Sir, – The correspondence on the Catholic Spring seems to be concentrating on the subject of married priests or women priests. The implied assumption is that changing the relevant Canon Law provisions concerning the priesthood will, like our present freak weather, get us through the winter of discontent in the Catholic Church and bring us to a new and glorious spring.
Such wishful thinking misinterprets the nature of the dissatisfaction of those Catholics who are concerned about the present state of their church and wish to improve it.
Changing rules is not the answer. Catholics generally and Irish Catholics in particular have been taught that good religious behaviour consists in obeying rules. That is the Old Testament mindset that Jesus condemned in the Pharisees. He came on earth to see us free. He had only two rules – love God and love your neighbour.
However, throughout the two millenniums of the church’s existence, rules – and the threatened consequences of breaking them – have been the mechanism by which church authorities have exercised their control over ordinary Catholics. Our duty, as one bishop told the Council, has been seen as “to obey, to pray and to pay”.
Obedience to rules does nothing to produce change in a person. Christ’s wish is, by his reaching and his example, to change each of us so that we, in turn, will change the world in what God wants the world to be. He is inviting each of us to be co-Redeemers with him and to change the world by our example in our family, our community, our workplace. This is one of the most significant teachings of Vatican 2. It is the blueprint for the Catholic Spring that the Council gave us 50 years ago when it described us as the People of God. When are we going to claim our inheritance? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Catholicism is evidently one of only very few institutions or belief systems that one can pour scorn on with apparent impunity and without reference to facts.
In his letter encouraging restive Catholics to abandon their faith and join the Church of Ireland (December 29th), Greg Scanlon patronisingly refers to what he describes as “Rome’s need for control and lack of respect for human dignity” without attempting to employ any evidence to back up his spurious claims. If the Catholic faith was so glibly dismissed by a firebrand fundamentalist Protestant preacher well-known for rants against “Popery” the attack would rightly be seen as anti-Catholic and lacking in substance.
Further, Mr Scanlon might reflect on the fact that for many Catholics their home in the Catholic Church is based on the truth of its message rather than on finding a denomination that suits one’s own feelings and patterns of behaviour. – Yours, etc,