Blog

Brian Fahy is currently writing commentaries on the Sunday lectionary for Mayhew Publications for a book that will be published later this year. While working on this project and with Sunday B ordinary time in mind he wrote this reflection on the publication of ‘The Joy of Love’.
“The issues of what is right and what is possible can be brought together and in this latest document Pope Francis does exactly that. Justice and mercy can meet. The great thing with Francis is that he speaks our language and before him, the popes too often spoke in a ‘language that the strangers (to church matters) do not know.’ “

Seamus Ahearne reflects on recent events and points to the need for real leadership in society and also a need for courageous leaders in church.
Faced by events like Brussels and Lahore, with the seas becoming ‘insatiable cemeteries’ for those fleeing war he asks ‘Where will the needed leadership come from? Who will create the map that we need?
In church Seamus tells us ‘Theology is full of poetic mystery but we were satisfied with crude prose for years and it passed as orthodoxy. It became official and those who stepped outside such thinking were condemned. The New Missal is a monument to fundamentalists who knew nothing of a living God or Grace. Their Liturgy was solemn, static and ignored the incarnation.’
Seamus concludes, ‘Politicians. Church people. Educationalists. Trade-unionists. Society. All need to begin to learn humbly how to live out the Proclamation; the Gospel; the challenge of being a grown up nation and an adult Catholic. There is much to do.’

On the eve of Holy Thursday Pádraig McCarthy reminds us of the cost of true discipleship in many parts of the world with reports of the death of Fr. Vincent Machozi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Coming so soon after the murder in Yemen of four religious sisters, Sisters Anselm, Marguerite, Regina, and Judith, of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, it highlights the immense dangers now faced by so many Christians who seek to practice their faith in a very disturbed world. Twelve others who worked with the sisters as volunteer aides were killed on 04 March by members of ISIS.

Sean O’Conaill argues that with the continuity of Catholic faith in Ireland now seriously in question – and with controversy growing over equal access to primary schooling for all – it is time to abandon school-centred Catholic faith formation as a catastrophic failure.

Pádraig McCarthy writes about an unusual “co-incidence” in the date of Good Friday this year. It won’t occur again until 2157.

Happy Spring Equinox and Holy Week.

Seamus Ahearne contrasts the, sadly failed, herculean efforts of one national ex-serviceman to exercise his right to cast his vote in the recent general election with the ‘The squabbling and childishness of many of the TDs (that) dishonours the flag and our country.’
But Seamus concludes that “Yes, I should be more gentle with our politicians and the electors – we probably all suffer from the same ‘sin’ of today. The immediate and the superficial and obvious is all we can cope with.”

Next week, Hans Küng, the Catholic priest and Swiss theologian, will mark his 88th birthday. The fifth volume of his complete works, titled Infallibility, has just become available from the German publishing house Herder. In connection with the release of Infallibility, Küng has written the following “urgent appeal to Pope Francis to permit an open and impartial discussion on infallibility of pope and bishops.” The text of his urgent appeal was released simultaneously by National Catholic Reporter and The Tablet.
“Receive this comprehensive documentation and allow a free, unprejudiced and open-ended discussion in our church of the all the unresolved and suppressed questions connected with the infallibility dogma.”