Position Papers - August/September 2016

A review of Catholic affairs

The New Evangelization of Ireland Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan

Abortion and Judgement Day Rev. Patrick G Burke

To consign clericalism to the past Jack Valero

Number 501 · August/September 2016

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Number 501 · August/September 2016 Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

Letter to Editor

by Denis Dunne

Evangelization in Modern Ireland

by Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan

Rising from the Dead

by Seán Hurley

Abortion and Judgement Day

by Rev. Patrick G Burke

Porn and the curse of total sexual freedom

by Bishop Robert Barron

2 5 6 15 19 23

by Rev. Andrew Black

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It’s time to consign clericalism to the past, where it belongs

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St Josemaría Escrivá, the Saint of Everyday Life

by Jack Valero

Book review: The Romanovs: 1613-1918

by Francis Phillips

Film review: Ghostbusters

by Joseph McAleer Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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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 I

n July the Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley led a pilgrimage from Boston to Knock and during his days there he gave an interview to RTÉ News in which he

warned against scapegoating Muslims following the recent atrocity in Nice and other terrorist attacks on the West. This was very timely advice which we Catholics in the Western world must reflect on and take to heart. Hardly a day passes now without news of some new Islamist atrocity in France, Germany, USA or of course the Middle East, and as we go to press comes news of the brutal murder of Fr. Hamel near Rouen - as clear an example of Christian martyrdom as you will ever find. The hallmark of these atrocities is a truly diabolical desire to murder innocent men, women and children at every opportunity and to strike terror into those of us who witness these events through the mass media. But more than the terror the danger is that these atrocities would inspire in us a reciprocal hatred of the perpetrators themselves, and then by extension a hostility towards the Islam which these terrorists claim in one way or another to embody.

The most pressing question for us then is not about the nature of Islam (whether or not it is indeed a religion of peace) nor about immigration (which in the words of Cardinal O’Malley “is such an important issue, and requires a lot of reflection. It requires people with wisdom to come together and talk about what is best for the common good”).

These two issues are not unimportant, but the issue we must grapple with in the immediate aftermath of these

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atrocities is the psychological and spiritual reaction they evince in us, because our reaction in the face of such shocking actions could very easily become one of hatred or at least resentment, and this is not the reaction of a Christian.

The reaction proper to a Christian is well summed up by St JosemarĂ­a EscrivĂĄ when he writes:

Editorial

We have to understand everyone; we must live peaceably with everyone; we must forgive everyone. We shall not call injustice justice; we shall not say that an offence against God is not an offence against God, or that evil is good. When confronted by evil we shall not reply with another evil, but rather with sound doctrine and good actions: drowning evil in an abundance of good.

That's how Christ will reign in our souls and in the souls of the people around us (Christ is Passing By, 182).

I remember as a young schoolboy in the mid 1970s hearing stories from a school friend who for one reason or another spent time in England with his family. This was the time of the terrible IRA bombing campaign there. He reported the anti-Irish remarks and insults he and his family experienced at the time. It seemed to me back then so unfair that the Irish at large would be blamed for the atrocities of a few. And yet forty years on we may be inclined to do the same with Muslims, or at least be ambivalent in the face of such a reaction.

Part of such ambivalence can be seen in a tendency of some conservative Catholics to ally themselves increasingly with a

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far-right reaction against the perceived incapacity or unwillingness of the political left to defend traditional Western values. While their judgment of the left’s inaction may be true, the swing to an extreme reaction is very dangerous, and has its precedents in the political events of pre-war Germany, as observed by one political commentator:

Editorial

That is the lesson from the right-wing populist upsurge in Weimar Germany, which culminated in the Nazi assumption of power. The political language of fear and hostility directed at “foreign” elements (never mind the fact that many and even most of those so-called foreigners had been residents and citizens for generations) enables moderate and radical conservatives to come together. The moderates make the radicals salonfähig, acceptable in polite society. That is the real and pressing danger of the current moment (Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany and Donald Trump).

The Catholic is not called to political naivety nor quietism.

But he is called to embody Christian love, mercy and forgiveness in his political choices, and also to witness to the world that evil is conquered not by further evil, but is drowned in an abundance of good. This is the trial to which we are now subject; the same trial undergone by Christ in his passion: Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance (Wisdom 2:19).

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Letter to Editor Dear Editor.

The article by Michael Kirke in the latest Position Papers on the book SPQR by Mary Beard, which I am reading at the moment, is a good indication of where we are heading unless Christian values are returned to our lives.

The transforming effect these values had on the Roman Empire was dramatic and the subsequent spreading of the Gospels particularly westwards was impressive as the innate need in all of humankind for spiritualism was fulfilled. This was particularly true in the case of our own country with the arrival of St Patrick.

Now the growth of relativism and materialism have quelled our innate need for spiritualism. The secularising of schools, marriage, services and Government policies is rampant and spreading daily throughout our country.

The consequences however can be seen everywhere with the increases in shootings, murders, divorces, depression, despair, debt, homelessness, child neglect, abortion etc The need for a spiritual content in all our lives and in our policies towards others is urgently required. This reawakening must be undertaken by our spiritual leaders.

Greater use should be made of the media, of outdoor professions of faith, maximising the opportunities to spread the good news at funerals, Church marriages and baptisms where the congregations are captive. We must take back Christmas, Easter and holy days from the commercial sector, ring church bells at the Angelus time etc.

Having visited Rome many times the Colosseum gives us an idea of the dark side of Roman life.

Regards Denis Dunne

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Evangelization in Modern Ireland

by Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan

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he purpose of the Evangelium Conference is “To spread the richness of the Catholic faith in the modern world.” I hope that this talk will be in keeping with that purpose.

Just to mention at the outset that the Lord has been very good to us all in the past few days.

