Reality May 2018

IN THE STORMS OF LIFE

EXONERATED

GOD CAN REACH OUT TO US

SUNNY AND PETER'S STORY

WE PRAISE YOU LORD

WITH THE WORK OF OUR HANDS

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

MAY 2018

IRELAND DECIDES ABORTION ON DEMAND? THE SCIENTIST WHO DISCOVERED THE CAUSE OF DOWN SYNDROME

ne Supp or azi ag

ng ti

Reality M

THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT JUST A RELIGIOUS ISSUE

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IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 FEARLESS ADVOCATE FOR LIFE: JÉRÔME LEJEUNE The scientist who discovered the cause of Down Syndrome, now declared 'Servant of God', was horrified that his research was used to abort the innocent.

By Susan Gately

15 HUMAN – NO EXCEPTIONS Acknowledging that unborn life is human and has rights, especially the right to survive, does not depend on a specifically religious belief but on the definition of what life is.

By Neil Foley

18 PENTECOST – THE GREAT ENERGISER!

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Can we make Pentecost different this year by preparing for it with a novena and a special celebration of the Vigil?

By Sarah Adams

22 EXONERATED The story of two people who spent time on death row for murders they did not commit.

By Paul Copeland

25 BEING CATHOLIC IN BRITAIN In cities like Liverpool and Manchester generations of settlement from Ireland and other countries have created a large and vibrant Catholic community.

By Declan McSweeney

32 COURAGE IT IS I: DO NOT BE AFRAID In the plays of Shakespeare, storms often mark the passage from suffering to compassion. God is in touch with us in the storms and uncertainties of our 21st century lives.

By Naomi Kloss

36 WE PRAISE YOU LORD WITH THE WORK OF OUR HANDS How contemplative communities earn their living Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

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25

OPINION

REGULARS

11 BRENDAN McCONVERY

04 REALITY BITES 07 POPE MONITOR 08 FEAST OF THE MONTH 09 REFLECTIONS 28 PRAYER CORNER 40 UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 42 TRÓCAIRE 45 GOD’S WORD

31 CARMEL WYNNE 44 PETER McVERRY SJ

REALITY BITES REDEMPTORIST SERVANT OF GOD ON WAY TO BEATIFICATION VATICAN CITY

RECOGNISING A GOOD MAN

On March 6, Pope Francis authorised the publication of the Decree recognising the heroic virtue of the Servant of God, Fr Bernard Łubieński, professed priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.

Fr Łubieński was born in Guzów, Poland, on December 9, 1846 and died in Warsaw on September 10, 1933. Bernard and his older brother, Henryk, were sent as boarders to Ushaw College in County Durham. Much to the disapproval of his father and an uncle who was a bishop, Bernard applied to join the Redemptorists in Clapham, London. He made his noviciate in Bishop Eton, Liverpool, and after completing his seminary studies

4

in Witten, Holland, he was ordained in Aachen in Germany in 1870. He returned to England and was attached to the Clapham community where he did the usual range of missions and pastoral work, including looking after Polish exiles in London and missions in Ireland, which was then part of the London Province. In 1882, Bernard returned to Poland to participate in the reintroduction of the Redemptorists to Poland.

St Benno’s, Warsaw had been established

by St Clement Hofbauer in 1787 as the first Redemptorist community outside of Italy.

They were expelled in 1806 by Napoleon. Fr Bernard died in 1933 in Warsaw.

Fr Bernard Łubieński CSsR

SHOPPING CENTRE FIRE IN KEMOROVO OVERSTATING THE FAITH’S DECLINE? SIBERIA

LOSS OF LIFE

On March 25, 2018, a fire at the Winter Cherry shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo claimed 64 lives. Dublin-born Fr Anthony Branagan has served in Kemerovo for many years as a member of the international Redemptorist community there. He reports: ”The shopping centre is one bus stop away from us. One 11-year-old girl baptised by Fr Andre here, and two of her half-sisters died in the fire. The granddaughter of one of our parishioners was taken out of the building along with her companions by the person looking after them, without their street clothes. People on the street put warm clothes on them. A grandson of another parishioner also got out of the building in time. Over the weekend we had a youth gathering and one group of the youth was outside the centre on a task at the time of the fire. One of them was about to go in when a group of children ran out without proper street clothes and they shared their clothes with the children. Forty-one small children died in the fire. “ REALITY MAY 2018

LONDON

A FLICKER OF HOPE

Irish young adults remain among the most religious of their generation in Europe, with around 24 per cent of them attending Mass weekly, according to the latest figures from the European Social Survey (ESS). According to Professor Stephen Bullivant, the story that the older Catholic generation is dying off and being replaced by new bright young secularists is overstated.

Prof Bullivant is director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary’s University, London. The survey, based on data from 2014 and 2016, found that the six ‘most Christian’ nations are all historically Catholic-majority countries, such as Ireland and Poland.

It found that 54 per cent of young adults aged between 16-29 in Ireland claim Catholic affiliation as opposed to 22 per cent in Belgium and 10 per cent in the UK. Poland had the highest number of young adult Catholics at 82 per cent. It also showed that approximately one in 10 young Irish Catholics attend religious services on a weekly basis, while 31 per cent claimed they pray weekly or more. Although there has been a decline in Mass attendance in Ireland, Prof Bullivant would not describe it as a collapse. “This is a generation that has been raised in the sort of new Ireland, post-Tiger – most of them – and they’re still going to Mass in remarkably high numbers and praying.”

While they go to Mass less frequently than their parents, they attend far more regularly than almost elsewhere across Europe.

N E WS

CONFESSIONS WHILE YOU SHOP DUBLIN

THE CHURCH OF THE STREETS

“It’s Holy Saturday, one of the busiest Bank Holiday weekends of the year, and for the parishes of Maynooth deanery there is an exciting initiative taking place in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre in West Dublin,” reports Jane Mellett, pastoral assistant in Ballyfermot parish. "Fr Stan Mellett CSsR from Ballyfermot Assumption Parish in Dublin, suggested that we should get out of the church and bring the sacrament of reconciliation to the ‘streets’. Sr Carmel Earls from Clondalkin said 'Let’s do it, I know the general manager in Liffey Valley.” And that was it. Priests, pastoral workers, deacons and volunteers from parishes across the Maynooth deanery got on board. It was fascinating to watch people’s reactions when they saw the signs and could not believe that we were so publicly advertising confession, a chat or a blessing. Some laughed, while others took photos to post on social media. Volunteers were kept busy chatting to passers-by, and a steady stream of people continued to pour in throughout the day to the ‘pop-up confessional’. At numerous times there were even queues!" For Christina Malone, parish pastoral worker in Clondalkin, “It’s not just about the sacrament of reconciliation; it’s about the chats you have outside the ‘shop’. It’s about the ones who pull out their phones to post the ‘event’; it’s about the guy who passed by three times before he decided to go inside. It’s about the one who saw but didn’t want to engage and it’s about the ones who find it easier to go through the door of a shop for reconciliation than through the door of a church.”

Jane adds: "We are very grateful to Liffey Valley Shopping Centre for allowing this initiative to take place. It’s an example of the church moving out of its comfort zone and meeting people where they are at. Many thanks especially goes to the parish teams of the Clondalkin grouping of parishes who continue to spear-head the project."

The team at the shopping centre

5 Frs Michael Murtagh CSsR and Stan Mellett CSsR

END OF SUNDAY TRADING IN POLAND POLAND

'CLOSED' ALL HOURS

A new Polish law banning almost all trading on Sundays has recently come into operation. Large supermarkets and most other retailers will close for the first time since liberal shopping laws were introduced in the 1990s after the fall of Communism. It has been welcomed by workers who were glad to have a day of rest but it is resented by the many Poles who see consumer freedom as one of benefits of the free market era. The new law will initially curb trading on two Sundays per month: by 2019 it will be three Sundays, and finally every Sunday from 2020, except for exceptions before the Easter and Christmas holidays.

Fr Stan Mellett CSsR engaged with a penitent

Calling in for a blessing

continued on page 6

REALITY BITES THE LATE FR JAMES GOOD: PROFESSOR AND MISSIONARY Rev Dr James Good, a priest of the diocese of Cork and former professor of philosophy at University College Cork, died on March 21 last, at the age of 94. Fr Jim, as he was known to many, studied for his doctorate at the University of Innsbruck in Austria shortly after his ordination in 1948. He was sent there by his bishop, Dr Cornelius Lucey, as it offered a greater challenge to a bright young priest to study in German, and in a country just recovering from the ravages of war. On return, in addition to his parish duties, he taught in University College Cork and worked with St Anne’s Adoption Society. The quiet academic shot to prominence in the summer of 1968, after the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae. Fr Good expressed his dissent from the encyclical. He was suspended from the public exercise of pastoral ministry in the diocese of Cork by Bishop Lucey.

UCC was opening an extension of its education department in Limerick, and Professor Good was asked to take on responsibility for it. While in Limerick, he lived with the Redemptorists and was permitted by the Bishop of Limerick to exercise a low-key pastoral ministry the diocese.

In 1975, Fr Good went to work in the Turkana desert as a missionary. Bishop Lucey dropped a bombshell on his retirement by announcing he was going to work with his friend, Jim Good as a missionary. It is a parable of two men of conflicting principles maintaining respect for one another.

Speaking to a journalist after the bishop’s death, Fr Good said, “I believe that he deeply regretted the suspension, but believed that he could not do anything about it. We both understood our position and accepted it.” Fr Good spent his last years in Cork, and occasionally contributed articles to this magazine.

6 GERMAN DIOCESE PROPOSES RADICAL REDUCTION OF PARISHES Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier has announced that the German diocese would reduce its 172 parishes to 35 in 2020.

Under the reorganisation, each parish will be headed by a priest and two full-time laypeople, with one or two management volunteers. In an interview carried on the diocesan website, Bishop Ackermann said local lay councils and expert groups would continue playing a role in the reorganization, but said final responsibility for the reform would lie with him.

“While the parish has been integral to Western Christian civilisation,” he said, “it is also facing profound and rapid change This has necessitated new models and stronger network systems.

We simply cannot continue as in the past.”

The diocese of Trier goes back to Roman times when it was the capital of Gaul. In the days of the Holy Roman Empire, its bishop had princely rank and was an elector of the Emperor. Situated on the river Moselle, it is still considered one of the most Catholic parts of Germany and has 1,016 priests and deacons and 1,740 members of religious orders of men and women. The archdiocese of Berlin announced in 2012 its decision to reconstitute its 105 parishes into 35 pastoral areas and sell off unused churches, reducing its staff by 40 per cent to cope with debts of $140 million since Germany’s 1989-90 reunification. Trier’s neighbour on the other side of the Moselle, the archdiocese of Luxembourg, is also reducing its existing 274 parishes to just 33.

REALITY MAY 2018

The late Fr James Good

ELDERLY SISTER DIES IN COURT An elderly nun died on March 9 during a court hearing in Los Angeles. Eighty-nineyear-old Sister Catherine Rose Holzman and another sister had been involved in a legal battle with singer Katy Perry and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles over the sale of a convent in which the sisters resided, but whose ownership is disputed by the sisters and the archdiocese. The archdiocese sold it to the singer in 2015 for $14.5m (almost €12m).

The sisters, who belong to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were no longer in residence in the former convent, but they objected to the sale, saying they were uncomfortable handing over the property to the singer. The Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters have had a troubled relationship with the archdiocese. In 1970, almost 90 per cent of them left the order in a dispute with Cardinal James McIntyre over decisions they had made to modernise following Vatican II. The sisters who left the order formed an independent lay community called the Immaculate Heart Community. Of those who remained in the order, only five are still living, including the two sisters involved in this case.

Ms Perry visited the sisters to try to find an agreement and reportedly showed them her Jesus tattoo and sang a hymn for them. The sisters were unimpressed, and sold the property to a local restaurant owner without the approval of their archdiocese. The singer and the archdiocese were awarded almost $10 million when their lawyers successfully argued that the sisters had no right to sell the property, as they had failed to get the consent of the archbishop or of the Vatican, since the sale of any property worth more than $7.5 million must be approved by the Holy See. Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles said: "Sister Catherine Rose served the Church with dedication and love for many years, and today we remember her life with gratitude."

N E WS

POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS POPE VISITS SHRINE OF ST ‘PADRE’ PIO

Above: The Pope prays at the saint's shrine. Below: Pope Francis spends a moment in the saint's room. Left: Kissing the cross

On March 17, Pope Francis went by helicopter to visit two places associated with the memory of St Pio. He left the Vatican at 7am and stopped off an hour later for a brief visit in St Pio’s birth-place of Pietrelcina before going to San Giovanni Rotondo. He celebrated Mass outside the shrine church there with about 30,000 people, after visiting children in the cancer ward of the hospital St. Pio founded, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of Suffering).

He returned to Rome after Mass and was back in the Vatican by 2pm. Many people admire St. Pio, Pope Francis said in his homily, but too few imitate him, especially in his care for the weak, the sick and those who modern culture treats as disposable. Departing from his prepared text, he recalled being taught in school about the Spartans, who, when a disabled child was born, would take them to the top of the mountain and throw them over. "We children would say, 'How cruel,' but, brothers and sisters, we do the same. With more cruelty and more knowledge. Whatever isn't useful, whatever doesn't produce, is thrown away.

This is the throwaway culture. The little ones are not wanted today. Those who take care of children are on the side of God and defeat the throwaway culture, which, on the contrary, prefers the powerful and considers the poor useless," he said. "Those who prefer the little ones proclaim a prophecy of life against the prophets of death of every age." Earlier in the day, something similar occurred. At the first stop in Pietrelcina, Padre Pio’s home town, the pope said the saintly Capuchin "felt he was assailed by the devil" and feared falling into sin.

