genesis 10:2-31 salvation is meant for all peoples. The instructions they are given are explicit. They are meant to be: kind and gentle (v. 3), simple and poor (v.4), bearers of peace (vv. 5-6), undemanding for themselves and their own needs (v.7), concerned about the needy (v.8) and proclaimers of the kingdom (v. 9). If their message is rejected, they are to repeat it without allowing themselves to be discouraged. On the other hand, they should
not entertain an unrealistic hope that their mission will be an immediate success. The seventy-two come back, rejoicing from their mission experience. Jesus greets them and sums up their mission as victory over Satan. He tells them to rejoice, not because their names are written in heaven, but because they have been privileged to know Jesus in the flesh to hear his message first-hand. Today’s Readings Isaiah 66:10-14; Ps 65; Galatians 6:1418; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
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of God rather than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6). Pouring oil and wine on wounds was a rudimentary form of first-aid. The ritually aware, however, they may have recalled the wine and oil poured onto the daily temple sacrifice. It is the unclean Samaritan, not the ritually pure priest and Levite, who offers the perfect acceptable offering. The payment for the man’s stay is a further act of mercy. The Samaritan, having done more than his duty, offers a final example of total kindness. The parable is not simply what it means to be a good neighbour. It overturns our ingrained notions of what it means to be a
neighbour. Being a neighbour is not being a member of a charmed circle. When the lawyer is finally invited to answer his own question in the light of the parable, the word "Samaritan" alongside the word "neighbour" seems to have stuck in his throat. If the wounded man was a Jew, how did he respond when he realised that the one who showed him mercy was a Samaritan? Today’s Readings Deut 30:10-14; Ps 68; Col 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37
God’s Word continues on page 44
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Martha reproving her sister Mary by Orazio Gentileschi, 1620, Munich, Germany
JUST A CUP OF TEA IN OUR HAND Apart from this story, thes e t wo women are mentioned only 16TH SUNDAY IN in the Gospel of John ORDINARY TIME in a slightly different context. Luke seems to regard them in the same light as he does the women in 8:3 "who provide for him out of their means", namely as sympathisers or supporters of the Jesus movement. Luke seems to have a special interest in women of this kind. There are others in Acts, like Tabitha or Lydia of Thyatira who supported the first church in Europe at Philippi. They were ‘patrons’ who hosted and often funded the community. Luke may be suggesting that support of this kind goes back to the mission of Jesus, and that wealthy members,
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especially women, supported the mission. The story is a domestic incident of ordinary proportions. The exasperation of one sister who feels victimised because she has to do all the house work involved in entertaining a guest, contrasts with the other who "sits at his feet" and enjoys the conversation. ‘Sitting at the feet’ of someone, particularly a rabbi, was a technical term for saying that someone was a pupil of that rabbi. In the social world of Palestine, it would have been ‘bad form’ for a woman to invade male company. However understandable Martha’s exasperation may have been, involving a guest in a household matter is also ‘bad form'. Jesus' reply seems to be a gentle reproof to Martha. Mary’s right to choose "the better part" is not a reward for laziness, but a vindication of the right of female disciples to be present at the community meeting, to receive
instruction as an equal disciple with males: the woman’s place was not just the kitchen. The verses "few things are necessary, indeed only one" offers something of a translation problem. One of my teachers, a good Kerry man, suggested that the best way to translate "one thing only is necessary" for an Irish audience is – ‘look, all we want is a cup of tea in our hand!’ It may have been intended to remind the community of the need for moderation in their entertainment budget. The "better part" of discipleship is companionship with the Lord.
