Would Cameron sup with the devil?

Thee amendment by Mr Loughton and others on the Same sex Bill was defeated tonight after a shoddy appeal from Mr Cameron to his political enemies Labour.

 Labour sources said Ed Miliband had agreed to encourage his MPs to vote against Mr Loughton's amendment after receiving an "11th hour" appeal for help from the government.

A phrase like "unprincipled buggers" comes to mind.   Perish the thought!
 Enough said.

Archbishop Peter Smith : Please pray for Christians in China

Earlier this month Archbishop Peter Smith received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Zen SDB, the Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, asking for prayers for Christians in the People's Republic of China.

The Cardinal wrote: 'The situation of the Church in China is getting more and more difficult. The enemies of the Church are trying all efforts to enslave our bishops and priests in order to strengthen a Church independent from the authority of the Pope.'

In 2007, Pope Emeritus Benedict asked the whole Church to pray for the Church in China, especially on 24th May, the Feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, and composed a prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan, who is venerated at her shrine in Shanghai.

The image is of Our Lady of Sheshan.

Please download Pope Emeritus Benedict's prayer (A4 .pdf) 

Courtesy Of Southwark Website

Comment by Archbishop Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Peter Smith on Marriage (same sex couples) Bill

We urge members of the House of Commons to think again about the long term consequences of the Marriage (same sex couples) Bill in deciding how to vote at the report stage and third reading debates next week (20-21 May).

Many people within and beyond the faith communities deeply believe that the state should not seek to change the fundamental meaning of marriage. This proposed change in the law is far more profound than first appears. Marriage will become an institution in which openness to children, and with it the responsibility on fathers and mothers to remain together to care for children born into their family, is no longer central to society’s understanding of marriage. It is not too late for Parliament to think again and we urge MPs to do so.

Furthermore, the Bill as currently drafted poses grave risks to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. If the Bill is to proceed through Parliament we urge members to ensure it is amended so that these fundamental freedoms we all cherish are clearly and demonstrably safeguarded.

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Commons Report Stage Briefing for Members of Parliament on proposed new clauses and amendments to the Marriage (same sex couples) Bill.
(please see top right of page or use the link below )
Commons report stage briefing, Same Sex Marriage Bill 233.39 kB

Babies who survive abortion left to die

Washington D.C., (CNA/EWTN News).- Pro-life activists protested outside the clinic of a Washington, D.C., abortionist who admitted during an undercover interview that he “would not help” any infant that survives an attempted abortion procedure.  

Melissa Ohden, a survivor of an attempted abortion, spoke at the May 1 protest, saying she was thankful that the doctors at the abortion facility where she was born “didn’t subscribe to Dr. (Cesare) Santangelo’s credo that children like me should be left to die.”

“They didn’t see me as a liability, they didn’t hate me for surviving, they saw my humanity,” Ohden said.

Lila Rose, president of the undercover reporting organization Live Action, called Santangelo’s comments “a great injustice.”

“This is something that we can all agree needs to stop, and we’re not going to stop doing this work until we see an end to these grave injustices,” she said.

Live Action is releasing a series of undercover videos filmed in abortion clinics across the country. The videos reveal a willingness to commit infanticide in the event that a baby survives an abortion procedure.

Video footage and transcripts released by the organization on April 29 show Santangelo – a doctor who runs an abortion practice at George Washington University – and a clinic nurse promising that if an infant were to survive a late-term abortion, they would treat the child as if he or she had “do not resuscitate orders” and, as if they were treating someone with terminal cancer, “wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive.”

This latest investigation coincides with the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who is currently charged with the murder of one woman under his supervision and several additional charges of murder for infants who were allegedly born alive and then killed by Gosnell or his staff members.

Rose warned that “Gosnell is not an outlier,” but that Live Action has documented a similar willingness to kill or fail to care for infants who survive abortions in clinics throughout the country.

“We can do so much better as a country, and we can do better for women than this,” Rose stated.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, also spoke at the protest, calling Santangelo’s comments “an unacceptable and inhumane tragedy.”

“If this is not rank discrimination and unspeakable cruelty, what is?” she asked.

Dannenfelser and several other speakers asked the building to evict Santangelo, and called on authorities to prosecute abortionists who break the law.

Dyllan Harrington, a protest participant, told CNA that he was moved by the testimonies of the speakers, who each “had a story of a personal experience to tell.”

He explained that he was driven to attend the protest by Santangelo’s comments, because “when infanticide is acceptable it’s just proof that abortion is murder – it’s something that’s inhuman and cruel.”

Other participants explained that the Catholic chaplaincy at George Washington University has gathered with students every week for years to pray the rosary outside of the clinic.

Lisa Campbell, a student at the university, said that many students “don’t know there’s an abortion clinic on campus.” The public protest helped draw attention the clinic’s presence, she observed, noting that “it was nice to see the students stop as they walked by and take note of what’s going on.”

Some counter-protesters also appeared at the event. Freshman Alicia Little told CNA that while she had not heard of Santangelo or Gosnell, she knew “that there have been protests here before” and thought that it was important for “both sides to be represented” at the event.

“I just personally think that it should be a person’s choice to have an abortion or to have a baby at all,” said Little, adding that she believes that “it should be available whenever” and that “any reason is a valid reason” to abort.

Fr. Greg Shaffer, Catholic chaplain at George Washington University, told CNA that while he has become accustomed to seeing evil over the past 20 years of involvement in the pro-life movement, “this goes to another level.”

“To defend infanticide – you can’t do it,” said Fr. Shaffer, adding that he was “very happy” at the prospect of the abortionist’s possible removal from campus.

“It’s really an answer to our prayers and we know that something is happening here,” he said.

COMMENT:   a "small" important step in the pro life campaign, though a huge step for the babies who may not be aborted after the closure of such a clinic.

Pope appoints new Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin

Pope Francis has appointed Fr Denis Nulty, as Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. Fr Nulty, who was Parish Priest of Saint Mary’s parish Drogheda in the Diocese of Meath, has been congratulated by many colleagues and welcomed to the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin by its former Bishop Jim Moriarty and diocesan administrator, Monsignor Brendan Byrne.

The bishop elect, who was the youngest parish priest in the country at the time of his appointment to Drogheda, will soon become the youngest Bishop in the country.  “Father Denis is a native of Slane, where Saint Patrick lit the Easter fire.  We welcome him to this diocese where in ancient days Brigid lit the fire of Christ in Kildare and Laserian (Molaise) nurtured that same flame of faith in Leighlin,” he said.

Bishop Michael Smith, of the Diocese of Meath where Fr Nulty is currently serving, spoke of the void the priest’s departure would leave. “His contribution to the mission of faith in the Diocese went far beyond his own parish.  He has at all times brought to his priestly ministry great dedication, commitment and wisdom both during his ten years in the Cathedral parish, Mullingar and since 1998 as Parish Priest of Saint Mary’s,” he said. 

Father Denis Nulty speaking on his appointment as Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Carlow  thanked everyone for their welcome.

Speaking of the Boyne and Barrow Rivers in Meath and Kildare and Leighlin and how they remind us of the life giving waters of baptism he said: “They also remind us that today so many people are thirsting for the water of new life and hope - those living in negative equity in the commuter belt; those coping with the stress of the daily treadmill; those out of work searching for a deeper appreciation of their self-worth and dignity; farmers coping with the fodder crisis and late spring, how much that life is needed - may each find solace and support in this hour. I am equally conscious this morning of those who have been wounded by the Church and the terrible sins of individuals who should have brought life, but instead inflicted pain and destruction on too many.”

He also spoke of last Saturday’s National Prayer Vigil offered at Knock and its message and said: “Mothers deserve nothing less than the best medical and psychiatric care available, especially during pregnancy when the lives of two persons – the life of the unborn and the life of the mother – are at stake.”

He reiterated the Bishops’ preliminary response to the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013 when they stated ‘The Gospel of life is at the heart of the message of Jesus: the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of life is always morally wrong’.

Kildare & Leighlin diocese had been without a bishop since Bishop James Moriarty who, following the publication of the Murphy report, offered his resignation to the Pope on 23 December 2009, and this was accepted on 22 April 2010.

In his welcome address, Monsignor Byrne paid particular tribute to Bishop Moriarty and Pope Benedict as he welcomed Fr Nulty to the diocese as Bishop Elect.