He departed from his script to ask the people if they believed the devil existed. When only a handful of people responded, he told them it didn't seem "they were totally convinced"."I'm going to have to tell the bishop to give some catechesis," he said jokingly. "Does the devil exist or not?" "Yes!" the crowd responded loudly this time.

NEW FEAST OF OUR LADY Pope Francis has decreed that the ancient devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of Mother of the Church, be inserted into the Roman Calendar. It will be celebrated as a Memorial on the Monday following the Feast of Pentecost.

Cardinal Sarah of the Congregation of Divine Worship said that the Holy Father wishes to promote this devotion in order to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety”.

Devotion to Our Lady under this title received additional support after the Second Vatican Council which placed great stress on the pre-eminence of this title after 'Mother of God'. For the Holy Year of Reconciliation in 1975, a votive Mass in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, was composed and issued with a set of other Votive Masses in her honour. The Congregation for Divine Worship has published the official liturgical texts in Latin. Translations will be prepared and approved by local Bishops’ Conferences.

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FEAST OF THE MONTH ST CONALL OF INISHKEEL MAY 22

ND

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St Conall was the founder and abbot of a sixth century monastery on Inch-Coel (Inniskeel), a tidal island on the southern shores of Gweebarra Bay in County Donegal. The island is about 80 acres in extent and has some carved grave slabs and the ruins of two small churches. According to O’Cleary’s Genealogies of the Saints of Ireland, Conall was of the same stock as Conall Gulban, joint Árd Rí from 640 to 656. He was also a contemporary of Colmcille and a friend of the illustrious poet Dallán Forgall, the author of Amra Choluim Chille, an elegy on the saint of Derry and Iona.

Both Conall and Dallán Forgall are buried in the same grave on Inniskeel. Tradition credits Conall with going on pilgrimage to Rome and returning with a copy of the Cain Domhnaigh, of which more anon.

The turus or pilgrim walk on the saint’s feast day was one of the most frequented in Donegal. It need hardly be said that his holy well was an important feature of the day. The main attraction, however, was St Conall’s Bell, the Bearnan Chonaill. Considered to be Conall’s very own bell, it certainly bears the marks of the centuries as is evident from the testimony of a woman who had often seen it, and was present when the bell became accessible after Dr George Petrie, ‘the father of Irish archaeology’, had broken the seal of the mediaeval reliquary in which it had been contained.

The woman describes the relic as "a Mass bell square in form, and very much worn and thinned from age, or by long use, having quite a number of dints and apertures showing upon it. It had no tongue, but appeared, when long used, to have been struck like a gong." By comparison with the simplicity of the bell, its 15th century shrine is extremely elaborate and includes silver plating incised with images of the heavenly Father, the crucified Christ, the Virgin and Child, St Michael the archangel and an array of saints.

Traditionally the local custodians of the bell-shrine were the MacAloones. Each year the relic was brought to the island and at the end of their turus people were offered the privilege of kissing it at a cost of a half penny. “Díol do leith-phinginn agus póg an Bearnan!” – pay your half-penny and kiss the Bearnan! In the mid 19th century the Bearnan seemingly passed by a marriage settlement into the keeping of a Breslin family who were apparently its hereditary erenaghs.

Breslin doubled the kissing fee to a penny, sold the bell to a landlord, and bought sheep with the proceeds. And the reader won’t be surprised to learn that they all – sheep or Breslins I’m not sure – died the following summer. After other twists and turns the Bearnan found its way to the British Museum, and was loaned briefly to Donegal in 2015.

We turn now to the Cain Domhnaigh or Law of Sunday already mentioned. It is said to have been brought by Conall from Rome to Inch-Coel. The document begins with a highly pretentious claim: "Here begins the Epistle of the Saviour our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the Lord’s Day, which his own hand wrote in the presence of the men of heaven and which was placed upon the altar of Peter the Apostle in Rome in Latium, to make Sunday holy for all time."

It presents Sunday as running from Vespers on Saturday to Tierce on Monday, that is, from about 6pm on Saturday evening to 9am on Monday morning. It gives a lengthy list of prohibitions pertaining work practices and smacks of the severest Old Testament observation of the Jewish Sabbath. Nevertheless, it says that not even people in hell are punished during this time, and goes on to call for mercy towards the poor and the infirm and the pilgrims.

Internal evidence shows the document to be a ninth century fraud, which has some caveats for today. With the plethora of private revelations, visions and heavenly messages in circulation, it may be advisable to give a second thought even to messages from “the Saviour our Lord Jesus Christ…which his own hand wrote”!

John J Ó Ríordáin CSsR REALITY MAY 2018

Reality Volume 83. No. 4 May 2018 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651 Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)

Editor Brendan McConvery CSsR editor@redcoms.org Design & Layout David Mc Namara CSsR dmcnamara@redcoms.org General Manager Paul Copeland pcopeland@redcoms.org Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Administration & Accounts Michelle McKeon mmckeon@redcoms.org Printed by Nicholson & Bass, Belfast Photo Credits Shutterstock, Catholic News Agency REALITY SUBSCRIPTIONS Through a promoter (Ireland only) €20 or £18 Annual Subscription by post: Ireland €25 or £20 UK £30 Europe €40 Rest of the world €50 Please send all payments to: Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin D09 X651 ADVERTISING Whilst we take every care to ensure the accuracy and validity of adverts placed in Reality, the information contained in adverts does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Redemptorist Communications. You are therefore advised to verify the accuracy and validity of any information contained in adverts before entering into any commitment based upon them.

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REFLECTIONS A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

I've had my doubts about religion, but if I don't go to mass on a Sunday I feel as though something is missing.

People are often surprised to find out that I'm a Catholic, but there's a real peace and perspective in it for me.

KATHLEEN NORRIS

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

IRIS MURDOCH

Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme.

NIKOLAI BERDAYEV

BAAL SHEM TOV (RABBI ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER)

If you're going through hell, keep going.

ROGER MCGOUGH

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

When a father complains that his son has taken to evil ways, what should he do? Love him more than ever.

Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed.

DOROTHY DAY

The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.

PETER BERGER

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men.

Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

CS LEWIS

In every friendship, hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with only a common thought. That is why separation is so painful; it is not so much two hearts separating, but one being torn asunder.

ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN

Each wrong act brings with it its own anaesthetic, dulling the conscience and blinding it against further light, and sometimes for years.

ROSE MACAULAY

People do evil things because they are evil. Some people are evil in the way that some things are coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are.

JRR TOLKIEN

JK ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

TERRY EAGLETON

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

SOREN KIERKEGAARD

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

God has the most wicked sense of humour.

MAUREEN O’HARA

9

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

MOTHER CHURCH OR “EMPIRE OF MISOGYNY”?

Speaking

atameetinginRome of the Voices of Faith Conference on March 8 last, Mary McAleese described the Catholic Church as one of the last great bastions of misogyny, indeed, as an "empire of misogyny". Mrs McAleese was clearly angry, and she had good reason to be. Her name had been scratched from the list of speakers by someone in the Vatican – it is still not clear by whom or why – and when the conference organisers rightly stuck to their guns, the conference was moved outside the walls of the Papal enclave. To treat a former head of state like this was, to say the least, inept.

I have worked with Mary McAleese on occasion.

I admire the warmth of her welcome for everyone, from the Queen of England to the elderly people and children who have queued up to shake her hand. I believe she draws great strength from her relationship with Martin and her extended family, as well as from her practice of Christian meditation.

So Mary is angry! So too are many of my women friends – relatives, former students, colleagues, married, single and religious. Some of them are highly trained theologians with years of doctoral research behind them and the publications to prove it. Others have given years of service to God and his people as religious sisters, teaching and nursing, often placing their health and safety at risk in places where no salary would attract their like. They are angry too. Most of them would not put it as vehemently as Mrs McAleese does, but they are conscious that years of training, of skills learned the hard way, of expertise that has come from a lifetime of hard-knocks are overlooked because they are not men – or to put it more accurately, because they are not part of the clerical club. Some of my priest friends also make the point that they are excluded because they are not part of a shadowy inner circle of decision makers. Are they right? Yes, I think they are for many reasons. I believe that our church at every level – from the smallest parish church in the remotest country village to the top departments

of the Vatican needs to include women at every level of life, and especially of decision making. Yet there is evidence that women are being included to a larger degree than might have been thought possible some years ago. The Papal Commission for Safeguarding Minors, for example, has an equal number of men and women. The same is increasingly true at diocesan and parish level, but women are impatient at the rate of change.

The issue of women’s place in the church emerges most painfully in the question of who can be ordained to the priesthood, and so assume a particular kind of leadership. I have Presbyterian and Methodist women friends who are ministers in charge of congregations. They can preach, administer and lead a parish as well as many male parish priests I know. Will it change soon?

I regret to say it will probably not. I believe such a change is only possible when the whole body of Christ recognises that it is possible. Were the Roman Church to go ahead and ordain women, it would exclude its closest brothers and sisters who belong to the great Orthodox Churches of Russia and the Middle East. The ordination of women would drive a further wedge between them, far deeper than leavened or unleavened bread for the Eucharist, or whether to sing or not to sing Alleluia in Lent.

Rosemary Haughton converted to Catholicism in her teens. Now aged over 90, she is the mother of ten children and author of about 30 books of popular theology. She was one of the rare women’s voices in theology as I was beginning my studies in preparation for ordination. Somewhere she paints a word picture of 'Mother Church'. An admirably dedicated person, Mother Church knows her children well. She tells them stories of their brave and imaginative brothers and sisters in the past and encourages the younger ones to imitate them. She is quite unshockable, for she has seen a lot in her long life. She has gathered a huge fund of wisdom which she puts at their disposal.

She cheers their gloomy days with dazzling colours in art, and uplifts them with the most sublime

music. “On the other hand, she is extremely inclined to feel that her will and God's are identical.

In her eyes there can be no better, no other, way than hers. If she is unshockable, she is frequently cynical. She is shrewd, with a thoroughly earthy and often humorous shrewdness... she will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority 'for their own good' but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppressing revolt...This is Mother Church, a crude, domineering, violent, loving, deceitful, compassionate old lady, a person to whom one cannot be indifferent, whom one may love much and yet fight against, whom one may hate and yet respect.”

On May 21 we will celebrate for the first time a new feast in honour of Mary, Mother of the Church. She is the wise elderly mother, but she is also, as the French writer George Bernanos wrote, “younger than sin, younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a mother by grace, mother of all graces, our little youngest sister.”

Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor

11

C OVE R STO RY

FEARLESS ADVO 12

THE SCIENTIST WHO DISCOVERED THE CAUSE OF DOWN SYNDROME WAS AGHAST WHEN HE DISCOVERED THAT HIS RESEARCH, INTENDED TO PROVIDE A CURE OR CARE FOR PATIENTS, WAS BEING USED FOR THEIR OBLITERATION. HE HAS NOW BEEN DECLARED 'SERVANT OF GOD' AND IS ON THE WAY TO SAINTHOOD.

BY SUSAN GATELY REALITY MAY 2018

The

brilliant physician accredited with discovering what causes Down Syndrome was a doctor who believed passionately in the Gospel words: “Whatever you do to the least… you do to me.” The attentive husband, father of five and beloved doctor was also a believer, declared 'Servant of God' in 2012.

Jérôme Lejeune grew up in pre- World War

OCATE FOR LIFE JÉRÔME LEJEUNE

2 France. His father was a lawyer, his mother, well educated. Both were devout Catholics.

He had two brothers. It is said he got his strength from his mother and his sweetness from his father.

had a brilliant mind, and yet failed his final medical exams three times – on the third occasion because he took the train in the wrong direction, arriving too late to sit the exam.

In the 1950s, with the horrors of war still a vivid memory, Lejeune joined the great paediatrician Professor Raymond Turpin at the Saint Louis Hospital in Paris, which dealt with children with Down Syndrome. As he began to treat the children, he became very fond of them, calling each by name, and collectively his “little ones”.

Seeking to understand the condition, he studied their palm prints, “because they are a snap shot of embryonic life. At 2 months, when the embryo is 2.5cms from head to rump, with a microscope you can see the palm prints,” explained Lejeune.

From his studies of human genetics , he b e c ame convinced that the cause of Down Syndrome must be some sort of chromosomal abnormality, explains Professor of Biology at Brown University, Kenneth R. Miller. “But at the time the techniques for visualising human chromosomes were poor. A colleague of his, Marthe Gautier, demonstrated an improved technique for visualising chromosomes, and they applied that technique to cells taken from Down patients.”

BEGINNINGS Immediately after the Second World War, Jérôme began his studies in medicine. He

BREAKTHROUGH In 1958, together with Raymond Turpin and Marthe Gautier, he discovered that

children with Down Syndrome have three chromosomes on the 21st pair [trisomy 21] instead of two. This was the first discovery ever of a chromosomal disorder and coming just two years after scientists had established humans had 46 chromosomes, it was a genetic revolution. Their findings were published by the French Academy of Sciences in 1959.

“By showing that trisomy had a chromosomal origin, Lejeune changed society’s views about children with trisomy and their families,” says Aude Dugast, the postulator of his cause. “He gave them back their dignity.” His consulting practice, where he treated around 9,000 patients, quickly became the most important of its kind in the world.