This weekend there are several wonderful faith events taking place: the Focolare Mariapolis in Dungarvan with around 250 participants, the Youth 2000 summer retreat in Roscrea with something around 800, the Knockadoon Faith Camp in Co. Cork run by the Dominicans, eight men were ordained for the Dominican Order yesterday, and now here in Maynooth the Evangelium Conference. These

are all examples of the green shoots of faith which the Spirit is making grow. They are all examples of the New Evangelization called for many years ago by Pope St. John Paul.

What is the New Evangelization?

Primary evangelization is the proclaiming of the Gospel to those who have never heard it.

Now in countries which have lost their fervour for the faith a New Evangelization is needed.

Pope St. John Paul used the expression “New Evangelization” for the first time in June 1979 during his first visit as Pope to his native land. He was speaking in Nova Huta – a district of Krakow which had

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been built by the Communists who deliberately excluded any religious element to this new development. No church was allowed to be built. There was no need of God.

Ireland that she had to choose her friends carefully because of all the girls in her year only five were not either: “sleeping around, drinking, doing drugs or cutting themselves”.

In 1983 in Port au Prince in Haiti JP II called for a New Evangelization of the Americas.

He called for this to begin in 1992. Why 1992? Because the first evangelization of the Americas took place after the discovery of America in 1492.

Five centuries earlier the great Catholic countries were Spain, France and Italy. Now the great Catholic countries are Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and one can even say the United States. In terms of the faith Europe has become tired in many places.

What is needed is a New Evangelization. We need a New Evangelization here in Ireland.

Irish society in many ways is falling apart. I am not going to go through the list of woes, I think we are well acquainted with them.

The number of people in Ireland who have undergone divorce or separation has shown massive growth since 1986. It has increased six fold in that time. It has increased by 47,332 since Census 2006 alone.

The rate of suicide in Ireland hit its peak in 2001 at 13.5 suicides per 100,000 people and by 2004 – a “Celtic Tiger” year in which economic growth was running at 4.6 per cent – the rate still remained at 12.2. That 2004 rate of 12.2 per 100,000 has never been exceeded since. The rates began to drop in 2005 and even though some of those gains were lost during the recession, making a clear cut link between the state of the economy and suicide is nowhere near as simple as people sometimes think. There is an equally compelling argument to be made that the problem of suicide in Ireland was at its worst in the period between

This is one example of our ailing culture: I heard from the father of a seventeen year old secondary school girl studying in

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2000 and 2004, during the height of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger.

enormity of the workload, etc. If it were not of God the new Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer more commonly known as the Redemptorists would have crumbled after a year or two.

We are all painfully aware of the scourge of illicit drugs. Just a short while ago we had the tragedy of the death of a young man who died after consuming drugs at a party where several people were out of their minds, with one man trying to eat the pavement … the list goes on.

If the Church were not of God it would have ended at 3pm on the day we call Good Friday over 2000 years ago. We are involved in a Church which is God’s. We must never forget that. We also must accept that in Ireland at the moment faithful Catholics are in the minority. We can point to recent referenda to prove our case. I think we all know this anyway. What do we do? One very helpful approach to this question is the approach of Pope Benedict XVI and his idea of the “creative minority”.

What do we do?

One of the best things that you could do to help your faith and the faith of those around you is to read up on Church history. I am reading at the moment a book on the life of St. Alphonsus Liguori. It is a fairly typical story of the founding of any new initiative in the Church. And the only conclusion one can arrive at on reading it is: if the Holy Spirit were not behind it, it would never have survived. St. Alphonsus had to battle against the opposition of good people, intrigue, calumnies, the desertion of close friends and members, misunderstandings, the efforts by some to control the beginnings of the order, jealousies, lack of funds, the

Creative minority The term “creative minority” came into the public square via Pope Benedict XVI in an interview he gave on a flight from Rome to Prague in 2009. A journalist on board asked: “The Catholic Church is a minority. In this situation, how can the Church effectively contribute to

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the common good of the country?” To which Pope Benedict replied: “I would say that normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future, and in this sense the Catholic Church must understand itself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not things of the past, but a very living and relevant reality. The Church must actualize, be present in the public debate, in our struggle for a true concept of liberty and peace.”

minority. The twelve apostles sent out by the Lord and the seventy-two disciples chosen by him were again, minorities who made all the difference.

Another example was the Catholic Church’s reaction to the Roman Empire’s collapse in the West in the 5th Century A.D. The Church responded by preserving the wisdom and law of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, while integrating the invading German tribes into a universal religious community. Western civilization was in that way saved and enriched. Irish monks played a significant role in this.

The phrase, which Benedict has used for several years, comes from English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975). Toynbee’s thesis was that civilizations primarily collapsed because of internal decline rather than external assault. “Civilizations,” Toynbee wrote, “die from suicide, not by murder.” The “creative minorities,” Toynbee held, are those who proactively respond to a civilizational crisis, and whose response allows that civilization to grow.

In the lives of so many of the saints we see how they battled against the majority, sometimes from within their own orders or dioceses to bring about renewal: Sts. Bernard, Benedict, Francis of Assisi, Simon Stock, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, the Cure of Ars, Francis de Sales, Josemaria Escriva, etc.

This is Benedict’s vision of the Catholic Church’s role in contemporary Europe. In fact, it’s probably the only viable strategy. One false alternative

For the Church this has always been the case. The group around the cross was a very tiny

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would be for the Church to ghettoize itself. This is not the kind of attitude Pope Benedict was talking about when he used the term “creative minority”. He is not talking about “circling the wagons”, about cutting oneself off from the world and surrounding oneself with likeminded people. It means instead engaging with the world.

Benedict’s creative minority strategy recognizes, first, that to be an active Catholic in Europe is now a choice rather than a matter of social conformity. This means practicing European Catholics in the future will be active believers because they have chosen and want to live the Church’s teaching.

Secondly, the creative minority approach isn’t just for Catholics.

