Position Papers - June/July 2016 (Number 500) by Position Papers

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500

Number 500 · June/July 2016

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: The revolution which transformed the world

Editorial

by Michael Kirke

The genesis of Position Papers by Rev. Charles Connolly

“Be prophetic. Be faithful. Pray.” by Cardinal Robert Sarah

12 16

Rev. Patrick G. Burke

Celebration – the Key to the Renewal of Irish Catholicism?

In the national interest?

by Rev. Vincent Twomey

Shakespeare and the fading of the catholic world

by Bishop Robert Barron

Film review: Midnight Special by Michael Aherne

Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Víctor Díaz

Contact us The editor, Position Papers, P.O. Box 4948, Rathmines, Dublin 6  email: editor@positionpapers.ie; website: www.positionpapers.ie Tel.+ 353 86065 2313  For new or renewed subscriptions contact: info@positionpapers.ie

Articles ©Position Papers, who normally will on application give permission to reproduce gratis subject only to a credit in this form: ‘Reprinted, with permission from Position Papers, Dublin’. Please note: the opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect those of the editor nor of the Opus Dei Prelature of which he is a priest.

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Editorial 5

00! That is the number of issues of Position Papers which have been produced it started since back in 1974. â&#x20AC;Š And in this 500th issue we carry an account of the beginnings of Position Papers from Fr Charles Connolly, the first editor. Since Fr Connolly was the one who produced well over 400 of those 500 issues the credit must go to him for the longevity of the publication. Over the years the fact that Position Papers has appeared on the shelves, or has been packaged up and posted across the country, and indeed across the world, is due in no small part to the indefatigable work of a small but intrepid Position Papers team. Since Position Papers first appeared in 1974, what changes the Church has seen, especially here in Ireland. In the early Seventies the Church the post-Conciliar enthusiasm and optimism had probably not entirely waned and been replaced by an awareness that something had gone seriously wrong since the heady years of the Council. Who would have guessed in 1974 what would befall the Church in Ireland over the next four decades? And yet even then the cracks in the edifice were beginning to show: the Seventies was the decade with the highest incidence of sexual abuse by clergy of children, vocations were already falling, the practice of the Faith was falling â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Ireland was even back then on the firm path to secularisation. For Irish Catholics the seventeen years spanning the beginning of the Brendan Smyth affair in 1994 to the Ryan

and Murphy Reports in 2009 and the publication of the Cloyne Report in 2011 were traumatic. Added to this there has been the relentless pressure – unfortunately not without success – to introduce liberal laws on abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage.

Editorial

But the past four decades has not been all darkness; indeed now we can see that the trials of these years have served to purify the Catholic Church in Ireland; at the same time the crisis has clearly galvanised laymen and women, young and old, in the task of re-evangelising the country. In recent years we have carried articles addressing the new role which committed Catholics find being thrust on them in an increasingly secularised, and decaying society: the role of what Pope Benedict termed ‘the creative minority’. While finding themselves with less societal and political support – indeed quite the contrary – Catholics here and elsewhere have refused the exit the public square and retreat into the catacombs as some would wish. Instead we find a small but courageous body of Catholic laity working on renovating and transforming an otherwise doomed world. We hope that during these years of ‘crisis’ Position Papers has been making its own small contribution to this task of re-evangelisation. Since 1974 we have sought to provide our readers with sound Catholic analysis of a wide range of current issues. I think we can truthfully say that not once in its 500 issues has Position Papers ever carried an article out of keeping with the Magisterium of the Church. At the same time I think we have also succeeded in avoiding falling into something almost as bad as doctrinal unorthodoxy: pessimism. It is all too easy to fall into sterile lamentation in commenting on the post-conciliar crisis, and to work on the presumption that the whole world is going to hell in a handcart! Position Papers has always been inspired by the

optimistic attitude of St Josemaria Escriva towards the world, despite the undeniable negative elements and developments in many areas of modernity. This positive (which doesn’t mean naive) approach is well summed up in a point in his work Furrow: Since you want to acquire a Catholic or universal mentality, here are some characteristics you should aim at:

– a breadth of vision and a deepening insight into the things that remain alive and unchanged in Catholic orthodoxy;

– a proper and healthy desire, which should never be frivolous, to present anew the standard teachings of traditional thought in philosophy and the interpretation of history;

– a careful awareness of trends in science and contemporary thought;

– and a positive and open attitude towards the

Editorial

current changes in society and in ways of living. (Furrow 428) Forty-two eventful and sometimes harrowing years have passed since the Position Papers saw the light of day. I wonder what kind of Ireland will greet issue 1000, which, if all goes to plan, will be in 2066. One thing is fairly sure, there will be a different editor, and hopefully a new name (incidentally the search for a new name is continuing). Prophecy is a dangerous business and perhaps a little unwise if it leads us to forget that Christ is the Lord of history and that God is the God of surprises. A lot can happen in a half century. Nevertheless I would hazard the guess that two things are certain: on the one hand the growth

of a dictatorship of relativism centred on gender ideology, and on the other hand the advent of well-formed and fervent Catholics, both priests and laity, who will be ones to have the courage and wherewithal to resist the tyranny of gender ideology. I hope too that Position Papers will continue to play its small part in the defence of the family in the coming years, and especially in these two years leading up to the World Meeting of Families to take place in Ireland in 2018. I would like to finish with a small quote from Pope Benedict which sums up the way we view our work here in Position Papers:

Editorial

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world.â&#x20AC;?

500

In Passing: The revolution which transformed the world by Michael Kirke

e look back at the classical world and classical civilization with glasses that are a little too rose-tinted. Myths were at the foundation of that world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; myths about men as well as myths about gods. Myths are still at the foundations of our conception of that world.

levels. One of Beardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s achievements in S.P.Q.R. is to unravel those myths for us and to puncture our own mythical conceptions about the events and the heroes of that time. It is that rare thing, scholarly and readable, learned and light. It is a joy to read and a magnificent stimulus for reflection on both the origins and development of our own civilization as well as on the perennial threats to its survival which are active in our contemporary world.