Aghast, Lejeune saw his discovery, aimed at providing a cure or care for patients, being used for their obliteration In the early 1960s, the upward trajectory of Lejeune’s career reached its zenith. President John F. Kennedy personally awarded him the Kennedy Prize, and he was awarded the Chair of Human Genetics at the Paris School of Medicine. By then he had discovered other genetic diseases caused by chromosomal abnormalities, like Cri du Chat syndrome.

But dark clouds were gathering. Trisomy 21 could be spotted while the baby was still in the womb through screening. Aghast, Lejeune saw his discovery, aimed at providing a cure or care for patients, being used for their obliteration.

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C OVE R STO RY

Quotations from Jérôme Lejeune “The thing that tells us what is good or bad is not science, but rather morality. And if science does not submit to morality, science goes mad.... It belongs to science to say that a human being is a human being, then morality tells you: therefore we must respect human beings.”

“I fight against false ideas, never against the person.”

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During a TV debate with the inventor of the abortion pill in 1988: “I fight on the side of life and not death.

Abortion pills kill children. What I want is that chemical war does not take place.

It [the abortion pill] is a very curious substance, with a specific toxicity for human beings at a certain stage of development.

It doesn't attack the mother's health but prevents the child's survival. It is a specific poison: the first anti-human pesticide. As a physician I can't approve an anti-human pesticide.”

“TODAY, I LOST MY NOBEL PRIZE” As governments in England, in France and in the US began to legislate for abortion, starting with abortion for babies with foetal abnormalities, he realised he had to take a public stance to defend “his little ones”.

In 1969 he used the occasion of winning the prestigious Allen Prize in San Francisco to make a scathing attack on this new form of medicine,

Receiving the Kennedy Award

which was not medicine at all. “To Kill or Not to Kill – that is the question,” he began. “For millennia, medicine has strived to fight for life and health and against disease and death. Any reversal of the order of these terms of reference would entirely change medicine itself.” In the same address he referred to ‘eugenics’ and a ‘National Institute of Death’. A horrified silence greeted the talk. Later he wrote “Today I lost my Nobel prize.”

On the plane home, in tears he wrote to his wife, Berthe: “Chromosomal racism is being brandished like a flag of freedom: they will kill abnormal foetuses in utero because they can recognize the abnormal karyotype from an amniotic fluid sample.

This denial of all medicine and of all the biological fraternity that unites human beings is at present the only practical application of our knowledge about trisomy 21 – this is more than heart-breaking.”

In the years that followed, Lejeune became a fearless advocate for life, with the words of a little ten-year-old boy with Downs Syndrome echoing in his heart: “Professor save me.” The child had seen a TV programme about abortion for trisomy 21 babies.

Medicine is service to sick people, he wrote.

With his good friend, Saint Pope John Paul

REALITY MAY 2018

“If I had remained silent, I would have had the impression that I was abandoning them out of cowardice while they were being consigned to extermination.”

His views provoked a backlash: years in the wilderness, banished from TV, radio and international scientific conferences. Subsidies dried up. Lejeune could continue his research only thanks to income from lectures and from benefactors.

In spite of this, he continued to work tirelessly, testifying in court cases and legislatures in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US where, for example, he defended the humanity of seven frozen embryos in 1989.

SERVANT OF GOD He became a close friend of Pope John Paul II, lunching with him just hours before his attempted assassination in 1981. When John Paul II set up the Pontifical Academy for Life, Lejeune was his obvious choice as president. But although the doctor had worked hard drafting its bylaws, he only held the position for a few months before his death on Easter Sunday, 1994. Thousands attended his funeral. One of his last requests was that spaces be reserved in the church for his “little ones"- the patients he loved to the end.

Today the Lejeune Institute, founded in his name, cares for 9,000 patients from all over the world, and is a leader in clinical research for patients with mental disabilities.

Suan Gately is author of God’s Surprise - the New Movements in the Church, published by Veritas, and is a regular contributor to Reality

HUMAN

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• NO E XC E P TI ON S • ACKNOWLEDGING THAT UNBORN LIFE IS HUMAN AND HAS RIGHTS, ESPECIALLY THE RIGHT TO SURVIVE, DOES NOT DEPEND ON ANY SPECIFICALLY RELIGIOUS BELIEF BUT ON OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT LIFE IS.

BY NEIL FOLEY

Lately

I’m tired. I’m tired of having to constantly explain reality. You would think in this modern day and age that reality would be fairly well nailed down. However, it seems the opposite is true. Never have we been

so unsure of our footing despite our great leaps in knowledge and technology. If I ask anyone do they know what a human being is, they look at me puzzled and answer “of course!” If I follow this with the claim that all human beings have human rights, again I get

an affirmative answer. And if I state that the law should protect these rights, yet again I get agreement, although the post-modern relativist will start wondering where the trick question is, despite there not being one.

I’m tired of people disagreeing with the basic

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COVER STO RY

scientific fact that, following conception, an entirely new and unique human being is created. Dehumanising arguments abound over physical development, consciousness, illness and autonomy, but whether we like it or not conception is the scientific beginning of a new human life.

CAN I BE LESS THAN HUMAN? A complete and unique human genome is created that will remain with that person until they die. If I am still growing, am I somehow less human? If I am asleep, or have a brain injury which reduces my mental cognition, am I any less human? If I require somebody else to feed me, or somebody to make insulin to be injected into me, am I less human? All of these things vary across the human spectrum and can even change during an individual’s life, but we do not try to say that these make somebody nonhuman.

Yet, why are these arguments applied to a human inside a womb? I’m tired of hearing that an embryo is not fully formed, but would we say this to dehumanise a toddler just because they haven’t reached some arbitrary growth point?

If I require dialysis am I less human?

Without any scientific evidence, we hear the claim that a foetus is not conscious. Yet all of us spend hours every day unconscious when we sleep, so does my classification as a human change then? Is it permissible to treat me differently because I am not awake?

IF I HAVE A FATAL ILLNESS, HAS SOMEONE THE RIGHT TO END MY LIFE? A case is made that the life of humans diagnosed with so-called 'fatal foetal abnormalities' may be ended. But if I am diagnosed with a terminal illness, does somebody else have the right to end my life because of this? Is my human status lessened because of my illness? And somehow because the unborn rely on their mother for sustenance, unable to autonomously live, they are less human. But what child can autonomously live without parents or guardians? Indeed many adults rely on the intervention of others to survive. If I require dialysis am I less human?

And if I am human I have human rights.

Surely this is the only logical conclusion.

Or do we subscribe to a scheme that only some humans have human rights? That at the whim of politicians, authorities or tyrants

human rights can be removed from some.

We need only review the crimes of history to see where this leads. But if we believe that all human beings have human rights then, as a civilised society, we must expect the law to uphold those rights for everyone. If we are scientifically human beings we morally have human rights which should be legally protected. No exceptions.

HEART SPEAKS TO HEART So in the words of John Henry Newman, I want heart to speak to heart. If people are willing to deny scientific, moral and legal truths, to circumvent logic and reason, to be willingly or ignorantly misled, another route is needed. The way of the heart; that deep intuition buried under the cerebral chatter.

So my friends and I, The Mustard Seeds, decided to compose a song and compile a video to explain all of the above without argument, without debate, without reams of words. Just music, song and images. Because we are all human from the moment we are conceived, we all have inherent human rights and we all deserve the chance to live.

To listen to and view the song and video Together Beat Our Hearts by The Mustard Seeds please follow the link: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=_Y38AS8TcVA Or simply search Together Beat Our Hearts on YouTube.

Neil Foley lives near Wexford Town in the Diocese of Ferns where he is involved in several prayer and music ministries. His latest collaborations are on the Hook of Faith digital evangelisation project and with The Mustard Seeds contemporary worship group, both of which can be followed on Facebook. He is married to Helen, has a Certificate in Pastoral Theology and works as an environmental scientist.

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In Tune with the Liturgy A series that highlights some of the features of the Church’s worship in the month ahead

PENTECOST – THE GREAT ENERGISER! PENTECOST IS IN DANGER OF BECOMING THE FORGOTTEN FEAST. CAN WE MAKE PENTECOST DIFFERENT THIS YEAR

BY PREPARING FOR IT WITH A NOVENA AND A SPECIAL CELEBRATION OF THE VIGIL?

BY SARAH ADAMS 18

It

is 11.59pm on December the 31, and the great countdown begins! Hundreds of thousands of people in London, Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh stand gathered, whatever the weather, counting down: 10, 9, 8….until at 12am clocks chime as one, heralding in a new year. A cacophony of sound bursts forth, as all kinds of fireworks are set off to create an amazing sight of light and colour and shape. Even if one is watching from the comfort of the sofa, in a warm room

just another day, on another level it offers the hope of a new beginning, a new way forward, a letting go of what was, in order to embrace something different.

I like to think that this is indeed what it was like at the first Pentecost. For me, those flames on the heads of disciples, in a closed room, is a challenging image. Fireworks exploding, wind blowing, a great sound emanating a new optimism and new possibilities.

Whatever did happen in that upper room, in whatever way the disciples were galvanised into action that night, they were certainly transformed from being a disparate, frightened group into a unified community able, ready and willing to share the Good News.

Unlike the euphoria which is aroused when we remember the Son’s coming at Christmas, the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost is met with an overwhelming silence with a glass of wine, it is difficult not to be moved, not to be filled with a great sense of excitement and anticipation. This happens all around the globe. Though in reality it is REALITY MAY 2018

A JEWISH HARVEST FESTIVAL Pentecost comes from a Greek word, pentēkostē, meaning 'fiftieth'. For the Jewish

people, it marked 50 days after Passover. It was a one-day festival for the beginning of the harvest season. The Law stressed that, during this harvest, special consideration was to be given to provide for the poor and the aliens in the land (Lev 23:22 , Deut 16:11-12). It was later expanded to include a commemoration of God giving the Law to Moses.

When Christians think of Pentecost, we link it with the birthday of the church. On the day of Pentecost, according to Acts 2, God poured the Holy Spirit out on his new covenant people, creating the community of those who follow Jesus and spread his Good News to the ends of the earth. It is celebrated on the seventh Sunday after Easter, and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish festival.

We could say that for the church, this is our new year celebration – our moment,

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each year, to be reenergised, refocused, renewed in the Spirit. Unfortunately, it is one of the great feasts in our liturgical calendar which seems to pass us by. It is just like another Sunday. The ‘forgotten person of the Trinity’ seems to be ignored. Unlike the euphoria which is aroused when we remember the Son’s coming at Christmas, the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost is met with an overwhelming silence. This is the exact opposite of the witness to which Pope Francis is calling us – to be proclaimers of the Gospel.

WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT? To help us understand and appreciate this great feast, we may need to reflect a little more on this third person of the Trinity.

Often it seems easier to understand God the Father and God the Son, but what of God the Spirit? Four themes, which intertwine, may be the lens through which we might see and understand what or who this Spirit it.

1. The first of these is to think of the Spirit as ‘energy’. There is a scientific principle which says that energy is not created or destroyed, it is just transferred. An example of this is to switch on a light. Electrical energy changes to light energy and a little heat energy. When we receive the Holy Spirit something within us changes or needs to change. The church uses the images of wind, fire and water. Wind represents the air that we breathe in order to live, it is the breath of life, as we sing – “Breathe on me breath of God”. Fire is a light to guide, warmth to comfort, power to purify us. Water: we need water to live, to quench our thirst, to cleanse us. Another image is the dove representing a sign of life and peace.

2. A second theme is that of ‘oneness/unity’.

When we are open to the power of the Holy Spirit we experience reconciliation and unity.

In times of crisis, people of different faiths and cultures and opinions communicate with each other and try to work together.

Last summer a great fire destroyed Grenfell

Tower in London, killing many people within the community. The shared grief and a desire to provide for those who had lost family members and all their belongings, led to a harmony where people united with one another in love and compassion. When we block the Spirit or cannot find time to pray and reflect, we can become disillusioned, insular, frightened and we can undermine one another through our words and actions.

3. The Spirit is also an agent for change. It prompts us to find a different way which renews us and reenergises us. In life we will have to make decisions and some of these will be big decisions. The Spirit, through a process of discernment, can help us to know where God is calling us. The Spirit can guide us so that we make right choices, life-giving choices. At other times the Holy Spirit can prompt us to make a change which we hadn’t considered but which is right for us. Pope Francis is urging us to think about this when he says, "I prefer a Church that is bruised,

In Tune with the Liturgy

Grenfell Tower and the many messages of support and solidarity pinned to its gates

The shared grief and a desire to provide for those who had lost family members and all their belongings, led to a harmony where people united with one another in love and compassion hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” In other words, we are called to take risks, to be courageous and break out of our apathy. Change needs to something which we embrace without being fearful of the possibility of making mistakes, which ultimately can help us to grow.

4. Finally, the Holy Spirit can be seen to be the perfume of God, the element of the Trinity which brings us closer to God. We often speak of the ‘fragrance of God’.

Perfume evokes memories within us, it can give a feeling of well-being, of richness. It is why at the Chrism Mass the Bishop mixes perfume with the oil of chrism. Used for the anointing of those who are to be baptised, baptised and sealed with the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, the perfume in the oil lingers and symbolises the closeness of God at these important sacramental times. Pope

Francis has spoken often of his desire for all Christians, everywhere, to have "a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ". It is an invitation to draw closer to Jesus, to engage with the ‘joy of the Lord’.

CALLING US TO CHANGE These four elements of the Holy Spirit show us that far from being a ‘non-person’ in the Trinity, the Spirit is very much alive and active, calling us to change, to grow closer to God, to be unified, and as a result energised to go out and proclaim the Good News, galvanised into action to fulfil the mission of the church and the Gospel.

