Our unforgiving world…

One of the most comforting aspects of Catholic Christianity is that its ethos is forgiving. Whatever sins or transgressions you may have committed, they will be forgiven (after due repentance). We have the words of the Saviour himself that it is a faith for sinners.

Worldly practices

How different from many of the worldly practices of today, where one mistake or fall from grace can ruin a career permanently: even unproven charges can stigmatise your name and deprive you of exercising your talents for the rest of your days.

One wrong association, or a word out of place, and you may be ‘cancelled’ from the public platform. Even some unedifying association with an ancestor can be social or professional death – supposing it is discovered that a great-great-grandpa had some tenuous link with slavery plantations? (Beware, anyone who has had historic connection with the sugar trade.)

Ollie Robinson (pictured) is by all accounts a very talented English cricketer and an ace bowler, who has played for the county of Sussex. He is now 27 years of age but when he was a teenager, he posted some tweets that are now considered racist and sexist. Apparently they were also silly and childish. And although he has repented and apologised, Mr Robinson has been suspended by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for his offences. So the fast bowler won’t be taking his place in matches against New Zealand, as expected.

Compassion

We are often told that ‘compassion’ is a contemporary virtue – ‘be kind’ is a popular slogan among young people. Yet the spirit of the age can be quite punitive. Errors, misjudgements and verbal offences are put into the full glare of publicity. What the French call les folies de la jeunesse – youth’s foolishness – are to be unforgiven, and the stigma forever attached. Even if Ollie Robinson is readmitted by the cricketing authorities, he’ll always be known as the bowler tagged with the ‘racist and sexist’ label.

Social media

How often, these days, I have heard older people – or even adults in early middle age – say: “Thank heaven I didn’t grow up in the age of social media! The stupid things I did and said as a teenager – or even older – make me blush to my roots, but at least they are not posted on social media, never to be erased.” That’s the point about Twitter and its ilk: the wrongs you committed, the idiotic or even offensive opinions you once expressed, will be there, in secula seculoram.

Unforgiving, indeed.

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A gentleman who attended St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, Mr John Lombard of Goatstown, was “astonished” to find himself in a pre-operation hospital holding bay where a crucifix hung on the wall. “If I had seen it in the recovery room, I would probably have put it down to a drug-induced hallucination,” he wrote to The Irish Times. “I thought the days of Catholic iconography in our hospitals were long gone?” He suggested that there might have been a companionate statue of the Buddha, but couldn’t find one.

Well, Mr Lombard of Goatstown –  the clue is in the name. St Vincent’s Hospital is called after a French Catholic saint, Vincent de Paul, who tended to the sick and afflicted. It was established in 1834 by Mother Mary Aikenhead, the foundress of the Sisters of Charity. The Buddha, venerated figure of the Orient, had no input into its conception, construction or operational foundation. Mother Mary Aikenhead and her sisters did all the heavy lifting, planning and practical establishment of the hospital Mr Lombard attended, and there is perfect historical continuity with the symbols of their faith being represented on the walls of a hospital which they brought into being.

Gardens gone wild

I am a pretty lazy gardener – my general tactic is to let nature do what it likes with my garden patch. I’ve also embraced my son’s dictum that “weeds are just flowers with bad PR”. The dandelion and the buttercup all have their place!

But now, rather than being regarded as a person of botanical sloth, I’m right in fashion, and may even aspire to being an environmental paragon. For it has been decreed that the best service we can give to nature is ‘re-wilding’ our gardens. Don’t mow the lawn in neat lines – or maybe hardly mow it at all. Don’t drown grass in scarce water either – let it go brown if it will. Don’t trim all those hedges and plants. Allow the birds and the bees to benefit from a profusion of untamed bloom.

The garden is somewhat jungle-like, but the profusion of growth has great charm – a previously unnoticed species of dazzling blue flowers has appeared, as well as the wild poppy. And the neighbours no longer need see me as the idle gardener – but an environmentally responsible gardening ‘re-wilder’!