Mary Beard, Professor of Classics in Cambridge, in her new work, SPQR: a History of Ancient Rome, prefaces the book by emphasising how ancient Rome is still important. She certainly convinces us. But there are many things that are important but boring. Boring, Rome is emphatically not. This is a fascinating book for all sorts of reasons and on all sorts of

This book will not endear you to the Romans, it may even horrify you. It is not that there were not people there trying to do their

best, striving for some kind of justice. There were. One of the abiding impressions you get from the book is a sense of mankind’s long, painstaking and faltering journey towards the rule of law in our world.

the emergence of the Christian Faith to take centre-stage in that evolution. The Roman world, even with its ameliorating Greek influences, was devoid of the radical goodness which the Christian message holds. While classical civilization had elements which that message was capable of taking and transforming, it could never have produced that transformation from within its own resources.

But one of the questions which haunts us as we make our way through this revision of our cosy and benign view of the Roman world is this: what would our modern world be like today if the radical revolution which was the conversion of this world to Christianity had not taken hold?

Mary Beard helps us to look back to this world with a cold eye and there we see what a floundering and inhumane world it was in which to live. This world was truly alien to the spirit of the subsequent ages, even in their rawest expressions, a spirit which followed the leavening of the mass by Christianity.

Richard Dawkins – in one of his wiser reflections some years ago, in the middle of a diatribe against the Christian Faith – expressed some concern about what might replace Christianity if his wishes for it came true. Well he might, given some of the evidence we have from mankind’s more recent efforts to create godless utopias.

Beard’s narrative approach is very different from what we are used to in the writing of ancient history. While the approach is generally chronological she deliberately eschews the tracing of cause and effect in the story. She concentrates instead on

The thought which this book prompts, however, is even more radical. What kind of civilization could faltering mankind ever have achieved had it not been for

giving us insights into the mentality of the people, the lifestyle and the mores prevailing over her thousand year span. In this we do not get blow by blow accounts of political or military action but a real feel for how political life worked in a militarised state – or did not – as well as what it was like to be a family, a mother, a child in that world.

Parenthood (capitals deliberate)? Is there not just a little more than an echo of this in the current controversies surrounding that American state-funded organization? As for poverty and destitution, the Roman world was truly dark. The sources don’t give a great deal of evidence. The reason for that, Beard tells us, is clear. “First, those who have nothing leave very few traces in the historical or archaeological record. Ephemeral shanty towns do not leave a permanent imprint in the soil; those buried in unmarked graves tell us much less about themselves than those accompanied by an eloquent epitaph. But second, and even more to the point, extreme poverty in the Roman world was a condition that usually solved itself: its victims died.” What there was by way of some social provision for the needy, the

She recounts the attitude to and the fate of children in the womb: “One letter, surviving on papyrus from Roman Egypt, written by a husband to his pregnant wife, instructs her to raise the child if it is a boy, but ‘if it is a girl, discard it’. How often this happened, and what the exact ratio of the victims was, is a matter of conjecture, but it was often enough for rubbish tips to be thought of as a source of free slaves.” Was this the ancient world’s version of Planned

“corn dole”, was for the needy within a “privileged group of about 250,000 male citizens in the first and second centuries CE.”

husbands loving their wives, wives loving their husbands, the sanctity of marriage, and much else. What shocks us not a little in reading this book is the realization that although we see some of the elements of our own civilization in the world Beard lays before us, we realize how radical and necessary was the peaceful Christian revolution to bring us from there to where we are today. It also helps us ask ourselves the question – what will we lose if we abandon the principles of that revolution as the West is now doing wholesale? It was not until Roman society began to be impregnated by the values of the Judaeo-Christian ethic that the Roman world and Roman law flourished as the framework for western civilisation.

No one in the Roman world, she tells us, “seriously believed that poverty was honourable – until the growth of Christianity…. The idea that a rich man might have a problem entering the kingdom of heaven would have seemed as preposterous to those hanging out in our Ostian bar as to the plutocrat in his mansion.” Political life operated in a pretty brutal and murderous way. Family life would have had its moments but was a very different reality from what we think of as ideal family life today. It may have taken centuries, even a millennium or more for much of what we experience today to become the norm for us, but we should have no illusions about where it all began. Its beginning is to be found in the words of Christ, “suffer little children to come unto me…”, and in the articulation of Christ’s teaching in the words of St Paul about

Christians have not always lived up to the standards set by Christ. Benedict XVI has often stressed that profound changes in institutions and people are usually the result of the saints, not of the learned or powerful: “Amid the vicissitudes of history,

it has been the saints who have been the true reformers, who have so often lifted mankind out of the dark valleys into which it constantly runs the risk of sinking back again and have brought light whenever necessary.” So it was in Rome. As Beard recounts in the conclusion of her book, “after periods of coordinated persecution of the Christians in the later third century CE, the universal empire decided to embrace the universal religion (or vice versa). The emperor Constantine…, the first Roman emperor to formally convert to Christianity was baptised on his deathbed. Constantine did, in a way, follow the Augustan model of building himself into power, but what he built was churches.” Her narrative ends just before that event, with the reign of Caracalla. Casting this kind of a cold eye on Rome is not to denigrate it. It is just important to tell it as it is, as it was. Beard concludes: “We do a disservice to the Romans if we heroise them, as much as if we

demonise them. But we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to take them seriously – and if we close our long conversation with them.” We might add that knowing the truth about what we have left behind us is important as an incentive to help us to maintain and treasure what we have. Part of the value of this book is that it does just that. Addendum George Weigel wrote in a post on Easter in First Things this week: The grittiness of Lent, and the “intransigent historical claims” without which Easter makes no sense at all, should remind us that Christianity does not rest on myths or “narratives,” but on radically changed human lives whose effect on their times are historical fact. Within two and a half centuries, what began as a ragtag gang of nobodies from the civilizational outback had so transformed the Mediterranean world that the most powerful man in that world, the Roman emperor Constantine, joined the

winning side. How did that happen? It didn’t happen because of better myth-making. It happened because those first Christians met a young rabbi who promised that, should they believe in him, each of them would become “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” [John 4.14]. Then came what seemed complete catastrophe: his crucifixion. But they met that teacher again as the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, and were infused by his Spirit. And after that, they didn’t sit around in the “presence of the question mark; rather, they told the truth of what they had “seen and heard” [cf. 1 John 1.1]. And thereby changed the world.

Catacombs in Rome

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Michael Kirke is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Position Papers, and a widely read blogger at Garvan Hill (www.garvan.wordpress.com). His views can be responded to at mjgkirke@gmail.com.