Is this not worth celebrating? Perhaps this Pentecost we could have a massive birthday celebration, with an explosion of fireworks, joyful music, powerful preaching and a renewal of our baptismal promises that we might be renewed in our ministry and committed to making a difference not just in

the week ahead but in the months and years ahead, as individuals and as a community.

Let us be one in the Spirit, united in love and passion for our faith. If we need to break out of our usual pattern and way of doing things – then so be it. Let us have the courage to make the changes.

How might we even begin to do this?

Perhaps the first step is to commit to having a novena in our parish in the week leading up to Pentecost, perhaps a vigil on the eve of Pentecost with prayer, readings, song and silence as we await the first Mass.

Make Pentecost different this year. See that the world needs us to be invigorated and energised, like the first disciples, and allow the Spirit to rain down on us, filling us with life and hope to share the Good News with the community and the world.

Sarah Adams studied liturgical theology at Maynooth. She now lives in Devon, working for the Diocese of Plymouth as a Religious Education adviser. She enjoys hiking on Dartmoor and the surrounding countryside.

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F E AT U R E

DEATH IS UNAVOIDABLE. WE HAVE ALL EXPERIENCED A ‘DEATH SENTENCE’ PRONOUNCED ON A FAMILY MEMBER OR FRIEND – A FATAL DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER OR OTHER ILLNESS. LIKE A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE, IT SIGNIFIES A TICKING CLOCK COUNTING DOWN TO THE END OF DAYS. ONLY A SMALL NUMBER, HOWEVER, WILL HAVE THIS PRONOUNCEMENT MADE BY LAW, IN THE FORM OF A SENTENCE OF DEATH MADE BY THE STATE.

BY PAUL COPELAND

Sonia

'Sunny' Jacobs a n d Pe te r Pringle are a unique couple who lived under death sentences for large parts of their lives. Both were on death row for murders they did not commit. Sunny served 17 years in a US prison, and Peter 15 years in Ireland.

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DEATH ROW Sunny was sentenced to death at the age of 28 for the 1976 murder of two police officers in Florida. She had been travelling to Florida to help out her partner Jesse. They got caught up with one of Jesse's friends, and ex-con Walter Rhodes, who murdered the two policemen in front of Sunny, her two young children and Jesse. Her partner Jesse was sent to the electric chair for the same crime, but both were innocent.

After five years on death row, her sentence was converted to life imprisonment by the Florida Supreme Court. When she was imprisoned, her two young children were placed in the care of Sunny’s parents.

Sunny suffered a double tragedy when her parents were killed in a plane crash in Louisiana and her children were then placed in foster care. Nearly 17 years after REALITY MAY 2018

her arrest, Sunny’s conviction was overturned on appeal and she was released.

Peter, along with two other men, was convicted of the murder of two Gardaí following a bank robbery in 1980. After his conviction, he was sentenced to hang. Days before his execution date in 1981, he was told his sentence had been commuted to 40 years in prison. During that time, Peter immersed himself in legal books and effectively became a ‘jailhouse lawyer’.

Serving as his own counsel, he was released in 1995 following a successful appeal against his conviction.

SURVIVAL Sunny spent five years in solitary confinement on death row while facing execution in the electric chair. During this time, she developed an inner strength to cope through regular yoga and meditation practice. In Sunny’s book, Stolen Time, she writes: "Hopelessness just didn't appeal to me … they can keep me here but what goes on within the confines of these walls is mine to create.

They cannot imprison my soul!"

Peter also looked inwards to cope with his confinement. "When I was in that cell, I realised that until

they killed me, I was still my own person. They couldn't imprison my mind, my spirit or my heart.

That somehow gave me relief and I promised myself I would live in prison in the best way possible," he said.

Their release did not mark the end of their respective struggles,

and Sunny and Peter each faced new challenges when finally set free. Their pasts had been destroyed and their futures were uncertain. They found it difficult to cope in the ‘outside world’ as time, friends and opportunities had moved on during their years of confinement.

and Peter maintained a longdistance relationship for three years before Sunny moved to Ireland, and they were married in 2011. It is a unique union of two exonerated death row inmates, with the thing they hold in common cementing their loving relationship.

The stunning Wild Atlantic Way in west Galway, a million miles away from small cells and solitary confinement, is now home to this happy couple. They share a small plot of land with an array of animals (cats, dogs, ducks, goats, hens and a rooster) and grow much of their own produce. It is a beautiful environment, as close to nature as they can possibly get, and they now have ‘another life’. "At home, we don't talk about what it was like in prison. That's understood," Peter says. "We've been there, done that. That's the way it is."

FORGIVENESS Sunny and Peter have been wronged by many people. Can they forgive those who unjustly imprisoned them, those who did not give the right evidence at the time of their trials, those who turned their backs when they were in prison, or those who

It is a unique union of two exonerated death row inmates, with the thing they hold in common cementing their loving relationship shunned them when released?

Having suffered so much over many years, Peter and Sunny’s model of forgiveness is an example for others to follow.

“I have worked to develop a spirit of forgiveness and have arrived at a place where I can forgive,” Peter explains. “It is not my job to forgive people, but be in the spirit of forgiveness. It is

DEATH ROW MEETING Sunny and Peter’s paths crossed in 1998. Sunny travelled to Ireland for a speaking tour with Amnesty International, appealing for the end of the death penalty. Peter went to one of the events in a pub in Galway and quietly listened to Sunny’s

story, noting the similarities.

Speaking to The Guardian, Peter said: "Since I'd been released, I'd never met anyone else who'd been through this kind of trauma… I was deeply touched by her story and I just had to talk to her. There was this spiritual connection there." Sunny

A state applying to join the European Union is required to have abolished the death penalty. States which retain it include China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the United States and Indonesia.

While support has fallen, the majority of US states have retained the death penalty. California and Nebraska voted in 2016 elections to retain it.

Twenty-three inmates were executed in US in 2017, compared to 98 in 1999 and 1,453 in 1976.

In 2017, lethal injection drugs in the state of Arkansas were due to expire.

As a result, an unprecedented seven executions were carried out in 11 days in July 2017.

23

F E AT U R E

not up to me judge other people.

I believe that people did the very best they could at that particular time. I hold no malice and am free of them. What a person does is between him and his creator.

What I do is between me and my creator."

They travel throughout Ireland and beyond telling their stories, campaigning for justice for the wrongly convicted, and promoting peace and healing. Their talks to a wide range of audiences illustrate the power of the human spirit to triumph over suffering, adversity and injustice.

Sunny and Peter have worked with bodies in Ireland to share their experiences and apply them for other purposes. This includes speaking at Retrouvaille (a programme designed to help heal and renew marriages) events where they encourage participants to explore forgiveness and work through crises in order to live well.

Sunny and Peter also work with Amicus, a US legal charity that trains lawyers working with prisoners to appeal their convictions and represents those facing the death penalty.

Sunny’s story, along with those

I have worked to develop a spirit of forgiveness and have arrived at a place where I can forgive Sunny’s mantra is simple: “Peace is the way, love is the answer.”

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CAMPAIGNING Sunny and Peter have been tireless campaigners against the death penalty. Sunny says, “We hope the number of death penalties will soon go to zero and we will work to get death sentences done away with globally. If the US leads the way, it would encourage other nations to follow.”

FAITH INSIDE There is a legacy of religious ministering to prisoners on death row.

The work of Sr Helen Prejean became known worldwide when her story was told in the film Dead Men Walking.

In 2015, Sr Terry Maher, CPPS was honoured by a national organisation committed to ending the death penalty in the US. Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN) is involved in public debate to end the death penalty and to promote restorative justice (www.catholicsmobilizing.org).

Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Africa work with death row inmates in Uganda.

Irish priest Fr Charlie Burrows is often the last person to speak to inmates on Indonesia's death row. Fr Charlie works in Cilacap near the notorious Prison Island that hosts the country's regular executions.

REALITY MAY 2018

of five other wrongfully convicted death row inmates, became The Exonerated, a play at New York’s socially-conscious, non-profit theatre, The Culture Project.

Since the play was first staged in 2002, Sunny has played herself and has also been portrayed by high-profile actors including Mia Farrow, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner and Brooke Shields. Reflecting on the role, Susan Sarandon said: “An extraordinary and inspirational story. Sunny Jacobs is a remarkable woman.”

SUPPORT Back in Ireland, Sunny and Peter established the Sunny Centre, a charity for former prisoners who have been exonerated, and their families. The charity attempts to fill the void in support for the exonerated, and aims to help people through the trauma of wrongful convictions. “First, society wrongs them, without even saying ‘sorry’, and waves goodbye to the exonerated. It leaves people with no hope; no future,” Sunny explains.

They invite exonerees to stay with them in west Galway, to allow them time to adjust to life on the outside.

They are made to feel part of the family. Sunny and Peter work with the individual, encouraging them to develop inner strength and healing through prayer, yoga and meditation. “These people need to heal from the inside out or their world will come crashing down,” Sunny says. Initially, they are listened to. Then, they are encouraged to explore their creative side through painting or photography to help them develop a different persona and understand that they are not the worst they have been.

Sunny and Peter cannot take exonerees out of poverty (only a small percentage ever receive compensation for their wrongful conviction), but they give them connections via the network they have developed. Many people arrive at the Sunny Centre with limited hope, but leave after a few weeks with a future in sight and a plan for how they can develop and thrive.

Sunny and Peter continue to develop the services they provide, including workshops for yoga and woodwork. They would also like to develop a place in the US for exonerees, as many do not have passports or are afraid to fly. They are convinced that facilities and healing retreats for exonerees are essential parts of the healing process. But all this takes money and Sunny and Peter are trying to achieve a lot through their own limited funds and donations.

Sunny and Peter are a unique, gentle and loving couple. Injustice and death sentences have carved them into the people they are today but their past experiences have not held them back. Their positivity, willingness to help, and attitude of forgiveness is an example to us all.

For more information: About Time by Peter Pringle, published by The History Press Ireland Stolen Time: One Woman’s Inspiring Story as an Innocent Condemned to Death by Sunny Jacobs, published by Doubleday Books Websites: www.sunnyandpeter.com www.thesunnycenter.com

Paul Copeland is a native of Belfast. Married with two young sons, he is manager of Redemptorist Communications.

CHU R C H

BEING CATHOLIC IN BRITAIN IN CITIES LIKE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER, GENERATIONS OF SETTLEMENT FROM IRELAND AND OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE CREATED A LARGE AND VIBRANT CATHOLIC COMMUNITY.

BY DECLAN McSWEENEY

On

the surface, with Catholics forming 8.7 per cent of the population of Great Britain, as against over 78 per cent in the Republic of Ireland, you would be forgiven for thinking that Ireland would be an easier place to be a Catholic.

However, I would argue that in many ways, at least in England and Wales, it is easier to be a Catholic here. I write as someone who has worked in eight English local authority areas – three London boroughs as well as Manchester, Salford, Liverpool (where I am currently based) and the adjacent area of Wirral, as well as a short sojourn in Hampshire.

NO BAGGAGE Precisely because Catholics are a minority, there is not the baggage associated with the church's position in Ireland, where decades of close ties with the State, and a dominant role in national life, have been followed by intense resentment.

This is, of course, associated with revelations regarding the church's handling of the sexual abuse cases. The extent of the decline in Catholic influence in Ireland was arguably most dramatically illustrated by the overwhelming passage of the samesex marriage amendment three y ears a go, o n e supported in all but one of the constituencies.

However, it is also shown in the decline in weekly Mass attendance from 91 per cent in 1973 to 35 per cent when a survey was carried out six years ago, with the level in Dublin being only 14 per cent. More recently, the reaction to the Tuam babies saga shows that the sense of public anger towards the church is still very strong, and this has also been shown in the

controversies over the National Maternity Hospital and the blasphemy law.

IRISH DECLINE Moreover, while some church representatives have sought to draw consolation from the

While some church representatives have sought to draw consolation from the fact that over 78 per cent still say they are Catholic, it must be said that is an enormous decline on the 95 per cent which was the figure for most of the Irish state's history fact that over 78 per cent still say they are Catholic, it must be said that is an enormous decline on the 95 per cent which was the figure for most of the Irish state's history.

While some of the other Christian denominations also experienced a slight

25

CHU RC H

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool

26

position of Catholicism in cities like Liverpool and Manchester, where generations of settlement from Ireland, and more recently from many other parts of the world, have created a very large Catholic community.

The Liverpool archdiocese, where the most recent figures suggest over 46 per cent are Catholic, is by far the strongest concentration of Catholics anywhere in Great Britain. By contrast, the Salford diocese, which includes Manchester, is just over 13 per cent. While considerably smaller, it is still well above the national figure.

Liverpool's demographics are mainly, but not entirely, due to the massive immigration from Ireland down the centuries.

Contrary to local mythology, most of the ancestors of the city's Catholics did not come during what they call the 'potato famine', but were later arrivals.

That said, the city did absorb significant numbers during the Famine – a tangible reminder is the memorial in the grounds of St Patrick's Church, Toxteth, to eight priests who died ministering to the immigrants arriving in Liverpool, when disease was rife.

A further factor in the strength of Liverpool Catholicism is its proximity to Lancashire,

The Liverpool archdiocese, where the most recent figures suggest over 46 per cent are Catholic, is by far the strongest concentration of Catholics anywhere in Great Britain decline, that has to be seen in the context of a quarter century of growth after decades of previous decline.

In recent decades, the rise in the Protestant population, and the growing numbers of other religious minorities, such as Orthodox Christians, as well as those of other faith traditions such as Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, have been significant, but the biggest reason the Catholic proportion has fallen has been because of the sharp growth of the non-religious population.