It attracts non-Catholics equally convinced that modern society has fundamental problems that cannot be solved by government spending. Creative minorities will play the essential role in restoring a Christian soul to Europe, and in defending Christian values against secularism and relativism.

Lastly, creative minorities have the power to resonate across time. It’s no coincidence that during his English journey Benedict delivered a major address in Westminster Hall, the site of Sir Thomas More’s showtrial in 1535. When Thomas More stood almost alone against Henry VIII’s brutal demolition of the Church’s liberty in England, many dismissed his resistance as a forlorn gesture.

More, however, turned out to be a one-man creative minority.

Five hundred years later, More is regarded by many Catholics and non-Catholics alike as a model for politicians. By contrast, no-one remembers those English bishops who, with the heroic exception of Bishop John Fisher, bowed down before the tyrant-king.

So what does the creative minority have to offer to people?

What we have to offer is to tell the world that there is only “One Thing Necessary”: God. God the Son tells the world its true story: that we are created by God, to live as children of the Father, but that we sin because we suffer

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from that original fault of Adam and Eve, that wound in our human nature which is prone to selfishness and sin, but that Jesus has taken our faults on himself and that through his death and Resurrection we have the promise of redemption and the grace to live a new kind of life and gain eternal life, back to the paradise from which we were exiled. This is what we have to tell the world – that life has meaning, ultimate meaning.

The creative minority’s task is the rebuilding of Christian culture. This is what the saints did time and again during history. As Alasdair MacIntyre explains in his concluding reflections in After Virtue:

We can tell the world that the way to happiness is selfforgetful love and the way to unhappiness is selfregard, self-worry, and the selfcentred search for personal happiness. Our happiness comes to us only when we do not seek for it. It comes to us when we seek the happiness of others instead.

We offer the world sanctity instead of spirituality.

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What they (the reformer saints) set themselves to achieve – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. And now, MacIntyre concludes: “We are waiting not for a God, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict.”

What is the Church for?

In the words of Evangelii Nuntiandi, the favourite encyclical of Pope Francis: “The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized

herself” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 15). And in the words of the same document: As the kernel and centre of His Good News, Christ proclaims salvation, this great gift of God which is liberation from everything that oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One, in the joy of knowing God and being known by Him, of seeing Him, and of being given over to Him. All of this is begun during the life of Christ and definitively accomplished by His death and resurrection.

But it must be patiently carried on during the course of history, in order to be realized fully on the day of the final coming of Christ, whose date is known to no one except the Father (Evangelii Nuntiandi 9).

We need saints who know they are sinners, not sinners who think they are saints. Oftentimes we are tempted to offer grace on the cheap. Dietrich Bonhoffer speaks eloquently about costly grace and contrasts it with cheap grace:

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“Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheap jacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.

Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! ….

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye

which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

has throughout history brought about reform. He depends on the few. That has always been the way change occurred in the Church.

Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life….”

We have to give God everything.

T S Elliot described Christianity as “a condition of complete simplicity costing nothing less not everything”. The creative minority is the way in which God

Blessed John Henry Newman in ‘Witnesses to the Resurrection’ asked himself why did God use a few souls to begin and continue the work of the Church, and he answered in this way: “I have already suggested, what is too obvious almost to insist upon, that in making a select few the ministers of His mercy to mankind at large, our Lord was but acting according to the general course of His providence. It is plain every great change is effected by the few, not by the many; by the resolute, undaunted, zealous few.”

What are the weapons Christ has given us? The same for Francis and Ignatius, and Columbanus, and Teresa: prayer, the Gospel the sacraments, the scriptures, and fasting and twenty-four hours each day to love God and our neighbour with all our minds and all our hearts and all our souls.

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We have to be saints. And we have to know that there will be challenge and fierce challenge at times. As Pope Francis famously said the Church is like a field hospital. That is a military term.

We are involved in a war.

Christ’s followers will get bruised and battered. There will be opposition even hatred, we will meet the cross; Calvary was a messy place. And we remind ourselves that God is in charge.

He is the One who gives us strength and hope. And we must realize this fully. With Christ we can stand undaunted. After all Christ has overcome the world.

Therefore the creative minority can stand unintimidated.

St. Paul writes in Romans 8: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And that is the most key thing of all: our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

not apostolic we do not know Christ. Apostolate is the overflow of the interior life. One naturally follows the other. And I do not have to save the whole world. I start where God has put me, with God’s grace changing hearts, one by one.

In an interview once Pope Francis was asked what the Pope does all day to which he answered that he discerns. The answer of a Jesuit! But a revealing one from which we can learn so much. May we discern what God wants of us today and may God give us the courage to follow it.

This paper was delivered at the Maynooth Evangelium Conference on July 10, 2016. Bishop Cullinan was appointed Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Waterford and Lismore in February 2015.

We are called to bring Christ to others – to be apostles. If we are

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Rising from the Dead

by Seán Hurley

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nce upon a time Kerry was famous for its bird watching. Year after year, the most ardent bird watchers from around the world would flock to Kerry in their droves and regale at the beauty of some of the rare birds that grace our skies. Skellig Michael I’m told is the Olympus of bird watching locations. Enthusiasts of the sport will lie prostrate for hours, squinting through binoculars with their brows furrowed in the hope of catching a glimpse of a puffin’s multi-coloured beak or to watch a gannet diving into the water like a torpedo at full speed.

Alas times change. Recently the noble pursuit of bird watching has slipped into obsolescence while gawking at celebrities has become all the rage. For the past few weeks dewy eyed local and national newspapers have been engaging in various hunting expeditions around Kerry from trying to follow the trail of the “Top Gear” roadshow or by trying to relocate the co-ordinates of Luke Skywalker from “Star Wars” who by all accounts is lost again, judging by their haphazard attempts to find him and his fellow movie stars around Dingle.

At any rate, the soiree of Top Gear’s new presenters into

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town brought back the tide of sentiment that I had for the show. While irreverent and provocative at times, there’s no denying that Top Gear at its best was absolute TV gold.