The genesis of Position Papers by Rev. Charles Connolly

ike every living thing Position Papers has developed over the years since 1973 when the first planning meeting took place. In fact it is fair to say that it has metamorphosed in recent times into a very attractive format, with a content that keeps one abreast of goings-on in Ireland, but always with an eye on the wider world.

and just about to launch out as a PR consultant; Jim Harman and John Leonard, both now deceased, who eventually took over the financial and distribution side of the operation; and myself.

If memory serves me correctly, we met for the first time in November or December 1973 in Nullamore where I was acting chaplain. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in this case was (with apologies to anyone whose name is omitted): Michael Adams RIP; Joe Murray, originally a journalist with the now-defunct Irish Press

The years after the close of the Second Vatican Council were times of upheaval. St John XXIII had opened the windows of the Church. Much good flowed in and found its way into the actual documents of the Council, hopefully bringing much good into the world. But along with the good also came ideas and openings which disturbed the faithful, not least in the areas of doctrine and morals.

Accordingly during those years much emphasis was placed on ensuring that the Catholic faithful knew thoroughly what had changed and what hadn’t, what could change and what couldn’t. Lectures and classes were the order of the day. This led to the notion to have something more permanent on offer. Hence the idea of a magazine that would present the teachings of the Church in an up-to-date fashion, incorporating what was of perennial value and linking it to the teachings of the Council. That in the matter of doctrine and morals there were disturbing trends is borne out by the attitude to Blessed Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical, Humanae Vitae, and by the fact that the same pope had to write an Encyclical on the Blessed Eucharist (Mysterium Fidei) and publish the Credo of the People of God. We started off with little cash but plenty of hope that we could reach a wide public. In those days (before the advent of the computer) we followed the ageold methods: a typesetter

produced galley proofs which were read and re-read (did we ever eliminate all the errata?); then an expert ‘pasted’ them up into our original format (A4 size); then they were sent off to the printer; then we took taking delivery of the papers (and oo-ed and ah-ed over the final version); and lastly we delivered them (by mail and by hand). It was a real adventure, always just about making ends meet at year’s end, breaking into the UK and USA markets and changing printers whenever we sussed out a better financial deal. With the arrival of the computer (the famous Commodore 64) the scene changed dramatically and more and more editorial work and layout were done by the staff (everyone was pitching in), until eventually only the actual printing was done out-of-house. Where the original papers carried only one or two articles, subsequent ones were expanded into four or five, without losing sight of the goal which was to have a well-formed laity, who were acquainted with the teaching of the Church and were

given positive insights into how they might influence, for the good, the society in which they lived. Very early on we published the text of a lecture given by Etienne Gilson. I always thought it summarized what we were trying to achieve, namely, Catholics who could take their rightful place in secular society from a position of strength, and who were not apologetic for being Catholic but rather saw in their beliefs what could make a healthy and life-giving contribution to politics, economics, education, family, marriage, etc. What he said was: â&#x20AC;&#x153;What I regret is that instead of confessing in all simplicity what we owe to our Church and to our faith, instead of showing what they bring to us and what we would not have without them, we believe it good politics or good tactics, in the interests of the Church itself, to act as if, after all, we distinguish ourselves in no way from others. What is the greatest praise that many among us may hope for? The greatest that the world can

give them: he is a Catholic, but he is really very nice; you would never think he was one. Ought not the very contrary be desired? Not indeed Catholics, who would wear their faith as a feather in their hat, but Catholics who would make Catholicism so enter into their everyday lives and work that the unbelieving would come to wonder what secret force animated that work and that life, and that, having discovered it, they would say to themselves, on the contrary: he is a very good man, and now I know why: it is because he is a Catholic.â&#x20AC;? We also thought that taking this line was in perfect harmony with the Second Vatican Council and its teaching on the primary role of the laity: â&#x20AC;&#x153;[T]he laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven.

They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity. Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemerâ&#x20AC;? (Lumen Gentium 31).

Over the years the magazine has grown, developed and matured. I left it behind some years ago now but each month I look forward to seeing and reading it. There is always something to catch my eye and keep me in touch with what is happening in our Church and our society.

ABOUT THEâ&#x20AC;¨ AUTHOR Rev Charles Connolly is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. He was editor of Position Papers from its beginning in 1974 until 2011. Before his ordination in 1971 he worked as a journalist for the Daily Mirror. For several years he was curate in the Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, Merrion Road, Dublin and is currently chaplain to Gort Ard University Centre in Galway.

“Be prophetic. Be faithful. Pray.” Cardinal Robert Sarah at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington Opening Remarks

1. The Situation of the World and the Mission of the Church

Thank you for inviting me to this remarkable gathering, in the company of such a distinguished audience. As you well know, what happens in the United States has repercussions everywhere. The entire globe looks to you, waiting and praying, to see what America resolves on the pressing challenges the world faces today. Such is your influence and responsibility. I do not say this lightly, because we find ourselves in such portentous times.

Rapid social and economic development in the past half century has not been accompanied by an equally fervent spiritual progress, as we witness what Pope Francis calls “globalized indifference”. It is the result of giving in to the delusion that we are selfsufficient, that man is his own measure in a pervasive individualism. It is manifested in the fear of suffering in our societies, our closing our eyes and hearts to the poor and vulnerable, and, in a very despicable way, in how we

discard the unborn and the elderly. When he prophetically announced the Second Vatican Council in the Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, Saint John XXIII remarked that the human community was in “turmoil” as it sought to establish a new world order where humanity relies entirely on technical and scientific solutions instead of God. Today we are witnessing the next stage – and the consummation – of the efforts to build a utopian paradise on earth without God. It is the stage of denying sin and the fall altogether. But the death of God results in the burial of good, beauty, love and truth. Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of sexual primal instincts, and truths are all relative. So all manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, but even promoted as a social good. The result is hostility to Christians, and, increasingly, religious persecution.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the threat that societies are visiting on the family through a demonic “gender ideology”, a deadly impulse that is being experienced in a world increasingly cut off from God through ideological colonialism. Saint Pope John XXIII observed in 1962: “Tasks of immense gravity and amplitude await the Church, as in the most tragic periods of her history. The Church must now inject the vivifying and perennial energies of the Gospel into the veins of the human community.” This remains the challenge that the Church is facing presently, more even than in 1962, and it is our task today. This is what I spoke of in my book God or Nothing: “Today the Church must fight against prevailing trends, with courage and hope, and not be afraid to raise her voice to denounce the hypocrites, the manipulators, and the false prophets. For two thousand years, the Church has faced many contrary winds but at the end of

the most difficult journey, the victory was always won.”

the innermost recesses of the conscience of our brothers and sisters, and heal the wounds inflicted on our humanity by sin.