Today’s Readings Gen 18:1-10; Ps 14; Col 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42
AN EVERYDAY LESSON ON PRAYER Jesus responds to the disciples’ request to teach them how to pray by giving them a form of words. For 17TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME those of us who are used to the Our Father, Luke’s form of the prayer might appear unusual. Luke’s version is shorter; Matthew’s is longer and more polished, so it was adopted for liturgical use. The prayer is followed by a short parable about a neighbour who won’t take no for an answer. A couple of details about the homes of country folk in Jesus’ Galilee will make it clearer. Only the very rich had separate bedrooms, otherwise the entire family spread their sleeping mats on a raised platform at one end of the living room soon after sunset and curled up for a night’s sleep close to one another. When all were safely in bed, the
family’s one lamp was extinguished. Lighting it again was a chore: with luck, the embers of the cooking fire would still be warm enough to kindle it. The door did not have a lock: a massive wooden bar kept it shut. Visitors calling after the family had gone to bed were not welcome. Getting as far as the door meant clambering over sleeping children and babies: opening it in the dark was a far from easy task. One can imagine Jesus’ listeners laughing at the stupidity of a neighbour who would cause such chaos and expose himself to gossip. But this man is not easily put off. His incessant knocking will wake the children anyway, not to mention any dog within earshot. With a very bad grace, the father gets up, hands over the loaf, not for friendship’s sake, but just to get rid of him. That is the first lesson in prayer. The third part of the Gospel takes the keywords from the parable and makes them an instruction on prayer. Prayer is asking, it is searching, it
“I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW” A best-selling American novel called Wall Street that became a successful 18TH SUNDAY IN film told the dark story of ORDINARY TIME how the search for financial power can corrupt and ruin individuals who start off in life with good attitudes. Its leading main character, Gordon Gecko, has a line that has become famous: “Greed is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, greed cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, greed for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” In other words, the best people are driven by greed. The man in today’s Gospel is a snap-shot of what exactly greed is. According to Jewish law, once you had reaped your field or plucked the fruit from the tree, you were forbidden to go over it a second time. Anything remaining was for the poor. A wealthy farmer, like the man in
the Gospel, had to leave what he could not store in his barn for the poor, so next year, he will build bigger barns, to pack in more stuff. Greed, or avarice, is one of the seven deadly sins – along with lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, pride and anger. A deadly sin is not just another name for a mortal sin. A deadly sin is rather an attitude that gets hold of a person, and colours everything they do. Each of us is probably in the grip of one of the deadly sins. You might never have realised it, but some day it might just dawn on you that this is what is driving your life. What drives you? What makes you tick? Greed, or the desire to possess things, is one of the most common of the deadly sins. The psychologist Eric Fromm described greed as "a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction”. The advertising industry has an extraordinary talent for creating new false needs and making people want them, from foods to fashions and even video games.
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is, if necessary, banging the door until God hears you. Although it is so true to life, the parable risks presenting God as a grudging giver, so Jesus adds two little examples of fatherly concern that hark back to the opening word of the prayer – Abba – the intimate name for one’s father. Daddies don’t play dangerous games with their children, giving them stones instead of bread or dangerous snakes or scorpions for eggs or fish. The message is clear – if we call God Abba, then he will give us not just what we ask for but will even share the life of his Spirit with us. These stories of fatherly love may trigger memories of our own fathers. They may also invite us to forgive a father who was sorry he could not be a superman. Today’s Readings Gen 18:1-10; Ps 14; Col 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42
Today’s Readings Eccl 1:2, 2:21-23; Ps 89:3-6; Col 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21
God’s Word continues on page 46
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GOD’S WORD THIS SUMMER ATTENTIVE SERVANTS Today’s Gospel is the continuation of last Sunday’s. It is a little collection of different 19TH SUNDAY IN kinds of sayings of Jesus. ORDINARY TIME It begins with a word of consolation and comfort to offset any discouragement that the hard word addressed to the rich fool may have struck in us. The followers of Jesus are heirs to the kingdom of God, and with such a promise, it is possible to embark on a radical path that puts material possessions into a proper frame. The real question about possessions is not how much you have, but rather what do they say about you. The saying "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" is another way of asking the question ‘who are you?’ Are you someone who is so totally 46 identified with what you have that you have no freedom to love anything else? The disciples of Jesus are to be like servants waiting the return of their master from a