CATHOLIC COMMUNITIES In that context, it is interesting to look at the REALITY MAY 2018

historically the heart of the recusants, those who remained in communion with Rome after the Reformation. Lancashire was associated with some of the English Martyrs, and an awareness of their legacy continues to inform English Catholicism.

LIVERPOOL My abiding impression of Catholicism in Liverpool is that there is a profound respect for it, even among the majority who are not regular Mass attenders. Given that Catholicism is not linked to the State, and does not dominate the educational system, one does not encounter the resentment one finds in Ireland, and there have been relatively few abuse cases.

A recent Marian procession in the city centre, in which the Rosary was recited and a statue of the Blessed Virgin carried, was met with respect by local people, regardless of their own faith or lack of it. I somehow feel the atmosphere would not be as good at a similar event in Ireland.

Catholicism is, however, linked to the 'establishment' to a greater degree than in the rest of England, as exemplified by the annual Civic Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (commonly known, with typical Scouse wit, as 'Paddy's Wigwam').

Leading judges, police officers and politicians attend this event.

WORKING TOGETHER However, the church has never lost its sense of its historic roots among the downtrodden, and this is reflected in the great work of Nugent Care, called after Father

Fr Michael McCormack leads the Rosary in a Liverpool Marian procession, accompanied

by Missionaries of Charity

It's worth noting that the architect of the Catholic cathedral was a Protestant, while that for the Anglican cathedral was a Catholic!

Interior view of cathedral during Mass

James Nugent, as well as of orders like the Missionaries of Charity, who do tremendous work with the homeless and those on low incomes.

While Liverpool has a long history of sectarian conflict, and while it is still the main centre of the Orange Order in England, the partnership between the churches which has grown since the days of Archbishop Derek Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard is a shining example of success.

The Church of England and the Catholic Church have many joint ventures, including the St Francis of Assisi Academy and a food bank.

However, the ecumenical spirit has widened to include the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches and the Salvation Army.

Last year, joint celebrations of Pentecost in the two cathedrals featured on BBC's Songs of Praise – it's worth noting that the architect of the Catholic cathedral was a Protestant, while that for the Anglican cathedral was a Catholic!

The partnership has widened further to include co-operation with other faith groups.

At Remembrance Day each year, the service includes not only representatives of the main Christian denominations, but also the Baha'i, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities.

The strong Irish ties of the Catholic population, and the memories of the years when Irish Catholics were seen as fellow travellers of the IRA, have helped to develop a sense of empathy for the Muslim community, which faces similar prejudices because of a handful of terrorists.

Ecumenical activity also takes place in local parishes, where it involves some of the AfroCaribbean Pentecostal churches. I would have to say, from experience, that this is a contrast to the Salford diocese, where ecumenism is much weaker.

Liverpool is, of course, the home city of the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who is a highly respected figure at national level. For example, after the Westminster terror attacks, it was striking that he appeared on television with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Justin Welby, the Chief Rabbi, Dr Ephraim Mirvis, and senior Sunni and Shia Muslim figures.

The increasing profile of the Catholic Church nationally was also shown in, for example, the presence of representatives of the English, Scottish and Irish hierarchies at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

In Britain today, Christians of any kind are a minority in an increasingly secular society. In that context, sectarianism makes less sense

than ever, though one does encounter some small evangelical groups which are quite biased, not just against Catholicism, but against the main Protestant denominations.

The growth in the non-religious population has not affected the Catholic Church as severely as the Church of England, because it remains an immigrant church. Built largely on arrivals from Ireland, it has been replenished by those from Poland and other parts of Europe, as well as from the Philippines, India, Nigeria and other areas of Africa. Masses in languages as different as Tamil and Ukrainian are a feature of Liverpool churches, whereas the Church of England has had relatively few immigrants in its ranks. Liverpool has also produced its share of Catholic intellectuals, like Frank Cottrell Boyce, screen writer, and the poet Roger McGough.

While, as in Ireland, the shortage of clergy is an acute problem in England and Wales, the overall sense one gets is of hope for the future.

Declan McSweeney is a Liverpool-based journalist who grew up in Offaly. He worked for over 18 years for the now-closed Offaly Express and has also worked in London, for Romford Recorder and Associated Press.

27

Praying with the Rosary – The Fifth Joyful Mystery prayer corner

The Finding in the Temple

28

Pensionante dei Saraceni / Christ among the doctors Artist unknown

IN THIS YEAR OF THE FAMILY, WE REFLECT ON THIS STORY OF ONE SPECIAL FAMILY AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOLD BY MIRIAM, WIFE OF YOSUF AND MOTHER OF YESHUAH. YOU CAN KEEP YOUR BIBLE OPEN AT LUKE 2: 41-52. WE KEEP THE NAMES AS MIRIAM WOULD HAVE CALLED THEM.

Our

law requires every adult male Jew who lives within 15 miles of Jerusalem to attend three annual feasts in Jerusalem – Passover in springtime, the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost in the early summer, and Tabernacles in the autumn.

Our family was out of range in Nazareth.

Even still, Yosuf and I used to go to Jerusalem for the feast as often as we could manage it.

REALITY MAY 2018

It was not always easy, as it meant almost a week travelling to and from the holy city, as well as a week there. Although we stayed with cousins, we could not afford to do it every year, and especially with a little boy to look after. Jewish boys become men at the age of 12. So, when Yeshuah was 12 we brought him with us for the first time since his presentation as a baby when we lived in

Bethlehem, just six miles from Jerusalem.

We travelled on foot, with a few donkeys to carry the bed-rolls, some cooking pots and the food. The women and children headed off first, with the men following a little behind. We would meet together in the evening when we reached the camping place or the inn. A boy of 12 could travel with the men, or with the women and younger

boys. It was an exciting time for youngsters.

Thousands of pilgrims came to Jerusalem from far and near, some even from as far away as Rome. A massive clean-up of the streets and squares in and around the city began about six weeks before the festival.

Wells were cleaned up along the roads. Ovens for roasting the Passover lambs were set up throughout the city. After the lamb of each family was sacrificed in the Temple, it was roasted in a special manner as prescribed by law, to be eaten in the evening along with other special foods and unleavened bread at the Passover dinner.

HOMEWARD BOUND Everything went off well that year, and the day after Passover, we gathered our bits and pieces together and headed off home. We had a head start on the men who packed our stuff and followed a little later. That evening when we arrived at the first encampment I went to look for Yosuf and Yeshuah. He wasn’t with his father.

“I haven’t seen him all day,” Yosuf said, “I presumed he was with you.”

“I haven’t had sight nor sound of him either,” I said, “I assumed he was with you and the older boys.”

We asked around among the boys from Nazareth and his cousins from places like Cana, but no one had seen him. One older boy thought he had seen someone like him go back towards the Temple while the rest were packing up to leave, but he wasn’t sure, he didn’t see his face. Panic set in. What had we done? We should have been far more careful with our God-given child. He was the one awaited for over two millennia, and now we had lost him. He was already a full day missing. It was dark now, and there was no point travelling back to Jerusalem until dawn, and that would take us a full day. Only God knew what danger he might be in. But God would protect him. Yeshuah wouldn’t deliberately wander off on his own like that without telling us, so we imagined the worst must have happened. I was sick to the pit of my stomach with anxiety. The endless list of calamities that might have befallen him

tumbled through my head. We had no choice but to go back and look for him.

BACK TO JERUSALEM “What if God has already started our child on his Messianic mission!” Yosuf said. And then he prayed a fervent prayer: “Dear Lord, he’s only a boy! Spare him! Bring him home to us!”

We enquired of every group of pilgrims we met on our way back: had they seen a young lad who looked lost? No, sorry! We asked the Temple officials posted all round the city if they had seen him – no, sorry! Did the Roman soldiers on guard duty pick up a lost child? – no, sorry! Our hearts torn between panic and prayer, we followed the only possible clue we had. We returned to the Temple.

The huge Temple was still bustling with activity. It had been built by King Herod. He was a heartless dictator and mass murderer and we had to go and live in Egypt for a few years to escape his fear that a new king of the Jews had been born. The greatest rabbis of the land gathered in the Temple courts to discuss great truths among themselves. Their discussions were open to whoever cared to listen. And that’s where we found our son. He was among the students who were listening to the experts and asking them questions.

And, of course, the great question of the day was the coming of the Messiah. For some reason, the air was full of expectation. At this stage of his life what did Yeshuah grasp about his own vocation!

Yeshuah saw us standing at the entrance to the court and slipped away from the other students. As he came towards us, I was crying with sheer joy and relief. I kissed him and hugged him and then, kneeling down to his height, I held his upper arms and said through my sobs: “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” Yeshuah saw my tears but seemed totally taken aback by my rebuke.

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked.

“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Now, it was our turn to be puzzled.

We had never heard him make a distinction between his earthly father and his heavenly Father. Of course, Yeshuah knew, and we

knew, that he had a special relationship with God. We weren’t too clear about the details of this relationship; we did not know what was going on in our son’s mind; we did not know when or where his mission as Messiah would take him.

LOOKING FOR A BOY, FOUND A YOUNG MAN Just at that moment I realised we had been looking for a boy and we had found a man; a young man already astounding his religious elders with his profound reflections and questions. Even though he knew his real Father in heaven he did not reject his earthly father. He came back to Nazareth with us.

Under Yosuf’s guiding hand he became a good carpenter. He never stopped listening and learning, at school and in the synagogue each Saturday. At home with us he was obedient and cheerful and the happiest hour each day was when we prayed together.

He always had a kind word for others and a helping hand when needed.

As we left the Temple that day in Jerusalem one of the Rabbis whispered in my ear: “Your son is very devout and very deep; take good care of him.” Yosuf and I certainly would.

Would others?

Fr George Wadding CSsR is a member of the Redemptorist Community at Dun Mhuire, Griffith Avenue, Dublin. He is the author of Praying with St Gerard, the Family Saint (available from Redemptorist Communications)

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

A WORD MAKES A DIFFERENCE

MIND-READING, OR THE GUESSES WE CONSIDER AS FACTS, ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH OF THE HURT AND RESENTMENT IN COUPLE AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS.

How honestly we communicate is the single most important factor that determines the quality of our adult relationships.

As children we learn relationship skills from observing how our parents relate and how they communicate. If, when we were growing up, we had parents who were comfortable to talk about both positive and negative feelings we had good modelling. If not, we may find it surprisingly difficult to be honest with our loved ones when we have negative feelings.

Many communication difficulties in relationships begin early, when a couple are madly in love. In those wonderful early days, it is easy to be agreeable, to stay quiet when one’s partner does something that is irritating or upsetting. Some people are so in love that they pretend that they don’t mind something when they do, or they act as if they are happy when they’re not.

What is ignored and not dealt with at the time can become a source of resentment later on.

For example, a man notices that his girlfriend has gone silent and he senses her coolness. He asks, “What’s wrong?” She says, “Nothing” because she doesn’t know how to talk about what’s bothering her. It may be easier for her to stay quiet than tell him the truth but her silence is not good for their relationship. Now he has a dilemma. He either

believes her and doubts himself, or he feels bad that he can do nothing about what made the change in her mood.

Small issues that are not address ed b ecome more difficult to resolve the longer they are ignored. Mind-reading, the guesses and assumptions we make and treat as if they are facts, is responsible for much of the hurt that breeds resentment in both couple and family relationships.

Misunderstandings are inevitable when a person makes assumptions about the intended meaning of a monosyllabic answer.

Irish people have the reputation of being great talkers and storytellers. While it is true that we, as a nation, have a great way with words, it’s also true that many of us have the ability to talk a lot, but very often we are poor at communicating what is really bothering us. Say a woman comes home from work. She’s had a really hard day but when her husband says, “How was your day?” her single word reply, “Fine” tells him nothing about what she did or how she feels.

Ignorance about the power a single word has to communicate a message that was never intended, can explain what causes much of the frustration, anger and hurt that can so quickly build resentment and

may lead to estrangements.

Our loved ones can’t know what we don’t tell them. A wife can harbour resentment at a husband who believed that she was fine when one glance at her face should have made it obvious that she was not.

An issue for many couples when they have children is that their conversations tend to focus on the practical things that need to be planned for in their busy lives. They no longer make time for the free, happy and fun conversations they once enjoyed. They think very differently about some issues but they never seem able to have the difficult conversation and bring these things up for discussion.

It’s surprisingly difficult to have an honest conversation if one spouse stays silent about what makes him or her unhappy, frustrated or inadequate. A simple definition of good communication is the giving and receiving of meaning between two people. The expectation that one partner should know what the matter is when the other person is unhappy is unrealistic and leaves the other spouse feeling shut out.

Advice in magazine articles that deal with marital difficulties suggest that couples who feel a lack of intimacy in their marriage could improve communication by talking more. What is rarely stressed is that talking about

everyday household matters such as things that happened during the day or even discussing issues to do with family, friends or hobbies, etc, may be an avoidance tactic.

A single-word reply like 'Nothing' or 'Fine' invites the kinds of misunderstanding that will never be resolved without honest communication. Some people are very quick to switch off or change the subject when they don’t like what is being said. They are in love with their partner, yet they resent him or her for failing to meet needs they never expressed.

It’s so sad when one partner senses that something is wrong but is told nothing is the matter.

It’s not true that if someone truly loves you, they will know how you feel. The courage to tell a partner how you feel and why is one of the most important first steps in building a quality relationship.