Underneath its sardonic humour it possessed a soft side and was occasionally able to produce episodes of such poignancy and pathos that it would stir the heart of the viewer.

One such episode that springs to mind was when the presenters attempted to destroy a Toyota Hylux. The aim of the show was to wipe this sturdy vehicle from the face of the earth. No means were spared in doing this. They set the car on fire, they bombarded it with a wrecking ball and a caravan and they also parked it in the sea, where soon enough the car became tidal. Having failed in all these means to write off the car, in a follow up episode they pursued the most dastardly scheme of all. They decided to plant the Toyota on top of a 240 feet apartment block and then proceeded to demolish the

apartment block with explosives. The whole building came crashing down and amidst all the rubble the Toyota was presumed dead.

When the rubble was removed arguably the most iconic moment in Top Gear history thence occurred. James May – the presenter—gingerly hopped into the vehicle and after a tentative turn of the ignition the Toyota roared into life. The Hylux had risen from the dead against all odds.

Really we shouldn’t have been all that surprised. Story writers have always been enamoured with the resurrection motif.

Chronicles like “Lord of the Rings”, “Narnia” and “Harry Potter” are but a few stories where a main protagonist comes back from the dead.

Audiences lap up these storylines as they touch at our very essence as human beings.

Consciously or subconsciously, they remind us of our frailty arising from original sin and our need to be redeemed. They all echo the ultimate story of when Jesus Christ died on the

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cross and rose from the dead to save us from our sins.

Fictional stories can be of practical use to Catholics as they remind us that redemption is not a foregone conclusion but is contingent on a lot of striving on our part.

Amidst all the euphoria of the resurrection, we can be prone to forget we must be coredeemers with Christ and like Simon of Cyrene help Him to carry his cross.

In order to do this we must always have our heart and gaze set on Christ. We cannot do this by our own means but we must have constant recourse to prayer, the sacraments and spiritual direction to be able to achieve this. The Toyota Hylux is a great simile to explain these points.

Frequently receiving the Eucharist (daily if possible) is a basic starting point for being able to follow Christ. Like the petrol the Toyota Hylux devours by the gallon, the Eucharist is a Catholic’s nourishment and fuel for being

able to persevere. It is our anchor amidst the tumults and challenges of life.

Frequent Confession is also necessary to keep on the right track. However I’d like to stress that only a good Confession will enable a Catholic to follow Christ. To return to the analogy of the Hylux when the vehicle was submerged by water it was necessary to get under the bonnet and to remove the silt that had built up in the cylinders. It would have been completely superfluous in that situation to give the car a new lick of paint and expect it to start. A paint job would only serve to paper over the cracks and does more harm than good. Conversely with a bad Confession – where you try to conceal the most embarrassing sins from the confessor— this only serves to deceive yourself and to offend God. Lastly, to be able to stay close to Christ at the foot of the cross, it is necessary to be in contact with a good spiritual director that you can trust and will help you to navigate the

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vicissitudes of life. A good spiritual director should be an experienced soul who is able to provide advice on spiritual reading and how to improve one’s prayer life.

sacrifice Christ underwent for us and serve as a reminder to take up our own cross and follow Him.

At the end of the Top Gear episode after the Toyota emerged from the rubble the presenters decided enough was enough and they decided to erect the Toyota on a pedestal in their studio as a constant testament to the sheer endurance of the car.

Ironically, it came to symbolise the show’s own longevity and steadfastness in the midst of strife and controversy.

Likewise the cross should always be a reminder of the

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Seán Hurley has completed first year of Business and Law in UCD. He hails from Tralee, Co. Kerry

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Abortion and Judgement Day

by Rev. Patrick G Burke

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ne of the more insidious directions that the debate over abortion in Ireland has taken is the increasingly insistent claims that access to abortion is in some way a human right. Not only is the claim very clearly false, the perpetuation of this untruth has great potential to do spiritual damage.

It is abundantly clear that there exists nowhere in any international rights treaty that Ireland, or indeed any other nation, is a party to an explicit right to an abortion under any circumstances. In fact, these treaties do not mention the topic at all. After many years of trying to claim that such a right exists Amnesty International, which

has made abortion advocacy one of its key areas of engagement, was forced to admit recently in correspondence to the Irish Times that no such explicit right exists. Naturally, it did not see this admission as being fatal to its contention that abortion is a human right. Instead it switched horses midstream, as it were, and claimed it is an interpreted right.

Now, an interpreted right is a real thing. It is quite common in jurisprudence for the courts to find a right to something exists of which the law it is considering makes no mention. However, Amnesty in this instance is not relying on interpretive decisions of some recognized legal body on

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which to make its claims.

Instead it is making them on the basis of opinions which have been issued by various UN committees and other bodies.

And the fact is that these committees have no power to make such interpretations.

The recent “finding” of the Geneva based UN Committee on Human Rights is a good case in point. This committee claimed that the human rights of an Irish woman had been breached because she did not have the option of obtaining an abortion in Ireland after the child she was carrying was diagnosed as having a life-limiting condition.

It is to be noted that the committee operates under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This covenant, as with all human rights treaties as noted above, makes no mention of abortion.

However, the committee claimed that this lack of access amounted to torture, something that is covered by the covenant.

That the committee is willing to publicly declare that not being able to obtain an abortion is

equivalent to torture says much about their ideological perspective but nothing at all about Irish law. And it must also be noted that the covenant which governs the existence and operation of the committee nowhere gives it the authority to exercise the juridical power of discovering in the covenant that which it does not explicitly contain. And it most certainly does not grant it any power to bind the states which have signed up to the Covenant with such “findings” that are outside its power to make.

The danger is, however, that along the principle that the lie endlessly repeated becomes regarded by many as the truth, so if it is repeated often enough publicly that abortion is some kind of a right people will come to believe that it must be.

Indeed, the following rather bizarre story shows that the tactic is having some success.