"When Pope Benedict relinquished the Papacy earlier this year, it sent a powerful signal about humility, embracing a new departure for the good of the Church. It is now three years since Bishop Moriarty, with similar humility, stepped down from office here in Kildare & Leighlin and expressed the hope that it would open the way to a better future for all concerned. With gratitude for all they both have done, we now celebrate with Easter faith and joy this new beginning for our faith community here in the Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin."

Bishop-elect Fr Denis Nulty was born in Slane, Co. Meath in 1963 to parents Den Nulty and Nan Balfe. He is the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters, all of whom were reared on the family farm. He attended Primary School at Saint Patrick’s National School, Slane and Secondary School at Saint Patrick’s Classical School, Navan until 1981.

In September the same year he entered the seminary at Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He was ordained a Priest for the Diocese of Meath in Saint Patrick’s Church, Slane in 1988 and his first appointment was as Curate in the Cathedral Parish at Mullingar where he served for ten years until 1998.

In August 1998 Bishop Smith appointed Fr Nulty as Parish Priest of Saint Mary’s, Drogheda where he has remained until the present day.  In 2006 he studied in All Hallows College, Dublin, for an M.A. in Management for the Pastoral and Voluntary Services awarded by DCU. In September 2006 he became Vicar Forane for the Duleek Deanery of seven parishes.  He has been Chairperson of the Council of Priests in the Diocese of Meath for the past eight years.

I am away in North Wales for two weeks and then going to Ireland , D.v. for a while, so there may not be another post for some time.

Is Clifton diocese still Catholic? Has Wicca taken over?

Protect the Pope blog has a disturbing report which makes me pose, at least to myself, the questions contained in the heading of my post today. For more information see my sidebar or
http://protectthepope.com/?p=7207




My COMMENT

Almighty God,

Who in our country raised up martyrs

from every walk of life,

to vindicate the authority of Your Church

in teaching and worship,

grant through their intercession, we pray,

that all Your people may be gathered once again

to celebrate the same sacraments

under the one Shepherd, Jesus Christ, Your Son,

Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

One God for ever and ever. Amen (collect from today's Mass on the Feast of The English Martyrs)

Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for our bishops and our nations. Amen

Statement by Bishop -elect Raymond Browne on his appointment as new Bishop of Kerry

“Life in its fullness points to the fundamental right to life of every human being from the moment of conception … the weeks ahead will be a decisive time for Ireland.  I urge people to travel to the ‘Choose Life’ vigil in Knock” – Bishop-elect Browne

A Easpaig, muintir Cill Áirne, muintir Deoise Ciarraí, gach duine atá baillithe, Dia dhiobh go léir ar maidin. Is mór an onóir dom gur iarr ár bPapa Prionsias orm bheith mar Easpaig anseo i Deoise Ciarrraí.

Bishop Murphy, people of Killarney, people of Kerry diocese, fellow priests, all who are gathered, good morning to you all and God bless you.

I am deeply honoured that Pope Francis has chosen me to be your Bishop.   It is with great humility I present myself to you today.  I am conscious of the great diocese this is.  I am conscious of the way the faith has been lived in all the parishes, church areas, religious houses and communities, schools, and all the faith communities throughout the diocese by this and previous generations.

My name is Father Ray Browne.  I was ordained a priest for Elphin Diocese in 1982.  You probably are not familiar with Elphin diocese.  Elphin is a village in mid Co Roscommon and the diocese consists of most of County Roscommon and a heavily populated area around Sligo town where the Cathedral is.  I come from the small part of the diocese that is in Co Westmeath, part of Athlone town.  I have three sisters and three brothers.  Of my thirty one years as a priest, I spent thirteen in Galway city doing Canon Law work, the rest I have spent as a school chaplain and in parish work.

I do have connections with Munster.  I studied for three years in UCC doing a science degree.  My mother’s native place was the Galtee mountains and the Glen of Aherlow on the Tipperary-Limerick border.  As children the only holidays we knew were an annual week or ten days there, wonderful memories.  The South of Ireland for me always means happy memories.  The parish I am in now runs along the Shannon at Ballyleague, Roscommon. The waters that flow by run out to the ocean by the northerly tip of Kerry diocese.

My knowledge of Kerry dates mostly from my years as a student.  I have happy memories of spending three weeks here in the Kerry Gaeltacht to benefit my Irish, courtesy of the UCC Irish Department.  My Irish needs to be renewed again.  I have a clear memory of thirty five years ago and my first visit to Gallarus oratory – has it seen well over a thousand years of lived faith in Jesus? Coming to Kerry now, I will finally get to achieve a lifelong ambition to put ashore on Sceilig Mhichíl – those monks by their lives gave centuries of honour and praise to God.  Two years ago I was at Ardfert Cathedral and monastic site, in the hallowed ruins you can feel the centuries of lived faith.

Many of you have just celebrated the 10.30am Mass.  God’s Word to us all in today’s Gospel is Jn 15:9  “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Remain in my love”.  Let that be God’s Word to us all as I come among you as bishop.  Let us all more and more seek to “remain in his love”.  If only we could fully appreciate that love.  Jesus came to reveal and make real in all of our lives the love of God the Father for us all.

Remember the word of Jesus in Jn 10:10, “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full”.  God the Father wants that all of us would know life in its fullness, that all of us would live our full human potential in peace and harmony.  I am very conscious today of the ongoing economic situation of our country and how it has impacted on so many in every town, village and town-land throughout Ireland.  I am sure Kerry is no different.  So many are out of work; so many are in major financial difficulty; our young adults, many highly qualified, cannot get a first job; many young people are emigrating.  Please God all in our country, at national and local level, will work together selflessly for the good of all to give hope to all.  That is basic to our Christian duty, Jesus is ever encouraging us “love one another”.

Returning to the Word, “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full”, there are many other difficult situations for us as a people that I could mention.  On this day I mention just one other:  ‘Life in its fullness’ points to the fundamental right to life of every human being from the moment of conception in our mother’s womb to the moment of our natural death.  We are all aware that the weeks ahead will be a decisive time for Ireland in this regard.  There will be a National Prayer Vigil at Knock this Saturday afternoon where the Church will gather from all over Ireland in prayer.  Please God the whole Church will be well represented there.  I urge people to travel to Knock.  The theme of the Vigil is ‘Choose life, mother and baby, we cherish them both’.

A few thoughts to finish.  I want to pay tribute to Bishop William Murphy for his years of wonderful, dedicated service to Kerry diocese both as Bishop and priest.  I wish him every happiness and blessing in the years ahead.  Likewise I pay tribute to all who, year in year out, give so generously of their time, energy and love to the Church in Kerry, especially your priests and religious.  It is not an easy time for priests and religious.  My first task will be to go among you and to get to know you all: parishes, people and priests.

I want to pay tribute to say thank you to all back in my own diocese of Elphin.  They have been my whole life and they have been very good to me.  It is not easy to suddenly depart from them.  I ask you all to pray for me and to pray for the Church in both dioceses, Kerry and Elphin.  In this worldwide Year of Faith let us all always seek to live by faith, hope and love, let us have time each day to spend in prayer with the Lord who so loves us.  In all we do let us be gentle, kind, caring and sensitive, as Jesus was.

Finally, as we go forth this day let us carry in our hearts today’s Gospel: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Remain in my love”.

Saint Brendan, pray for us.

Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us.

Thank you.

COMMENT:  The bishop-elect was born in Athlone, Ireland in 1957 and was ordained a priest in 1982. Since ordination he has served in several pastoral and judicial roles, most recently as pastor in Ballagh and the Diocese of Elphin's designated contact for the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) as well as for assistance for elderly and ill clergy. He succeeds Bishop William Murphy, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

Why I will vote UKIP despite the "clowns"

I have decided to vote for UKIP in the local elections on Thursday, D.v.

I realise they have a proportion of clowns and "loonies", though I think there are more  loonies and Xenophobes in the Conservative party. The Labour party is beneath contempt, as is the Lib Dem party.

However the overwhelming factor for me  deciding to vote UKIP is that it is the only party wholeheartedly and officially opposed to same sex "marriage". The election is an opportunity for me to express disapproval in the only way that Cameron and his ilk will understand.

If it were a General rather than an a Local election I would probably have second thoughts and vote for a good Independent candidate.

Please note that I will not publish any comments which suggest that I will probably feel at home amongst the loonies!  Such comments, like those that came recently from Conservative offices,  are usually, though not always, directed by my ISP to my spam box, and therefore not opened by me anyway!  Please don't save yourself a coronary by sending abusive email to me.

