In a reply this week to a letter writer in The Irish Times, Alan Hynes, who is Chief Executive of the Catholic Education Partnership says the writer “presents an understanding of faith all too often found among people of no religion: that the main appeal of faith is comfort or soothing, particularly in the face of death.”
He writes: “For Christians, this is not the promise at all. The only promise made to me was that if I truly live in accordance with God’s will, following the example of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, then I will face the opposition, or even hatred, of the world, even to death, to the Cross.
“Faith can be a comfort, and this is backed up by studies showing more positive mental health and general wellbeing outcomes for people of faith versus those without – St Augustine’s insight that we are made for God, and our hearts restless until they rest in God is a key insight into true human flourishing.
“But faith is primarily a challenge to Christians: it asks us not only to forgive those who do us wrong but to love them; we are required to see Jesus in all who suffer or in the migrant among us, as the Irish bishops recently reminded people in their pastoral letter, A Hundred Thousand Welcomes?
“We are required too to bear our own suffering, misfortunes or injustice with patience, joining them in prayer to Jesus on the Cross.”
The letter writer, says Hynes “rightfully understands the Cross to be a scandal – it is! Christians knew this from the start. Christianity has never been an easy religion.
“The human condition of having potential for greatness coupled with a capacity for evil, the reality of suffering, but also the possibility of redemption, has always been there.”
Responding to the charge of the letter writer that the “indoctrination” received in a Catholic school did not work, Hynes replies: “I should be surprised if it did, given that the aim of a Catholic ethos school, in its life, its community and its teaching, is not to indoctrinate, but to propose the faith, hopefully mainly by example.
“It is a cause of shame that this was not always so, but many teachers and other school staff, religious and lay, did, and we are thankful for them.”