Anyone who knows me is aware I am pro-life and not shy about making my views known. And so when the UN committee mentioned above tried to claim

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abortion is a right I expressed the view that it is not and that the committee has no authority to claim it is in a letter to one of our national papers, which was duly published (this view, it should be noted, is hardly a controversial one; no less a person than our Taoiseach has said much the same).

stand before God and be judged for my behaviour.

The day it was published I got a phone call from a gentleman who was most irate with me. He didn’t agree with my opinion. In fact, he didn’t think it was a matter of opinion at all. Ireland had signed up to these treaties; therefore Ireland had to do whatever the UN committee said. And if it said abortion was a human right, then it was. I, therefore, was a liar, a spreader of vile falsehoods, and someone behaving in a manner unworthy of a member of the clergy. His wife, he let me know, had travelled to the UK some years earlier for an abortion after the child had been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition. He had made his peace with God as to the decision they had made. And the day would come, he informed me, when I would

Those who are pro-life are often accused of trying to force their religious beliefs on those who are in favour of abortion. So it was rather surreal to be told effectively that I was going to hell for opposing it. And I will admit that I found the personalized abuse directed at me, as well as its nature, to be quite disturbing. But more disturbing were the theological implications of what this man had to say. He had completely internalized the idea that access to an abortion is a human right; and therefore those who obtain one, and those who assist others in obtaining one, absolutely do nothing wrong. Abortion has become a moral good; and those who oppose it behave immorally by trying to prevent others from having access to this moral good.

The spiritual dangers of such an attitude are obvious. Abortion is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life and as such is evil. But if people are duped into believing that it is not evil but good then the likelihood of

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their repenting of their complicity in this evil is greatly reduced. Thus the falsehood that abortion is a right not only lures people into committing this great evil, it also denies them the opportunity to repent of what they have done and ask God's forgiveness. It is therefore incumbent, I would suggest, upon all people of good will to speak out publicly and name this falsehood for what it is again and again. By doing so the lives of the innocent may be saved; as may the souls of those who might otherwise be led astray by so terrible a lie.

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 www.thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie, is a frequent correspondent to the letters page of the Irish Times and other national newspapers, and can occasionally be heard on RTE Radio One’s A Living Word.

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Porn and the curse of total sexual freedom

by Bishop Robert Barron

T

he most recent issue of Time Magazine features a fascinating and deeply troubling article on the prevalence of pornography in our culture. The focus of the piece is on the generation of young men now coming of age, the first generation who grew up with unlimited access to hardcore pornography on the Internet.

The statistics on this score are absolutely startling. Most young men commence their pornography use at the age of eleven; there are approximately 107 million monthly visitors to adult websites in this country; twelve million hours a day are spent watching porn globally on the adult-video site Pornhub; 40% of boys in Great Britain say

that they regularly consume pornography – and – on and on.

All of this wanton viewing of live-action pornography has produced, many are arguing, an army of young men who are incapable of normal and satisfying sexual activity with real human beings. Many twenty-somethings are testifying that when they have the opportunity for sexual relations with their wives or girlfriends, they cannot perform. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, this is not a physiological issue, which is proved by the fact that they can still become aroused easily by images on a computer screen. The sad truth is that for these young men, sexual

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stimulation is associated not with flesh and blood human beings, but with flickering pictures of physically perfect people in virtual reality.

Moreover, since they start so young, they have been compelled, as they get older, to turn to ever more bizarre and violent pornography in order to get the thrill that they desire.

And this in turn makes them incapable of finding conventional, non-exotic sex even vaguely interesting.

This state of affairs has led a number of men from the affected generation to lead the charge to disenthrall their contemporaries from the curse of pornography. Following the

example of various antiaddiction programs, they are setting up support groups, speaking out about the dangers of porn, advocating for restrictions on adult websites, getting addicts into contact with sponsors who will challenge them, etc. And all of this, it seems to me, is to the good. But what really struck me in the Time article is that neither the author nor anyone that he interviewed or referenced ever spoke of pornography use as something morally objectionable. It has apparently come to the culture’s attention only because it has resulted in erectile dysfunction! The Catholic Church – and indeed all of decent society until about

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forty years ago – sees pornography as, first and foremost, an ethical violation, a deep distortion of human sexuality, an unconscionable objectification of persons who should never be treated as anything less than subjects. That this ethical distortion results in myriad problems, both physical and psychological, goes without saying, but the Catholic conviction is that those secondary consequences will not be adequately addressed unless the underlying issue be dealt with.

It is precisely on this point that we come up against a cultural block. Though Freud’s psychological theorizing has been largely discredited, a fundamental assumption of Freudianism remains an absolute bedrock of our culture.

I’m referring to the conviction that most of our psychological suffering follows as a consequence from the suppression of our sexual desires. Once we have been liberated from old taboos regarding sex, this line of argument runs, we will

overcome the neuroses and psychoses that so bedevil us.

What was once the peculiar philosophy of a Viennese psychiatrist came to flower in the 1960’s, at least in the West, and then made its way into practically every nook and cranny of the culture. How often have we heard some version of this argument: as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, you should be allowed to do whatever pleases you in the sexual arena. What the Time article articulates in regard to the specific issue of pornography has been, in point of fact, glaringly obvious for quite some time: Freud was wrong.

Complete sexual freedom has not made us psychologically healthier, just the contrary. It has deeply sickened our society.

The valorization of unrestricted freedom in regard to sex – precisely because it is morally corrupt – proves psychologically debilitating as well.

Whereas Freud, in the manner of most modern thinkers, principally valued freedom, the Church values love, which is to say, willing the good of the

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other. Just as moderns tend to reduce everything to freedom, the Church reduces everything to love, by which I mean, it puts all things in relation to love. Sex is, on the Biblical reading, good indeed, but its goodness is a function of its subordination to the demand of love. When it loses that mooring – as it necessarily does when freedom is reverenced as the supreme value – it turns into something other than what it is meant to be. The laws governing sexual behavior, which the Freudian can read only as “taboos” and invitations to repression, are in fact the manner in which the relation between sex and love is maintained. And upon the maintenance of that relation

depends our psychological and even physical health as well.

