Position Papers - December 2014 by Position Papers

A review of Catholic affairs

Lourdes: not a holiday Newman and the importance of Catholic literature Mums: talk to your kids! In passing: Regrettable foolishness of Hilary Mantel? Civilization's most beautiful idea Film review: Interstellar

Number 484 December 2014

Winning vocations €3 £2.50 $4

If you would like to subscribe or donate to Position Papers (10 issues per year) just fill in the form below and return it to: Subscriptions Manager P.O. Box 4948 Rathmines, Dublin 6

Number 484 December 2014

Editorial

Lourdes: not a holiday Seán Hurley

Newman and the importance of Catholic literature Father John McCloskey

Priests promoting priestly vocations Bishop Denis Nulty

Mums: talk to your kids! Luz Ariztía de Searle

In passing: Regrettable foolishness of Hilary Mantel? Michael Kirke

Civilization's most beautiful idea Lord Jonathan Sacks

Film review: Interstellar John Mulderig

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. Printed by Gemini Printers, Plato Business Park, Dublin 15.

Editorial

n Tuesday, November 25, Pope Francis gave a magisterial address to the European parliament in Strasbourg, addressing, as he said himself, the five hundred million or so Europeans through the parliament. It was a call to Europe to recover the spirit which lies at the source of its once, though now receding, greatness. Europe needs to leave behind technical utilitarianism and return to the metaphysical values on which it was built: At the heart of this ambitious political project was confidence in man, not so much as a citizen or an economic agent, but in man, in men and women as persons endowed with transcendent dignity. At the heart of his message was a challenge to the bureaucrats of the European Union to recover the transcendental dimension of the human beings that they govern, for, as things stand, there is a “growing mistrust” of an institution perceived as being essentially heartless: In recent years, as the European Union has expanded, there has been growing mistrust on the part of citizens towards institutions considered to be aloof, engaged in laying down rules perceived as insensitive to individual peoples, if not downright harmful. In fact what the Pope said last month echoes a similar analysis made by the one time Czech dissident intellectual and later head of State, Václav Havel, in an address he made to the same parliament in 1994. Back then, Havel described to the assembled parliament how his initial enthusiasm for the European Union was tempered on closer examination: However, into my admiration, which initially verged on enthusiasm, there began to intrude a disturbing, less exuberant feeling. I felt I was looking into the inner workings of an absolutely perfect and immensely ingenious modern machine. To study such a machine must be a great joy to an admirer of technical inventions, but for me, whose interest in the world is not satisfied by admiration for well-oiled machines, something was seriously missing, something that could be called, in a rather simplified way, a spiritual or moral or emotional dimension. The treaty addressed my reason, but not my heart  (Václav Havel, Strasbourg, March 8, 1994).

Editorial

Both men identify the same core defect at the heart of Europe: for Václav Havel, the “spiritual or moral or emotional dimension” is absent from this “machine”; for Pope Francis, Europe has grown old and weary and has exchanged its once vibrant idealism for “the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions”. The Pope warned the European parliament that, because the governing bodies of the EU have abandoned the spiritual dimension of man for a pure bureaucratic functionalism, the citizens of Europe feel increasingly alienated. Perhaps the great success of anti-EU parties in the May 2014 European elections, not only in the historically eurosceptic UK, but even traditionally more EU sympathetic countries such as France, Germany and Denmark can to some degree be understood as a protest against mechanistic government. Even here in Ireland a recent attempt to introduce water charges was met with a huge and energetic backlash by some of the populace (especially significant here where the citizens tend to be more biddable than most of our European brethren). These protests appear to have been sparked by the heartless and bureaucratic manner in which the proposal was presented. The Pope presents European politicians with an alternative way of governing; one which refuses to reduce man to homo economicus or to allow politics be reduced to “technical and economic questions”. The future of Europe depends on this, say Pope Francis: A Europe which is no longer open to the transcendent dimension of life is a Europe which risks slowly losing its own soul and that “humanistic spirit” which it still loves and defends.

Lourdes: not a holiday by Seán Hurley

wo days into the start of Sixth Year I ditched the books and headed off to Lourdes with Kerry Diocesan Pilgrimage. Last year, I was selected as one of four helpers from my school to help aid the sick, elderly and disabled travellers. Around three hundred people went on the pilgrimage in all including forty helpers mostly made up of College and Sixth Year students interspersed with a few older, wiser heads to guide us along. I’m not joking when I say it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had!

One of the recurring themes at the meeting for first time helpers the week before we left was “It’s NOT a holiday!” We were duly informed that our prime role was to aid the incapacitated pilgrims. Any personal dreams I harboured of a relaxing holiday were quickly dashed when I arrived in Farranfore, Kerry’s local airport. It seemed more like military training than a pilgrimage, as we had to lug numerous pilgrims’ bags onto the Check In, almost all of which exceeded the recommended weight! The next task for the helpers came, when all the pilgrims were safely

through Security, and seated in the airport lounge. We had to make them a cup of tea. Sounds easy doesn’t it? You have no idea how stressful it is ensuring that every pilgrim has a cup of tea of the right consistency and warmth for each particular pilgrim’s palette and that the right kind of chocolate bar is served up! When my head hit the pillow in my hotel in Lourdes after a tough day of work, I fell fast asleep!

take in what was going on. I came out of the bath strangely invigorated and I asked the Spanish attendant on duty if he had ever seen a change come over a person on going in to the bath. He told me he had witnessed “People coming to Lourdes with a whole pile of baggage but leaving with a new sense of determination and hoping to take on the world.” On hearing this I’m reminded of my late friend Donal Walsh who visited Lourdes before he died of cancer last year. While he didn’t get the miraculous cure he perhaps hoped for, I’m sure Our Lady gave him the grace he needed to shamelessly speak out against suicide and capture the nation’s heart.