Muslim leaders in Syria call for release of kidnapped bishops

In a strong message of solidarity on Friday, Muslim clerics across Damascus, denounced the kidnapping of Aleppo’s Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulos Yaziji, and the Syrian Orthodox Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim. The two were abducted last Monday by armed men while they were travelling to Aleppo from a town on the Turkish border where they were carrying out “humanitarian work.”

Imams and preachers at mosques throughout the Syrian capital said in Friday sermons that the kidnappers were "violating the sanctity of Christian and Islamic clergymen, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation joined in on Saturday calling for the 'unconditional' release of the two bishops. Ekmeledin Ihsanoglu, the OIC secretary general, condemned the kidnapping. The OIC statement urged for their “immediate and unconditional release because such acts contradict the principles of true Islam and the [high] status held for Christian clergymen in Islam.” It added that Christian clergy always “lived in dignity and honour in the countries of Islam.”

Psychiatrists express concerns at Ireland's abortion plans (2) VIGIL for LIFE at KNOCK

A group of almost 70 psychiatrists have told TDs and senators they are "deeply concerned" at the Government's plan to legislate for abortion where there is a threat of suicide.

The group of 68 psychiatrists signed a statement calling for any proposal to be based on a "rigorous appraisal of the available psychiatric research and medical evidence”, the Irish Independent reports.

"We believe that legislation that includes a proposal that an abortion should form part of the treatment for suicidal ideation has no basis in the medical evidence available.

"We as psychiatrists are being called upon to participate in a process that is not evidence-based and we do not believe that this should be asked of the profession," the statement said.

The statement originated from a letter to colleagues sent by psychiatrists Dr Bernie McCabe, Dr Jacqueline Montwill, Dr Richelle Kirrane and Dr Martin Mahon.

Perinatal psychiatrist Dr Anthony McCarthy, of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dublin, said forcing psychiatrists to participate in this kind of system was an abuse of their profession.

The news comes after the College of Psychiatry in Ireland, the representative body of Irish psychiatrists, said they would not participate in any compulsory assessment of pregnant women who have suicidal ideation and are seeking an abortion.

The president of the College, Dr Anthony McCarthy, said that the idea of requiring vulnerable women to undergo mandatory psychiatric assessments of up to 12 people was abusive.

Speaking to RTÉ News, Dr McCarthy said compelling psychiatrists to take part in such a system was abusing their profession.

Dr McCarthy said the Government has to deal with the abortion issue and legislate adequately for it, and should not pass the social control of a situation onto psychiatrists.

He said it was the position of the college that they would not take part in such panels of assessment.

by Tom O'Gorman

Dr McCarthy said psychiatrists would be happy to continue to provide second opinions, as is normal professional practice, but would not take part in any process of formalised compulsory assessment panels.

Psychiatrists would not act as judges, tasked with assessing whether a woman was feeling suicidal, he said.


Comment:   I would be more impressed if they had expressed concern at the abuse of the vulnerable child in the womb


VIGIL FOR LIFE at KNOCK
CHOOSE LIFE: A Vigil of Prayer for the Right to Life of Mothers and their Unborn Babies, Saturday 4 May, Our Lady’s Shrine, Knock, Co Mayo. This  event, supported by the Irish Bishops’ Conference, will begin with a themed Rosary Procession at 1.00pm and conclude with Mass in the Basilica at 3.00pm.  All are invited to attend.  Main celebrant, Cardinal Seán Brady, homilist Most Rev. Brendan Leahy, Bishop of Limerick.  A blessing for expectant mothers who are present will be given during the Mass.  For further details see www.chooselife2013.ie

CATHOLIC IRELAND: PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE - address by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, in Fordham University, New York, yesterday

The Russo Family Lecture    CATHOLIC IRELAND: PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE Speaking Notes of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin

Archbishop of Dublin

 at

 Fordham Centre of Religion and Culture, New York, 24th April 2013

      “Ireland has changed and Ireland is changing.  The other evening I was at a lecture in the Italian Embassy in Dublin about Ireland in renaissance times.  I was struck by two quotes chosen by the lecturer.  The first was from Pope Pius II, Piccolomini, written in 1458 looking at the situation of Europe at the time.  He concluded his three sentences on Ireland writing: “since nothing worth remembering took place there during the period we write about, we hurry on to matters Spanish”.  I can tell you, much worth remembering and much that we would prefer not to remember has taken place in the Ireland of recent times.

The second quote was from Petrarch who, in the latter part of the 12th century, noted about Ireland: “in one year you will hardly hear it thunder once.  No thunderbolts cause terror here, no lightening ever strikes”.  That quote should make anyone who still had lingering doubts recognise that climate change is a reality!

 I entered the seminary in Dublin in October 1962 just one week before the opening of Vatican II.  The winter of 1962/63 was one of the bleakest winters for decades and our seminary was a very cold place in more ways than one.  My memory of the seminary is of a building and a routine, a discipline and a way of life which seemed to have been like that for decades.   Even to someone who was not a revolutionary, it all seemed so out of touch with the world from which I had just come, and in which my friends were thriving.   But you were not supposed to think that way.  Things were to be done as they had always been done.  The Catholic Church was unchanging, but that was about to change.

For years now people looked to Ireland as a vibrant and sustainable model for strong economic growth.  Countries were told to follow the Irish example.  Today the economic situation of Ireland is full of uncertainties, precisely at a moment when confidence and trust are urgently needed.  On the other hand, for decades Ireland was looked on as one of the world’s most deeply and stably Catholic countries and today Ireland finds itself along with other parts of Europe being classified as “post-Catholic”.

I would issue here my first warning.  Everyone has his or her own definition of “post-Catholic”.  You can only fully define post-Catholic in terms of the Catholicism that has been displaced.  Irish Catholicism has its own unique history and culture.  Renewal in the Irish Church will not come simply from imported plans and programmes.  Renewal must be home-grown.  You must understand where Irish Catholicism is coming from.

Ireland does of course share the same currents of secularization with other counties of the Western world and thus shares many of the same challenges. There are specific challenges within Europe; there are specific challenges which are common to the English-speaking world.  There is however a danger that people think that because Ireland is an English-speaking country it can be put into the same category as the United States and Great Britain.

Ireland is different.  Neither the United States nor Great Britain was ever a predominantly, much less a dominantly, Catholic country.  The demographics and the cultural presence of Catholicism in society were different and still remain different.  Indeed one would have to say that today Northern-Irish Catholicism is different to that in the Republic of Ireland.  There are some who feel that all the answers to the problems of the Church in Ireland might be solved by learning from Northern Ireland where years of conflict forged a tighter Catholic identity.   There may be some truth in that but it could also be misleading as Northern Ireland itself is changing. 

Curiously if anything there is a growing difference between the social realities in Ireland North and South because of the evolving differences in social policy and the emergence of a possible unforeseen consequence of the peace process: a new Northern Ireland identity.  You can no longer simplistically equate Catholicism and nationalism in Northern Ireland.  A very large number of Northern Irish Catholics would favour staying in the United Kingdom.

What happened?  Why did so much happen so quickly? How can the overall economic climate of a country change almost overnight?  Who was asleep or were we all asleep?  The deeper question is: what were the underlying values that underpinned the better-times-Ireland?  How did we underestimate the fact that the success of an economic model ought to have been evaluated in terms of long-term social sustainability of jobs, mortgages and borrowing, of life style, education and health care as well as sustainable opportunities for young people?  What was going on in the way “Catholic Ireland” was thinking?

Ireland is today picking up the pieces economically and paying the price socially.  The social effects are dramatic.  I was talking to teachers at recent confirmations and they tell me of the, often, unseen hardships that some of their young pupils are facing.  In modern Ireland many children come to school without having had breakfast; in some schools the level of under-nourishment is such that children’s learning ability is being hindered.

There is growing anxiety that the austerity measures introduced to respond to the economic crisis are now coming to a social breaking point.  At a time of rapid change, ownership of social change is vital if change is to be accepted and fully embraced. Who however wants to own policies of austerity?  There is a certain flight from political ownership.  In Ireland it is easy to put the blame on the previous government.  It is too easy simply to say that it is being imposed from the outside or by necessity and that we would really prefer to do it somehow differently.   You will not generate ownership if the measures imposed are applied arbitrarily across the board and do not appear to differentiate according to real situations, especially the situation of those already vulnerable.  We see that in Ireland in some policies regarding education or healthcare or the care of the elderly. 