That to me is the deepest lesson of the Time article.

This article first appeared at: www.wordonfire.org.

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

This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

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St Josemaría Escrivá, the Saint of Everyday Life

by Rev. Andrew Black

I

n the Book of Leviticus the Lord says, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy!”

Those with an interest in grammar will note that the Lord uses the imperative command here, God does not suggest to his people that they should be holy, he doesn’t say that it would be great if they were holy, no the Lord is clear, and what he desires is our holiness. Before such a challenge how are we to respond? How are we to be holy when there are so many distractions in our lives, how indeed are we to be holy when there are so many others who are already so much better than us, how can we ever be holy when we fall into the same

sinful traps time and time again? Perhaps we might begin to think that the Lord’s command is not meant for us, holiness is for those who have already been chosen by God for this exalted task, in fact there’s a comfort that comes with that thought – since I probably never will be holy I don’t need to put in as much effort, the Lord will be satisfied with me just the way I am – isn’t that altogether more palatable than “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy!”

Just whenever we’ve reached that happy compromise, that holiness is for anyone other than me, we read on, but this time St Paul is throwing our

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spiritual life into chaos, “God wills you all to be holy,” he writes to the Church in Thessalonica. It is the will of God that we are Holy, all of us.

But how is this even possible, how do we even begin to realise this awesome will of God? The problem is, that if we keep reading the scriptures, seeking a get out clause, some proof that holiness is for someone, anyone other than me, then we may stop reading, because the discommoding fact is that God wants us, all of us, to be holy.

There is clearly nothing new with God’s call to holiness, but it has been so hard for us to fully grasp. When we read through the lives of saints and

read of heroic feats, of souls totally enwrapped in prayer, of the foundation of great religious institutions; holiness begins to feel very distant again, it seems like a greatness beyond our own meagre efforts. How different our lives would be today were it not for the 2nd of October 1928 when God allowed Fr Josemaría Escrivá to see a vision of holiness that is for all, and that all are capable of, and thus Opus Dei began as a particular part in the life of the universal Church. With the most impressive dedication, St Josemaría immediately set out to spread the age old call to holiness, not in spite of ordinary life, not through

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extraordinary means, but precisely in and through the small things of ordinary life, offering up our work, done to the best of our human capacity for the glory of God, and for our own sanctification.

Holiness is not a thing to be achieved, a prize for which we might toil in vain, but it is our daily objective, our Opus Dei, God’s work achieved through the offering of our hands and hearts.

Last September Bishop Treanor appointed me to the City Hospital to act as the Catholic Chaplain. The first few weeks in any new job are completely exhausting, but I can tell you that after a few weeks in the hospital I was drained in every possible way.

One evening I took up a well known book about the life of St Josemaría and read about the period in his life just after God had inspired him to found Opus Dei, when he himself was working as a hospital chaplain in Madrid. I was instantly impressed with his incredible love and devotion for souls, how he would crisscross the

city to hear the confessions of dying patients, how he would cheerfully attend to those who were dying of the most terrible diseases and the deep sense of peace that he would give people who were suffering tremendous pain. I was instantly enthused for my own work and renewed for my own apostolate, and I suggest that this is the continued work of our Father today. St Josemaría enthuses us on our own mission because he shows us that it is possible to find God in everyday life, it is possible to offer up little things for God’s glory, and perhaps most crucially of all, he shows us that it is possible to be a saint in ordinary life.

There are so many things that we could say about St Josemaría, about his personal witness and for the extraordinary contribution which Opus Dei continues to make in all areas of the Church, not least in the Diocese of Down and Connor. Time and again he inspires us to through down the nets on the other side of the boat, and to seek God in

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the midst of our ordinary lives.

He is our saint, the saint of men and women everywhere who hear God’s command to ‘be holy’ and struggle to find a way, he is the saint to lift us up and encourage us in our workplaces and in our homes to do all things well and to live out our Catholic faith, and he is the saint who cheerfully gives us all the hope that God calls us all to holiness, and that it is indeed possible.

This is the text of a homily delivered during a Mass in honour of St Josemaria Escriva, in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Holy Rosary Parish on July 2, 2016. It first appeared on the website of the Down and Connor diocese: www.downandconnor.org

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rev. Andrew Black is a graduate of Queens University Belfast and is a priest of the Down and Connor diocese. He is currently chaplain to the City Hospital, Belfast.

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It’s time to consign clericalism to the past, where it belongs

by Jack Valero

A

new front that Pope Francis has opened in his bid to reform the Catholic Church may prove one of his toughest challenges yet. But it is also, unquestionably, one of the most important.

“I remember now the famous expression, ‘It is the hour of the laity’,” he said in a recent letter to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, “but it seems that the clock has stopped.” A resurgence of clericalism, he warned, is stifling the possibility of lay people taking up their proper role in the Church – one of the key insights of the Second Vatican Council.

This isn’t a side issue for Francis; unless lay people assume responsibility for mission and evangelization, he says in the letter, “the prophetic fire that the Church is called to light in the hearts of her peoples will be extinguished.” In other words, the very purpose of the Church will be undermined unless it allows lay people to fulfil their vocation.

“Clericalism” is a term originally used in political circles in the nineteenth century to refer to what liberals saw as the overweening and interfering power of the Church in political life. But in more recent times, it has been used to describe an attitude that identifies the Church with the hierarchy.

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Clericalism is a mindset that leads both to an undue widening of the role of the clergy to the detriment of the legitimate rights of lay people, and to lay people aping the customs and actions of priests. The first denies the majority of Christians their responsibility for evangelization; the second colludes in that disempowerment.