2. The Family “The future of the world and the Church passes through the family.” These prophetic words of Saint John Paul II show how the Church, in our time, must, above all, defend and promote the beauty of the Christian family in fidelity to God’s design. In his post-synodal Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Lætitia (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis states clearly: “In no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur … proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being.” This is why the Holy Father openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children and much more. In my first five years as Archbishop of Conakry (Guinea, Africa), I made it my task to dedicate all of my pastoral letters to the family. Perhaps only the beauty of the family can reawaken the longing for God in

Saint John Paul, the Pope of the new evangelization, describes in Familiaris Consortio how the family is the first place where the Gospel is welcomed and is also the first herald of the Gospel. How true this is! The generous and responsible love of spouses, made visible through the self-giving of parents who welcome and nurture children as a gift of God, makes love visible in our generation. It makes present the perfect charity of the Trinity. “If you see charity, you see the Trinity,” wrote Saint Augustine. From the beginning of creation, God, who is a communion of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three different Persons, yet one – has built a Trinitarian structure into our very nature. In the continent of my origin, Africa, we declare: “Man is nothing without woman, woman is nothing without man, and the two are nothing without a third element, which is the child.” The

Triune God dwells within each of us and imbues our whole being: God’s own image and likeness. Every human being, like the persons of the Trinity, has the capacity to be united with other persons in communion through the vinculum caritatis – the bond of charity – of the Holy Spirit. The family is a natural preparation and anticipation of the communion that is possible when we are united with God. The family, as it were, is a natural praeparatio evangelica – preparation for the Gospel – written into our nature. This is why the devil is so intent on destroying the family. If the family is destroyed, we lose our God-given, anthropological foundations and so find it more difficult to welcome the saving Good News of Jesus Christ: selfgiving, fruitful love. St John Paul explained: if it is true that the family is the place where more than anywhere else human beings can flourish and truly be themselves, it is also a place where human beings can be humanly and spiritually wounded.

The rupture of the foundational relationships of someone’s life – through separation, divorce or distorted impositions of the family, such as cohabitation and same sex unions – is a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love unto death, and even leads to cynicism and despair. These situations cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love. They are a scandal – a stumbling block – that prevents the most vulnerable from believing in such love, and a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel. Advanced societies, including – I regret – this nation have done and continue to do everything possible to legalize such situations. But this can never be a truthful solution. It is like putting bandages on an infected wound. It will continue to poison the body until antibiotics are taken. Sadly, the advent of artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, so-called homosexual “marriage”, and other evils of

gender ideology, will inflict even more wounds in the midst of the generations we live with.

around the world because of their belief in Jesus Christ.

This is why it is so important to fight to protect the family, the first cell of the life of the Church and every society. This is not about abstract ideas. It is not an ideological war between competing ideas. This is about defending ourselves, children and future generations from a demonic ideology that says children do not need mothers and fathers. It denies human nature and wants to cut off entire generations from God. 3. Religious Freedom I encourage you to truly make use of the freedom willed by your founding fathers, lest you lose it. In so many other countries, on almost a daily basis, we hear of merciless beheadings, futile bombings of churches, torching of orphanages and ruthless expulsions of entire families from homes that religious minorities suffer worldwide simply because of their beliefs. Even in this yet young twenty-first century of barely 16 years, one million people have been martyred

Yet the violence against Christians is not just physical, it is also political, ideological and cultural. This form of religious persecution is equally damaging, yet more hidden. It does not destroy physically but spiritually; it demolishes the teaching of Jesus and His Church and, hence, the foundations of faith by leading souls astray. By this violence, political leaders, lobby groups and mass media seek to neutralize and depersonalize the conscience of Christians so as to dissolve them in a fluid society without religion and without God. This is the will of the Evil One: to close Heaven … out of envy. Do we not see signs of this insidious war in this great nation of the United States? In the name of “tolerance” the Church’s teachings on marriage, sexuality and the human person are dismantled. The legalization of same sex marriage, the obligation to accept contraception within health care programs, and even “bathroom bills” that allow men

to use the women’s restrooms and locker rooms. Should not a biological man use the men’s restroom? How simpler can that concept be? How low we are sinking for a nation built on a set of moral claims about God, the human person, the meaning of life, and the purpose of society, given by America’s first settlers and founders! God is named in your founding documents as “Creator” and “Supreme Judge” over individuals and government. The human person endowed with God-given and therefore inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” George Washington wrote that “the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the motive that induced me to the field of battle.” Today, we find ourselves before the battle of a sickness that has pervaded our world. I repeat: the battle of a sickness. That is what we face. I call this sickness “the liquidation, the eclipse of God”. Pope Francis describes the causes of this “sickness”. I quote:

“Religious liberty is not only that of thought or private worship. It is freedom to live according to ethical principles consequent upon the truth found, be it privately or publicly. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak thought – which is like a sickness – also lowers the general ethical level, and in the name of a false concept of tolerance ends up by persecuting those who defend the truth about man and the ethical consequences.” What are the remedies to this sickness? What should we do to protect the family, religious freedom, and marriage – as revealed to us by God? Concluding Remarks Before such a distinguished gathering, I offer three humble suggestions. 1. First: Be prophetic. The Book of Proverbs tells us: “Where there is no vision, discernment, the people perish” (29, 18). Discern carefully – in your lives, your homes, your workplaces – how, in your nation, God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated.

