Fr Brendan Coffey OSB Those who challenge modern certainties are “taken to the edge of the cliff”, the Abbot of Glenstal said in a homily at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), encouraging openness to all knowledge in education at a time when free-speech debates rage on college campuses.
Fr Brendan Coffey OSB also railed against the “irrational fear” behind a recent spate of attacks, violence, arson and xenophobia, in a homily given at the Service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving at TCD on April 22.
“Anything that might seem to threaten our narrow world of certainties was pushed off the cliff,” Fr Coffey said, referencing the Gospel story of the people of Nazareth trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.
“Today, I am sad to say that this attitude is still alive and well,” he continued, saying: “We might have exchanged one set of certainties for another, but very little has really changed.
“Anyone who challenges the perceived orthodoxy is immediately taken to the edge of the cliff.”
True education, learning and knowledge are “essential” today to combat this narrow world view, and to tackle the irrational fear that “lies behind our recent spate of attacks, violence, arson, and xenophobia”, said Fr Coffey, a former president of the Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious Ireland (AMRI).
“Not a knowledge which is closed in its own discipline, but one which is open to all disciplines,” he added.