James Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 14 Oct – Mon 20 Oct 2025

Tues 14^th Oct – Merit or Grace?

Having lived my life as a Catholic and as a priest been at the coalface of Catholic practice for 45 years, I now look at the sorry state of the institutional church and seriously wonder if we have overlooked something fundamental to our faith. It seems as if somewhere over the mists of time a core truth got lost and without this the entire edifice is doomed to collapse. Apart from a few areas where there has been an influx of foreign nationals into a community, there is little evidence of any growth or expansion in the Catholic community. Currently the church in Ireland is experiencing severe contraction. In one group of traditional rural parishes with a population of around 4000 a survey was conducted as to the average weekend Mass attendance, as this would be considered a yardstick of involvement. The number of just 120 regular attendees was staggering and speaks volumes as to the seriousness of the current situation.

Wed 15^th Oct – The Missing Piece

I sometimes meet people who would class themselves as evangelical Christians. Most of these would have been baptized and brought up Catholic and would rarely be classed as anti-Catholic. However, they felt they had been missing out on something important in their faith that was essentially a lack of depth experience. Often following a crisis, they would have been through a profound conversion wherein they found something that previously had been totally lacking. From there on they would have been passionate to share with others what had become real for them as a result of that conversion. In all such cases this conversion would not have been related to any denomination but to the person of Jesus Christ. As a result of their conversion this relationship would have become personal and no longer just with the historical Jesus.

Thurs 16^th Oct – The Zeal that does not lead to Righteousness

When asked to describe the difference between what was then and now, many might refer to the Scriptures where in the early days of Christianity lots of Jews had great difficulty accepting Christ as the long-awaited messiah. Some evangelicals would quote from St Paul’s letter to the Romans when speaking of his deepest desire for them to be saved he remarked, how he noticed their deep zeal for God but that ‘it was without knowledge’. They were ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and instead had substituted their own. In so doing they were not submitting to God’s righteousness. He then goes on to say that Christ alone is the true source of righteousness of all believers. In other words, no amount of obedience to the Law makes one justified and trying to rely on this makes the message of salvation through Christ redundant.

Fri 17^th Oct – The Wrong Answer

It is sometimes said that the difference between religion and spirituality is that religion is for those who are earning their way to heaven and have a fear of going to hell while spirituality is for those who have been there. This carries a truth that is widespread in religious circles which espouses seeking one’s own righteousness and being good enough to merit heaven. Even traditional church teaching serves to give this impression; that there is no such thing as a free lunch is carried into our religious lives. For the majority, the reason why God would allow them into heaven would be because of having lived a reasonably good life, having done no harm to anyone, or having been a practicing believer. From a scriptural perspective this is entirely the wrong answer where it states clearly that our good works do not justify us in the sight of God and that Christ alone is the source of righteousness. So many of the Gospel stories attest to this, consider the Pharisee and the Publican and the Workers in the Vineyard to name but a few.

Sat 18^th Oct – Models of Church

In the picture shown there are two hearts that can represent the different models of Church in operation today. The first, the traditional one that we are most familiar with, is on its head and getting smaller as it ascends. The other is alive and growing. Within these two hearts we can situate salvation by works in the lower and salvation by grace in the upper. The vast majority in the lower have great zeal for God but no awareness of any righteousness other than that which is earned by their own good works. Within this traditional model we could place words like merit, effort, earning, struggle, willpower, obedience, achieving. All of these form the arsenal of good works that most believers think they need in bountiful supply for when the day of reckoning comes. Yet the Scripture reminds us that if we are relying on our good works to make us right with God, they ‘are as filthy rags in His sight’.

Sun 19^th Oct – Prayer

The following is a story of persevering prayer and how the answer unfolded. Quite a few years ago I officiated at a wedding where the bride was from the West of Ireland and the groom was from Wexford. It was the marriage of two very fine mature and responsible people. Both had been round the block a few times; they knew what they wanted and had a lot going for them in every way. If I were a betting man, I would have put big money on its chance of marital success as being very high. One can never be sure because relationships are fragile at the best of times. Over the years we kept up occasional contact and I got the impression of them both being very happy as the family increased and multiplied.

Then I was shocked to the core to learn they had gone their separate ways. She had returned to the West bringing the children with her and he was in psychiatric care trying to get his head round what had happened. Their relationship had been spiralling out of control for some time and like anyone who gets caught up in that kind of negative energy it’s very hard to remain objective and get things back on track. It didn’t look as if there was the slightest hope of them being reconciled.