Blessed Paul VI saw that in 1968 when, for the Church, he so courageously wrote Humanae Vitae. What are the threats to Christian identity and the family today? ISIS, the growing influence of China, the colonization of ideologies such as gender? How do we react? 2. Be faithful. This is my second suggestion. Specifically for you, as men and women called to influence even the political sphere you have a mission of bringing Divine Revelation to bear in the lives of your fellow citizens. Uphold the wise principles of your founding fathers. Do not be afraid to proclaim the truth with love, especially about marriage according to God’s plan, just as courageously as Saint John the Baptist, who risked his life to proclaim the truth. The battle to preserve the roots of mankind is perhaps the greatest challenge that our world has faced since its origins. In the words of Saint Catherine of Siena: “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”

3. Third: Pray. Sometimes, in front of happenings in the world, our nation or even the Church, the results of our prayer might tempt us to become discouraged. Like Sisyphus in the Greek myth: condemned to roll a large boulder uphill, only to see it roll down again as soon as he had reached the top. Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est encourages us: “People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone.” Whether in doctrine or morality or everyday decisions, the heart of prayer is to discern God’s will. This can only happen in prolonged moments of silence where, like Elijah before the horrendous threats of Queen Jezebel, we allow the “gentle breeze” of God to enlighten us and confirm us along our journey to do God’s will. Such was the virginal silence of the Blessed Mother. At a marriage, the wedding feast of Cana, when for a new family “they have no wine,” Mary our Mother trusted in the grace given by Jesus to bestow the joy of love overflowing –

Amoris Lætitia. She pronounced her very last words, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2: 1-12). Then she remained silent. Be prophetic. Be faithful. Pray. That is why I came to this prayer breakfast. To encourage you. Be prophetic. Be faithful. And, above all, pray. These three suggestions suggest that the battle for the soul of America, and the soul of the world, is primarily spiritual. They show that the battle is fought firstly with our own conversion to God’s will every day. And so I wholly welcome this initiative, and join you in prayer that this great country may experience a new great “spiritual

awakening”, and help stem the tide of evil that is spreading in the world. I am confident that your efforts will no doubt contribute to protecting human life, strengthening the family, and safeguarding religious freedom not only here in these United States, but everywhere in the world. For in the end: it is “God or nothing.” Thank you very much. This is the full text of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, via the Catholic News Agency.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Cardinal Sarah serves as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and has recently published a book entitled God or Nothing.

In the national interest? by Rev. Patrick G. Burke

ore attention, I think, needs to be paid to the fact of how long it took to form a government after the last election. All the pundits and just about anyone with the slightest political nous were predicting long before the election counts were final that the only realistic option – other than another general election – was a minority led Fine Gael one propped up by Fianna Fáil support. That is what we now have. Yet of the 70 days between when the polls closed and when the new Taoiseach was elected by the Dáil, more time was spent in pursuit of the formation of a grand coalition between the two major parties, supposedly in the national interest.

Why was this, when anyone with a lick of sense knew that such an arrangement was just never going to happen? My own observation was that the media seemed to be very keen on the idea and promoted in heavily both in print and on the airwaves. I am not alone in my thinking. Eoghan Harris, writing in the Irish Independent, called it a ‘fantasy’ driven by the media. Given that this idea would have seen Fianna Fáil back in government and the largely liberal media in this country generally have little but contempt for that party one might be excused for wondering exactly why the media expended so much effort in trying coax, tempt, or bludgeon them into

this grand coalition and Mr. Harris did speculate as to why they did. But I have suggestions of my own as to what prompted all the media pressure. The first relates to the fact that Fianna Fáil, while not fully conservative on all matters, is the nearest thing Ireland has to a mainstream political party along those lines; and the media in Ireland is nakedly liberal. They would dearly love to see the party wiped out once and for all. They thought the mistakes made by the party during the boom years followed by a dramatic decline in support might have accomplished that. However, the electorate, to the dismay of the media, were more forgiving than they had hoped for as was shown by Fianna Fáil’s resurgence at the polls during the last election. I suspect the media hoped it could pressurise the party into this grand coalition with the ceaseless mantra that to do so was in in the ‘national interest’. This, of course, would have been political suicide for the party. It would have torn itself apart trying to come to terms with

what many members would have seen as being a betrayal of what Fianna Fáil has stood for since its inception. And then, come the next election, what was left would likely have gone the way of every other small party in government over recent years: one term in office followed by annihilation at the polls next time out. We have a long history of this. It was the fate suffered by, among others, the Workers Party, the Green Party, and the Progressive Democrats. Labour was the most recent victim of what might be termed ‘the incredible shrinking supporting partner in government’ syndrome. Ireland's media has been frothing at the mouth at the sight of FF making such a powerful political comeback; a few years of them in government would be a small price to pay as long as it helped to nail down the lid of their coffin. But that would have been simply an added bonus, the icing on the cake so to speak. The most important reason was that the large majority enjoyed by the last coalition produced a

government that was curiously subject to allowing itself to be influenced by the media – especially on controversial social issues. We’ve had a lot of liberal policy changes introduced into this country during the time of the last government, and the media played a large part not only in beginning the campaigns to have these changes, but making sure they ended in the passing of the legislation needed to make them a reality. There was, for example, the 31st Amendment to the Constitution, which reduced the rights of parents claiming to do so in the interests of children’s rights, whose only apparent effect was to give greater rights to the state to interfere with traditional family rights. There was the socalled ‘Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill’, which claimed to allow for abortion only when the life of the mother was threatened, but which actually provides for the death of the child up to nine-months gestation on the grounds of suicidal ideation – despite the accepted fact that abortion is in no way a treatment in cases where a mother is threatening

self-harm. And most recently there was the referendum to allow for same-sex marriage, something that went to the top of the government agenda on the basis of a media pressure despite no prior public perception that it was a pressing issue. As noted above, the impetus for these changes was largely media driven. So it’s not hard to suspect that having had so much success with the formula last time out, the media would be keen to see a government with a big majority in place again – a government that didn’t need to worry too much about debating controversial issues in the Dáil, and a government capable of using the whip and the guillotine to ram legislation home with as little discussion as possible. All done, of course, in the national interest, and the media’s idea of what is in the national interest is further ‘progressive’ social change. The end of denominational schools is one of their pet projects, and one that is even dearer to their hearts is to pave the way for abortion on demand in this country by repealing the Eighth Amendment.