Only two days ago I attended a national Congress of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul where it was noted that people who one year ago were contributors to the society are one year later turning to the Society for help.     Patience is wearing thin; it is hard for some to hope.

What happened the Church?  When I was asked to return to Dublin, Pope John Paul asked me why secularisation had taken place so rapidly in Ireland.   It was one of the rare occasions when I told a Pope he was wrong!  The roots of change in Ireland were there but were not seen.  It is not that Ireland is today in a momentary out-of-the ordinary period in its history, somehow temporarily adrift from what is really the default position. There is no default position anymore and there has not been such a position for some time.  In many ways the Church in Ireland had been trapped in an illusory self image.  The demographic majority which the Church enjoyed hid many structural weaknesses and the Church became insensitive to such weakness.  In the immediate post Vatican II period there was a moment of enthusiastic renewal in the Irish Church and the positive acceptance of change probably indicated that there was already a deep dissatisfaction and a desire for change in the Irish Church and the Church leadership was out of touch with the religious sentiment of the people.

The Catholic Church in Ireland had for far too long felt that it was safely ensconced in a “Catholic country”.  The Church had become conformist and controlling not just with its faithful, but in society in general.  I was at a seminar last week about the Church’s self-understanding as a “perfect society”.  All I can say is that anyone who might have thought that “Catholic Ireland” was anything like a perfect society must now be very disillusioned.

Faith in Jesus Christ must open us out beyond human horizons.  Christian faith requires changing our way of thinking, of trusting in God’s love rather than in the tangible securities of day to day life.  When faith leads to conformism it has betrayed the very nature of faith.  Conformism falsely feels that it has attained certainty.  Faith is always a leap into the unknown and a challenge to go beyond our own limits and beyond our own narrow certainties and the distorted understanding that comes from them.

In the comments he made at the congregation of the Cardinals just before the Conclave, Pope Francis spoke about the need for the Church to break out, to break out into what he called the outskirts – the frontiers - of human existence.    And he added when the Church does not break out of herself to evangelise she becomes auto-referential and so shuts herself in.  “The evils which as time passes afflict ecclesial institutions are rooted in self-reference, a sort of theological narcissism”. One of the keys to understanding the mismanagement of the recent child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland must be precisely the measure in which the Church in Ireland had become auto-referential.

The effects of the child abuse scandals have had a demoralising effect on the entire Church in Ireland and continue to have.  In one sense the scandals could not have come at a worse time, in that confidence in the Church was well on the wane and when the scandals broke their effects were devastating.  Today, Ireland has strong child protection measures in place and the Irish Church is a much safer place for children than in the past. I would like to pay tribute to National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and in particular, Ian Elliot, for their extraordinary contribution in helping make the Church a safer place for children, as can be seen with the publication today of the latest NSBCCC reports.

One still however has to ask where the roots of this scandal and its mismanagement were to be found within the Church.  Was the issue simply the action of a few deviant priests who did not represent the Church, or was there something deeper?

Certainly the overwhelming majority of priests in Ireland led and lead an exemplary moral life, they carry out their ministry with great dedication and enjoy great support and affection from their people and contribute and support the new ethos of child safeguarding.   

What are extraordinarily high are the numbers of children that were abused, and we are talking thousands, and in the case of the Archdiocese of Dublin, the number of priests who were serial paedophiles.   There is no way you can simply explain away the huge number of those who were abused and the fact that this took place undetected and unrecognised within the Church of Jesus Christ.   Today we are in a safer place, but it took decades to attain this.

One of the great challenges the Irish Catholic Church still has to face is that of strong remnants of inherited clericalism.  The days of the dominant or at times domineering role of clergy within what people call the “institutional Church” have changed, but part of the culture still remains and from time to time reappears in new forms.   We often overlook the fact that the very term “institutional Church” only has meaning in a context of clericalism.

Clericalism will only be eliminated by fostering a deeper sense of the meaning of the Church and that understanding of the nature of the Church will come not from media strategies or simply by structural reforms, but by genuine renewal in what faith in Jesus Christ is about.  If we focus only on structures and power there is a risk that clericalism might be replaced by neo-clericalism.

The Christian presence in society is not achieved by the imposition of a manifesto or simply by high profile social criticism.  It is more about the witness which people give to Christian principles, mediated within the particular responsibilities they carry.

For generations now the Irish Catholic Church relied on Irish society in general to be the principal instrument for the passing on of the faith. Day by day that becomes less and less the case. The religious culture of Ireland has changed.  Many people say to me that they reject the Church but still consider themselves believers in Jesus Christ.  The difficulty is that in such a situation, without a personal and rigorous intellectual encounter with the scriptures and Christian tradition, a person can drift into something which is their own, rather than a challenging encounter with their faith.  The realities of faith if viewed, consciously or unconsciously, through secularised lenses, can easily end up with a distortion of faith or an inability to understand the logic of belief.

I am not saying that reform of structures is not necessary within the Church.  Anything but!  What I am saying is that such reform without ongoing radical renewal in the faith will end up with the wrong structures and indeed might end up just answering yesterday’s unanswered questions tomorrow.   Clericalism will to some extent vanish when a new culture of co-responsibility and collaboration develops.

There is a further and more vital need: that of charting a new path to allow the Church once again to impact on society and mediate the Christian message into the broad culture of the Ireland of tomorrow.  Reform is not just an inner-Church reality.   A Church trapped in inner Church squabbles will never be attractive to others.

The Church will relinquish many of the institutional roles it has held in Ireland.  But it does not mean that the Church should retreat into sacristies or into the private values systems. If anything its presence must become even more vigorous within society. I am not advocating here imposing one’s belief on others nor of establishing a sort of Catholic mafia to manipulate society. I am not thinking just of the area of sexual morality.  I am talking about the place of faith and of believers in the social, economic and political and cultural world.   I am talking about the type of person I have so often encountered in international life.  These were people who are recognised by their colleagues as people whose religious faith brought an added dimension to the quality of their professional life and to their broad humanitarian concern.

The Catholic Church requires lay man and women whose faith enables them to dare to hope and who will challenge us to expand the parameters of our hope beyond the narrow confines that each of us individually and as communities consciously or unconsciously fix for ourselves. The Church has to re-find its ability to form leaders in an Ireland which is facing new challenges culturally economically, politically and religiously.

Where do we find these new leaders who will be in the forefront of the presence of the Christian message in the society of tomorrow?  How will they be educated and prepared for their task?  Where are the points of contact between the Church and the new culture of Irish society?

We have men and women who take this task on in the media world.  Much of our Catholic punditry is as ideological as much of the punditry of the other side.   Catholic punditry of this kind will only appear to the other side as narrow defensiveness, while the analogous secular punditry will be perceived as entrenched anti-Catholicism.  Why is it that the type of mature dialogue between believers and atheists and non-believers that we find in other European societies – in the academic world, in the media and indeed in Churches - does not happen in Ireland?

Let me take brief look at the changed demographics of Catholic Ireland. Church attendance is very low in some areas, especially in socially deprived areas.  In Dublin, Mass attendance is generally highest in middle class parishes, where parishioners are middle class economically and liberal middle-of-the-road on matters of Church teaching.  They are parishes however where there is a sense of community and activity.  There is a growing interest in adult faith formation, but as yet generally on an irregular basis. Irish Catholics are generous to the Church even in hard times.  The Dublin Eucharistic Congress was financed above all by the voluntary contribution of ordinary Catholics.   The presence of young people in the life of these parishes is however minimal. The strong backbone of good Catholics in Ireland is an aging group.

Where there are signs of youth participation in the Irish Church it is among more conservative young Catholics.  Is this where the future of the Irish Church lies?  I am not sure.  Many of these movements of young,  more traditional Catholics are very limited in numbers and make little inroads into the lives of their peers.  When it comes to New Evangelisation the Irish Church has to ask radical questions as to where it should be directing its resources.

On the question of vocations, numbers are low and the seminarians are divided between two establishments, one in Ireland and one in Rome, neither of which can really achieve its aims on the basis of such small numbers.  There are religious congregation which have not had an ordination for fifteen years and more.  There are dioceses which have currently no seminarians.  No one from West of the River Shannon entered the seminary this year.  It is not the case of a secularised urban Ireland and a healthy rural Ireland.  The same cultural processes are at work across the country.