Back in 2011, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said in an interview to the Argentinian agency AICA that “we priests tend to clericalise lay people.

And the lay people – not all of them, but many – ask us on their knees to clericalise them, because it’s easier to be an altar server than a protagonist in a lay vocation.”

In his letter to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Francis warned that “clericalism does not just negate the personality of Christians, but has a tendency to diminish and devalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit put in the hearts of our people.” The Pope added:

“Clericalism leads to seeing lay people in a functional way, treating them as servants, and cutting out their initiative, efforts, and even the necessary boldness to take the Good News of the Gospel to all environments of social and especially political life.”

He came back to the theme during an audience on May 12 with women religious. His speech was eclipsed by reports of his decision to study the role of women deacons in the early Church, but some of the most interesting parts of that speech were against clericalism. He told the nuns it was “a danger, a very strong temptation,” and added: “Lay people don’t know what to do without asking a priest, and for this reason an awareness of the role of the laity has been very much delayed.”

Then, in an interview with La Croix on May 9, he reflected on how lay people can and should be at the center of the Church’s work of evangelization, citing the example of Korea. “That country was evangelized by missionaries from China who later left,” said Francis. “Then,

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for two hundred years, Korea was evangelized by lay people.…

So there is not necessarily a need for priests in order to evangelize.

Baptism provides the strength to evangelize.”

Pope Francis tours St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on his open car at the end of a Mass he celebrated for the Youths Jubilee, part of the Holy Year activities, Sunday, April 24, 2016.

Before the Second Vatican Council, it was common to think of the Church as made up of bishops (successors to the apostles), priests (ordained ministers), consecrated religious (who took public vows) and laity, who were seen as nonordained and non-consecrated – in other words, as “none of the above”.

Vatican II turned this around.

Its key document on the Church, Lumen Gentium, describes the Church as made up of Christ’s Faithful. This includes the laity, whose specific mission consists in bringing the secular world to God, and the clergy, who are to help the lay people achieve their mission. In other words, lay

people evangelize with a direct mission from God, which is theirs by right, not as a mandate from the hierarchy.

Last November, on the fiftieth anniversary of the document on lay people, Apostolicam Actuositatem, promulgated in 1965 at the end of the Council, the Pope observed how Vatican II did not see the laity as members of a “second order” at the service of the hierarchy but as disciples of Christ. Laity are called, Francis said, “to animate every environment, every activity, every human relation according to the spirit of the Gospel, bringing light, hope, and the charity received from Christ to those places that otherwise would remain foreign to God’s action and abandoned to the misery of the human condition.”

He added: “No one better than they can carry out the essential task of inscribing the divine law in the life of the earthly city.”

What might it look like, this vision of the laity taking their proper place? Some think it’s about lay people – both men, and even more importantly, women – having power in the

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Church, and taking on more ministries. Yet it is precisely this that Pope Francis calls clericalism. “In Buenos Aires,” he said at the recent meeting of women religious, “I had this experience: a good priest came to me and said, ‘I have a very good layperson in my parish: he does this and that, he knows how to organize things, he gets things done.… Shall we make him a deacon?’ Or rather: shall we ‘clericalise’ him?”

Francis said he emphatically rejected that idea. “No! Let him remain a layperson. Don’t make him a deacon. This is important.

It often happens to you that clericalism obstructs the correct development of something.” For Pope Francis, the “hour of the laity” is all about the public activity of lay people, not the internal functioning of the Church.

He warns in the letter to the Latin American bishops against “the temptation of thinking that the committed layman is one who works in the tasks of the Church and/or in the things of the parish or of the diocese, and we have reflected little on how to

accompany a baptized person in his public and daily life.” As result, “we have generated a lay élite, believing that only they are committed laymen who work in the things ‘of the priests,’ and we have forgotten, we have neglected the believer who often burns his hope in the daily struggle to live the faith. These are the situations that clericalism cannot see, as it is more concerned to dominate areas more than to generate processes.”

Public life is not just about politics but all the areas of human activity – the family, the workplace, shops and restaurants, leisure and the arts.

It is the specific role of lay people to sanctify each and every environment of the world. It means lay people getting together and starting projects for the good of both Church and society, projects distinguished by their liberty yet their loyalty, blessed by the bishops as fruits of apostolic activity, but not controlled by them.

One such initiative is Catholic Voices, a project I co-founded in 2010 that trains lay people of all

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ages and occupations to tell the Church’s story in the news as well as in talks and in our everyday conversations in ordinary life. This is what the “hour of the laity” will really look like when it finally comes: lay people who are so well prepared, both in their chosen profession or job and in their knowledge of the doctrines and history of the Church, that they can build the new earthly city placing Christ at the centre of all human activities.

It means politicians working for the common good, not for particular interests, doctors who nurture life from conception to natural death, lawyers who are at the service of justice and

human rights, journalists who tell truth to power using ethical means, financiers who are motivated by human flourishing in the workplace. It means ordinary Catholics who offer up their work to God, whatever it is, and who give their lives in love to those around them.

We need more priests. But we need many more committed, awakened laypeople, not as a remedy for a lack of priestly vocations, but so that lay people at last take their proper role.

When that comes – when the “Hour of the Laity” finally strikes – it will mean the prophetic fire has been lit, consigning clericalism to the past where it should belong.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jack Valero is co-founder of Catholic Voices and Press Officer for Opus Dei in the UK.

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Book review: The Romanovs: 1613-1918

by Francis Phillips

T

he Romanov dynasty which ruled Russia from 1613 until 1918 provides a colourful and compelling narrative, of which the biographer of Potemkin and Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore, has taken full advantage. Russia and her autocratic rulers have always been larger than life. The empire itself grew by 20,000 square miles a year from 1613 until, by the late 19th century, the tsars (the word is derived from “Caesar”) ruled one-sixth of the globe. Were the twenty sovereigns of the dynasty capable of ruling an empire this size? Hardly.