wedding feast. Like Matthew’s parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13), it focuses on the future return of the Lord at the end of human history, or at the end of our individual story when we die. The first disciples of Jesus had believed he would return to them in a very short time. Luke is less sure of this, and more convinced that the second coming will not take place so soon and he makes this point through the master’s delay in the parable. The genuine servant will have a watchful attitude, ready to open if the master returns unexpectedly. There is a twist in the parable however: normally a servant would welcome the master and serve his meal. In this parable, it is the master who puts on an apron and serves the servants. Another example of watchfulness is the householder who has heard he is in line for a visit from a burglar: only a fool would take no precautions. The disciple of Jesus knows that his return is at hand and he must learn to live with the same kind of watchfulness. Jesus gives another example of delay in the parable of the two servants. One is faithful to
the commission: the other takes advantage of the apparent delay of the master to set himself up as a petty dictator, who will be unmasked when the master returns unexpectedly and demands an account of him. Luke probably intended this parable for leaders of the church. They are not in authority to further their own ambitions but to be at the service of their brothers and sisters. One servant may understand perfectly well what is required of him, but due to laziness or thoughtlessness, never quite gets around it. Another may have missed the point completely. How will they be judged when the Lord comes? The Gospel ends with a summary that needs little comment: when a person has been given a great deal on trust, much will be expected of them.
THROUGH FIRE AND WATER AUGUST Today’s gospel can be divided into two fairly distinct parts. In the first, Jesus 20TH SUNDAY IN gives expression to TIME ORDINARY his deepest desires and in the second, he prepares his followers for the uncertainty and shaking of their faith’s foundations that lies ahead. There are two clear images in the first section – the blazing fire cast on the earth and the unique baptism that lies ahead for Jesus. "I have come to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it was already ablaze." St Luke uses the symbol of fire in two quite different senses. In some cases, fire stands as a symbol of divine judgment. In other cases, it represents the Holy Spirit who comes down
on the disciples at Pentecost as tongues of fire. If we read the verse in this sense, it means that Jesus longs for the final judgment of God that will be associated with his death and resurrection. It is not a destructive judgment however, but a life-giving one, for the fire of the Spirit will renew the face of the earth. He then speaks of a baptism he must receive, and says he is in "great distress" until he has received it. Baptism in Greek literally means to be dipped, submerged or even perhaps drowned. The baptism that awaits Jesus is death. He must abandon himself totally to it like a person being drowned in deep waters. The prospect is one that fills him with anguish and distress. The second half of the gospel concerns the disciples. If he is to face death, they must be ready to face division and opposition even within their own families. That is the cost they must pay for following him. The way of Jesus,
whose birth was announced by angels as the beginning of a new time of peace to people of good will, will also entail suffering. This too had been foretold by the old man Simeon when he was presented in the temple: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed" (Luke 2:34). These divisions will be experienced even more painfully after his death by those who remain faithful to him. Families will be divided painfully over their allegiance to Jesus the Messiah.
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REALITY SUMMER 2019
Today’s Readings Wis 18:6-9; Ps 32; Heb 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48
Today’s Readings Jer 38:4-6, 8-10; Ps 39; Heb 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53
THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 6 JULY/AUGUST 2019
HOW MANY DID YOU SAY? The question someone from the crowd asks Jesus has been repeated down the ages: "Will only a few be saved?" According to a Jewish writing that was not accepted as Holy Scripture: "the Most 21ST SUNDAY IN High has made the present age for many but ORDINARY TIME the age to come for few" (4 Ezra 8:1). Jesus does not answer the question in the way in which it is asked. He simply advises the questioner to strive to enter by the narrow door. This picture suggests a crowd trying to crush through a narrow opening that will not admit everyone. The parable then puts the question into a new light. The language of the parable, about people knocking on the door when it has been shut, recalls the parable of the 19th Sunday. The master of the house has got up and locked the door. One might have ordinarily expected him to have locked it before going to bed, but Luke may be suggesting that the master is the risen Jesus and that we now stand close to the end times. The parable develops into an argument between the master and those on the other side of the locked door, insisting on being admitted. Luke suggests they are Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries ("we once ate and drank in your company, you taught in our streets"). That is not sufficient to guarantee entrance to the feast, for the master does not know them. Luke now draws an even sharper contrast. Those who have failed to gain admission to the feast will see to their disappointment the great figures of Israel’s history (eg Abraham, the prophets) at the banquet while they are excluded. Even more astonishing, a crowd of foreigners from the four points of the compass will join their ancestors at table. This is the answer to the opening question: the number of the saved will not be small. The feast of the Kingdom is open to all nations, but those who presumed they were entitled to be there may find there is no place for them. From the beginning of his gospel, Luke has played on the theme of how the Kingdom of God as a gracious gift overthrows all our presuppositions and expectations. As Mary sang in her Magnificat, God puts down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly, fills the starving and sends the rich away empty.