One of the highlights of the trip came later the following day as we went to the world famous baths of Lourdes. Since the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858 and told her to drink from the spring, millions of pilgrims have come to Lourdes on hearing about the miracles that happened there. We were told horror stories from more seasoned helpers that you would be submerged into the bath head first! Needless to say I approached the bath with an air of apprehension, but thankfully this particular rumour turned out to be untrue. One was in and out in a matter of seconds before one had time to

As the week went on we found ourselves bonding with fellow pilgrims as if we’d known each other our whole lives. Many of the helpers formed an extremely close rapport with pilgrims they were tending to. You would quickly get to know an elderly pilgrim’s entire life story as you took him or her for a stroll in the wheelchair down by the river or simply for a pint of Guinness in

the local pub. In these moments I realised the social aspect of the pilgrimage was just as important as the spiritual one. Sometimes in obsessing over the big miracles of Lourdes, you miss out on the little ones. These were evident to me, in the transformation some the elderly people underwent over the pilgrimage. Many pilgrims would come to Lourdes depressed and burdened with loneliness, perhaps having minimal human contact all year round. These same people would leave Lourdes with a new zeal and love for life. I’m certain that the youth, vigour and generosity of the helpers helped achieve this.

of pilgrims, still kneeling town praying in the candlelight. It was an extremely moving sight and I decided to kneel down and said my own final goodbye to Our Lady. I felt a tear trickle down my face as I contemplated how unworthy I was to kneel down in front of her. Laura, a fellow helper, and I then had our “Nawwh” moment as we lit a candle asking Our Lady to watch over us during our Leaving Cert year. The Leaving Cert examns truly never seemed further away as the wax dropped from the candle, and the stream gushed in the background as Our Lady looked down on us.

One of my most abiding memories of Lourdes was visiting the Grotto of Our Lady on the last night. After a parting meal in the local restaurant, a group of the helpers decided to head down to the Grotto to say goodbye to Our Lady. By this time it was 1:00 a.m. and the main gates were locked, so we decided to head down by the side entrance. We were expecting the Grotto to be deserted but were extremely moved to see a group

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Seán Hurley is a sixth year student at Mercy Mounthawk Secondary School, Tralee, Co. Kerry. He hopes to study Law and Business in UCD.

Newman and the importance of Catholic literature by Father John McCloskey

ver the years, I have often written on the importance of spiritual reading for growth in holiness. Good Catholic books are also a great outreach to family, friends, and multitudes of ignorant and fallen-away Catholics, not to mention the millions of our countrymen who are pagans at best and atheists in practice.

Of course, Christian literature goes back to the Scriptures and the first centuries of the Faith. A lot of that is well enough known or at least appreciated. My emphasis here is on recommendations from Catholic poetry and fiction, including great novels from all over the world that are generally available in translation and easily accessible via your iPad or Kindle. Some of these may even be gathering dust in your attic or basement, just waiting to be rediscovered.

But in addition to what we might technically consider "spiritual" reading, I would like to offer some recommendations of a rather different kind of book. Many people are not fully aware of the depth and breadth of Christian literature covering two millennia and every genre of writing.

Blessed John Henry Newman gave a classic justification for paying attention to such works. In his lectures to the students at the Catholic university that he founded in Dublin in the mid-1800s (later published as The Idea of the University), he

discusses the meaning and purpose of Catholic literature. And he draws very interesting distinctions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and lessons from them:

could assume most people would understand what he was getting at: "Why it is important to have them treated by Catholics hardly need be explained hereâ&#x20AC;Ś For it is evident that, if by a Catholic Literature were meant nothing more or less than a religious literature, its writers would be mainly ecclesiastics; just as writers on Law are mainly lawyers, and writers on Medicine are mainly physicians or surgeons."

When a "Catholic Literature in the English tongue" is spoken of as a desideratum, no reasonable person will mean by "Catholic works" much more than the "works of Catholics." The phrase does not mean a religious literature. "Religious Literature" indeed would mean much more than "the Literature of religious men;" it means over and above this, that the subjectmatter of the Literature is religious; but by "Catholic Literature" is not to be understood a literature which treats exclusively or primarily of Catholic matters, of Catholic doctrine, controversy, history, persons, or politics; but it includes all subjects of literature whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat them.

The point has a bearing far beyond what might apply in professional groups or academic disciplines: "if this be so, a Catholic Literature is no object special to a University, unless a University is to be considered identical with a Seminary or a Theological School." For Newman, the importance of literature stems from our very nature and God-given powers as human beings, especially language:

Newman was clearly trying to stake out a particular kind of writing that would not be the usual apologetics or spiritual works or theology. In his day, he

If by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is

relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,—if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,—if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family, – it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life, – who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.

from EWTN, online as MP3s or may be purchased in DVD format.) I chose men and women much more knowing than I as my guests (people like Ralph McInerny, Joseph Bottom, and The Catholic Thing's own Robert Royal). So if you want to get a flying start into Catholic literature, you won't go wrong here: St. Augustine, Dante, Pascal, Manzoni, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sigrid Undset, Bernanos, Tolkien, Walker Perc y, F l a n n e r y O ' C o n n o r, Sienkiewicz, Calderon de la Barca, Hilaire Belloc, Fr. Ronald Knox, Fr. Robert Hugh Benson, G.K. Chesterton, Shakespeare, Edwin O'Connor, Ralph McInerny, Fr. Thomas Merton. And there are dozens upon dozens more for you to encounter. With the general decline in knowledge of Catholic culture, it's a good time to start that Catholic Book club with your friends, as well as pagans, agnostics, or fallen-away and potential Catholics. And there are plenty more great works where these came from. Who knows? Maybe you will one day write one yourself!

In the desire to propagate these and other benefits of Catholic literature, some years ago I hosted two series on Catholic authors. (They are still available

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Father C. John McCloskey, III, STD is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He currently is Research Fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC. From 1985 to 1990, he was a chaplain at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for guiding into the Church such luminaries as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Lawrence Kudlow, Robert Novak, Judge Robert Bork and Senator Sam Brownback.

