Sir, - Your article entitled "US nun to help religious TV station in Ireland" was timely.
The Tablet (May 4th) reported that "the American nun (Mother Angelica) whose ultra conservative Catholic TV station is said to reach 40 million homes in 26 countries, hopes to extend her cable television service to the United Kingdom". On Sunday, May 5th, Radharc did a programme on Mother Angelica which confirmed The Tablet's view of her as ultra conservative and which, at the same time, showed her enormous power and influence on the Catholic Church in America. It would be tragic if she were to have a similar influence in Ireland.
In the Catholic Herald in early April an article by Alice Thomas Ellis speaks of the magnificent Franciscan, Mother Angelica. She quotes Mother Angelica as addressing the liberal Catholics of America as follows: "You are a group that says, I will not serve. I'm tired of your witchcraft. I'm tired of your inclusive language. I'm tired of your tricks. I'm tired of your deceit . . . You have no God. You have no dogma, no doctrine, no authority . . . You do not believe in the Eucharist
I'm just tired of your pushing your anti God and anti Catholic and pagan ways into the Catholic Church . . . Live your lies. Leave us alone." The article continues with much more of the same.
To say that Mother Angelica is conservative is a misnomer. Her treatment of those who disagree with her is a complete demolition job. As Alice Thomas Ellis says, she doesn't mince her words. What frightens me is the intolerance for those who might think differently. Such people are dismissed out of hand. The underlying problem here for the church is how to cope with change. The tendency is to revert to the wisdom of the past in pressured situations. Crisis is then seen only as danger and never as opportunity. Fear takes over. The council vision of John XXIII, a vision that called on us to give ourselves eagerly and without fear to the task this present age demands of us, is lost. We are left with a restoration of the old and a refusal to change, a refusal to read correctly the signs of the times.
Cardinal Martini, speaking of the church in Milan in 1993, made the following comment: "My own opinion is that these differences (between right and left) may be unavoidable as we are not all contemporaries . . . This is 1993, but some Catholics are living in 1963, some in 1940 and some even in the last century. It's inevitable that there will be a clash of mentalities." That is indeed true but the call must be for tolerance and not condemnation or dismissal. Each is going to have to be tolerant of the other, seeking to understand and empathise with the other while holding different views in a unity of difference. There is and has to be room for plurality of form while preserving what John XXIII called "the substance of the ancient deposit of faith".
It is better to live with unanswered questions than questionable answers. Today we live in an age of uncertainty and doubt. Many of the old certainties with which we grew up, have been found to be inadequate. It is vital that we embrace the present moment with all its unanswered questions and doubts and uncertainties and be content to actively wait. Diarmuid O'Murchu talks about the present moment as a time of "contemplative waiting". He also says: "We so desperately need to grieve our loss, to experience our pain, stand still before our powerlessness and pray for the grace to be open and receptive to the new, which will be ours to receive from God's creative abundance in God's own time."
How can we move into the future when we haven't yet listened to what God invites of us in the present? - Yours, etc.,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.