With regard to the Archdiocese of Dublin we have been able to carry out detailed research on the basis of the most recent census figures of 2011, matching them to parish boundaries and to the boundaries of the entire diocese.   There are a number of interesting facts.  The population of the diocese has gone up significantly, but the numbers of those who registered as Catholics has remained at about 1,200,000.  About one quarter of the population of the Archdiocese registered as something other than Catholic, well above the national average.  It is very clear that of the three quarters who ticked the “Catholic box” on the census form many would not be practicing or even in any real contact with the Church.  This gives a very different demographic picture than the one at times presented or presumed.  There are already parishes in Dublin where Catholics are in a minority and it is clear that the cultural Catholicism which today still exists will not continue for ever.

Another significant fact is that the numbers of those under 6 years of age is higher than those over 70.  Ours is a young diocese.  The cohort of one year olds and two year olds is larger than that of six and seven year olds.   Demographers estimate that the population of the island of Ireland will once again reach the 8,000,000 of pre-famine Ireland and that 50% of that population will live on a narrow strip of land along the East Coast of Ireland from Gorey to Dundalk most of which will be within the territory of the Archdiocese of Dublin.  Will that emerging demographic reality still be “Catholic Ireland”?

How should the Church be looking at the faith formation of this growing number of young people?   Until now the formation of young Catholics depended in great measure on the schools. The specific preparation for the sacraments of First Communion and for Confirmation took place within the schools and at times the link between family, school and parish was problematic. 

Almost all Irish education at elementary level has traditionally been denominational, with Catholic schools making up well over 90% of all such schools  These schools  are fully funded by the State and were thus until very recently the only form of State school that existed.  With greater pluralism there is growing demand for other forms of school patronage.  

All the indications are however that a sizeable number of parents wish to see high-quality denominational education remain an essential pillar, alongside other models, of our national educational system to help young people to grow and flourish within the religious tradition to which they belong.  Obviously such denominational education should not become divisive or exclusivist, but neither should religious education be reduced simply a colourless presentation of the history or the sociology of religion.

The presence of the Catholic Church in the educational landscape of the United States is quite extraordinary.  At times in Ireland there is a latent fear that Catholic schools and Catholic higher academic institutions are somehow a little outdated in a pluralist and increasingly secularised world. There is an ambiguity about how to define their Catholic specificity.  I am uneasy when I hear of Catholic education being defined somehow as a service of quality education with religious veneer offered in general to society and within which anyone can feel fully at home.  

I fear that in the current debates about divesting patronage of a substantial number of Catholic schools, the argument is being presented that Catholic schools are so “open” that that there is really no need for schools of different patronage:  we Catholics can really do it all and better, so there is no need to divest.  The Catholic Church in Ireland has to focus its energies more clearly on how it wishes to ensure a presence, in a more pluralist educational system, of schools and institutions which are truly Catholic.

The contribution of Catholic academic institutions to the good of society is not something that extinguishes the ecclesial nature and vocation of those institutions.  Their Catholic identity is an essential part of the package which has built their excellence.   Indeed one could rather say that any downplaying of their Catholic vocation and identity could well result in a downgrading of their academic excellence.

In the past if one was talking about renewal of the Church in Ireland one would in the first place have looked towards the seminaries. That is still the case and the crisis of vocations has to be addressed.  But vocations spring from within the life of believing families and communities.  The renewal of the Church in Ireland and the challenge of creating a new Christian presence in Irish society tomorrow will come from a renewed generation of lay men and women who fell confident to witness to the meaning that their Christian faith brings to their lives.

One of the great surprises of the recent International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin was the extraordinary interest that the various seminars and catechesis aroused.  In many cases the talks had to be repeated two or three times in order to facilitate all those who wanted to attend.

There is a strong desire within Irish Catholics for a deep renewal in formation in faith and in prayer and this is not being responded to sufficiently.  We have a first class National Directory for Catechesis Share the Good News which indicates what is needed at every stage.  But its implementation is slow and it encounters resistance to change.  Our school system and our teachers have made an immense contribution to the transmission of the faith.  But many teachers no longer practice and there is a growing danger that, due to curriculum pressures, catechesis will be limited to two events, first communion and confirmation and stop there.  Young people have in many cases already drifted away from religious practice already before they enter second level education.   The Church’s presence at third level education is often limited to pastoral care with minimal faith formation.

All this is taking place at a time in which there is a growing secularization of culture and of politics.  I could list many examples of the distance between politics and the Church examples of unbalanced media coverage.  But to do that would probably be interpreted as saying that it is politicians and journalists and the media who are to blame for the crisis that exists in the Irish Church.  The causes of the crisis lie within the Church itself.   Much of the heritage of Catholic dominated Ireland still entraps us from being free witnesses to the Christian message within a secular society which is seeking meaning.

It is not a time to be lamenting; it is a time to be rising to the challenge with courage and Christian enthusiasm.”

Address from Coadjutor Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh at the conclusion of his Episcopal Ordination yesterday

Address from Coadjutor Archbishop Eamon Martin at the conclusion of his Episcopal Ordination

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh

Sunday 21st April 2013

My brothers and sisters in Christ, distinguished guests, friends, thank you for your presence here this afternoon and for the encouragement of your prayers. I know that many of you have travelled long distances to be here.  I really appreciate it.  Agus dóibh siúd ar fud na tíre a thug am le cúpla mí anuas le scríobh chugam, nó a chuir scairt orm, ag gealladh domsa paidreacha a rá ar mo shon, tugaim buíochas ó mo chroí amach. Cuimhneoidh me oraibh i mo chuid paidreacha féin, agus bígí cinnte go ndéanfaidh me mo dhícheall sa ghairm seo ó Dhia i mo shaol.

I feel a whole mixture of emotions about this new calling in my life – excitement, nervousness, a sense of my unworthiness and inadequacy – but your prayers, good wishes and generosity have lifted me up. Since the announcement of my appointment in January, I’ve been simply overwhelmed by so many messages of encouragement, assuring me that this is a time of hope and new life for our Church, and telling  me not to be afraid, but to trust in God always.

Cardinal Brady, Archbishop Brown, Bishop Clifford, I really appreciate the support and welcome that you have given me and indeed that of all the bishops in Ireland and beyond. To my mother, and all my family – I want to say ‘thank you’ from the bottom of my heart. You have always been there for me; God have mercy on my father – I pray that he also, with all those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, is sharing this celebration in the happiness of heaven. To you, my good friends, your love and support mean so much to me. I really appreciate your kindness and the sacrifices you have made for me; I hope and pray we shall always be there for each other. To the people of Derry, and the priests and retired bishops of my native diocese, it has been a privilege to serve you and work alongside you; I shall miss you and you will always be in my thoughts and prayers – please keep me in yours. And to you, the people, priests and religious of the Archdiocese of Armagh – thank you for your very warm welcome; I really look forward to getting to know you better. I hope and pray that I can be a caring shepherd for you.

What an uplifting liturgy this has been! I am grateful to everyone who has been part of it and to all those who have helped in any way with the planning and organisation for today. And what more fitting occasion than Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocations Sunday, for me to begin my new ministry!  Cardinal Brady, your homily was thoughtful and inspiring. I’m sure today brings back memories of your ordination as Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh 18 years ago, and of course for you too Bishop Clifford as you remember your episcopal ordination on this very day in 1991. Thank you both for your commitment and dedication to the flock of Christ here in Armagh. I look forward very much to serving alongside you.

Not long ago my aunts gave me a figurine of the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders. When I look at it, I remember that when we, like sheep, go astray, the Lord, in his mercy, searches us out, lifts us up, and lovingly carries us back. I pray that the Good Shepherd will always guide me along the right path and walk beside me in troubled times.  Agus mé ag teacht chuig an áit iontach seo, Ard Mhacha, croí Críostaí na hÉireann, guím mar a ghuigh Naomh Pádraig:

Críost liom,

Críost romham,

Críost i mo dhiaidh,

Críost istigh ionam,

Críost fúm,

Críost os mo chionn,

Críost ar mo láimh dheas,

Críost ar mo láimh chlé.

I mentioned back in January that we live in a time of change, challenge and opportunity, and I suggested that this is a good time, as the psalms say, to ‘sing a new song to the Lord’. A lot of people commented to be afterwards about that beautiful verse of scripture, so I chose it for my episcopal motto: Cantate Domino canticum novum!