Carmel Wynne is a life and work skills coach and lives in Dublin. For more information, visit www.carmelwynne.org

31

F E AT U R E

COURAGE, IT IS I.

DO NOT BE AFRAID

IN THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE, STORMS OFTEN PLAY A SYMBOLIC ROLE, MARKING A PASSAGE FROM SUFFERING TO COMPASSION. WE HAVE A GOD WHO IS IN TOUCH WITH US EVEN NOW IN THE STORMS AND UNCERTAINTIES OF OUR 21ST CENTURY LIVES.

BY NAOMI KLOSS

Choppy 32

seas and thunder overhead play a central role in many of Shakespeare's tempestuous and tragic plays.

Such imagery could also play well into our current woes.

The ongoing war in Syria, the financial, political and social concerns regarding Brexit, the talk of borders, border controls

and the Mexican Wall have all at some point dominated the news. The world is full of trouble, contest and competition. There will be storm clouds ahead, and like St Peter, we can feel ourselves submerged, fearful, not just for ourselves, but for our loved ones.

Storms had a dynamic and often spiritual significance in many of Shakespeare’s plays; the

storm parted General Othello, the gallant hero, from his friend, Cassio, prefiguring the jealousy which will destroy his marriage with the saintly Desdemona.

Perhaps it identifies for us how friendships can break down, and how we can sometimes feel bewildered and alone. Likewise, in Shakespeare’s philosophical masterpiece, King Lear, the

former king undergoes a new spiritual awakening through suffering in the powerful storm on the open heath. King Lear is a family tragedy: a king gives up his kingdom to his ungrateful daughters and sonsin-law only to become homeless.

Ironically, he demeaned his only honourable daughter, Cordelia, in public because she failed

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to flatter him. So, he finds himself left alone with only a few companions, one of whom is a fool! At first, he rants at the elements and hopes that the tempest will obliterate the world with the fiery phrase “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” (Act 3, Scene 2). Paradoxically, through his madness and sufferings, the former king becomes preoccupied with thoughts of the injustices in life and reaches out to the “unaccommodated man”, the desolate and the lost. Through the storm, he becomes a better person than he ever had been as king. His startling awareness of the poor, the homeless, the lost or the forgotten is a stark reminder for us in the real world; the increasing numbers of families who are left without a home to call their own is a disgrace on so many levels. Others have a blighted view of the family

while some tragically never had a family to call their own. For all of us, life can take unusual twists and turns.

The biblical storms were no less dramatic. Happily, the biblical story is not a Shakespearean tragedy; instead it is a story of good news, of joy, hope and love. The most iconic view of hope is that of an infant, Jesus, in swaddling clothes in a manger. The New Testament tells the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph who faced the prospect of refugee status and an uncertain future. Jesus embodies dynamic change for our stormy, stress-filled world. Happily for us, there is a God who is in touch with us even now in the storms and uncertainties of our 21st century lives. Jesus invites us, whatever our human experience of family is like, to join the all-loving, all-embracing family of God. It is a message that encourages us to become fired with the courage of the Holy Spirit, to

turn the corner, to live in hope. It is a message that encourages us to be of practical benefit to the many who are lost, or lonely or forgotten.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus got into a boat

Storms had a dynamic and often spiritual significance in many of Shakespeare’s plays followed by his disciples. A storm raged in the sea and the disciples were distraught and afraid as the waves were sweeping over the boat. In their fear, they woke Jesus pleading with him to save them.

He wondered “why are you so frightened?” Jesus targeted their fear and challenged it. Jesus did not shy away from the difficult questions, as we often do, nor did he run away from those in pain. Immediately, he rebuked the powerful storm and a calm descended on the sea.

Astonished, the disciples wondered “whatever kind of man is this?

Even the winds and sea obey him.”

(Matthew 8:23-27). Jesus faced

BREXIT-WHAT NEXT? Sam Whitehall reporting

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the choppy sea and commanded it. He encouraged his disciples to do likewise; to call on God’s wise and loving power to bring about a transformation in their lives. This transformation involved facing

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their fears and being touched by the pain of others. Likewise, our world is bombarded with fears. In a way, much of the news media thrives on fear. Our only solution, as for the disciples so long ago, is to turn to Jesus. Yet, like the disciples, it is easy for us to be swept away by the cruel winds and the angry storms of life. In the midst of all that uncertainty, we are encouraged to find the courage within, the resting place of calm which leads us to God. In a similar incident recorded in the Gospel of St Mark, Jesus astonished his disciples by walking on water. At first, his

33

F E AT U R E

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disciples thought he was a ghost and again they were afraid but he called to them with the memorable phrase “Courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.” (Mark 6:51).

When he got into the boat, the wind dropped. In the rages and ravages of our lives, we too, like the disciples are encouraged to reach out and recognise the many ways that Jesus walks beside us. It is a message for all peoples and for all time.

Later, a resurrected Jesus showed himself to the disciples on the shore of Tiberius. This was the place of much of his preaching and ministry, where he worked miracles, healed and touched the lives of so many there. It is also a fitting place for Jesus to meet the disciples after the resurrection.

The Risen Jesus was involved in

his disciples’ daily lives, drawing them to him as friends. He ordered them to throw their nets out to the starboard and as they did, there were so many fish they could hardly haul them in. Once more, it is a story which inspires us to take heart, despite the difficulties and weariness in our own personal storms in life and it encourages us to be open to God in our discoveries and our daily experiences. After all, Jesus said “Courage- It is I.” If ever there was a need for this Gospel message of hope amidst the winds of adversity and turmoil, it is now

Naomi Kloss is from Wexford. She is a teacher of English, History and Classics. She has written for Reality in the past.

Awareness and Mindful Living.

Mount St Anne's Retreat Centre Thursday Eve May 24th –Sunday (Lunchtime) May 27th A lot of the time we are on ‘automatic pilot’, whereby the constant internal ‘noise’ of mental activity builds up stress hormones in the body. In this retreat/workshop we will learn how to ‘switch off ’ the anxiety/ stress activity button . This reduces our habitual tendency of being ‘lost’ in the past or the future, in self judgement or comparisons,. Through input, guided meditation, reflective music, gentle scriptural reflection and healing rituals, we will begin to ‘wake up’ to the miracle of who we are.

Booking: Ph 057.8626153 Patrick Sheehan MIAHIP, and Martina Lehane Sheehan MIAHIP (Cork Wellbeing Counselling) have been facilitating retreats and workshops for many years in Ireland and Internationally. They bring a mind, body spirit approach to their retreats.; Patrick, an Accredited Psychotherapist is also a CBT Practitioner and Musician, while Martina, is an Accredited Psychotherapist, Spiritual Director and Author of four best selling titles.

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F E AT U R E

We Praise You Lord 36

with the Work of Our Hands

THE MOTTO OF THE BENEDICTINE ORDER IS ORA ET LABORA – WORK AND PRAY. IT IS AN APPROPRIATE DESCRIPTION OF THE DAILY RHYTHM OF MONASTIC LIFE. IF MONASTIC WORK WAS ONCE LARGELY AGRICULTURAL, MANY MODERN CONTEMPLATIVE HOUSES ARE CENTRES FOR SMALL ARTISANAL CRAFT INDUSTRIES. BY THE LABOUR OF THEIR HANDS, THEY MAKE POSSIBLE THEIR LIVES OF PRAYER AND CONTEMPLATION AND HAVE SOMETHING LEFT OVER TO SHARE WITH THE POOR.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

According

to the Rule of St Benedict, “idleness is the enemy of the soul.

Therefore the brothers and sisters should be occupied at certain times in manual labour, and again at fixed hours in sacred reading.”

Benedict set aside two periods for work in the monastery each day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. If the needs of the monastery required it, however, work time could be increased, especially at the harvest: “if the circumstances of the place or their poverty should require that they themselves do the work of gathering the harvest, let them not be discontented. For

REALITY MAY 2018

then are they truly monastics when they live by the labour of their hands, as did our Fathers and the Apostles. Let all things be done with moderation, however, for the sake of the faint-hearted" (Rule of St Benedict, 48).

Monastic labour has varied with history.

For many centuries, the monastery was dedicated to agriculture, as the monks reclaimed large tracts of farm land from forests or marshes. Monasteries today are usually much smaller than they were in the past, but the principle of paying your way by the labour of your hands still remains. The gift shops in monasteries, or larger ones such as Ai Monasteri, not far from the Piazza Navona

in Rome, which sells a large range of monastic products, give an idea of how varied the work of monks and nuns is.

LIQUEURS AND STRONG DRINK One of the best known monastic products is probably Chartreuse, a strong liqueur made from a recipe reputed to have been given to the Carthusians in 1605. The Carthusians, a semi-hermetical order in which each monk lives alone in a separate cell containing a bedroom / study and workshop, was founded more than 900 years ago. There are 24 monasteries of the Order worldwide. Their mother house, La Grande Chartreuse, in a

rugged mountain region in south-eastern France near Grenoble, is where the liqueur is produced. About 1.5 million bottles are sold worldwide annually. It is not cheap, but all profits go to support the order and its charitable projects. The exact recipe is a secret, known only to three monks, but it is reputed to be made from 130 plants, herbs and flowers. The monks blend the herbs, and deliver the essence to the factory nearby, where lay employees blend the mixture with the alcohol base.

It is usually assumed that another wellknown French liqueur, Bénédictine, had a similar origin. Its monastic origins however are doubtful. It was first marketed by a 19th century French business man, Louis Le Grand, who claimed that he had discovered the recipe among the manuscripts of the Abbey of Fécamp, which was destroyed during the French Revolution. Le Grand’s family held the rights of production, and kept the recipe secret. It is now produced by the firm of Bacardi.

Other monasteries produce liqueurs based on a blend of alcohol and herbs. Most of them were originally produced for medicinal reasons, either to aid digestion or as remedies against winter colds and flu. The Cistercians of the famous Abbey of Casamari in Italy, for example, produce a range of herbal liqueurs and grappa, a spirit distilled from wine.

TRAPPIST BEER If you go into a bar or cafe in Belgium or Holland and order a beer, you are likely to be handed a menu, with a large section devoted to Trappisten or Kloosterbier. These are beers brewed in monasteries, or at least under the direction of a monastery. Long before the arrival of tea or coffee, the staple drink of cooler northern countries was beer. Originally produced for the needs of the community and its guests, the monks’ beers spread firstly in the immediate locality of the monastery and then further afield.

One abbey, the Cistercians of Westvleteren in Belgium, makes it very clear on its website how beer fits in to their life. “We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."

Six Belgian Cistercian monasteries (also known popularly as Trappists) produce beer.

Those that can be easily bought in Ireland include Orval, Chimay and Westmalle. A further 18 monastic or ‘abbey beers’ are produced in Belgium, including Maredsous, the Benedictine house where the Dublinborn priest, Blessed Columba Marmion, was abbot and a well-known spiritual writer.

It is the mother house of the only Irish Benedictine monastery, Glentstall Abbey.

Leffe, another well-known brand, is produced by a Premonstratensian community.

In Wittem, in Holland, the local beer is

Time for prayer

known as Gerardus. It is called after St Gerard Majella, whose shrine is a centre of local devotion. The beer was originally made by Redemptorist brothers for the large community of students and missioners. It is now produced by a brewery in the town, but it retains a picture of St Gerard on the label.

BEAUTY PRODUCTS Many of the goods made in monasteries drew on natural products and herbs which were cultivated in the monastery gardens for the benefit of the sick. Some of the earliest pharmacies in Europe were attached to monasteries and used natural herbal remedies.

The production of medicine is now very “high tech", but the traditional monastic interest in natural products has gone in the direction of high quality natural beauty products, such as good quality soaps and shampoos. The Rome monastic products boutique mentioned above, for example, lists more than 30 cosmetic products made in monasteries and convents.

An American community of enclosed Dominican sisters produces a range of soaps made from moisturising agents such as glycerin, shea butter or goat’s milk and perfumed with natural aromatics.

The Benedictine monks of Rostrevor, Co Down, make and sell in their gift shop a range of cosmetic products, including natural rose water, and shower and bath products.

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NEW TITLE FROM REDEMPTORIST COMMUNICATIONS Redemptorist Communications and Veritas are very pleased to collaborate on Pope Francis: Follow His Call. Divided into four sections, this full-colour copublication examines a number of key topics – family; social justice; the environment; and the centrality of Mary to the Christian prayer tradition – that have all been particularly close to Pope Francis’ heart since he became pontiff.

In language that is both engaging and accessible, Pope Francis: Follow His Call provides a clear-sighted account of Francis’ teachings. This inspiring resource also invites Christians to take up Pope Francis’ invitation to embrace their faith, to proclaim the Good News of the Gospels and to stand in solidarity with all those who feel hurt, lost or abandoned in the world today.

A perfect resource the help prepare for Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland and 2018 World Meeting of Families. Also, an excellent book for personal reflection and as a parish resource for community prayer.

TO ORDER: Call: 00353 (0)1 4922 488 Email: sales@redcoms.org Website: www.redcomsd.org

POPE FRANCIS: FOLLOW HIS CALL €8.95 (plus p&p) Upcoming Retreats with

Martina Lehane Sheehan Christian Mindfulness and Wellbeing May 24th-27th 2018 Mount St Anne’s Retreat centre Portarlington Calming the mind, Opening the Heart June 16th-22nd 2018 Dominican Retreat Centre Tallaght Dublin Become who you are meant to be and set the world on fire July 8th-13th 2018 Ennismore Retreat Centre, Cork Hope: The Anchor for the Soul July 21st - 27th 2018 Ballyvaloo Retreat Centre Co Wexford.

