Dear Editor, In recent weeks The Irish Catholic has featured fascinating interviews with the American apologist-philosopher Dr William Lane Craig (IC 30/03/2017) and with Jonny Somerville (IC 13/04/2017), the key figure behind an ambitious new series of films intended for youth evangelisation.
As I understand it, Dr Craig visited several Irish cities while he was here, speaking and debating before capacity crowds wherever he went, with the Oxford-based apologist-mathematician Prof. John Lennox doing something similar a week or two later, both men making powerful cases for the reasonableness of Christian faith.
Both the speaking tour and the NUA video series were organised by evangelical Protestants.
All this is laudable and encouraging, of course, but reading your articles about these projects left me uneasy: why is Ireland, in which even now four out of five people identify as Catholic, dependent on evangelical Protestants to tour the country’s universities arguing for the truth of Christianity or to make series of films helping young people grapple with the hard questions of Faith?
Since the papacy of St John Paul II, the Church has been calling us to a ‘new evangelisation’ – a re-evangelisation of the old Christian heartlands that have been falling away from the Faith for one reason or another.
Ireland’s census figures, which show Catholic numbers in freefall among the younger half of the population, show how desperately needed such a re-evangelisation is. This seems especially clear given how our figures, like statistics from Britain, show that when Catholics fall away from the Faith they do not turn to a more ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ version of Christianity, but abandon Christianity altogether.
If Christianity is to survive in our land, we need to engage with the reasons why our young people are walking away. It’s admirable to see evangelical Protestants facing this reality head on. We should do the same.
Yours etc.,
Peter O’Reilly,
Lucan,
Co. Dublin.
Comparisons to ‘Brit-bashing’ unhelpful
Dear Editor, David Quinn’s article ‘Church-bashing is the new Brit-bashing’ (IC 20/04/2017) made for interesting reading, and made some very valid points about what can at times seem an obsessive anti-clericalism in Irish life.
However, I would question his comparisons with Theresa May’s lip service to Christian values and to Britain’s supposed willingness to embrace a warts-and-version of its history – one that acknowledges dark chapters in Britain’s history but nonetheless retains a “sense of proportion about itself” and cherishes its “proud moments”.
Those familiar with British history who have lived in Britain tend to be struck, above all, by a staggering cluelessness – even a wilful blindness – to the dark chapters of British history.
Derry’s Bloody Sunday is at best seen as a one-off mistake, rather than something that was of a pattern with British military practice in the North in the early 1970s, for instance, and even those who know about Dublin’s Bloody Sunday tend to be ignorant of such things as the North King Street Massacre and the Burning of Cork.
It’s rare to meet British people who are both proud of their country’s past and aware of such things as Britain’s destabilisation of India before it formally embedded it into its empire, the extent to which famines in Ireland and India were due to economic structures needed to sustain the industrial revolution, the cynicism of the Boer Wars, the Opium Wars, the gulags of 1950s Kenya, etc.
Even supposed ‘proud moments’ aren’t quite so simple: slavery was ended, as much as anything, because doing so would hurt the French, while Britain never really stood ‘alone’ against Hitler, accompanied as it was by its Empire.
Church-bashing is tiresome and often unjustified, but we need better arguments against it than comparisons with a neighbour that continues to hold on to unjustified patriotic fictions.
Yours etc.,
Gabriel Kelly,
Drogheda,
Co. Louth.
Contraception denies the sacramentality of the human body
Dear Editor, I enjoy reading Mary Kenny’s articles but I couldn’t disagree with her more on her recent one where she expresses her wish that the Church lifts its ban on artificial contraception (IC 20/04/2017). The crucial question is “What is the human body for and how is it sacramental?” That is to say, “For Christians, how do the activities of the body, especially in the marital act, reflect and manifest God’s life-giving creativity, love and tenderness?” To stunt the marital act with artificial contraception is to deny all of the “signs of God’s goodness” inherent in the act.
One of the greatest spiritual ills of our time (within Christianity!) is neo-Gnosticism, a failure to see that the living out of our faith is a bodily as well as spiritual journey and that these two dimensions of our existence are intertwined.
Regrettably, even within the Church, the faithful (following the secular world) are treating their bodies like machines that need to be serviced – as if our bodily behaviours have no effect on our soul. The use of contraception and the consumption of pornography are examples of this. The incarnation of Christ and his Gospel teach us that, through Baptism, our bodies become the dwelling places of the Holy Spirit: we meet Christ both in the flesh and in the spirit.
The Church has a duty to teach the faithful about what is ungodly….and ‘ban’ them (even though that is hardly a suitable word here).
We have a long way to go in the Church to recover the sacramentality of the human body….but in this is our salvation. Jesus rose from the dead and we believe in the Resurrection of the Body.
Yours etc.,
Fr Eamon Roche,
Midleton,
Co. Cork.
‘The nuns’ will not be running the hospital
Dear Editor, I am so fed up with all the nonsense and hysteria over the new National Maternity Hospital. The Sisters of Charity have kindly offered to give the State extremely valuable land in Dublin 4 in order to build the new hospital. The response in the public square, especially in social media, has been pure rage at the idea of ‘nuns’ being ‘gifted’ a hospital.
The new hospital will be completely independent of the Sisters of Charity, so ‘the nuns’ will not be running the hospital. It will be owned by the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and only two sisters sit on the board.
The claims that the land should be seized to pay the sisters’ outstanding €3m voluntary contribution to the redress board, is nonsensical, and frankly illegal! As Kieran Mulvey, who acted as a mediator for the hospital deal, has said, this is a separate clinical need for the women of Ireland, which should be allowed to go ahead untarnished.
As for Dr Peter Boylan claiming the nuns should be asked if they will allow gender reassignment operations, who exactly will be looking for that procedure in a maternity hospital, the pregnant mother or the newborn baby?
Yours etc.,
Philomena O’Brien,
Drumcondra,
Dublin 3.
Sisters should withdraw gift of land
Dear Editor, Here’s a suggestion in relation to the National Maternity Hospital due to be sited on the St Vincent’s campus in south Dublin: the Religious Sisters of Charity could simply withdraw their generous offer to gift the land to the State. That way, the State could seek a new site, build the new hospital wherever they like and grant ownership to whomever they like – thus avoiding further controversy.
Yours etc.,
Liam Collins,
Crumlin,
Dublin 12.
It’s time for Mary to make a comeback
Dear Editor,We will soon be entering the month of May – a beautiful month dedicated to Our Lady, God’s mother. It seems that May no longer holds the resonance it once did. The ubiquitous ‘May altars’ are no more, nor do I any longer see ‘May devotions’ advertised. It’s a pity. Without doubt, some of the pious traditions surrounding Our Lady are from another era, and best left in the past. But, Catholics would benefit from an authentic theology and spirituality around Mary that would emphasise her role in Salvation history. A spirituality that would underline the vital importance of the ‘yes’ of that young woman to God’s design to send a Saviour “born of a woman”.
Recent years have seen a tendency to downplay the role of Mary, seeing her as a meek secondary figure. But who cannot fail to marvel at the Mary of the Scriptures who refused to flinch when, to save the young couple’s blushes at Cana, boldly said to Jesus: “they have no wine”. Before turning to the servants with the beautiful prayerful “do whatever he tells you”. It’s time for Mary to make a comeback!
Yours etc.,
Martin Kenny,
Blackrock,
Co. Dublin.