Priests promoting priestly vocations by Bishop Denis Nulty

will begin with that Ordination Date – August 4th 2013 – the feast day of St. John Vianney, the patron of all priests. Choosing that date was very important to me, as it has allowed me to establish a clear emphasis on the priesthood from the very get-go of my episcopacy in Kildare & Leighlin. The diocese has indeed a very proud historic tradition. The Kildare end owes its origin to St. Brigid in 470 AD and St. Conleth in 490 AD, Conleth becoming the first Bishop of Kildare. St. Erc of my native parish of Slane was, we are told by historians, an intimate friend of St. Brigid and he took an active part in the consecration of Conleth. What does ‘an active part’ in the consecration suggest? Well he was obviously invited and had an important role there. The Leighlin end can be traced back to St. Laserian. It’s Laserian we thank for determining the date of Easter following a Synod at Leighlin in 630 AD. The two dioceses were amalgamated in 1678 by St. Oliver Plunkett, the Loughcrew man who became Archbishop of Armagh. The union of Leighlin and Kildare was deemed nec-

essary because there were insufficient funds to support two separate administrations. Today the amalgamated diocese stretches from its most northerly tip at Moyvalley in the parish of Balyna to its most southerly point, St. Mullins, where the river Barrow becomes tidal, flowing out at Waterford Harbour. Apparently that’s just in case I need a quick escape! The statistics of Kildare & Leighlin Diocese paint a picture that allows me to frame this morning’s subject matter – ‘Priests Promoting Priestly Vocations’. There are 56 parishes in the Diocese. The estimated population (a quarter of a million) is about 10,000 short on the Meath total but when the Ploughing Championships are on in Ratheniska, or the races at the Curragh or Naas, or when the Electric Picnic is taking place in Stradbally, the population of the Diocese then well exceeds that of Meath! Let’s return to the priestly profile of Kildare & Leighlin. There are 95 priests in active ministry in the Diocese. Out of

the 95 in active ministry, 15 are non-diocesan priests. Of the 80 diocesan or Kildare & Leighlin priests in active ministry, one is on loan to the Dublin Regional Marriage Tribunal; a second is on extended leave in the United States; a third is currently on sabbatical. There are two men full time in St. Patrick’s College, Carlow, a Diocesan Chancellor and a full time Vocations Director, appointed only recently. Of the remaining 73 ministering in what might be termed ‘Parish Responsibilities’, 17 are over 75, the seventeenth just celebrating his 75th birthday today. There is no priest in the Diocese today under 40. We have 21 fully retired priests and just one seminarian currently in formation, David Vard. David is now in his Second Divinity year, presently on pastoral placement in Graiguecullen Parish, on the outskirts of Carlow. From a hurried hearing of the priestly profile of the diocese, you can sense why this morning’s topic is very close to my heart. I went to secondary school at St. Pat’s in Navan, a short distance from here. It was the

priests there who were most influential on my own vocation – the late Fr. Seamus Dunican on the early morning run around the infamous ‘All Weather Pitch’; the late Fr. Joe Dooley, who later became my Parish Priest in Slane – in his English Class as he imparted to us a huge appreciation of rhythm and meter in poetry; and of course Fr. Gerry Rice and Fr. Michael Sheerin through their respective History and Maths classes, but mostly through their example of being good priests. You will already note this is not an academic paper as on previous seminars, but a more ‘hands on’ paper, reminding you all how important your example and witness of priesthood is to those around you. Pope Francis reminds us “behind and before every vocation to the priesthood or the consecrated life there is always the strong and intense prayer of someone: a grandmother, a grandfather, a mother, a father, a community … this is why Jesus said: ‘Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest,’ that is God the Father, ‘to send out labourers into his harvest’(Mt.

9:38). Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer; and only through prayer can they persevere and bear fruit. (Pope Francis, Regina Coeli, April 21, 2013).” In recent months I started a programme around the renewal and revival of Eucharistic Adoration in our Diocese; to have appointed a full-time Vocations Director without an army of prayer behind his work would have been a futile and hollow exercise. The most important group who can promote vocations, I firmly believe are you the priests. Your priesthood, your example, your witness, your presence in the market place and your quiet time in the Church or Adoration Room are a huge influence on a young man who is exploring the possibility of a vocation. But you must do much, much more. But it is not easy. As Priests, working in collaboration with our lay people we are still continuing to cope with the aftermath of the sexual abuse scandals that have swept the western world and impacted hugely here in Ireland. These scandals have done immense damage to many

people, particularly young people – our credibility has been seriously dented – we still have a journey to go. It is difficult to put our heads above the parapet and encourage or promote vocations, in such a despondent and at times hostile context. But I think we must, and I’ll make some suggestions how. In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis tells us an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral! Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that delightful and comforting joy of evangelising (EG 10). Now I suggest is the time to witness to the joy we all share in our preaching of the gospel. This joy is not something flippant or trivial, but something rooted in the very nature of our priesthood. St. Paul suggests: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again, Rejoice! … Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will

guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” ( Phil. 4:4,7). Joy is our deep sense of contentment that grows out of our relationship with God. Happiness depends on things around us, joy doesn’t. Mgr. Joseph Murphy speaking on ‘The Priest, Man of Joy’ here in Lismullin three years ago referenced Pope Emeritus Benedict in an academic paper he delivered many years before becoming Pope, when the then Cardinal Ratzinger said “the root of man’s joy is the harmony he enjoys with himself” (Ratzinger, J.: ‘Faith as Trust and Joy – Evangelium’). Harmony is a great word for us to reflect on; harmony covers every aspect of our priesthood. If we are comfortable in our skin, others will note our comfort and learn from it. Comfortable is not being smug or self-righteous, in fact it’s quite the opposite. The writer and mystic Catherine de Hueck Doherty, whose cause for canonisation was opened by St. John Paul II in 2000, wrote about the reverence she has for the priesthood: “We call you ‘Father’ because

you begot us in the mystery of a tremendous love affair between you and God. Because you participate in the one priesthood of Christ, you are wedded to the Church, his Bride … we call you ‘Father’ and we are your ‘family’. We need you desperately to serve us, to feed us with the Eucharist, to heal us with anointing, to reconcile us to God …”. Harmony begins in our comfortableness around who we are and what we’re about. What influence that has on others we may never know. Archbishop Charles Chaput, one of the most coherent and incisive thinkers in the American Church posed a great question centring on Mother Teresa in a series of talks he delivered to priests in Melbourne seven years ago: How many of you know the name of M o t h e r Te r e s a ’ s Parish Priest when she was a child? What’s my point? Mother Teresa didn’t become Mother Teresa by herself. She had someone who preached the Word of God to her… Did he