The author has conceived his book as a study in character: the “distorting effect of absolute

The Romanovs: 1613-1918

By Simon Sebag Montefiore Weidenfeld & Nicolson January 2016 Hardback: 768 pages ISBN: 0297852663

power on personality”. It certainly provides a fascinating psychological study of this succession of megalomaniacs, madmen and mediocrities. It was Alexei, son of the first tsar, Michael, who agreed to an alliance with his nobles, which meant they were free to rule over their own vast estates and dispense justice – often vicious and cruel – to their serfs, in return for their loyalty. This alliance lasted until 1861, when Alexander II emancipated the 22 million serfs. Nonetheless, the core of the great Russian families with their illustrious names, such as the Sheremetevs, Dolgorukys, Golitsyns, Trubetskoys and Orlovs, carried

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on flaunting their wealth and power until the Revolution.

There was a constant tension, as the author describes, between the need for Russia to maintain its vast borders, while at the same time projecting a power proportionate to its imperial pretensions within a backward society which, unlike the rest of Europe, did not develop functioning democratic assemblies and civic institutions.

By the nineteenth century, the country had a vast bureaucracy of petty functionaries with symbolic power, alongside a largely irresponsible aristocratic class and a royal family imprisoned by protocol and semi-mystical status.

The tsars had a fourfold function: as religious leaders, imperial heads of state, as a focus of nationalist pride and as military warlords. If they often seemed paranoid it was because their survival depended on constant vigilance, backed by violence. Six of the last twelve tsars were murdered and there were five assassination attempts on the life of Alexander II,

1855-1881, before he was finally killed. When the ill-fated Nicholas II and his family once visited Queen Victoria at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, he did not dare leave the security of his yacht, prompting pity from his English relations.

Nicholas II, who came to power at a time of increasing civic turbulence and demand for reform, was a weak and indecisive figure who commented on his sudden accession in 1894, “I’m not ready to be tsar. I never wanted to become one. I’ve no idea of even how to talk to the ministers.” His ancestress, the empress Anna, 1730-40, is described by the author as “lazy, vicious and weak, distracted by hunting, spying and dwarf-baiting”. Peter the Great had his son and heir tortured to death and Catherine the Great was complicit in the murder of her husband, Peter II. Nicholas I, 1825-55, who created the peculiarly – and enduring – Russian institution of the secret police, lived in “Olympian isolation”. A lady-in-waiting remarked on his “arrogant and cruel expression”.

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Sebag Montefiore reminds us in his afterword, where he reflects on the style of Putin’s government, that there is “nothing incompatible about modernity and authoritarianism”. He writes with knowledge and gusto, though in my view he is too keen to highlight and dwell on the salacious details concerning the private lives of this dysfunctional dynasty. He also has a pretentious way of turning the different reigns into a series of theatrical performances rather than chapters, each with its own cast of characters, which makes their outrageous or flamboyant behaviour seem even more frivolous and fantastical than it actually was.

which succeeded these corrupt and backward autocrats in 1917, was repugnant and resulted in more decades of misery for the peasants, now turned into the proletariat. Yet after reading this book readers will have some understanding of Trotsky’s description of the Romanov dynasty as “a world of icons and cockroaches”.

This article is reprinted from MercatorNet.com.

The violence of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, who imposed the Soviet state

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Francis Phillips writes from Buckinghamshire in the UK.

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Director Paul Feig Writers Katie Dippold and Paul Feig Starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Charles Dance, Michael Kenneth Williams, Chris Hemsworth

Film review: Ghostbusters

USA

by John Mulderig

F

ew films released over the last several decades have embedded themselves as firmly in the public consciousness as the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters. Both the lyrics and the tune of its impossible-to-forget theme song cling tenaciously in the collective memory. So too do any number of its one-liners and visual images (“He slimed me!”).

to that of its long-ago progenitor.

But director and co-writer (with Katie Dippold) Paul Feig mixes things up by shifting the gender balance. In lieu of the Reagan-era male specter collectors – played

by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis – we get lady metaphysical musketeers.

While the franchise offerings that followed generally failed to live up to the quality of the original, they did extend across several media, from the 1989 big-screen sequel (unimaginatively titled Ghostbusters II) to television, comic books and video games.

And now – lo, these many years later – there arrives a reboot.

The first of these we meet is Columbia University physics professor – and tenure aspirant – Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig). With her future on the line, the last thing Erin can afford is to have her colleagues discover that she once collaborated on a book about the paranormal with her nowestranged best friend, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy).

The plot of this 3-D Ghostbusters (Columbia) runs a similar course

So when Abby, who continues to research the subject, puts their

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volume up for sale on the internet, Erin pays a visit to Abby’s lab to protest. There she’s introduced to Abby’s current sidekick, tech whiz Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon).

Spooky circumstances soon have Erin and Abby patching up their differences and teaming with Jillian to track the numerous ghosts that have suddenly started popping up around New York City. They're eventually joined on their hunt by no-nonsense transit worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), whose subway station has fallen victim to one of the hauntings.

Rounding out the band of wraith wranglers is Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), the ditzy hunk of a secretary the women hire after renting office space for their new partnership. The dumb-blond/ eye-candy gags aimed at Kevin typify the overall tone of the proceedings, a light note that’s eventually drowned out by an increasingly heavy emphasis on (admittedly spectacular) special effects.

generally harmless, sometimes drift into mild raunchiness makes this suitable for grownups only.

The film contains occult themes, some strong but stylized violence, a suicide, brief irreverence, occasional sexual and scatological humor, at least one use each of profanity and crude language, several crass terms and a series of obscene gestures. 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.

Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service.

Copyright (c) 2016 Catholic News Service.

The movie’s treatment of the supernatural is unlikely to lead even the impressionable astray.

But the fact that the jokes, though

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Friday 7th – Sunday 9th October

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.familyenrichmentireland.org