Mary KennyChristians must pull together to make common cause with a Faith under siege
I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in my lifetime when ecumenism has seemed more important and compelling.
With both the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury – he being the head of the worldwide Anglican Church – emphasising, over Easter, the ghastly torment of Christian martyrs throughout the world that point has been amplified.
The various Patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, who have seen their Coptic brethren horribly slain, have made the same plea.
I think we will always have our differences of emphasis and even of theology, but all Christians must surely pull together now to make common cause with a Faith that is manifestly under siege.
In the Middle East, in Pakistan and in Africa, Christians are now in fear of their lives, and their freedom to worship is under the severest strain.
In the developed European societies, a different kind of pressure obtains – to conform to secularist values at all costs. In Britain, the Conservative MP Michael Gove warned just last week that British Christians were under increasing social oppression. In France, the French bishops are extremely concerned that ‘laïcité’ – secularism – is now at such an aggressive point that religion is being entirely chased out of the public square. If an infants’ crèche so much as displays a holy picture, it will lose any public funding.
And in Ireland, we can see the agenda not only to secularise the whole society – and most particularly the education system – but to airbrush history as well (see panel).
Ecumenism cannot be an answer to everything, since Christians don’t agree even on secular matters – some Christians agree with more secularisation – yet an awareness of what is occurring must surely prompt us to a sense of ecumenical solidarity to defend Christianity itself.
AA has a very good motto for this endeavour: “Identify with the similarities, not the differences.”
Religious spirit animated the Rising
Over the Easter weekend, there were several pictures and reports in my ‘social media’ boxes marking the 99th anniversary of the Easter Rising. They were all celebratory and attractive. But, as with the mainstream media, no commentator mentioned that the Easter Rising of 1916 was carried out by men and women with a strong sense of religious faith, and all those who signed the Proclamation died with the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Last Rites of the Catholic Church.
Roger Casement, the 16th man, executed later than the others, converted to Catholicism at the end of his life.
At the GPO, the rosary was frequently recited, and in the streets of Dublin, Capuchin brothers and Sisters of Charity ministered to the wounded and dying. Readers of The Irish Catholic will be aware of these facts, but fewer people in mainstream society now know about the prevailing faith element in the Rising, and some who know choose to ignore it. The spirit of the Easter Rising is now being claimed by advocates of same-sex marriage – such as Joan Burton – and by abortion rights claimants, neither issues having anything whatsoever to do with the 1916 event.
Before the centenary next year, would some popular historian please produce an accessible book which describes the religious spirit that animated so many of the men and women of 1916? And would the bishops of Ireland please reclaim this historical territory? To be sure, the ecclesiastical authorities of the time did not endorse the Rising, but that does not erase the fact that Patrick Pearse, and those he inspired, were people of profound faith.
This is not about propaganda, but about the facts of history, and unless someone rescues the faith element of 1916, it will be entirely deleted from public understanding.