Picking up the Shards
by Donal Murray (Veritas, €12.99 / £11.52)
The author begins with a story about Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago.
Before he died, in a conversation with some of his priests he said: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” But he concluded: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilisation as the Church has done so often in human history.”
There are many examples in history of the Church having this role. Perhaps one of the most remarkable was the manner in which Irish missionaries contributed to the restoration of civilisation in Europe following the devastation wrought on the Roman empire by the Barbarians.
In our time Murray suggests that the Church should and could set about working to restore a more equitable, fairer and more just society, which, since it has been secularised, has been detached from Gospel values.
The need to do so is blindingly obvious. The political elite by their efforts – some intentional, some unintentional – have transformed Christian Europe into a mega-secular region. It is a polity characterised by post-truth, fake news, fake opinions, PR presentations, alternative truths and a pernicious relativism. Objective demonstrable truth takes second place to personal feelings and convictions. Discussion in the public forum is conducted not by rational argument but by emotional manipulation.
The result is the development of a legal system which embraces John Stuart Mills’ Utilitarianism and veers further and further away from moral principles. In a society formed by such a legal system the disadvantaged, the weak and the vulnerable are overlooked.
Intolerance
Uniformity is a feature of this new neo-liberal secularised ‘progressive’ society. Ironically the internet, the world wide web and social media tend to endorse its intolerance towards disparate opinions. In this environment freedom of expression, and at times even freedom of thought, seems to be in peril.
Representatives of the media ought to be champions of independent opinion. Yet many of them share a self-assured group-think which is not conducive to dialogue. There are shades of George Orwell’s 1984 and ‘Big Brother’.
Pope Francis has noted this stultifying uniformity of thought. In a homily on April 10, 2014 he stated: “Today uniform thought has been turned into an idol. Today one has to think in a certain way, and if you don’t think in this way you are not modern, you are not open.”
Representatives of the media ought to be champions of independent opinion”
Murray casts a cold eye on this environment and draws attention to the moral and social deficits of our individualist and consumerist society. He highlights the destructive effect of the modern relativist approach to reality and truth.
Thus the first imperative in attempting the ‘Picking up of the Shards’ of society is to encourage people to seek the truth and speak the truth. This timely and thoughtful monograph is a clarion call to fellow-Christians to undertake this challenge as their predecessors have done so often in former times.