know he was helping to form the soul of one of our age’s great witnesses to Christ? He couldn’t have. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. His mission would have been the same. He was doing what he was supposed to do. What God called him to do (Chaput, Charles: ‘Claiming our Vocation as Priests of Jesus Christ’). Did I know Br. Oisín, as he is now called, was attending daily Mass quietly in the right side aisle of St. Mary’s Church on James Street in Drogheda for a number of years? I didn’t, but he was and he now is a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal in the Blessed Sacrament Friary at Newark in New Jersey, miles from his life ten years ago as a Civil Servant working in the Donore Industrial Estate on the outskirts of the town. We priests have a special responsibility to promote vocations. While every diocese is obliged to have a Diocesan Director, the very clear brief I gave

our recently appointed one, was to resource and support the priests in their work as Vocations Directors. Fr. Stephen Langridge, a priest of the diocese of Southwark in England and Chairman of the England and Wales Vocations Directors’ Conference at a recent gathering at Maynooth (October 2014) said “the best people to promote vocations in parishes are priests themselves but that sometimes there is a lack of confidence. As a Church we need to help priests to recover their confidence in themselves and in their priestly ministry”. The work of encouraging vocations mustn’t be left at the door of the Vocations Director in the Diocese; his job, his task, his role is to resource his colleagues, to strengthen their confidence to speak about the priesthood and to ensure materials and manuals are professionally produced. The Dioceses have invested hugely and rightly so on safeguarding; we must now invest in the promotion of vocations. I don’t have enough priests to pull one of the younger ones out of active parish ministry and assign him to co-ordinating full

time the Vocations Ministry, but I think it’s important enough to do just that. In St. Patrick’s College Maynooth there are currently 69 seminarians studying for the priesthood. In 2013 the first year seminarian intake didn’t include one seminarian from west of the River Shannon. In the first year group who entered three months ago there wasn’t one seminarian from all of Munster; while Kerry had one student, his roots were in Belfast. Where are students coming from? The focus has firmly shifted from a parish-rooted involvement to a pilgrimage-rooted experience. A guy enquiring today about the priesthood mightn’t be even sure what parish he comes from, not to mention what Diocese he might study for. ‘Youth 2000’, ‘Pure in Heart’ are much bigger seminarian pullers than the traditional Diocesan School. While Fr. Terence McGovern, a past pupil of Knockbeg was ordained for Kildare & Leighlin in June 2013, the last priest ordained for the diocese who had entered the seminary directly from his leaving cert in Knock-

beg was Fr. Seán Maher, ordained in 1997. That’s 17 years ago. Admittedly there is a Knockbeg past pupil currently studying for the Archdiocese of Dublin out in Rome, Bill Shaughnessy, a native of Castledermot in County Kildare, so there is hope. There seems to me to have been a determination among formators and maybe vocation directors in recent years that seminarians shouldn’t be accepted straight from their Leaving Cert. ‘They should experience the world’, what exactly does this entail? Does it suggest that the bulk of us who entered in our time are less priests for not having this experience? I don’t think so! While there may be exceptions to the current intake strategy, they are few in number. I believe priests must get back into our secondary schools, and our third level colleges, or wherever young people gather and encourage vocations. When did you last ask a young person to consider the priesthood? I do it regularly. The last time for me was last Friday evening, November 7 while pre-

senting awards at another of our Diocesan Schools, St. Paul’s in Monasterevin. Among the awards were past pupil prizes. I presented a young man named Stephen who is studying first year engineering in UCD with two trophies for his results last August, I think in Physics and Construction. As the photographs were being taken, the local priest told me, ‘Bishop Denis, Stephen is made of great stuff, he has the makings of a priest’. I asked Stephen how his course was going and had he ever considered the priesthood. He said his mother has asked him that before. I suggested his mother was a woman well worth listening to! I think today of Fr. Michael Balfe, my uncle, a Columban priest based at Dalgan Park up the road and the many Columbans who tell me today if it wasn’t for Fr. Michael Balfe, they would never have joined the Columbans. May the same be said one day of any of us gathered this morning here in Lismullin… ‘if it wasn’t for Fr. so and so, I would never have joined the Diocese, the Prelature, the Order…’.

Priests need to reclaim their voice again in the encouragement of vocations. This is done by stirring in our hearts the gifts we all have received with the imposition of hands on our Ordination Day. While we all may be vessels of clay, broken and bruised often, we must regain the strength, the appetite and the hunger for a renewed vocations drive. I smile when I read in the Irish Catholic that vocations are back on the agenda of the Bishops Conference, they should never have been off that agenda. Just as the school Board of Management must always have the issue of safeguarding on its agenda, so too vocations needs to be a topic at every gathering and assembly of priests and bishops. This morning’s discussion topic ‘Priests Promoting Priestly Vocations’ carries within its frame self-made restrictions. It omits the huge contribution lay people make to the encouragement of vocations. In Kildare & Leighlin our Vocations Director is about to train twenty young lay people who will be equipped to tell their vocation story and

implant in that story the central to release the priests most giftrole of the priest on their lives. ed in the area of formation and Alongside priests promoting vodiscernment for work in our cations to the priesthood is the seminaries. Priests who are essential presence of good men comfortable but not smug in and women, especially parents, their priesthood; priests who are who believe firmly in the critical articulate and do present a good role which priests play in parish example of priestly commitment; life. I mentioned earlier the priests who radiate a sense of profile of the diocese joy in their preaching from a personnel and their living of the perspective; once gospel message. I The best examagain the title of think we need to ples of priesthood the talk didn’t alrestructure our are joyful priests low me to flag formation model, who love their faith the huge numstaffing a semiand who love the bers of religious nary with priests Church and laity who are who remain rooted the backbone of so in parish life and pasmany of our fifty-six toral practice, while still parishes. Sometimes it is said possessing the key qualities around lay involvement that lay necessary to form and educate people are not just an optional seminarians. In 2014 while we extra, called in when there is a may realise most vocations scarcity of vocations but an eswon’t come immediately out of a sential component in parish life. secondary school environment, This is absolutely true, but we need urgently to plant the equally the reverse has validity, seeds to nourish a culture of a parish wouldn’t be a parish discernment, where young peowithout its ordained priests. ple are encouraged to think seriously about their life. If we as Priestly vocations are everypriests don’t encourage this culone’s business, but you the ture of discernment, the young priests are a central cog in that men who want to become drive. A diocese must be willing priests and have that calling in

their DNA will slip through the cracks. I conclude with a line I used in my address in Carlow on the day when I was ordained Bishop: “the best examples of priesthood are joyful priests who love their faith and who love the Church”. May we all be those joyful priests who believe that “priesthood is a call, not a career, a way of life, not a job, an identity, not just a role” and in that belief, may we take up our rightful place as vocation promoters seeking out the vocations which are out there waiting to be invited, waiting to be encouraged and waiting to be challenged. Many thanks. This is the text of a paper given on November 11, at the annual Lismullin Priests’ Seminar.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Most Reverend Denis Nulty is the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin.

