Eighth Amendment
While the Church can never become a cult of the perfect, it has to help each of us along the narrow road to a deeper relationship with God, writes Fr John Harris OP
The tsunami of the vote in favour of abortion was no silent revolution, it was the biggest wake-up call ever given to the Church in Ireland and each one of us who claim to be Catholic must listen to it and take it very seriously. One thing is clear after last Friday’s vote; things can’t go on as before for the Church here in Ireland.
Whatever we are doing simply isn’t working. The teaching of the Church on the sacredness of human life is not a periphery doctrine, and yet there are Catholics who simply ignored this doctrine and presume it’s business as usual. It can’t be! However, as Christians, we believe in the power of the Risen Lord therefore we face this challenge with hope.
We must begin by applauding and recognising the extraordinary work done by thousands of volunteers on the pro-life campaign. Their energy and commitment to the cause against all the media, most of the political establishment and the ruling elites were amazing. As it has been noted by some foreign media outlets, given the weight of the pro- abortion lobby it is a miracle that the ‘No’ vote was so high.
Here is the first place we must begin to see hope for the Church. We have within our ranks thousands of enthusiastic and committed people of all ages. The pastoral challenge will be to harness this committed core for the future. I think every Church community needs to acknowledge the work done by those in their midst who went out and knocked on doors, those who put up posters and put them up again when they were pulled down and those who courageously went on various radio and television programmes.
That’s the easy bit. Given the new reality of what happened no one in the Catholic Church can be complacent, each of us and every institution run by or supported by Catholics need to have a deep look into their souls and organisations to see if they are truly advancing the message of the Gospel. Are they focused on facilitating the encounter with Jesus?
Empire
CS Lewis once wrote: “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the middle ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark, on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. Aim at heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’, aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Recently Pope Francis wrote an Apostolic Exhortation on the call to holiness in today’s world, this of course is an echo of one of the central, but largely forgotten teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the universal call to holiness. This is the central mission of the Church. Each and every one of us need to ask ourselves, “am I advancing on the road to holiness”.
The main task of the Catholic Church is to get souls to heaven, we seem to have largely forgotten this. Recently I heard of a lady who said that she has stopped going to Mass in a particular church because the priest there speaks too much about God.
Choice
The real choice facing every human being is either heaven or hell, either to accept God or reject him. While the Church can never become a cult of the perfect it nevertheless has to help each of us along the narrow road to a deeper relationship with God. Let us begin by acknowledging and supporting those who are involved in the various movements in the Church which are bringing people to Jesus.
We need to look around and see the many green shoots in the life of the Irish Church. We need to build upon and encourage those who want to be Catholics, by educating them better in the ways of the Faith, there is a profound need for basic catechesis.
Writing this as a Dominican I am acutely aware of the need for doctrinal preaching. From the results it is clear that for lots of Catholics our Faith is devoid of content. For most Catholics the only time they receive any intellectual input into the development of their Faith is the few minutes of the homily on a Sunday.
It seems that most of us have forgotten that as Catholics we do stand for something and we do have central doctrines that we all required to believe.
In the midst of the ocean of the secular media the weekend homily may seem minuscule, but we have to start someplace to rebuild.
Last week made it obvious that we not only are we not reaching those on the peripheries we are losing those sitting in front of us every weekend. Let’s begin with the doctrinal content of the weekend homily.