Sing a new song to The Lord! It suggests ‘renewal’. It calls on us to seek fresh ways of presenting the message of the Gospel. But how can this be done? How can we sing the song of the Lord in these strange times? How can we make it heard above the cacophony of voices competing for attention in the public square?  Only if others can see that our believing in Christ makes a real difference to our lives. St Augustine said ‘the one who has learned to love a new life has learned to sing a new song’! For me, that new song is a song about love and peace, a song of forgiveness and reconciliation. It sings out Good News about the sacredness of all human life and the wonder of God’s creation; it tells of the dignity of every person and it challenges us to reach out to the poorest and most vulnerable in the world;  It’s a song about family and solidarity, about charity, truth and justice.

Of course there are some who will not want to listen. There are others too who have been so hurt and betrayed in the past, that understandably they find themselves unable to trust our message. That is why we must continue, as Pope Benedict XVI exhorted us in his letter, ‘to reflect on the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body’, and persevere in our efforts to bind those wounds and heal them.

Pope Francis has spoken recently about the need to ‘go out of ourselves’, beyond our usual comfort zones to the ‘edges of our existence’. It is there, he says, that we meet the poor, the forgotten, the disillusioned. And there we must sing our new song in a way which will speak to the reality of their daily lives, with  all their hurts and burdens and troubles. The only way we can do that is by singing about God’s mercy and love for each one of us personally. That is what the new song is about – it is a song of love, that God unconditionally loves each one of us, despite our sinfulness and imperfections, and that the Lamb of God, who suffered and died to take away the sins of the world, has mercy on us.

The singing of the new song is not simply a task for bishops, priests and religious. It belongs to all God’s people. We are all called to holiness and to mission.  During this Year of Faith, I pray for a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Ireland, enkindling the fire of God’s love in the hearts of all the faithful!  My brothers and sisters, we need you to share in the renewal and new evangelisation that is at the very heart of the Church’s mission. Sing the new song of the Lord with your hearts and your lives, by witnessing to Christ in your families and workplaces, and in the new mission fields of media, culture, business and politics.

Blessed John Henry Newman said that God has created each of us to do him some definite service, some task or mission that he is not entrusting to anyone else. On this Vocations Sunday, I pray that each of us can hear more clearly the voice of the Lord in our lives, and understand more fully what God is calling us to. I pray also that the Holy Spirit may re-awaken in Ireland that wonderful spirit of self-giving which inspired so many young men and women in the past to give themselves totally to the service of the Gospel as priests and in consecrated life.

Of course we must all be sure that it is the Lord’s song that we are singing, and not simply our own composition with a catchy rhythm and some clever lyrics. And we must sing in harmony with one another as people, priests, religious and bishops. Our new song must never dilute the strength of Christ’s message but must capture faithfully the timeless truth of the Gospel. And that can only happen if we live in communion with Christ and with one another, and if we gather regularly to be nourished by God’s word and the sacraments.

In Ireland today each one of us is being called to personal conversion, to open our heart to friendship with Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life! If we listen carefully to his voice speaking gently in the depth of our being, then we can find our personal vocation and learn to understand where our Good Shepherd is leading us. We become like a new person with a new song, and, because that new song is about the Good News of Jesus Christ, it is impossible to keep it to ourselves! As the old Baptist hymn puts it: ‘Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth… How can I keep from singing!’

My dear brothers and sisters, every Holy Thursday at the Chrism Mass, the bishop asks his flock to pray for him. In those same words, please pray for me that, ‘despite my own weakness and sinfulness, I may be faithful to the apostolic office entrusted to me today, and every day of my life remaining, by the grace of God, I may be made a living and more perfect image of Christ, the Priest, the Good Shepherd, the Teacher and the Servant of all. May the Lord keep all of us in his charity and lead us, shepherds and flock, to eternal life’.

‘Sé an Tiarna m’aoire, ní bheidh aon nith de dhith orm. Amen.

Comment: Archbishop Eamon will be Primate of All Ireland when he succeeds Cardinal Brady. There are two Catholic primates in Ireland. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin is Primate of Ireland while the Archbishop of Armagh is the Primate of All Ireland.

President of Ireland praises St. Vincent de Paul Society as " an important voice for the vulnerable and the poor"

People need to make a fresh start based on ethics, President Michael D Higgin has told a conference, adding a new and fairer society would not automatically emerge.

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton meanwhile said she believed “we have reached the limits of austerity now”, adding that ordinary people “are shouldering too much of the burden”.

Addressing a conference of the St Vincent de Paul Society to mark the bicentennial of Frederic Ozanam, the organisation’s founder, the President called for a fresh start to be made now in the midst of the financial crisis.

“We now need a new connection between economy, society and the person – one based on ethics,” President Michael D Higgins told the Dublin conference.

Mr Higgins, quoting the society’s vice-president, said the Irish do not want to look back on this period “as one when the seeds of future social inequities were sown, but one in which the values necessary for a socially just, fair and caring nation emerged”.

Realisation of a fairer society will not happen on its own, he continued.

“Getting from extreme individualism to a social version of citizenship requires a journey that will bring a new discourse into being,” he said.

“The work is beyond a simple conversation, even if impelled and empowered by it. It also requires intellectual work and above all moral courage.”

He quoted Central Statistics Office figures which estimate that 700,000 citizens are in poverty while 5,000 are homeless, and referred to general concerns among many families about the security of their home.

These, he said, were serious obstacles to a genuinely inclusive citizenship. These are “life-draining impediments which can erect so many barriers between an individual and the society they wish to engage in”.

The St Vincent de Paul Society was, he argued, a working-out of the “radical and forward-thinking vision” laid down by Ozanam. Its 9,500 volunteers and 1,000 sections across Ireland are an important voice for the vulnerable and the poor.

“There can be no doubt of the enormous contribution to society of St Vincent de Paul today,” he added.

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton told the conference of her vision of a fair society with full employment. “The strongest protection against poverty is decent, secure and fairly paid work,” she said. “This has been my abiding political conviction since I first entered politics and it has informed me throughout my career.

“Sadly we live in a world where the availability of decent, secure and fairly paid work has contracted massively since the financial crisis.”

Ms Burton set out her vision for a new employment contract, stating: “I have long advocated a formal guarantee that any young person will receive training, work experience or an apprenticeship within a short period of becoming unemployed.

Pro-life in Ireland welcomes "medical misadventure" decision and jury recommendations after death of baby.

The inquest jury into the death Savita Halappanavar has found that she died due to medical misadventure and has made nine recommendations to ensure such a situation will not arise again. The Pro Life campaign has welcomed the inquest recommendations, including the call for Guidelines providing clarity for doctors in relation to medical interventions for women in pregnancy, which may result in the unintended loss of the baby.

During an eight day hearing, the jury heard of a series of medical systems failures including the lack of follow up on blood counts showing an elevated white cell count,  the lack of monitoring of vital signs every four hours, failures in communications and a failure to administer a strong enough antibiotics.

Following the hearing, the eleven member jury delivered its verdict yesterday, tragically the fifth wedding anniversary of Praveen and Savita Halappanavar.

The jury made nine recommendations:

Clearer medical guidelines on when a doctor can intervene to save the life of the mother

Proper follow up on blood samples.

Proper training and guidelines to be followed in the management of sepsis

Proper and effective communication to occur between staff on-call and a team coming on duty and a dedicated handover time for such communications.

Protocol for sepsis written by the department of microbiology for each hospital and each hospital directorate.

A modified early warning score chart should be adopted by all hospitals in the state as soon as practicable.

Early and effective communications with patients and/or their relatives to ensure that a treatment plan is readily explained and understood.

Medical and nursing notes should be separate documents and kept separate.

No additions should be made to the medical records of a deceased whose death is the subject of a coroner's inquiry.

The jury stated the recommendations should be applied nationally.

Galway Coroner, Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin said the verdict did not mean that deficiencies or systems failures in University Hospital Galway contributed to Ms Halappanavar's death; these were just findings in relation to the management of her care.

Addressing himself to Mr Halappanavar, he offered him his "sincerest and deepest" condolences on the death of his wife. "You showed tremendous loyalty in the love to her during her last week. The whole of Ireland has followed your story and I want, on their behalf, to offer our deepest sympathy."

He went on:“You will also be watched over and protected by the shadow of Savita who was in our thoughts during this painful and difficult journey.”  Mr Halappanavar sat with his legal team as the coroner, gardaí, the jury and legal teams for the hospital and its staff sympathised with him.

Reacting to the verdict, Dr Berry Kiely from the PLC welcomed its decision.  She described as “little short of shameless” the manner in which those seeking the introduction of abortion legislation based on the X case ruling had exploited the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar all along, claiming that the failure to bring in such legislation was what led to Ms Halappanavar’s death.