That the attempt to pressure the parties into forging a grand coalition has failed might on the surface seem to be something of a victory for those who still hold to traditional values in this country. After all, it means that it will be harder for the media to influence government than last time out. But it is not as simple as that. The media will continue to push the agenda of the liberal elite. There will be an endless stream of articles directly attacking what is left of traditional values in this country. There will be myriad ‘casual’ asides dropped into opinion pieces whose ostensible focus is entirely unrelated. A poisoned phrase dropped in here and there along the lines of

‘religion is oppressive’, ‘denominational schools are discriminatory’, ‘abortion is a human right’. This constant drip-drip of almost subliminal campaigning must be fought, for this is the campaign strategy of the lie repeated often enough appearing to be the truth. We have to challenge every such reference, overt and covert, where we find them and not let ourselves be worn down by the seeming endlessness of it all. To do so would be to concede the field, because battles like this never end. What we are called to do is soldier on; because refusing to yield, refusing to let traditional values be trodden underfoot – that is what is truly in the national interest.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR The Rev Patrick G Burke is the Church of Ireland rector of the Castlecomer Union of Parishes, Co Kilkenny. A regular contributor to Position Papers, he was formerly a broadcast journalist with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. He blogs at http://thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie/

Celebration – the Key to the Renewal of Irish Catholicism? by Rev. Vincent Twomey

aynooth, Corpus Christi 2016. In most of the Catholic World, this great feast is marked by Processions of the Blessed Sacrament through the bunting-strewn streets of cities and villages. But not in Maynooth, or, as far as I can tell, in any of the towns in the neighbourhood, where three dioceses converge. When I was growing up, the Corpus Christi public Procession was a feature of many a town and village, at least in Co. Cork. But Cork city’s own Corpus Christi Procession was in a league of its own. Bishop Daniel Coholan started the tradition in 1926 in response to a request by businessmen. It was a truly great occasion. The Procession was

that of the men, who, dressed in their Sunday best, proudly walked from the surrounding parishes into city centre. Brass bands played lustily as we headed for Daunt’s Square at the confluence of Pana (Patrick’s Street) and the Grand Parade. There a huge outdoor altar was erected, at the centre of which was an oval picture of the Sacred Heart. The Bishop of Cork carried the Monstrance from the North Chapel (then the Pro-Cathedral) – under a gleaming canopy (or baldachin) of white silk and gold thread, accompanied by four smart cadets with raised swords – down to St Mary’s Quay, over Patrick’s Bridge, down the length of Patrick’s Street (Pana

to the natives) right up to Daunt’s Square, at the centre of the city. Before the bishop were the serried ranks of the city’s secular clergy and Religious, after him, uniformed platoons of the Gardai, the army and the navy, the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city. as well as professors from UCC, all in their colourful robes and uniforms. As in the houses in the suburbs and back streets, so too were the main streets strewn with bunting and papal flags hung from private homes and public buildings. Images of Our Lord and Our Lady surrounded by a vast array of flowers replaced the usual fashion displays in the big shop windows, while young girls in their First Communion dresses strew rose petals to create a carpet for the magnificently coped Bishop to walk on, carrying the monstrance with bare and bowed head.

renowned for their piety – pass by. All knelt in awe-some adoration, as the golden Monstrance passed them, sweet incense from swinging thuribles wafting through the Summer breeze.

The women and children had already made their leisurely way into the city. They lined the pavements of Patrick Street and the other streets, where they watched with wonder at their marching men folk – not always

We wended our weary way into the city. Gone were the Papal Flags and bunting that used to be strewn from the houses in the parish. The secularisation of Ireland cannot be entirely blamed, since it is still

Cork’s annual Procession was always held on the Sunday after Corpus Christi, though the actual Feast was on a Thursday. A decade or so ago, I happened to be in Cork for Corpus Christi and decided to join my own parish for the Procession. I was shocked. It was a sad sight. Some time previously, the Bishop had decreed that women could also walk in the Procession. A small straggly crowd gathered at the church gates to be led by the PP into the city. It was made up mainly of older women and some younger women with children in prams, The men mostly stayed at home.

celebrated with great colour in other secular states of Europe (e.g. the Catholic States of Federal Germany). The day is even marked with a public holiday in some countries. One or other brass band was to be heard, but their plaintive sound of half-forgotten hymns was more mournful than robust. In the Grand Parade the full crowd amounted to a few thousand at the most – compared to the some 50,000, if my memory serves me right, that in my youth filled the length and breadth of Patrick Street, and the Grand Parade, not to mention the broad expanse of Washington Street. The altar seemed to be more or less the same as fifty years ago, though in need of a lick of fresh paint. The Rosary was loudly recited over a brash loudspeaker in English and Irish, the response a muffled murmur. The bedraggled clergy looked anything but smart. There was a sermon – eminently forgettable – followed by the traditional Benediction (the woeful singing

accompanied by a dull harmonium). Since then, the shape of things have changed somewhat. According to a press release for the 2014 Procession: This year, as in previous years, the numbers in the procession were greatly enhanced by members of the Asian, African and Eastern European Communities in the city. A particular welcome was afforded by the large crowd in Daunt’s Square to greet the arrival of the Polish and Indian communities, accompanied by their chaplains. Father Piotr Gallus, the Polish Chaplain, led the Rosary from the Altar in Daunt’s Square. Special places were reserved for the sick and those in wheelchairs adjacent to the altar in Daunt’s Square.1 It would seem that the Corpus Christi Procession in Cork has in

http://www.catholicbishops.ie/2014/06/22/annual-eucharistic-procession-in-corkmarks-89th-year/

one sense become more Catholic by reason of the presence of the migrant communities in the city. Perhaps the migrants in their colourful costumes might help transform the “Annual Eucharistic Procession” (the new name is so anaemic) into something truly Catholic, more universal and more resembling the joyous festivities that shape the whole year in other Catholic counties – and in earlier times in Ireland, such as the Pattern Days, May Processions, etc. Summer is the festive season in secular Ireland, though these, essentially secular, festivals occur throughout the year. In the past few decades, Ireland, it seems to me, has been slowly recovering from the dark antiChristian – and so anti-human – shadow cast over our ancient Catholic tradition by 19thcentury cultural developments marked by Victorian Protestant respectability (the dominant essentially puritan Christianity) and Catholic legalistic moral theology. Both of these cultural factors were anything but lifeaffirming. They are often identified with so-called

“traditional Irish Catholicism”, which is in its death throes. It will not be missed. Today, Ireland is in a sense more Catholic than then, as reflected in the thousands of festivals of every hue and cry that are held up and down the country, especially during the Summer season: people rejoicing in music, dance, poetry reading, and wide-ranging debates in the Summer Schools. The recent 1916 celebrations have shown how we Irish too can do pageantry well, indeed we do it in such a way as to make us proud to be Irish. Today the Catholic Church is most of the time rarely little more than an empty building (often interiorly vandalized by progressive clerics). At most, the local Catholic church is simply part of the backdrop to all the festivities – a dark silhouette on the hill, while in the bright, bunting-bedecked squares and streets below people of all ages, but especially our amazingly talented youth, enjoy themselves. More power to them! And yet, all these festivals around the country, which are to

be heartily welcomed, cannot replace a truly religious celebration. Indeed, they can easily become forms of escapism, while some often end in a sea of alcohol.

victory alone enables us to be life-affirming. “That is why we utter the Amen through him to the glory of God” (2 Cor 22).

