ACP leadership to meet diocesan reps

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.’

The death of Eamonn Casey, former bishop of Galway, has evoked different reactions and emotions.
Kevin Clancy has his own special memories; “Having been a diocesan priest myself for several years, working with and coming across a considerable number of bishops, charisma-wise none of them could compare with him or match his passion in promoting the social message of the gospel.”

Brendan Hoban in his weekly column in the Western People says that “If the values of the gospel of Jesus are to find its space in a different world, we need ordinary words to communicate truths that resonate with the deepest reaches and we need rituals, religious or otherwise, that speak gospel truths.
Eamonn Casey urging on thousands of young people in Galway to tell the Pope that they loved him is now part of the baggage of a by-gone era. We need to stop visiting it.”