“It is now clear from the facts presented at the inquest that a number of what the inquest terms ‘systems failures’ and communications shortcomings significantly delayed the moment at which the medical team recognised the seriousness of her condition and carried out the appropriate medical intervention.”

St Bernadette Soubirous (1844 - 1879)

 St Bernadette Soubirous 

She was born in 1844 to a destitute family in Lourdes, in France. On 11 February 1858 she went down to the river Gave with her sister and a friend, to look for firewood and bones. There she received the first of a series of visions of the Mother of God which led to Lourdes becoming a place of pilgrimage and healing. In 1866 she became a nun at Nevers, where she died on 16 April 1879.

    It is a rule of the Church that saints are to be celebrated for what they are and what they do – to serve as examples of heroic virtue for us all – and not merely for what happens to them. There is no way that we can all go off and have visions of Our Lady, and the world would be a madhouse if we tried. So what of Bernadette? What heroic virtue has she that we should imitate? There are two: suffering, and humility.

    Bernadette was seriously ill with asthma all her life and she died young; but she never let illness be an excuse for anything – how many times do we, feeling a little unwell, use that as an excuse for being bad-tempered or simply not doing what we ought?

    To move away from Bernadette for a moment: imagine that you are a poor working-class boy with little education who happens to be good at kicking a ball about. Within a few years you find yourself earning more, annually, than your father earned in his entire lifetime. You receive attention, adulation, status – all that you could possibly desire. People emulate you. They hang on your every word. How would you feel? How would you act?

    Next, imagine that you are a poor girl – not even working-class, because your father hardly ever has any work – poor in a way that we can hardly conceive of – unintelligent and uneducated, and suddenly something happens to you. Overnight you are famous. People come in crowds to see you (sometimes the police have to control them). Everyone treats you with respect and admiration. They hang on your every word and ask you, over and over, questions about even the tiniest detail of your experience. They press coins into your family’s hands. You shut yourself up in a convent far from home, but even there you are constantly visited by bishops and other eminent persons who just want a quick look at you.

    Wouldn’t that turn your head? Just a little? Wouldn’t you think that there must be something about you that made you worth seeing? However tiny that something was?

    Here is Bernadette’s response, in conversation with one of the nuns:

    “What do you do with a broom?”

    “Why, sweep with it, of course.”

    “And then?”

    “Put it back in its place.”

    “Yes. And so for me. Our Lady used me. They have put me in my corner. I am happy there, and stay there.”

    Saint Bernadette Soubirous is patron saint of the sick, and rightly so. But if there is to be a patron saint of celebrities and footballers, Bernadette would be a wise choice for that task too.

(Note: St Bernadette’s feast is celebrated on 16 April by most of the world but on 18 February in France. Some people called “Bernadette” celebrate their name-day on 11 February, which is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the date of the first vision).

COMMENT: all the above is repoduced with permission, none of it is my work

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin: Vatican II - looking back, looking forward- Talk commemorating 50th Anniversary of Vat ll given at TCD yesterday

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Below  is the full text of the closing address from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at the Vatican II Colloquium at Trinity College Dublin (yesterday, Saturday 13th April).
The conference has been organised by the  (Anglican) Church of Ireland Journal and the Church of Ireland Chaplaincy at TCD to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

Speaking Notes of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin  The Long Room Hub, Trinity College, 13th April 2013

“I am pleased, not just to have been invited to speak at the conclusion of this Conference, I am pleased, above all, that this Conference is taking place.  One of the speakers concluded his remarks asking whether this Conference could have taken place at all before the Vatican Council and the presumption is that it could not have taken place.  I would add to such an Anglican presumption, this time almost with a touch of Catholic infallibility, that it is most likely that such a conference could not have taken place before Vatican II, but with certainty it could not have taken place here in Trinity College Dublin.

 I am pleased that this Conference has been opened by Archbishop Michael Jackson and that it seems quite natural to all that it be closed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop. I wish to express my particular appreciation for the fact that the principal theological Conference on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II here in this capital city is one organised by the Anglican Church.

In this context I would also like to put on record the support that the Catholic Church received on the occasion of last year’s International Eucharistic Congress.  For the first time in the history of such a Congress the opening day was devoted to our common baptism and was led by representatives of different Christian Churches thus permitting the other Christian Churches to be present not just as guests and visitors but as full and equal participants.  Something that passed less noticed was the manner in which the leaders of the other Churches rejoiced at the success of what was an event of the Catholic Church and at the renewal of the Catholic Church in Ireland.  True ecumenism rejoices at the successes of the other.

There is a wide awareness of the fact that the relationship between the two Archbishops here in Dublin is one of friendship.  I have been greatly supported in difficult moments in my ministry by the friendship of two Anglican Archbishops.  I have experienced a true form of deep ecumenical friendship.  But no matter how important that friendship is for me and how it is recognised by members of both our communities, the real importance in our relationship, as Archbishop Michael noted in his remarks this morning, is our common sense of mission: a sense of common mission and of common witness to the message of Jesus Christ.  Archbishop Michael spoke of a “shared adventure”, a common search for the apposite language to bring the message Jesus Christ to our society and for the good of our society.  

This conference should be looked at as another forward-looking step on a common path into the future in the dialogue between our common faith in Jesus Christ and our modern culture, recognising our common baptism but also being acutely aware that today for many baptized Christians their faith remains marginal to their lives and the life of society.

A few years ago Cardinal Walter Kasper, then President of the Holy See’s Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, published a small book called “Harvesting the Fruits”.  Its aim was to gather together and examine the fruits of the ecumenical dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and a variety of other Christian Churches and to take stock of where the fruits of these dialogues are today.

I believe that perhaps the time is ripe that we in Ireland ought to undertake a similar review of where we are in our ecumenical relations.  We need to do so in order to understand better the path forward.   It is not just a question of theological dialogues concerning historical theological differences, but the challenge of how we face the future together. This dialogue has hardly begun.

An important dimension of such a review would also be address the doubt and scepticism and tiredness that can easily creep into our relations.  There are those who talk of an ecumenical winter or a lack of progress after many years of conversations.   Such scepticism can easily lead to frustration and immobilism and drain our spiritual energies in the ecumenical field. There is a danger that many will become content with the status quo and simply go though the motions on occasions like the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

We need constantly to remind ourselves of just how central ecumenical endeavour is for the Christian life.  The call to ecumenism is an urgent call.  Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism sets out in simple yet stark words the negative consequences of our divisions.  We should be reminding ourselves of these three indications, if necessary three times a day. Our division “openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world and inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature.”

Much has taken place in the relationship between our Churches in these past fifty years since the opening of Vatican II.   I remember my early days in the seminary at Clonliffe College fifty years ago, especially at this particular time of year, because in 1963 Ireland was in the midst of one of the bleakest winters for decades and Clonliffe was a very cold place in more ways than one.    I came to formation filled with ideals, not always entirely clear, and found myself in an atmosphere which was not quite what I was expecting.

My memory is of a building and a routine, a discipline and a way of life which seemed to have been like that for decades.   Even to someone who was not a revolutionary, it all seemed so out of touch with the world from which I had just come, and in which my friends were thriving.   But you were not supposed to think that way.  Things were to be done as they had always been done.  The Catholic Church was unchanging.

We were allowed to watch the opening of the Council on television.  We were interested but perhaps not excited and not too sure what the Council really was about. I remember earlier, when the Council was announced, we had begun to hold debates in school about the Council and especially about a possibility of which Pope John XXIII had spoken:  of the Council attaining Christian Unity. I must say that the good Catholic education I had received equipped me well to successfully debate against any such ideas.

Our Churches lived in separate compartments. Mixed marriages were considered by Catholics not just a challenge to Catholic numbers, but a danger to the faith.  Even entering a Protestant Church was a danger to the faith!  Christian Unity meant that Protestants converted.  We were not just divided religiously but socially. My mother thought she had been successful in getting job early in the twentieth century only to find that her future employer, highly embarrassed, had to come to her and say that a problem had emerged:  “Miss Mullen I am really sorry, but I always thought you were Church of Ireland”. 