Today’s festivals, though they help alleviate the underlying loneliness and inner emptiness of secular society, cannot fill the void at the heart of contemporary Irish society. As Josef Pieper, echoing Nietzsche, put it, you cannot truly celebrate unless you can say “Yes” to life, to reality as it is. And this affirmation of life is only possible ultimately when we know that God says Yes to us and to our broken world - which is the essence of our faith. “All the promises of God find their Yes in him [Jesus Christ]” (2 Cor 1:20). All that the human heart yearns for, all that promise which God built into our DNA, all that God promised the Chosen People, all our longing of happiness is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who says Yes to us personally and collectively: “how good that you are!” To be a Christian is to share in His victory over sin and death, which

The first task of the Irish Church today, it seems to me, is to discover once again how to celebrate, how to organize our own public festivals, which, like the old Pattern days and May Processions, are life-affirming, that express and engender joy in the participants. Music. By means of authentic art and dance, good food and drink, all God’s good creation must experienced as beautiful; it is to be enjoyed. This can only happen, if our festivities are ultimately rooted in an experience of the sublime – in and through the liturgy. That is the subject of another article. Suffice it is to say here that, in order for the faithful to be able to “lift up their hearts” in joyful worship in company of the angels and saints (and afterwards enjoy a street party), we celebrants must overcome the legalistic minimalism, which we clerics (liberal and traditional alike) inherited from the preConciliar culture. Good though it

is to fulfil one’s Sunday obligation and stick to the (few but important) rubrics that are left in the reformed liturgy, it is not enough. We must recover “the Spirit of the liturgy” (J. Ratzinger) though the excitement of discovering the Truth through communal study and reflection in our parish communities. After that, we might be in a position to create an new Irish Catholic public culture. Our hugely talented youth need to be welcomed in (even if they are not practicing at present) to offer their creativity, not only for the liturgy but for what is celebrated outside, in the what I call the overflow of the liturgy onto the

streets and squares. Then all the world can sing and dance and give thanks to God. People must taste and see that the Lord is good, that it is worth living, that is it is good to be alive, to be here on God’s good earth redeemed by the blood of the innocent Lamb so that we can once again experience that “The world is charged with the splendour of God” (G.M. Hopkins). Now, in the here and now, we can learn to enjoy the good things of God’s creation – and to learn again what it is to be truly Catholic in modern Ireland where the Irish Church is in the process of becoming multicultural – and more Catholic. © D. Vincent Twomey SVD

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D. holds both a Ph.D. in Theology and is Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland. A formal doctoral student under Joseph Ratzinger, Twomey is the author of several books, including his acclaimed study of the state of Irish Catholicism, The End of Irish Catholicism?

Shakespeare and the fading of the catholic world by Bishop Robert Barron

ast April the world marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the greatest writer in the English language and one of the three or four most significant artists the human race has produced. William Shakespeare simply contains so much. In the manner of Dante, Homer, Michelangelo, James Joyce, and Aquinas, he seems to encompass the whole: every texture of feeling, every nuance of thought, the tragedy of sin, the most exquisite longings of the soul, the most confounding confusions, heaven, hell, and everything in between. It is, of course, this very capaciousness that has made possible such a variety of readings of his work. Kenneth

Clark, relying perhaps on the darkest of Macbeth’s soliloquies – “Life’s but a walking shadow/ a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing” – read Shakespeare as the harbinger of post-religious nihilism; Freud saw, especially in “Hamlet,” a foreshadowing of his psychological theories; Rene Girard appreciated “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Merchant of Venice,” and “Othello” as anticipations of his own musings on mimetic desire and the scapegoating mechanism. Some feminists love Shakespeare and others can’t stand him; he has been portrayed as the ultimate defender of the status quo and as an explicit revolutionary; there are Catholic and Protestant and

even atheist construals of the Bard. My former colleague, the late, great Fr. Edward Oakes, an ardent Bardophile, always argued that Shakespeare himself remains permanently elusive, smiling like the Cheshire cat behind the vividness of his characters and the energy of his dramaturgy. Though I have been impressed by much of the recent scholarship purporting to show that Shakespeare was in fact a canny and clandestine Catholic, prudently making his way through the ideological minefields of Elizabethan England, I don’t want to pursue that analysis here. Mindful that the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (2016) almost exactly coincides with the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation (2017), I want to make a related though simpler claim, namely, that, whatever his personal religious commitments, the great poet, throughout his work, was indeed mourning the fading of an integrated Catholic milieu. I might suggest we begin with the beloved sonnet number 73, in

which Shakespeare remarks the passing of his own life: “That time of year thou mayest in me behold/ when yellow leaves or none or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” He has come to the autumn of his years, the last stage before the lifelessness of winter. Shifting metaphors, he speaks of a flame dying down: “In me thou seest the glowing of such fire/ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie/ As the death bed whereon it must expire.” But it is not simply his own existence that he sees passing away, and the clue is found in that lyrical reference to “bare ruined choirs.” Those are indeed the naked branches from which the summer birds have long fled, but they are also the choir stalls of the monasteries, wrecked by Henry VIII’s enthusiasm for reformation and need for quick financing. The sweet-singing monks, chased away and in hiding, are representative of a Catholic culture, marked by beauty and majestic liturgy, that was, by Shakespeare’s time, fast evanescing.