REALITY APRIL 2018

For more info: mlehanesheehan@gmail.com

F E AT U R E

The hills are alight... with our beautiful candles!

NOT FORGETTING THE CHEESE AND CANDLES There is no end to the range of products monasteries can produce. Some, like Maredsous or Orval, produce high quality cheese and bread to go with the beer sold in the gift shop. The range of products may vary, but they are often hand-made with attention to detail.

Many monasteries continue to produce high-quality goods for liturgical use. German Benedictine men and women, for example, produce high quality religious art for homes and churches, or high quality vestments. The American Cistercians of New Mellary Abbey, Iowa, produce a range of coffins and urns for holding the ashes after cremation. Several Irish contemplative communities, such as the Cistercians of Mellary, the Carmelites of Tullow or the Dominican sisters of Drogheda, have small printing presses that produce Mass cards and greeting cards.

Several communities, like the Benedictines of Rostrevor or the Redemptoristines of Drumcondra, produce high-quality candles.

Candles intended for special occasions

such as baptisms and weddings usually incorporate the names of those celebrating the sacrament and they need to be ordered several weeks in advance.

Monastic communities have been leaders in promoting the art of the icon in recent years.

Many communities either mount already printed icons or will write original icons on commission. The Adoration Sisters on the Falls Road in Belfast have a gift shop at the side of the monastery that sells a range of copies of well-known icons and other religious images. The Cistercian, Redemptoristine and contemplative Dominican sisters all produce icons in the traditional style using traditional egg-based natural colours on commission.

HOSTS FOR MASS The most common work in communities of Irish contemplative sisters is the production of hosts for Mass. It would be impossible to estimate the number of individual hosts produced each year by the Carmelites, Poor Clares and Redemptoristines, but it certainly runs into millions and keeps the sisters employed for many hours each day baking, cutting and packing the hosts for distribution. For the sisters, it is a labour of love that draws them into the lives of the people who receive the Body of the Lord in the bread their hands have made, and whose cares they bring to the Lord many times each day in their community’s prayer.

Brendan McConvery CSsR is a former lecturer in biblical studies.

He is currently editor of Reality.

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UNDER THE MICROSCOPE BOOK REVIEWS

STAN MELLETT CSsR AND BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

TOMORROW’S PARISH A VISION AND A PATH.

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“Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday – why fret about them if today is sweet”? Omar Khayyam said that about a thousand years ago. A generation and a bit ago I grew up in a rural parish in County Clare. All was so ‘sweet’ – so neat and tidy – where the life of the parish, its worship, practices and devotions did not have the slightest taste or hint of decay or dying. Patrick Kavanagh said in his parish as he grew up the only one sure of going to heaven was the parish priest. The rest of us would go to heaven too if we kept the Ten Commandments and REALITY MAY 2018

observed the Precepts of the church.

Today as a curate in an urban parish, all that seems like a thousand years ago. We have a defined parish; it has a name and small group of loyal and ageing practicing parishioners. The difference between then and now in so short a time span leaves many of us wondering will we survive!

Donal Harrington bravely and with hope says the parish will not only survive, but it can and will thrive.

Donal provides a hopeful vision and a possible path toward the new and vital parish of tomorrow.

Not without a cost! Required is a

change as radical as Jesus’ challenge to Nicodemus to be born again!

Reading Harrington, my mood fluctuated between enthusiasm and near despair. So many inspiring insights drawn from recent church and theological thinking had me rearing to go; but then where to start with the bleak, limited and diminished material to hand! I include myself in that limited space and recall the words of G.K. Chesterton "hope is a virtue only when things are hopeless."

Accept the challenge. Exercise hope. Does one passively let tomorrow take its course or actively do something that might inject new life? This book is a call to action now.

Let the word ‘parochial’ frame a much bigger picture in which we are a part and participate in a universal ‘people of God’ sustained and enlivened by the Spirit of Jesus Our Lord! A new mind-set where our parish is a faith community – where Baptism, not Orders, is the point of departure – where the family and the home with its belonging, caring and growth is the better analogy for the parish faith family. In this respect I quote from page 109: “The new ‘who’s who’ in today’s church gives us a new perspective on what we call the ‘vocations crisis.’ This phrase is used in reference to both priests and religious, but usually it is about priests…But the key crisis is elsewhere. It is where the large number of baptised people are still in a passive, provided for mode – still ‘laity’ in that sense…If that is true, and if Baptism is the fundamental vocation, then it seems clear that this is the main issue. The challenge revolves around Baptism, not

Ordination.” Let us pray for more Christian vocations.

Renewal of the parish or new evangelisation is not an emergency response to a crisis, it is the essence of what the church and parish is about. That was always true and will continue to be true. We found the previous parish existence so ‘sweet’ and solid that examining the real meaning of parish was simply not necessary. At least one Bishop returning from the Vatican Council reassured his flock that nothing had changed to disturb the faith of the people. At the 11th hour we know all is changed and changed utterly.

How we respond remains to be seen. All, priest and people, must be convinced that “the greatest contribution anyone can make to evangelisation is to lead a profound Christian life! (p 115). That must be attended to day by day. Allow that personal contribution expand in ever-widening circles so that parish slowly begins to be a living faith community.

Donal Harrington has done us all a service. To say less detail might make for easier reading is to gild the lily. Reading his book for oneself or with a parish study group will repay abundantly the time and effort.

Essential reading!

Tomorrow’s Parish – a vision and a path.

Columba Press. Revised Edition 2018 ISBN 9781782183419 €14.99 Fr Stan Mellett has served the church as a parish missioner in India and Ireland. He is currently a member of the Redemptorist Community serving the parish of Ballyfermot.

WHISTLE-BLOWER LIFE, DEATH, HOPE AND THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT Whistle-blowing has become a hazardous occupation in contemporary Ireland.

People who draw attention to matters of deep concern, when their superiors would prefer to hide behind a curtain of silence, are liable to be misunderstood or worse still, presented to the world as grouches with chips on their shoulders. Fr Pádraig McCarthy is a Dublin priest, now retired after many years of active ministry.

In this short study of the issues that surround the forthcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution regarding the right to life of the unborn, he blows the whistle on many aspects of the debate – the way in which the present debate emerged, the role of the Citizens’ Assembly, the failure to examine the wording of the amendment itself. He asks whether the debate might desensitise us to the vital values that respect for the life of the unborn have traditionally meant for Irish society, and how the world has abandoned lessons it learned from some of the greatest horrors of the 20th century in the concentration camps and gulags. It is available through the Veritas bookshops or from the publisher www.lettertec.com . It will be a valuable discussion aid in the weeks leading up to the referendum.

Whistle-blower: Life, Death, Hope and the Eighth Amendment by Pádraig McCarthy, Lettertec Publishing, 2018. €5.00

REDEMPTORIST

PARISH MISSIONS

Breaking the Word in May 2018

Please pray for the Redemptorist Teams who will preach the Word and for God’s People who will hear the Word proclaimed this month in:

St. Gerard’s, Belfast, Down & Connor Diocese (7th – 15th May 2018) Solemn novena preached by Brendan Keane CSsR and Fodhla McGrane Priorswood, Dublin Archdiocese (19th – 27th May 2018) Solemn novena preached by Brendan Keane CSsR and Claire Gilmore Foxrock, Dublin Archdiocese (21st – 29th May 2018) Solemn novena preached by Johnny Doherty CSsR and Helena Connolly The details above are accurate at the time of printing. If you have any views, comments or even criticisms about Redemptorist preaching, we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in a mission or novena in your parish, please contact us for further information. And please keep all Redemptorist preachers in your prayers.

Fr Johnny Doherty CSsR, Email: dohertyjohnny@gmail.com Tel: +44 28 90445950

Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Email: missions.novenas@redemptorists.ie Tel: +353 61 315099

D E V E LO P M E N T I N ACTION

THE LITTLE BOY ON THE BOX IS ALL GROWN UP!

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Daniel with his family in Uganda

A TRÓCAIRE TEAM RECENTLY VISITED UGANDA WHERE THEY MET A VERY SPECIAL YOUNG MAN…

BY SEÁN FARRELL

In

2012, at the age of nine, Daniel Okweng featured on the Trócaire Box as part of that year’s Lenten appeal, and he is still bemused by the idea that a million households saw his smiling face every day for two months.

He says he’d like to come to Ireland someday and see a few of the faces who know his, but in the meantime, he’s a young man determined to make the most of his latest adventure.

I visited Daniel and his family at their home recently – it had been five years since we last met. Daniel had then been a shy nine-year-old with a big smile. Now Daniel is a tall 15-yearold teenager.

REALITY MAY 2018

Yet, Daniel is unlike other 15-year-olds you might know, because his home is a simple hut in northern Uganda, and his family is among the survivors of one of the worst massacres perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) during the 20 years of terror the rebel group inflicted on the region. Daniel was 18 months old at the time when over 300 people were killed in his village of Barlonyo on Feburary 21, 2004.

The family then spent two years at an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp 40km away. His mother Betty said: “There were 8,000 people in that camp. There was a lot

of sickness and I was sick also. Women with babies were failing. When the time came to deliver, there was difficulty. Many children died and there was no school.”

COMING HOME After the 2006 peace agreement between the LRA and the Ugandan government, Betty and her husband Joel and their neighbours began the cautious return to Barlonyo.

“When we come back, we find the home is just bush. There was no seed, no hoes, no food, nothing at all. We had nothing to send our children to school.”

Trócaire helped many returning families to get their farms and small enterprises functioning again and to re-establish the community structures that gave them a sense of mutual support and security.

“When Trócaire came here, we were very, very hopeless,” says Betty, explaining how the charity helped her and Joel to reclaim their farm and introduced new techniques to ensure better harvests.

SUMMER

ALL GROWN UP The support Daniel's family received ensured that he and his siblings could go to school.

Education is the most important thing for Daniel’s parents as it is the only way they can prevent their children from returning to a life of struggle and poverty.

Daniel stands with awkward stiffness, looking downwards as if trying to hide his newly gained height, but ignites into assured and graceful action when a football falls to his feet.

Daniel is a fan of the English premiership and supports Arsenal, ironically for a country that for

Daniel was the Trócaire poster boy in 2012

so long was torn apart by guns, but that was in the past. Daniel is now part of a generation who run for fun, not for their lives.

TRÓCAIRE IN UGANDA Trócaire has supported humanitarian aid and development projects in Uganda since 1995 and has had a physical presence there since 2005.

It has been particularly active in the northern region, assisting communities to recover from decades of war, supporting agricultural projects, training for work, women’s rights, land rights, and access to water, healthcare and education.

Trócaire responded to the needs of the South Sudanese refugees who began pouring into northern Uganda in late summer 2016.

By the end of this year, Trócaire will have spent €365,000 to support those fleeing violence in South Sudan through local nongovernmental and local church organisations run by Ugandan personnel and encompassing all faiths.

Trócaire’s annual Lenten campaign ended on Easter Sunday and it is thanks to the generous donations of people in Ireland that children like Daniel are doing so well.

To find out more about Trócaire’s work or to make a donation visit www.trocaire.org or call 0800 912 1200.

Ennismore Retreat Centre

Friday 8th – Sunday 10th June Trinity: The Nearness of God. Stephen Cummins OP Friday 10a.m. to Sunday 4p.m.

Cost: Res – €220/ Non Res €140 Sunday 10th – Saturday 16th June “Be Clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12) Fr. Mike Serrage MSC Cost: Res: €440 Sunday 24th – Friday 29th June God is love; Journey into the Heart of Creation (A Centering Prayer Retreat) Fionnuala Quinn OP Cost: Res: €460

Sunday 8th – Friday 13th July “Become who you are meant to be and you set the world on fire” A Journey towards Transformation and Wholeness.

Martina Lehane Sheehan Cost: Res: €440

ST DOMINIC’S

Sunday 15th – Saturday 21st July “For the Beauty of the World” Benedict Hegarty OP Cost: Res €440

All six days retreats commence Sunday evening at 6p.m. with supper and finish after lunch on Saturday.

Sunday 15th – Saturday 22st July Individually Directed Retreat Ann Alcock Cost: €465

Ennismore Retreat Centre is set in 30 acres of wood, field and garden overlooking Lough Mahon on the River Lee. It’s the ideal place for some time-out, reflection and prayer.

For ongoing programmes please contact the Secretary or visit our website Tel: 021-4502520 Fax: 021-4502712 E-mail: ennismore@eircom.net www.ennismore.ie

Sunday 22nd – Saturday 28th July Individually Directed Retreat John Bennett Cost: €465 Sunday 22nd – Saturday 28th July Individually Directed Retreat Sr. Peggy Cronin Cost: €465 Sunday 12th – Sunday 19th August “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them” (John 6:44) Stephen Cummins OP Cost: €440

CO M M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

CRYSTAL METH – THE NEW DRUG ON THE BLOCK

IF WE THINK THE DRUG PROBLEM IN IRELAND IS BAD, THE WORST IS YET TO COME.

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The recent discovery of a crystal meth laboratory in Dublin adds a new, and frightening, dimension to the drug problem.

Crystal meth gives the user an intense emotional experience which creates the desire to use it again and again, and so it is highly addictive: a person can be addicted after only two or three uses. It is also extraordinarily dangerous; it makes the user psychotic, and their hallucinations can make them very violent and unpredictable. Most worryingly of all, while most other drugs must be imported, and hence are supplied and controlled by the drug cartels, crystal meth can be made at home with chemicals which are easy and mostly legal to obtain. Hence it is not only highly addictive, extremely dangerous, but it is also very cheap. Crystal meth (or methamphetamines) has been creeping into the drug scene in Dublin for the past nine or 12 months. Being so addictive, it is likely to become an epidemic.

