Chai Brady
Mickey Harte Renowned GAA manager Mickey Harte has said Irish people owe it to their children to pass on the Faith, or even make them aware of it so they can make up their own minds.
Mr Harte told The Irish Catholic there has been extra challenges for people of Faith over the last two years due to the strife caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite this, his hopes for the future lie in the Faith handed down by parents, grandparents and ancestors who have lived through periods in which it was very dangerous to practice their religion.
He says: “Thankfully in this country people don’t come to bad ends because people believe in God, but we need to realise that without a belief in God or if we remove God from the picture then life becomes more of a trivial thing in many ways, it doesn’t have meaning.
“The depth of meaning comes from the Faith that we have been handed on under difficult circumstances and the least we could expect to do for those people who handed on that faith to us is to hand it on to others, especially if we can add value to it.”
The current manager of Louth and former manager of the Tyrone GAA team, Mr Harte said young Catholics can also pass the Faith on to their parents.
“Our young people I believe nowadays are very, very well-tuned in to their faith and they are a good example as well and they can actually hand the Faith up the other way. There’s so many very committed young Catholics and they have various groups and organisations and I think they are to be admired because they really do believe, they research it and they find out that it is a great source of value in their spiritual life.”
He added: “People owe it today to the next generation to let them be aware of the Faith and to let them make their own minds up… we need to show them that it means something to us, that it’s a source of strength to us and that there’s something very special about the Faith that we are committed to.”
Read Mickey Harte’s full interview here.