Dear Editor, Two items in your May 19 issue highlight a major problem in our parishes – the case of the lay reader in Cork and the couple who wanted to be married in a pretty church. Both smack of individualism and moral relativism (basically an ego crisis in the Church) which Francis, Benedict and John Paul II battled against.
Cheap sloganeering like “We are Church” and “it says so in Vatican II” hides this à la carte Catholic faith or spiritual worldliness, as Pope Francis writes in Evangelii Gaudium (93): “It is a subtle way of seeking one’s own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”
Basic catechism will help remedy the above ills. But first and foremost we need a good dose of humility. That is why the Church has dedicated the month of May to Our Lady, whose spirit exults in God, not her ego.
Yours etc.,
Declan Cooney,
Birr, Co. Offaly.