Mums: talk to your kids! by Luz Ariztía de Searle

come from Chile; I’m married with four children. When I got married an aunt of mine gave me the following bit of advice: be a mum who talks a lot with her children – from the time they are very small till they grow up. I took up that advice and from the start I showed interest in whatever it was mattered to them: with the young boys the conversation was about cars, trains and planes; with the young girls it was about dolls, dresses and shoes. I’d have to admit that I found these conversations a little boring but that didn't stop me from trying to make them inter-

esting for them. After a short while I realised that what they really wanted to do was to tell me about their own things – the good and the bad times that they were going through. That’s the way I’ve always done it and I believe that my husband and I are happy to have four children who are close to us and who know that they are very much loved. A little over four years ago I came to Ireland because of my husband’s job, and I found it a delightful country with wonderful people. I’ve always loved to ob-

serve people: you see great things, and at times things that aren’t so great. One day I joined four friends for a coffee in Dalkey. In the café there was a mum with a boy of about twelve years of age. While she read the newspaper he just ate. I was quite struck by this and thought to myself that this mother should be speaking with her son; that she should be having a pleasant conversation with him and getting involved in his world. The other day a friend of mine told me that her seven year old daughter came up to her after dinner one recently and said: “Mummy I want to tell you about something” to which she replied “I’m going out now for a walk so when I come back we’ll talk.” When she returned the girl was already asleep. I commented to her that that evening her girl had something important to say to her and that it was a mistake to have gone out walking before speaking with her. That’s the way we miss good opportunities to speak with our children.

I’ve often observed mums dropping off their kids at school, or picking them up, often travel in silence, or are busy with their mobile phones, without realising that these are golden opportunities to speak with their children: to ask them about their exams, their friends, their games at school, how the day went, what the lunch was like, did they like it, and so on. It has also struck me that couples don't speak much between themselves. You might see them in a restaurant eating together with long periods of silence. Here the art of conversation needs to be learnt also; people need to know how to dialogue, to speak about the things of interest to the other person: their concerns, their dreams, their work and projects – and they should set aside a day each week to go out somewhere together in order to converse.

In passing: Regrettable foolishness of Hilary Mantel? by Michael Kirke

don’t know if this makes me sad because of its arrogant vanity, its crass stupidity – in suggesting that the world’s greatest treasures of art, music and literature have been inspired by a “trashy religion”, – or the realisation that being a gifted writer is no guarantee of wisdom, or even common sense. Rod Dreher, in theamericanconservative.com drew our attention some time ago to some of Hilary Mantel’s reasons for her rejection of the church of her baptism. His reading of her words of wisdom is that she considers Catholicism suitable

only for trashy people, not respectable people like her and her friends. The multiple prize-winning British novelist says of herself, “I’m one of nature’s Protestants. I should never have been brought up as a Catholic. I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people.” “Nowadays”? I suppose she doesn’t really mean that. As someone who has some familiarity with history she must surely be aware that there have always been people within the

Catholic Church who have given scandal – and that with all our problems we now enjoy something of a golden age in comparison with certain epochs in the past. So, we can take it that her repulsion relates to any and every age. We will take it on faith that her novels were worthy of their accolades. I have not read Wolf Hall on the basis that an apologia for Thomas Cromwell, the vicious persecutor of Thomas More, was on the other side of a line which I felt no inclination to cross. Catholics will undoubtedly pray for him – and leave him in God’s merciful hands. Mantel probably thinks that is a pretty trashy thing to do. Hilary has lots or admirers of her work and doubtless the admiration of all the “respectable” company she keeps is enhanced by her rubbishing of Catholicism. I wonder does she consider the respectability of the BBC compromised in the same way for the blind eyes in that corporation which were turned on the rampant abuse of children there over a few decades?

Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet, remarked in an article on Mantel’s confessions of infidelity, I think she’s unwittingly come up with the best line possible for a new marketing campaign: “The Catholic church – not an institution for respectable people.” It reminds me of a priest a few years ago who told me that a young woman came to him who’d got pregnant and been thrown out by her parents. He told her story to one of his parishioners, saying he didn’t think the girl could cope on her own in a flat but wasn’t sure what to do to help. Simple, said the parishioner, she comes to live with me. And it makes me think of another priest I know who was trying to help some asylum seekers living in lousy accommodation, and in the end decided they might as well move in with him. Or the young kids living on the street, often with drug problems, who have been helped by charities such as The Passage and the Cardinal Hume Centre. None of these people are exactly respectable – with complicated, chaotic lives –

but Catholics and their institutions have tried to do their bit and have welcomed them in. Dreher, not a Roman Catholic, is with Pepinster on most of this. He says: I certainly hope to be thought of as a member of a church that inspires sneers and hatred by cultured despisers like Hilary Mantel and The Respectable People. Given the way of the world these days, if you are a Christian and aren’t in some way hated by The Respectable People, you are doing something wrong. I suppose it has always and everywhere been the case, but I think that in Europe and in America in the very near future, orthodox Christians of all kinds will soon have to make a stark, clear decision about whether or not to be Respectable, with all the privilege and ease of life that entails, or be truly Christian. The Irish writer, diplomat and politician, Conor Cruise O’Brien, a man of agnostic disposition, once made a very ugly remark about Pope John Paul II. In def-

erence to Cruise O’Brien’s memory I will not repeat it because before he died the man was generous and noble enough to say that he regretted what he said. Mantel, in her recent diatribes against those who are her brothers and sisters in the faith – they still are, whether she likes it or not -has now built up quite a store of things to regret. We might hope for the wisdom of humility for her – but then, she is no Conor Cruise O’Brien.