But there were ups and downs in relationships.  I find in my archives many references to the regular presence of my predecessor Archbishop William J. Walsh here in Trinity College and of the Provost of Trinity College in Archbishop’s House.  When Archbishop Byrne died in 1940 the Church of Ireland Archbishop was among the early callers to express his sympathy.  We were polite but very much living in separate compartments and the protestant community in particular must have felt threatened by the emerging cultural dominance of the Roman Catholic Church as Ireland began to identify itself as a “Catholic country”.   The separate compartments became more tightly sealed.

 But let me come back to my seminary days as the Second Vatican Council began its course.  Within months, the Council began to fascinate me.  The reading in the refectory in the seminary was Abbot Cuthbert Butler’s “History of the [First] Vatican Council” and that helped me to understand something of what a Council was and the manner in which doctrinal and pastoral challenges were faced in truly robust discussions at Vatican I.   We tend to overlook the fact that Vatican I was anything but monolithic.

That book was followed by The Council and Reunion, by Hans Kung, which we listened to in the refectory with attention and fascination and then went to our weekly conference with our spiritual director who denounced the book as near heresy.    Robust discussion was coming alive again in the Catholic Church even in Archbishop McQuaid’s seminary.

Over these past months I have been reading a number of books published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II.  I came across an interesting recent interview with the then private secretary of Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Loris Capovilla, who is still alive today.   He recounts how Pope John had been thinking of a Council from the very first days after his election.  Pope John was a man of intuition and was not afraid to think boldly.

His announcement of a Council, made during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, just three months after his election, caused surprise and not a little anxiety among some of his collaborators in the Vatican. Pope John was anxious, but his notes show that his initial conversations with the few influential Cardinals with whom he shared his intentions before he announced the Council were actually positive, especially the reaction of the Secretary of State, Tardini, whose support was vital.   There are times when consultations about bold decisions work much better when bold decisions have already been taken.

Pope John was fortunate that the Spirit had placed on his path ecumenical leaders who were also deeply committed to Church renewal, people like Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher or Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople.   The encounter between Archbishop Fisher and Pope John and the later meeting between Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI were historic and represented the reattachment of conversation after centuries of separation.  It had been over 400 years since Henry VIII broke with Rome and the divisions with the East were even longer.

It was remarkable at the recent Synod of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church which also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Council, to see the normality of the participation at the Synod of the successors of Archbishop Fisher and Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Rowan Williams and Patriarch Bartholomew and their evidently fraternal relations with Pope Benedict.  

At the Synod, Archbishop Rowan Williams gave a remarkable reflection on the Church fifty years after Vatican II.   He recalled how the Second Vatican Council did so much “for the health of the Church and helped the Church to recover so much of the energy needed to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ effectively in our age”.

Fifty years after the Council, we are called to reflect on how we can derive and use the energy needed to proclaim the Good News effectively in a world which has changed so much.  Archbishop Williams noted: “For so many of my own generation, even beyond the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church, that Council was a sign of great promise, a sign that the Church was strong enough to ask itself some demanding questions about whether its culture and structures were adequate to the task of sharing the Gospel with the complex, often rebellious, always restless mind of the modern world”.

The Council began by allowing many of the right questions to emerge.  They are the perennial questions which as the Church of Jesus Christ we have to ask generation after generation.  Rather than be trapped in our certainties and the safe comfort zones of our denominations, we have to see that promise comes when we have the strength to ask if our denominational culture and structures and the quality of our ecumenical relationships are adequate to the task of sharing the Gospel with the men and women with whom we live.

When I was a student of theology in Dublin in the 1960’s there was one word that was not in great use.  It was the word “risk”.  Risk could involve rocking the boat.  As a member of the Catholic community risk would be linked with uncertainty – and the Catholic tradition seemed to have no need to reflect on that, we had all the certainties.  Risk could even mean irresponsibly leading yourself open to uncertainties, to an occasion of sin!

Faith and life are both about risk.  Christian faith is about risk because it requires us to take that leap into a certainty of faith which requires changing our way of thinking, of trusting in God’s love rather than in the tangible securities of day to day life.  Opening to others requires the ability to take risk and to experience the joy of expressing trust.

How do we share our Christian faith in the culture of our time?  When we talk about the presence of the Church in contemporary culture and in the modern world, we are tempted to speak about how the Church should be present in the structures of the politics and the economics of the modern word, especially through social analysis and social commentary.  We would talk also about reform of Church structures and forms of ministry.    Archbishop Rowan Williams began with God and how we come to understand God and enter into a relationship with God.  In a world in which human advancement is high on our daily agenda he chose to speak of “self-forgetfulness”.

What did he mean by that?  Is this a sort of self-denigration or a return to a type of spirituality of self-hatred or self-annihilation or self-repression which many of us would have encountered as part of our formation?  His thrust was another one.  It was about contemplation as looking towards the light of God revealed in Jesus Christ, in such a way as to be led beyond self.   It was about contemplation which leads us beyond “self-generated fantasies of God” with which the modern world might be able live comfortably and beyond forms of religious experience that simply make us feel secure.   Faith is in Jesus Christ not a private comfort zone of our own making or a quick compromise with contemporary trends.

Faith in Jesus Christ opens us out beyond human horizons.  It offers a yearning for knowledge, but also a yearning for goodness, truth and love which changes people.  When faith leads to conformism it has betrayed the very nature of faith.  Conformism falsely feels that it has attained certainty.  Faith is always a leap into the unknown and a challenge to go beyond our own limits and beyond our own narrow certainties and the distorted understanding that comes from them.   Without faith our true self can so easily be undermined by human deception.

Looking at the light of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ is contemplation.   Without that sense of self-forgetfulness that comes from contemplation we run the risk, as Archbishop Williams says, “of trying to sustain faith on the basis of an un-transformed set of human habits - with the all too familiar result that the Church comes to look unhappily like so many purely human institutions, anxious, busy, competitive and controlling”.

Anxious, busy, competitive and controlling!  This brings me to some reflections on words of Pope Francis. As yet we have no great collection so his thoughts.  His manner of presenting himself and his ministry is not one which has up to now been marked by lengthy, scholarly academic discussions.  His vocabulary is simply and he tends to come back to some of the same words which express his sentiments.   When on Holy Thursday he washed the feet of young prisoners in a Roman detention centre his homily was simply of ten lines.

One of the most interesting and indicative comment was that made at the congregation of the Cardinals just before the Conclave reflecting on the role of the new Pope and on the future of the Church.  It was a single handwritten page.  The dominant word was la periferia:  “the outskirts”.    He said simply that the Church is called boldly to come out of herself and go towards the outskirts, not only of place but also to the outskirts of our existence; those of the mystery of sin, those of suffering, of ignorance; the outskirts of indifference to religion of thought and of all wretchedness.  And he added when the Church does not come out of herself to evangelise she becomes auto-referential and so shuts herself in.  “The evils which as time passes afflict ecclesial institutions are rooted in self-reference, a sort of theological narcissism”. I spoke earlier of how things were to be done as they had always been done.  One key to understanding the mismanagement of the recent child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church is precisely what happens when a Church becomes auto-referential.

Pope Francis notes that we at times feel that the failures in our evangelising efforts are due to the fact that so many in today’s world do not hear the call of Jesus; that when Jesus knocks on our doors we do not let him in.  The Pope counters that by adding:  “we also fail at times when Jesus knocks from within and we do not let him out.  The self referential Church keeps Jesus within her and does not let him out  A self referential Church believes that she is her own light and stops being a witness to the [true light]”.

Today our societies have radically changed.  The pace of social, scientific and political change is increasing.  This means on one side that risk is today part and parcel of the way we live and the range of choices that are open to us.  It may also mean that in the face of the rapidity and uncertainty of change we may become fearful in new ways and reject the risk that is necessary to really hope and to translate our hope into a meaning reality in our lives.

Bringing the message of Jesus Christ to the outskirts of our society inevitably involves - to use another key word of Pope Francis's thought - breaking out.  It involves breaking out from ourselves to follow Christ, breaking out from a tired faith based on pure habit and breaking out from being imprisoned in our own dissatisfactions and frustrations which only impede the creative action of God working in and through us.

Faith frees.  Faith liberates. Preoccupation with ourselves alone enslaves.  A  Church which is not riddled through and through with real and enthusiastic commitment to Jesus Christ will be an empty self-serving, self-referential organisation to which no one will be attracted.

Vatican Ii asked many of the right questions regarding the signs of the times for fifty years ago.  We need today to search for the signs of the times in our days, not just the signs of our contemporary culture, but above all the signs of God’s presence and his call to us, so that the freshness of his message can break out and flourish anew in our Church and in our society."