Successive Irish Governments have never adequately addressed the drug problem.

When heroin first arrived in Dublin’s inner city, back in the early 1980s, the official response was to “individualise” the problem, blaming drug users for their addiction, rejecting and marginalising them and punishing them for using drugs through arrest, prosecution, and sometimes imprisonment. The REALITY MAY 2018

crimes a day to feed their habit.

If they are put on a six-month waiting list for methadone treatment, about 350 crimes will be committed, which could have been avoided if treatment was readily available, with all the trauma and distress that each crime may cause to the victim.

As cocaine and crack cocaine give the user a “high” for a far shorter time than heroin, more money is required to feed the habit, leading sometimes to very serious crimes being committed.

idea that poverty, poor and overcrowded housing, high unemployment, lack of social and recreational amenities, all characteristics of the inner city, had anything to do with drug misuse was absent from official thinking. For many young people in Dublin’s inner city, heroin was a “temporary vacation” from life. Drug policy only began to develop with the realisation that HIV/AIDS was closely associated with injecting drug users. Providing services to drug users, other than prison, was therefore essential to controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But because the focus was on HIV/AIDS, and not on the drug users’ addiction, the services provided were patchy and very inadequate.

As heroin became more widespread, many users had to turn to crime to feed their habit. The official response to

the drug problem then focused on reducing crime levels, mainly through providing methadone maintenance. In 1996, the Department of Health promised that waiting lists for treatment (mainly methadone treatment) would be eliminated by 1997. Twenty years later, long waiting lists for treatment still exist, and in many parts of the country, there is no methadone treatment available at all! Most other treatment services, other than methadone treatment, are provided by voluntary agencies, often with little government funding.

The failure to adequately address the problem of addiction has led to a massive increase in crime and violence.

It is estimated that 80 per cent of all monetary crime is drugrelated, either robbing to pay for drugs or to pay drug debts. I would estimate that the average heroin user must commit two

Using criminal justice policies to try to address the drug problem has been an expensive failure. The 'war on drugs' was lost decades ago, but successive governments continued to fight on. To avoid an epidemic of crystal meth in the not-sodistant future, we need now to address the drug problem directly, by investing in a major educational campaign in drug clinics, homeless services and prisons, highlighting the dangers of crystal meth, and showing the rapid deterioration in appearance and health of users.

We also require treatment on demand, as promised in 1997 and again in 2005. Crystal meth users on a waiting list can do a lot of damage to a lot of people, including themselves.

Ireland is at a crossroads. We can start to address our drug problem now with proper services, or we can let it spiral out of control, at great cost to society.

GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH CAN YOU LAY DOWN YOUR LIFE FOR A FRIEND? MAY Today’s Gospel is taken from John’s lengthy account of the Last Supper. Having washed the feet of his SIXTH SUNDAY disciples as a sign of his love OF EASTER for them, Jesus engaged with them in a lengthy conversation in which he bids them farewell and prepares them for life in the community when he is no longer physically with them.

This scene is five chapters long – virtually a quarter of the entire Gospel – and is in some respects a blueprint for the life of the church. Strangely however, John never uses the word ‘church’ in his Gospel: instead of an structured community, he thinks of a group of people who owe their identity to their profound personal attachment to Jesus and through him, to one another.

Immediately before today’s reading, the evangelist has introduced the symbol of the vine to describe how each individual disciple,

06

and the disciples as a community, are part of the vine whose main stock is Jesus and which is tended by God the Father. It is this image that leads us into the opening words of today’s Gospel – “as the Father has loved me, I have loved you. Remain in my love.” There are a number of key words that set the tone for this passage – love, joy, commandment, friend (as opposed to slave). The disciples are bound to each other by the same kind of love that binds the Son to the Father. Just as the good son obeys his father’s will, so Jesus has come to do the will of the Father and has kept his commandments. Commandments here are not dry, formal precepts: a truly loving son is always on the look-out for how he can give his father pleasure, and does not wait for a formal precept but will be able to view how his loving Father views life. The greatest commandment that will sustain the life of the community is to love one another.

The test of how genuine their love will be is indeed a searching one. At the beginning of the meal, Jesus had shown them example

by stripping himself of his garments like a slave and washing their feet. Now he cites a more demanding pattern – someone being prepared to lay down their life for a friend.

Within the next 24 hours, Jesus himself will have done precisely that: the foot-washing was a pointer to Calvary. They have been chosen through the mysterious initiative on Jesus' part, which commenced at the beginning of the Gospel story itself with the invitation to "Come and see". The full meaning of friendship is now revealed – "Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend". There is a mystery in friendship. They might have thought that by abandoning their former trades and following Jesus that they had chosen him: no, he had chosen them and had commissioned them to bear fruit in his name, but above all, to love one another Today’s Readings Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:710; John 15:9-17

God’s Word continues on page 46

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GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH REAL PRESENCE: REAL ABSENCE Mark’s Gospel probably ended originally with the women, leaving the SOLEMNITY OF tomb, frightened and THE ASCENSION determined to tell no one (16:8). Later editors, feeling that this was inadequate, tried to improve it, so we have a number of different endings for Mark. The description of the mission to the Eleven draws on Matthew’s Great Commission at the end of his Gospel and the account of the mission of the seventy (two) in Luke 10 (eg “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you” Luke 10:19). The Lord’s ascension and heavenly enthronement are mentioned in a short half-verse. The main emphasis falls on the proclamation of the Gospel and the signs that will accompany it. These signs, apart from speaking in new

tongues, are not mentioned anywhere else in the Gospels, but drinking poison without ill effect became a common feature in lives of saints.

The Ascension is often depicted as Jesus being lifted above the earth and soaring higher and higher into the clouds. Perhaps a better key to its meaning might be the words “Absence” and “Presence”. There are all sorts of ways in which a person can be ‘present’ to us – by a photograph, by a letter, by a gift – without being physically present, and indeed, even when we are separated by distance or death. We talk about the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The other side of that mystery is his real Absence. We do not see him as his disciples saw him, hear his voice as they heard it or feel the touch of his hand as the sick in his time heard it.

That can sometimes lead to a crisis of faith.

A modern Irish poet, Dennis O’Driscoll has a poem called Missing God. Does it mean that ‘God has gone missing,’ or that the poet

realises there are empty spaces in his heart where ‘he misses God’?

“Yet, though we rebelled against Him like adolescents, uplifted to see an oppressive father banished – a bearded hermit – to the desert, we confess to missing Him at times.”

It is especially in dark times that God’s absence is most painfully felt, when “we stumble on the breast lump for the first time and an involuntary prayer escapes our lips."

For modern believers, these are times when faith is tested. The real presence of Jesus meant that God took on our human nature. His real absence means that we may have to journey without the reassurance of his physical presence, but knowing we are not totally alone.

RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT The Feast of Pentecost, MAY like Easter, was originally a Jewish feast. Shevuot, the Feast of Weeks, occurs 50 days after Passover SOLEMNITY OF and commemorate d PENTECOST the giving of the Law on Sinai. For Christians, it commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit.

The first words in today’s Gospel are “In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week” (John 20:19). John is referring here to Easter Sunday. The Spirit is Jesus’ Easter gift to his community. He enters unexpectedly the closed room where his disciples are hiding "for fear of the Jews". There are none of the great signs of the coming of the Spirit we read about in the first reading – no tongues of fire, no great wind shaking the house. Instead, Jesus "breathes of them". That is an unusual word in the Bible, but it is used three times in the Old Testament. The first is in the creation

account of Genesis where God breathed into the face of the clay figure he had made from the dust of the earth and it became a living being (Genesis 2:7). The second is when the prophet Elisha restores to life the son of the widow of Saraphath by breathing three times on the boy and restoring him to health. The third is when young Tobias cures his father’s blindness by rubbing his father’s eyes with the gall of a fish and so restoring his sight. So breathing on someone is like a new creation, a kind of resurrection and a restoration of sight.

St Luke’s account of the day of Pentecost in the first reading is very rich. That extraordinary list of nationalities that deserves to be counted: “(1) Parthians,(2) Medes and (3) Elamites; (4)people from Mesopotamia, (5) Judaea and (6) Cappadocia, (7) Pontus and (8)Asia, (9) Phrygia and (10) Pamphylia, (11) Egypt and (12) the parts of Libya round Cyrene; (13) residents of Rome – Jews and proselytes alike – (14) Cretans

and (15) Arabs, we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God” (Act 2:9-11): you probably would not know where most of them are today, but there are actually15 countries in that list that stretch from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

For Luke, Pentecost is 'Mission Sunday' – the day in which we remember that the Good News is meant to transform the world. A line in one of my favourite novels, The Diary of a Country Priest has an experienced older priest tell the nervous young curate that "the Gospel is meant to be the light of the world, we have turned it into a bedside lamp for Christians". Pentecost reminds us of that each year.

MAY

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REALITY MAY 2018

Today’s Readings Acts 1:1-11; Eph 4:1-13; Mark 16:15-20

Today’s Readings Acts 2:1-11; Gal 5:16-25; John 20: 19-23 [or John 15:26-27; 16:12-15]

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 4 MAY 2018

THRICE BLESSED THREE IN ONE Today’s Gospel, the final scene in the Gospel MAY according to Matthew, is often known as the Great Commission. In it the Risen Lord gives his disciples, and through them all who will follow, the charge to make disciples of people TRINITY SUNDAY of all nations and to seal that discipleship with baptism in the name of the Trinity. Although the Father, Son and Spirit are mentioned frequently in the New Testament, only in this text and one other text are they named together. The other text is in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba!

Father!" (Gal 4:6). The commission ends with the great reassurance that Jesus will be with us until the end of time. The Trinity is not some complex mathematical puzzle but the reality of the Christian experience of God. It was to fulfil this missionary mandate that St Patrick came to the Irish, and according to tradition, taught them how God was three yet one by using the symbol of the shamrock. The Trinity remained one of the great marks of Irish traditional spirituality. The Irish Constitution begins by invoking “the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred.” A very lovely traditional poem, collected by Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland, and included among his collection Religious Poems of Connaught also sees the traces of the Trinity engraved in nature and everyday life.

Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there.

Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair.

Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear.

Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin share.

Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer.

27

SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 2 ACROSS: Across: 1. Sat-nav, 5. Quills, 10. Gritter, 11. Ego trip, 12. Etna, 13. Angel, 15. Ache, 17. Arc, 19. Sinbad, 21. Aisles, 22. Francis, 23. Galley, 25. Daniel, 28. Ode, 30. Figs, 31. Alamo, 32. Fret, 35.

Romanov, 36. Tablets, 37. Isobar, 38. Cleric.

DOWN: 2. Avignon, 3. Note, 4. Verona, 5. Québec, 6. Idol, 7. Lyrical, 8. Egrets, 9. Upsets, 14.

Granada, 16. Wafer, 18. Visas, 20. Dry, 21. Aid, 23. Gofers, 24. Legumes, 26. Israeli, 27. Latest, 28.

Oliver, 29. Emetic, 33. Snub, 34. Oboe.

Winner of Crossword No. 2 John Collins, 3 Ashbrook, Ennis Rd, Limerick

ACROSS 1. Apostle with questions. (6) 5. Dense bread roll in the shape of a ring. (6) 10. Tropical climbing orchid which is ordinary or standard. (7) 11. Low oval mound or small hill caused by glacial action. (7) 12. Travel aimlessly. (4) 13. He used a razor to choose an explanation. (5) 15. Strip of self-governing Palestinian territory. (4) 17. Turn under and sew the edge of a piece of cloth. (3) 19. A miniature keyboard or set of buttons for operating a device. (6) 21. Influenced a person or a course of action. (6) 22. Sea beside Nazareth. (7) 23. The largest island in the Mediterranean. (6) 25. A fabricator. (6) 28. Provide someone with food or drink in an insistent way. (3) 30. Often fund beside a cranny. (4) 31. The cup or platter used by Christ at the Last Supper. (5) 32. Profoundly immoral and wicked. (4) 35. The patron saint of lost things. (7) 36. Place of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees. (7) 37. Stole a touch screen to activate a function. (6) 38. Moves away from the right course with

lost dogs. (6) DOWN 2. EU member, capital is Budapest. (7) 3. Think about Kintyre deeply and at length. (4) 4. Quickly seize something. (6) 5. A scene of uproar and confusion. (6) 6. Dejected, morose. (4) 7. A gentle song sung to get someone to sleep. (7) 8. Czech composer and a keyboard. (6) 9. Away from the sea. (6) 14. A mark written under the letter in French. (7) 16. Standard Roman bird. (5) 18. A coarse wool cloth originally produced in Scotland. (5) 20. Division of time equating to a rotation of the earth. (3) 21. Get to work with a needle and thread. (3) 23. The day of rest. (6) 24. Native American tribe which came up trumps in 1847. (7) 26. In a way that produces strong, clear images in the mind. (7) 27. Take great enjoyment from the piquant sauce. (6) 28. Offered a petition to God. (6) 29. Gives way to the amounts produced. (6) 33. Cleanser for a TV opera? (4) 34. Sound of a contented feline. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.4, May 2018 Name:

Today’s Readings

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Deut 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8: 14-17; Matthew 28: 16-20 All entries must reach us by May 31, 2018 One €35 prize is offered for the first correct solutions opened. The Editor’s decision on all matters concerning this competition will be final. Do not include correspondence on any other subject with your entry which should be addressed to: Reality Crossword No. 4, Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651

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