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.

Civilization's most beautiful idea

by Lord Jonathan Sacks

Prof. Jonathan Sacks was one of the speakers at the Humanum conference which took place in the Vatican in November. The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium was a gathering of leaders and scholars from many religions across the globe, to examine and propose anew the beauty of the relationship between the man and the woman, in order to support and reinvigorate marriage and family life for the flourishing of human society.

want this morning to begin our conversation by one way of telling the story of the most beautiful idea in the history of civilization: the idea of the love that brings new life into the world. There are of course many ways of telling the story, and this is just one. But to me it is a story of seven key moments, each of them surprising and unexpected. The first, according to a report in the press on 20th October of this year, took place in a lake in Scotland 385 million years ago. It was then, according to this new discovery, that two fish came together to perform the first instance of sexual reproduction known to science. Until then all life had propagated itself asexually, by cell division, budding, fragmentation or parthenogenesis, all of which are far simpler and more economical than the division of life into male and female, each with a different role in creating and sustaining life. When we consider, even in the animal kingdom, how much effort and energy the coming to-

gether of male and female takes, in terms of displays, courtship rituals, rivalries and violence, it is astonishing that sexual reproduction ever happened at all. Biologists are still not quite sure why it did. Some say to offer protection against parasites, or immunities against disease. Others say it’s simply that the meeting of opposites generates diversity. But one way or another, the fish in Scotland discovered something new and beautiful that’s been copied ever since by virtually all advanced forms of life. Life begins when male and female meet and embrace. The second unexpected development was the unique challenge posed to Homo sapiens by two factors: we stood upright, which constricted the female pelvis, and we had bigger brains – a 300 per cent increase – which meant larger heads. The result was that human babies had to be born more prematurely than any other species, and so needed parental protection for much longer. This made parenting more demanding among humans than any other species,

the work of two people rather than one. Hence the very rare phenomenon among mammals, of pair bonding, unlike other species where the male contribution tends to end with the act of impregnation. Among most primates, fathers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even recognise their children let alone care for them. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom motherhood is almost universal but fatherhood is rare. So what emerged along with the human person was the union of the biological mother and father to care for their child. Thus far nature, but then came culture, and the third surprise.

which the few had power over the many. And the most obvious expression of power among alpha males whether human or primate, is to dominate access to fertile women and thus maximise the handing on of your genes to the next generation. Hence polygamy, which exists in 95 per cent of mammal species and 75 per cent of cultures k n o w n t o a n t h r o p o l o g y. Polygamy is the ultimate expression of inequality because it means that many males never get the chance to have a wife and child. And sexual envy has been, throughout history, among animals as well as humans, a prime driver of violence.

It seems that among hunter gatherers, pair bonding was the norm. Then came agriculture, and economic surplus, and cities and civilisation, and for the first time sharp inequalities began to emerge between rich and poor, powerful and powerless. The great ziggurats of Mesopotamia and pyramids of ancient Egypt, with their broad base and narrow top, were monumental statements in stone of a hierarchical society in

That is what makes the first chapter of Genesis so revolutionary with its statement that every human being, regardless of class, colour, culture or creed, is in the image and likeness of God himself. We know that in the ancient world it was rulers, kings, emperors and pharaohs who were held to be in the image of God. So what Genesis was saying was that we are all royalty. We each have equal dignity in the king-

dom of faith under the sovereignty of God. From this it follows that we each have an equal right to form a marriage and have children, which is why, regardless of how we read the story of Adam and Eve – and there are differences between Jewish and Christian readings – the norm presupposed by that story is: one woman, one man. Or as the Bible itself says: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Monogamy did not immediately become the norm, even within the world of the Bible. But many of its most famous stories, about the tension between Sarah and Hagar, or Leah and Rachel and their children, or David and Bathsheba, or Solomon’s many wives, are all critiques that point the way to monogamy. !

And there is a deep connection between monotheism and monogamy, just as there is, in the opposite direction, between idolatry and adultery. Monotheism and monogamy are about the all-embracing relationship between I and Thou, myself and one other, be it a human, or the divine, Other. What makes the emergence of monogamy unusual is that it is normally the case that the values of a society are those imposed on it by the ruling class. And the ruling class in any hierarchical society stands to gain from promiscuity and polygamy, both of which multiply the chances of my genes being handed on to the next generation. From monogamy the rich and powerful lose and the poor and powerless gain. So the return of monogamy goes against the normal grain of social change and was a real triumph for the equal dignity of all. Every bride and every groom are royalty; every home a palace when furnished with love.

The fourth remarkable development was the way this transformed the moral life. We’ve all become familiar with the work of evolutionary biologists using computer simulations and the iterated prisoners’ dilemma to explain why reciprocal altruism exists among all social animals. We behave to others as we would wish them to behave to us, and we respond to them as they respond to us. As C S Lewis pointed out in his book The Abolition of Man, reciprocity is the Golden Rule shared by all the great civilizations. What was new and remarkable in the Hebrew Bible was the idea that love, not just fairness, is the driving principle of the moral life. Three loves. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.” “Love your neighbours as yourself.” And, repeated no less than 36 times in the Mosaic books, “Love the stranger because you know what it feels like to be a stranger.” Or to put it another way: just as God created the natural world in love and

forgiveness, so we are charged with creating the social world in love and forgiveness. And that love is a flame lit in marriage and the family. Morality is the love between husband and wife, parent and child, extended outward to the world. The fifth development shaped the entire structure of Jewish experience. In ancient Israel an originally secular form of agreement, called a covenant, was taken and transformed into a new way of thinking about the relationship between God and humanity, in the case of Noah, and between God and a people in the case of Abraham and later the Israelites at Mount Sinai. A covenant is like a marriage. It is a mutual pledge of loyalty and trust between two or more people, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, to work together to achieve together what neither can achieve alone. And there is one thing even God cannot achieve alone, which is to live within the human heart. That needs us.