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SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 4 ACROSS: Across: 1. Quartz, 5. Cerise, 10. Hurling, 11. Relaxed, 12. Tugs, 13. Babel, 15. John, 17. Goa, 19. Hotpot, 21. Cassis, 22. Galilee, 23. Caesar, 25. Panama, 28. Lie, 30. Cues, 31. Alamo, 32. Sumo, 35. Uniform, 36. Avignon, 37. Altars, 38. Medusa. DOWN: 2. Upright, 3. Ruin, 4. Zigzag, 5. Cornea, 6. Rule, 7. Sextons, 8. Thatch, 9. Adonis, 14. Bolivia, 16. Togas, 18. Paean, 20. Tar, 21. Cep, 23. Cactus, 24. Ezekiel, 26. Aquinas, 27. Anoint, 28. Llamas, 29. Embalm, 33. Coma, 34. Find.
Winner of Crossword No. 4 Patrick Mongan, Ballina, Co. Mayo
ACROSS 1. A market in a Middle Eastern country. (6) 5. Disgustingly dirty. (6) 10. Placing things in a container for travel. (7) 11. Part of a monk's head left bare after shaving. (7) 12. The largest urban area in German. (4) 13. Important soldier. (5) 15. Italian greeting or parting. (4) 17. A precious stone. (3) 19. In the arms of Morpheus. (6) 21. Newspaper or magazine text giving the name of the writer. (2-4) 22. Unpowered vehicle towed by another. (7) 23. The line of Catholic leaders down the centuries. (6) 25. Judges, priests and teachers in Celtic times. (6) 28. Nervous or timid in the company of other people. (3) 30. Precious stone, often with shifting colours. (4) 31. Swell on another's misfortune with malignant smugness. (5) 32. Biblical boat builder. (4) 35. Requesting help from God. (7) 36. A soldier, usually one with skill and experience. (7) 37. Asian country which pioneered the concept of 'Gross National Happiness.' (6) 38. 'An ... witness tells the truth, but a false witness tells lies.1 (Prov. 12:17) (6)
DOWN 2. Legal sedative drug. (7) 3. Sharp tasting or sour. (4) 4. A miscellaneous collection of things. (6) 5. A unit for measuring the depth of water. (6) 6. Gave for the fasting period. (4) 7. The great escaper. (7) 8. Biblical city with a trumpet problem. (6) 9. Distant device to control a TV perhaps. (6) 14. Biblical city with a real trumpet problem. (7) 16. Go for and bring back. (5) 18. Gold, frankincense and ....? (5) 20. Inquire too closely into a person's private life. (3) 21. Short reversible debutante. (3) 23. Done without delay, immediate. (6) 24. Ancient Egyptian ruler. (7) 26. Teeth and piano keys! (7) 27. The largest hot desert in the world. (6) 28. As long as a memorable advertising phrase. (6) 29. A form of the Hebrew name of God used in the Bible. (6) 33. A serious break in friendly relations. (4) 34. Fe. (4)
Entry Form for Crossword No.6, July/August 2019 Name:
Today’s Readings
Address: Telephone:
Is 66:18-21; Ps 116; Heb 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30 All entries must reach us by Friday August 30, 2019 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.6, Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, Dundalk, County Louth A91 F3FC