A court case was planned to finalize a separation agreement and sort out access and maintenance. It had all the appearances that it was going to be an expensive bloodbath costing in the region of €30,000. There was going to be no winners, both would emerge poorer and bitter. Even if one were to win the battle he or she was going to lose the war. The children were the ones who would be footing the bill since the money had to come from their education fund. Also with safety concerns and a restraint order in place the issue of supervised access was going to be a nightmare given the distance between them.

I got a sense from listening to both of them, sometimes over two-hour phone calls late into the night, that beneath all the rubble of devastation the foundation of the relationship, in other words the love between them, was still intact. It was the only thing that we had to work on and I just knew that if the court case were to go ahead that too would have been shattered and there would be no going back.

For days it felt as if I were holding the future not just of a family but of generations yet unborn in my hands and when I thought about it too deeply it was quite scary. There was everything to pray for, everything to fight for but also everything to lose and it was all on a knife-edge where even one unwise word would have toppled the balance. With two hurting people involved there was the usual demands for rights with each one prepared to fight to the death to get what they wanted. It reminded me of a dogfight where each was to ready to shoot down the other but unlikely to have the strength left to make it back to base when it was all over.

My counsel to them both was to be wary of handing over their future into the hands of the solicitors; to avoid inflicting any more injury on each other; to drop all demands, to give generously and trust each other to respond favourably. It was a huge ask that demanded a major act of faith. In other words I was challenging them to give everything with the chance of gaining everything in return instead of demanding in a legal way and risk losing everything in the process. My gut feeling was that the foundation of the relationship would be wiped out in the legal case and needed to be protected at all costs.

On the day of the court at Mass I read the Exodus story of the Israelites being pursued by the Egyptians who were out to destroy them. I could see the parallel where this couple had carried destructive issues from their past that had undermined their relationship. With the court case looming this was their Red Sea day where they desperately needed a miracle and if the Sea didn’t open they were history. I asked people to pray for them, and I truly believe they did.  

When I hadn’t heard by late afternoon I rang and was more than relieved to hear that they were together and talking for the first time in months. When they met before the case was due they both burst into tears and decided to do their own negotiations. He rose to the occasion and made the ultimate sacrifice of agreeing to forego all demands in relation to the children. He couldn’t have declared his love for her in a more powerful way and she in turn responded by granting him unconditional access and dropped all safety and restriction orders. He offered to give her total access to what had been their joint bank account and she in turn said she wanted very little. They both said that in those three hours something amazing happened where they felt closer than they ever had been. Even the solicitors were amazed and one of them said we have never seen anything like this; it’s just lovely to see you working this out together even if it’s not good for us.

So, the miracle happened; the Red Sea parted and the forces that were pursuing them were destroyed. A big sticking point for her was whether or not he could change. The statistics show that only a small percentage manage to do so and those are the ones who take responsibility and stop blaming someone else. It takes a lot to bring about change but when we suffer enough we do change and for them there will be no going back to old ways. What they agreed on was an interim arrangement to give them space to sort things out, which I believe they can. There will be the inevitable hiccups along the way, but all the indications are that they are well on the way to the Promised Land and I suspect they will be back together for Christmas. They were both exhausted after the ordeal and they weren’t the only ones but thankfully faith prevailed, and a lot of peoples prayers were answered.

Mon 20^th Oct – Church Awakening

The second heart is the one that is alive and growing and it is also quite separate from the first. This one is more associated with spirituality than religious practice. It is within its confines that the evangelical Christian would see themselves but with a lot more company than the few who have read their Bible and understood the doctrine of justification by faith and not by doing everything right. Here also are the vast numbers who have experienced this truth. Their entry point has been precisely at the point where they have come to realize their powerlessness and inadequacy, where their lives were unmanageable. It was in their brokenness they had forsaken efforts to be better and through surrender have discovered the miracle of Grace. This is the true poverty of spirit mentioned in the Beatitudes which is the place of blessedness. With such awakening comes the realization of being justified by faith and the futility of my own efforts. At the core of this heart lie words like, humility, failure, brokenness, alongside others like surrender, grace and justification. The latter being that deep sense of being loved as I am and not for what I do and being at peace with my God. It is truly a sense of being justified – just as if I had never sinned.