So the Hebrew word emunah, wrongly translated as faith, really means faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, steadfastness, not walking away even when the going gets tough, trusting the other and honouring the other’s trust in us. What covenant did, and we see this in almost all the prophets, was to understand the relationship between us and God in terms of the relationship between bride and groom, wife and husband. Love thus became not only the basis of morality but also of theology. In Judaism faith is a marriage. Rarely was this more beautifully stated than by Hosea when he said in the name of God: will betroth you to me • Iever;

for-

will betroth you in right• Ieousness and justice, love and compassion. will betroth you in faithful• Iness, and you will know the Lord. Jewish men say those words every weekday morning as we wind the strap of our tefillin around our finger like a wedding

ring. Each morning we renew our marriage with God. This led to a sixth and quite subtle idea that truth, beauty, goodness, and life itself, do not exist in any one person or entity but in the “between,” what Martin Buber called Das Zwischenmenschliche, the interpersonal, the counterpoint of speaking and listening, giving and receiving. Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic literature, the vehicle of truth is conversation. In revelation God speaks and asks us to listen. In prayer we speak and ask God to listen. There is never only one voice. In the Bible the prophets argue with God. In the Talmud rabbis argue with one another. In fact I sometimes think the reason God chose the Jewish people was because He loves a good argument. Judaism is a conversation scored for many voices, never more passionately than in the Song of Songs, a duet between a woman and a man, the beloved and her lover, that Rabbi Akiva called the holy of holies of religious literature.

The prophet Malachi calls the male priest the guardian of the law of truth. The book of Proverbs says of the woman of worth that “the law of loving kindness is on her tongue.” It is that conversation between male and female voices, between truth and love, justice and mercy, law and forgiveness, that frames the spiritual life. In biblical times each Jew had to give a half shekel to the Temple to remind us that we are only half.

Abraham, He says: “I have known him so that he will instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.” Abraham was chosen not to rule an empire, command an army, perform miracles or deliver prophecies, but simply to be a parent. In one of the most famous lines in Judaism, which we say every day and night, Moses commands, “You shall teach these things repeatedly to your children, There are some cultures that speaking of them when you sit teach that we are nothing. There in your house or when you walk are others that teach on the way, when you lie down that we are everyand when you rise thing. The Jewish up.” Parents are view is that we to be educaYou shall teach these things repeatedly to are half and we tors, education your children, speakneed to open is the convering of them when you ourselves to ans a t i o n sit in your house or other if we are between the when you walk on the to become generations, and way, when you lie whole. the first school is down and when you the home. rise up. All this led to the seventh outSo Jews became come, that in Judaism the home an intensely family and the family became the cenoriented people, and it was this tral setting of the life of faith. In that saved us from tragedy. After the only verse in the Hebrew the destruction of the Second Bible to explain why God chose Temple in the year 70, Jews

were scattered throughout the world, everywhere a minority, everywhere without rights, suffering some of the worst persecutions ever known by a people and yet Jews survived because they never lost three things: their sense of family, their sense of community and their faith. And they were renewed every week especially on Shabbat, the day of rest when we give our marriages and families what they most need and are most starved of in the contemporary world, namely time. I once produced a television documentary for the BBC on the state of family life in Britain, and I took the person who was then Britain’s leading expert on child care, Penelope Leach, to a Jewish primary school on a Friday morning. There she saw the children enacting in advance what they would see that evening around the family table. There were the five year old mother and father blessing the five year old children with the five year old grandparents looking on. She was fascinated by this whole

institution, and she asked the children what they most enjoyed about the Sabbath. One five year old boy turned to her and said, “It’s the only night of the week when daddy doesn’t have to rush off.” As we walked away from the school when the filming was over she turned to me and said, “Chief Rabbi, that Sabbath of yours is saving their parents’ marriages.” So that is one way of telling the story, a Jewish way, beginning with the birth of sexual reproduction, then the unique demands of human parenting, then the eventual triumph of monogamy as a fundamental statement of human equality, followed by the way marriage shaped our vision of the moral and religious life as based on love and covenant and faithfulness, even to the point of thinking of truth as a conversation between lover and beloved. Marriage and the family are where faith finds its home and where the Divine Presence lives in the love between husband and wife, parent and child.

What then has changed? Here’s one way of putting it. I wrote a book a few years ago about religion and science and I summarised the difference between them in two sentences. “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.” And that’s a way of thinking about culture also. Does it put things together or does it take things apart? What made the traditional family remarkable, a work of high religious art, is what it brought together: sexual drive, physical desire, friendship, companionship, emotional kinship and love, the begetting of children and their protection and care, their early education and induction into an identity and a history. Seldom has any institution woven together so many different drives and desires, roles and responsibilities. It made sense of the world and gave it a human face, the face of love. For a whole variety of reasons, some to do with medical de-

velopments like birth control, in vitro fertilisation and other genetic interventions, some to do with moral change like the idea that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does not harm others, some to do with a transfer of responsibilities from the individual to the state, and other and more profound changes in the culture of the West, almost everything that marriage once brought together has now been split apart. Sex has been divorced from love, love from commitment, marriage from having children, and having children from responsibility for their care. The result is that in Britain in 2012, 47.5 per cent of children were born outside marriage, expected to become a majority in 2016. Fewer people are marrying, those who are, are marrying later, and 42 per cent of marriages end in divorce. Nor is cohabitation a substitute for marriage. The average length of cohabitation in Britain and the United States is less than two years. The result is a sharp increase among young people of eating disorders,

drug and alcohol abuse, stress related syndromes, depression and actual and attempted suicides. The collapse of marriage has created a new form of poverty concentrated among single parent families, and of these, the main burden is born by women, who in 2011 headed 92 per cent of single parent households. In Britain today more than a million children will grow up with no contact whatsoever with their fathers. This is creating a divide within societies the like of which has not been seen since Disraeli spoke of “two nations” a century and a half ago. Those who are privileged to grow up in stable loving association with the two people who brought them into being will, on average, be healthier physically and e m o t i o n a l l y. They will do better at school and at work. They will have more Alan successful relaTuring tionships, be happier and live longer.