In many of his greatest plays, Shakespeare shows the givingway of an old order through the efforts of puritanical, even fanatic, revolutionaries. In “Julius Caesar,” the grand old man is done to death by a band of conspirators who see themselves as the agents of liberation: “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” they shout as they stand around Caesar’s body, and as they bathe in Caesar’s blood, they exult: “How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown!” That Shakespeare is unsympathetic with the murderers becomes clear in his crafting of Antony’s oration and also in his contrivance of the haunting of Brutus and Cassius by Caesar’s ghost. But it is equally clear that Caesar is not without guilt. His physical deafness is evocative of a psychological and spiritual deafness to the needs of his people and the intensity of the opposition party, and his egoism and self-satisfaction are on almost constant display. Just one example among many: “I could well be moved if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers

would move me. But I am constant as the Northern Star.” If the conspirators symbolize the reformers, then might Caesar represent a Catholic establishment that was majestic indeed, but also smug and insensitive to the need for change? As Owen Chadwick, the great historian of the Reformation, put it: “Anyone who mattered at the beginning of the sixteenth century, thought that the Church stood in need of reform.” This included Erasmus as well as the saintly and fiercely Catholic Thomas More. Was Shakespeare subtly suggesting that the very violence of the Reformation was, to a degree, the product of a certain deafness and pride on the part of the Catholic leadership? We find something very similar in the late play “Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare portrays the famous lovers as sensuous, funny, volatile, romantic, larger than life, and deeply dysfunctional. And their great opponent, Caesar Augustus, who eventually overwhelms them, is depicted as stark, rational, unbending, legalistic, and humorless. To be sure, Antony

and Cleopatra are hardly saints, and to a degree they gave rise to Augustus’s opposition. But Shakespeare rather obviously mourns their passing and that of the entire world they represent. Are star-crossed Antony and Cleopatra the doomed Catholic culture that is fading away under the pressure from an efficient, rationalistic Protestant movement? And might the tension between the two worlds be best summed up in Shakespeare’s greatest and most fully-imagined character? Prince Hamlet is identified as a student in Luther’s University of Wittenberg and yet he confronts the ghost of his father visiting him from Purgatory, a place explicitly denied by Protestant theology! Are the very madness and suicidal depression of Hamlet not the symbolic expressions of the deep psychological anxiety produced by the clash between two ways of life, one fading and the other only beginning to emerge? And is the ghost of Hamlet’s father perhaps the spirit of the old Catholicism still haunting the minds of Protestant Englishmen?

I don’t intend this article to be an exercise in Catholic triumphalism. As I’ve suggested, Shakespeare finds plenty to criticize on both sides of the Reformation divide. But I wonder whether everyone can agree that Shakespeare was indeed mourning the loss of something that came apart in the sixteenth century – something beautiful and something worth putting back together. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Word on Fire and first appeared on www.wordonfire.org.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Bishop Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry.

Director and writer Jeff Nichols Starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst

Film review:   Midnight Special

USA

by Michael Aherne

n many ways Jeff Nichols is like his filmmaking peer Edgar Wright whose Scott Pilgrim and Cornetto Trilogy I’ve already reviewed. He has made only four films, none of which have had particularly big budgets, and in that time he has formed a completely idiosyncratic style. That’s where the similarities stop. Nichols makes deceptively simple films that cover the spectrum of the human experience, from first love to parenthood to letting go, in a way that never topples into pure sentimentality nor pure intellectualism. Instead he allows his deep themes to seep into your consciousness. Films like Midnight Special are the end result.

Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) is on the run across the American South with his eightyear-old son Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher). The boy is gifted with many remarkable psychic abilities that often shine through in episodic fits. During these, walls might collapse and bright lights emit from his eyes. He would cry out apparently random series of numbers. His abilities resulted in his adoptive father Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard) building a cult called “the Ranch” around him. His kidnapping from the Ranch piqued the interest of the FBI – and NSA agent Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) who has found that Alton’s numbers correlate with top secret information. Now not only outrunning the Ranch but the government as

well, Roy – with the help of his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) and Alton’s mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst) – must get Alton to a specific location within four days, for a reason of possibly cosmic importance… Recently I watched Jeff Nichols’ Mark-Twain-inspired comingof-age drama Mud, and the immense talent, showcased in that film, has really come to fruition in Midnight Special. Nichols has an eye for beautiful, loose compositions that often play longer than the contemporary style. I felt in Mud that he used too much cutting, possibly for fear of boring the audience or because he lacked confidence in the strength of his shots. In Midnight Special, however, with the assistance of cinematographer Adam Stone and editor Julie Monroe, Nichols puts much more information in each shot and plays them out much longer, creating a pace that some may find slow but which I found to be beautifully pensive, a rare trait in a film labelled a sci-fi thriller.

The acting is very strong all round, though I felt Edgerton and Dunst were more competent than memorable. Driver, known to most people as Kylo Ren from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is clearly much more at home here than on the Starkiller, striking a perfect balance between the dedicated seriousness of a scientist and the passionate heart of a kid looking through his telescope on a starry night. Lieberher and Shannon, however, gave the best performances of the entire cast. Lieberher’s occasional, empty seriousness that child actors are prone to is completely overshadowed by his earnestness and maturity. Shannon conveys all the strength, conviction and tenderness of a loving father almost entirely through his piercing eyes. One feels genuine connection between the two actors in the film’s quietest moments. Though the film does feature a cult, I don’t feel it is a film about religion. Obviously, any group of people that employ

violent means in following their beliefs should not be condoned. The film never suggests that those beliefs are wrong or that those holding them are ignorant. I would argue that Midnight Special, like Star Wars before it, is a decidedly theistic film that never advertises itself as so such. Unlike Star Wars where the Force was employed as a story device, Alton’s powers make the story. I admire Nichols’ courage in trusting the audience to follow an almost entirely conceptual film in which the plot takes the passenger seat.

not governed by logic but by pure understanding. The tagline for this film is “He’s Not Like Us”. Midnight Special will make you wonder if that’s really so.

This film will not please everyone. The thriller fan may find it unrepentantly slow and the sci-fi fan may be confused by the film’s ending. But, if you leave your genre expectations at the door, Midnight Special – with Nichols’ steady direction and minimal writing, Stone’s casually breath-taking imagery, and the beautifully ambient score by David Wingo – will bypass both your heart and your brain and connect with a higher level of your consciousness, one

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Michael Aherne has just completed First Arts in University College Dublin where he is studying English and Philosophy.

Ratzinger Symposium 2016 Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland 10.30am – 5pm, Saturday 2nd July 2016

Workshop on Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s Recent Interview on Faith, Mercy and Justification Maynooth, Co. Kildare Professor D Vincent Twomey and Dr Mary McCaughey Suggested contribution of €10

For further information and to register, please contact info@ratzingersymposium.org

FEI special guest speaker:

'Working towards   an anxiety-free family life'

Dr. Kevin Majeres M.D. of the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he teaches a weekly class on   cognitive-behavioral therapy   to psychiatrists-in-training.

Sunday, August 21st at 4pm Entrance fee: €20 per person (€30 per couple)

Rosemont School  Enniskerry Rd, Sandyford,   Co. Dublin   (see www.rosemont.ie)

For further information see www.familyenrichment.org