Dear Editor, Following your reports in recent weeks in relation to the forthcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment we wish to make clear the position of the Society of St Vincent de Paul as an organisation.
As on previous occasions, where there have been referenda or elections, the Society of St Vincent de Paul will not be issuing advice or comment to its membership as how to vote in the forthcoming Referendum.
It should also be understood that the Society of St Vincent de Paul is a registered charity and is therefore constrained by law from involvement in political campaigns which are not aligned to our charitable objectives.
However, although we will not be issuing advice or comment to our members for the reasons outlined, the Society of St Vincent de Paul would emphasise to its members and supporters throughout Ireland, that it is a lay Catholic organisation, strongly committed to the values of Catholic social teaching and as set out in our constitution/Rule our activities are fully supportive and consistent with Catholic teaching and morals.
Yours etc.,
Kieran Stafford,
National President,
Society of St Vincent de Paul,
Dublin 1.
Remembering our Mass rocks and our martyrs
Dear Editor, Susan Gately’s article on Mass rocks and not losing the memories and landmarks of the Penal Times (IC 26/4/2018) was truly remarkable, and Dr Hilary Bishop should be commended for her work in trying to preserve this so often forgotten part of our past. And how much worse will this national amnesia become now that history is ceasing to be a compulsory subject in our children’s Junior Cert curriculum?
Reading the piece, I was startled by how many Mass rocks there are around the country, and was left wondering how many I might have walked or driven past over the years, clueless to how I was passing a monument of our beleaguered history. Whatever about the State’s duty to protect such relics, surely we as Catholics have a duty to cherish them too. And yet we don’t.
Why is this? Why do we forget our Mass rocks, just as we forget our hundreds of martyrs? Are we somehow ashamed of our persecuted past?
Have we drank so deeply of contemporary narratives of the Catholic triumphalism of Ireland in its first independent decades that we forget that it was not always so, that there were times when our priests were hunted down, interned, and executed, when we were forced to sustain a State religion that denied us the freedom to practice our own Faith, and when we were not even allowed to own, run, teach in, or learn in Catholic schools?
And yet we forget the sacrifices our forebears made, first to maintain their Faith, and then to build the healthcare and education systems of the society that won Irish independence, sustaining these through the impoverished first decades of the new State.
We may not be entering into a new time of persecution, but these are clearly challenging times for Ireland’s Catholics. It could be time to remember that our ancestors faced worse than us, and to look to them for inspiration.
Yours etc.,
Colm O’Shea,
Bray, Co. Wicklow.
A good religion can laugh at itself
Dear Editor, Can I commend your recent letters page cartoons? With our necessary but relentless focus on the upcoming referendum, the letters page must always be at risk of being a grim spot. As the English Catholic writer GK Chesterton put it, “it is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it”, and a bit of levity does no harm. As Chesterton said somewhere else, Satan fell by the force of gravity!
Yours etc.,
Liam Hayden,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22.
We must not be found wanting on voting day
Dear Editor, It is time to prepare for Friday, May 25. I am suggesting that every parish in Ireland to have one church open for 24 hours of Adoration on that day. I am also suggesting that every church in the country be lit up for 24 hours as a symbol of light in the darkness that will try to prevail that day. We as Catholics are all called to battle on that day. Our weapon is our Rosary Beads. On the hour, every hour, of that day one of us should go to the microphone and say the Rosary. When our Priests celebrate Mass that day they must offer the most perfect sacrifice they can to the Lord to protect our country and children from abortion.
We must stand shoulder to shoulder in prayer that day. The work will be finished outside in the public but the most important work of prayer will still need to be done.
We must prepare now and not be found wanting on that day. So many people around the country will have given every waking moment to the fight for life for months and years. That day should be exclusively for prayer and Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in an open church.
I am asking Adoration to be done in the church and not in an Adoration chapel so we are visible to all. Every single prayer and intercession will count. People, some priests and parishioners, will fight against doing this and obstacles will be put in our way. When this happens we will know we are doing the right thing. This is one day when the Lord will hear the Irish loud and clear.
It would be lovely if other Christian Churches, Synagogues & Mosques lit up as well. By voting NO and praying we can fight this.
Yours etc.,
Fiona Kiely,
Bartlemy, Co. Cork.
Slain gendarme may be a candidate for martyrdom
Dear Editor, In commending Fr Conor McDonough for his ‘note’ on Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame (IC 12/4/2018) I’m sure I speak for many readers.
The stark headlines and images of the secular media reporting one more terrorist atrocity in France failed to satisfy Fr McDonough. With appropriate passion for truth, he interrogates the populist presentation of French heroism, and going deeper, presents us with the portrait of a genuine patriot – and possibly a martyr.
Within the gendarme’s uniform stood a true soldier of Christ, this is the M, Beltrame who received his First Communion at 33, was undergoing preparation for Marriage, and domestically had reserved a prayer-space in his home.
Fr McDonough presents his subject as a model of the lay vocation: “confidently secular, worldly and holy, sanctifying the world by being love at the heart of the world”.
Quoting from Lumen Gentium, of Vatican II, this Dominican priest reminds us that the vocation of all the baptised is to be holy: policemen, business persons, teachers…and thus bring about the Kingdom of Love.
Yours etc.,
JP Murphy,
Newtown,
Co. Waterford.
Great to see Fr Kelly’s talent on television
Dear Editor, I enjoyed reading your report of how Meath’s Fr Ray Kelly did so well in Britain’s Got Talent (IC 26/4/2018), even if one wonders why, if Britain has talent, it needs to import Ireland’s priests for its television schedules.
That’s to quibble, though. Fr Ray’s rendition of REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ was genuinely superb, and should be recognised as such. I was uneasy a few years ago when his rendition of a version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ during a wedding Mass for a couple he knew became an internet sensation, as it seemed ‘off’ to me for a priest to be drawing attention to himself in such a way during Mass, but I have no such qualms about his ITV performance.
Full credit!
Yours etc.,
Bernadette Quigley,
Limerick, Co. Limerick.
How can we keep the energy?
Dear Editor, Campaigning is part of Christian witness but post referendum…how will Parishes maintain and re-channel the energies and enthusiasm of so many wonderful Pro-Life groups that have been mobilised Countrywide?
Yours etc.,
Judith Leonard,
Raheny, Dublin 6.