And yes, there are many exceptions. But the injustice of it all cries out to heaven. It will go down in history as one of the tragic instances of what Friedrich Hayek called “the fatal conceit” that somehow we know better than the wisdom of the ages, and can defy the lessons of biology and history. No one surely wants to go back to the narrow prejudices of the past. This week, in Britain, a new film opens, telling the story of one of the great minds of the twentieth century, Alan Turing, the Cambridge mathematician who laid the philosophical foundations of computing and artificial intelligence, and helped win the war by breaking the German naval code Enigma. After the war, Turing was arrested and tried for homos e x u a l b eh a v i o u r, u nderwent chemically induced castration, and died at the age of 41 by cyanide poi-

soning, thought by many to have committed suicide. That is a world to which we should never return. But our compassion for those who choose to live differently should not inhibit us from being advocates for the single most humanising institution in history. The family, man, woman, and child, is not one lifestyle choice among many. It is the best means we have yet discovered for nurturing future generations and enabling children to grow in a matrix of stability and love. It is where we learn the delicate choreography of relationship and how to handle the inevitable conflicts within any human group. It is where we first take the risk of giving and receiving love. It is where one generation passes on its values to the next, ensuring the continuity of a civilization. For any society, the family is the crucible of its future, and for the sake of our children’s future, we must be its defenders. Since this is a religious gathering, let me, if I may, end with a

piece of biblical exegesis. The story of the first family, the first man and woman in the garden of Eden, is not generally regarded as a success. Whether or not we believe in original sin, it did not end happily. After many years of studying the text I want to suggest a different reading. The story ends with three verses that seem to have no connection with one another. No sequence. No logic. In Genesis 3: 19 God says to the man: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Then in the next verse we read: “The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all life.” And in the next, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” What is the connection here? Why did God telling the man that he was mortal lead him to give his wife a new name? And why did that act seem to change God’s attitude to both of them, so that He

performed an act of tenderness, by making them clothes, almost as if He had partially forgiven them? Let me also add that the Hebrew word for “skin” is almost indistinguishable from the Hebrew word for “light,” so that Rabbi Meir, the great sage of the early second century, read the text as saying that God made for them “garments of light.” What did he mean? If we read the text carefully, we see that until now the first man had given his wife a purely generic name. He called her ishah, woman. Recall what he said when he first saw her: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman for she was taken from man.” For him she was a type, not a person. He gave her a noun, not a name. What is more he defines her as a derivative of himself: something taken from man. She is not yet for him someone other, a person in her own right. She is merely a kind of reflection of himself.

As long as the man thought he was immortal, he ultimately needed no one else. But now he knew he was mortal. He would one day die and return to dust. There was only one way in which something of him would live on after his death. That would be if he had a child. But he could not have a child on his own. For that he needed his wife. She alone could give birth. She alone could mitigate his mortality. And not because she was like him but precisely because she was unlike him. At that moment she ceased to be, for him, a type, and became a person in her own right. And a person has a proper name. That is what he gave her: the name Chavah, “Eve,” meaning, “giver of life.” At that moment, as they were about to leave Eden and face the world as we know it, a place of darkness, Adam gave his wife the first gift of love, a personal name.

And at that moment, God responded to them both in love, and made them garments to clothe their nakedness, or as Rabbi Meir put it, â&#x20AC;&#x153;garments of light.â&#x20AC;? And so it has been ever since, that when a man and woman turn to one another in a bond of faithfulness, God robes them in garments of light, and we come as close as we will ever get to God himself, bringing new life into being, turning the prose of biology into the poetry of the human spirit, redeeming the darkness of the world by the radiance of love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks, Kt is a rabbi, philosopher and scholar of Judaism. He was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013.

Film review: Interstellar John Mulderig

s befits a sprawling space epic, Interstellar (Paramount) aims high. While its ambitions are admirable, and its visuals dazzling, the film's roughly three-hour running time tries patience. Other aesthetic miscalculations, combined with morally problematic elements, ultimately make for something of a flawed liftoff. Director and co-writer (with his brother Jonathan) Christopher Nolan charts the exploits of a crew of astronauts who use a wormhole to speed their travel to distant planets. Their critical goal is to find a habitable refuge for the entire human race, which is facing worldwide starvation back on a dystopian, dustbowlplagued version of Earth. Leading the mission is former test pilot and engineer-turnedunwilling-farmer Cooper

(Matthew McConaughey). With society's need to cultivate crops having displaced interest in advancing technology, Cooper, a widower, has been forced to pursue an agricultural lifestyle on the farmstead he shares with his cranky father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow), his placid teen son. Tom (Timothee Chalamet), and his precocious, adoring daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy). So when an unusual turn of events results in the opportunity for Cooper to command a space expedition, he essentially jumps at the chance, despite the fact that the prospect of his prolonged absence is nothing short of crushing to Murph. Cooper is joined on the journey by astrophysicist Romilly (David Gyasi) and science officer Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway). The latter's father (Michael

Caine) – a renowned professor who was once Cooper's mentor – conceived the rescue program and is its overall supervisor. Just as protracted separation tests Cooper's bond with Murph (played in adulthood by Jessica Chastain), so Amelia's relationship with her idolized Dad is eventually subjected to other strains. Interstellar has most of its values in good order as it weighs familial ties against the sacrifices necessary to advance the common welfare and ponders the place of love within a worldview shaped by quantum mechanics and Darwinian evolution. But both the film's implicit message about the dire consequences of overpopulation and a subplot involving frozen embryos call for moral discernment. Cinematically, unnatural situations resulting from the relativity of time and other environmental factors create a distance from ordinary reality that blunts the impact of the movie's human element. In this respect, Inter-

stellar stands in contrast to Nolan's masterful 2010 mindbender Inception. In that earlier picture, different strands of events simultaneousl y u n fo l d i n g w i th i n va ri e d chronologies made for suspense and excitement. Here the playful feel of Inception is absent, as too is the driving sense of urgency. Instead, like the character central to the climax of Interstellar, moviegoers are likely to feel trapped by the theoretical paradoxes of boldly going where no man – or woman or movie director, for that matter – has gone before. The film contains ethical issues, some bloodless violence, a handful of profanities and occasional crude and crass language. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Position Papers wishes all our readers a very happy & blessed Christmas

PROGRAMMES EACH YEAR IN FEBRUARY & OCTOBER. See website.