Dear Editor, Thank you so much for your article ‘Children of the Famine’ (IC 23/03/2017) about the mindset that sustained the networks of social control independent Ireland inherited and developed from the British.
Too often commentators act as though our clergy and religious were Vatican shock troops parachuted into Ireland, despite these supposed agents of a foreign power being the children, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins of Ireland’s laity. They arose from Irish society – they weren’t imposed on it!
What’s more, the values they encouraged had originally been inculcated in them by the society in which they themselves had grown up and that served crucial social functions.
That poverty was a marker of moral failure in newly independent Ireland is especially important: it’s remarkable how few commentators acknowledge how utterly contrary this once commonplace notion is to Catholic teaching, let alone consider what this disconnect might mean.
The idea of the ‘undeserving poor’ derived ultimately from Elizabethan attempts to justify helping only some of England’s poorest. However, it was not until after the Industrial Revolution and the Evangelical movement jointly transformed Britain’s middle and working classes and gave them a fetish for respectability that this distinction became legally calcified.
This explicitly punitive Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 aimed to cut costs and curb supposed abuses by denying aid save through workhouses where dire conditions would deter all but the most desperate.
Effectively absolving men from responsibility for pregnancies among unmarried women, a streamlined version of the law was introduced in Ireland soon afterwards.
Thomas Davis may have looked forward in the 1840s to Ireland being a nation once again, but it would take decades for independent Ireland to shake off the Victorian values of the British province it long was.
Yours etc.,
Margaret Kelly,
Cork City.
No ambiguity over papal authority
Dear Editor, Michael Higgins’ claim (IC 09/03/2017) that the Dubia regarding Amoris Laetitia constitute an unprecedented challenge to papal authority is quite fanciful. Protestant historian Rodney Stark in his book, Bearing False Witness, outlines a 1686 Holy Office ruling concerning the Spanish-Portuguese slave trade. It models the ‘yes/no’ structure of the Dubia submitted to the Pope.
“It is asked:
“Whether it is permitted to capture by force and deceit Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one: Answer ‘No.’
“Whether it is permitted to buy, sell or make contracts in their respect Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and been made captives by force or deceit? Answer ‘No.’
“Whether the possessors of Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and been captured by force or deceit, are not held to set them free? Answer ‘Yes.’
“Whether the captors, buyers or possessors of Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and been captured by force or deceit, are not held to make compensation to them. Answer ‘Yes.’
“Nothing ambiguous here.” (Page 173) Clarity banishing confusion!
Whatever about indulging Higgins’ historical unawareness, is not disseminating his gratuitous unfounded slander of Popes Benedict, John Paul and of Cardinal Burke rather tabloid? Answer: Alas, yes.
Yours etc.,
Neil Bray,
Cappamore, Co Limerick.
Time is right for public act of atonement
Dear Editor, The more we cover it up, excuse it, turn a blind eye to it, psychologise it, relegate it to pre-Vatican II or the medieval church, lock up our confessionals against it, or hurry it through in a fast moving penitential service queue, yet, so the more the Church continues to be bedeviled by it.
I am of course referring to sin and its awful consequences for us all whether bishops, priests, religious or laypeople. As the Catholic Church continues to lurch from one scandal to the next and seems unable to free herself, I believe the time is right now for a public act of atonement by our bishops gathered together in Lough Derg. Could we not also fix a national day for Confession for all our priests and all our religious?
Pope Francis has already asked for a 24-hour availability of Confession for the people during the Lenten period. This year, the centenary year of the Fatima apparition, calls the Church to “repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15). Pope Saint John Paul II tells us that, “The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel” (Fatima 1982).
People need to actually see our religious leaders make a public act of repentance, not as a Lenten exercise and not simply to mark the centenary of Fatima, but rather as a turning together, as Church, to the Gospel which can set us free. Such a unified act of atonement to God for the sins of the Church would raise, I believe, a great cry to Heaven for the intervention of Divine Mercy and for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Yours etc.,
Fr Freddy Warner SMA,
Portumna,
Co. Galway.
McGuinness’ legacy could be to highlight rare disease
Dear Editor, I was saddened at the news of Martin McGuinness’ death, and despite the variant views appearing in the media, one aspect of this that resonated with me was the human side of his passing having suffered with the rare degenerative disease that I also am being treated for since 2013, Amyloidosis.
This basically attacks all the vital organs of the body. It is incurable but is treated with chemotherapy and other drugs such as Thalidomide, which I have to take 21 days each month on top of kidney dialysis three days a week in the Ulster Hospital.
I recently sent a card to Martin McGuinness informing him that there were people in Bangor praying for him. I have no idea if the card, addressed to Stormont, would have got to him on time, but I hope it did. Amyloidosis is a difficult disease and there is little public awareness about it. Maybe one last legacy of Martin McGuinness will also be to help shed more light and public attention on this debilitating and serious illness.
Yours etc.,
Colin Nevin,
Bangor,
Co Dow
Don’t tar all with the same brush
Dear Editor, I was, of course, appalled at the latest terrorist incident on Westminster Bridge in London. I agree it is important to condemn the crimes of Islamist terrorists without painting all Muslims with the same brush, although I do think it is important that Muslim leaders acknowledge the fact that there is something within Islam, or with how it is being taught, that is leading to radicalisation.
I also can’t help but wonder at the double standards at how Catholics are treated in the media. Barbs at the Catholic Church are not just targeting the Vatican or the bishops, they affect all people of faith, whether it is in the context of religion in schools or repealing the Eighth Amendment, yet there is never the same call for calm or sensitive language.
Yours etc.,
Bernie Flynn,
Drogheda,
Co. Louth.
British soldiers were initially welcomed as protectors
Dear Editor, In Fr Joe McVeigh’s tribute to the late Martin McGuinness (IC 23/03/2017), he refers to the British reaction “militarily” to the civil rights campaign. But it must be borne in mind that the initial reaction to the civil rights campaign came from the RUC when they baton-charged the peaceful demonstration and it was on this occasion that the TV cameras revealed world-wide the injustices endured by the Catholic people in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, as a result of the peaceful and moral force rising up, mob violence was perpetuated on the besieged Catholic citizens.
The first encounter these people had with the British soldiers was as protectors and were greeted as such. Sadly, they later became ‘legitimate targets’ when the aims of the civil rights movement were seen to be achieved solely by other means.
Yours etc.,
Patrick Fleming,
Glasnevin, Dublin 9.
There is little time for silence at Mass now
Dear Editor, I’m all for a quiet weekday Mass, anois is arís. One where there is no singing or homily, like as usually was before the Second Vatican Council. Sometimes now, I think, we go to the opposite extreme, with singing, maybe three or four verses of a hymn three or four times, as well as a homily and Prayers of the Faithful. There is little time for silence.
I once heard a priest make a clear distinction between singing AT Mass and singing THE Mass. He much preferred the second way. So do I.
Recently I was at a weekday Mass twice in my native Dundalk. I could scarcely believe it – there was no singing or homily.
Yours etc.,
George Whyte,
Dublin 10.