Church at crossroads as Pope arrives says Bishop Leahy

Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy has said that visit of Pope Francis to Ireland is a crossroads moment for the Church in Ireland to acknowledge our past, good and bad.

In a pivotal moment in what he described as his own personal pilgrimage in preparation for the World Meeting of Families and visit of Pope Francis, Bishop Leahy said it is good for us to recall with a grateful heart just how much the Church contributed to Irish society.  But to acknowledge with gratitude the good can never eclipse recognition of sin, criminality and evil, he said.

We need, he said, to prepare for the Pope’s coming with a desire to want to “repair” the Church first of all by seeking forgiveness for the sins of the past.  As well as needing to pray for those who have been wounded we need to keep listening and to learn from them how to clarify and repair our church.

Bishop Leahy delivered his Feast of the Assumption of Mary homily at the Mass Rock in Killeedy, Co. Limerick, following Mass earlier at Ashford Church.  He chose the location as a symbolic gesture to bring, as is needed he said, the Catholic Church out into the open and to acknowledge the inspiration of not just Mary herself but also Limerick’s own St. Ita, after whom the parish of Killeedy is named.

“Without gratitude we grow cynical. We can and should be proud of the living commitment in faith and hope of those of previous generations. We can draw inspiration from it and express our thanks to them,” he said.

“But, then, we need to acknowledge the dark aspects of our Church’s history that have come to light especially in recent decades – a clericalism that ended up confusing power and ministry, the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and religious that did untold life-long damage to victims, the violent and repressive treatment by church representatives of young people sent to the State’s reformatory institutions, the dark experience of vulnerable women in places meant to be residences of refuge.  Sadly, as has been highlighted, cover-up, wilful or otherwise, and mismanagement compounded the damage, adding to our shame.

“We know that not every bishop or priest or sister or brother or lay person engaged in church circles was bad. And we know that not everyone was good. Those of us of a certain age, however, know many, many who were very kind, caring and helpful.  But to acknowledge with gratitude the good can never eclipse recognition of sin, criminality and evil. In some way, everyone in the church bears the shame of these darks aspects of our history. Few of us can throw stones as if we ourselves were not somehow associated.”

Bishop Leahy’s homily was built around three pillars for preparing for the Pope’s arrival, the first was the need to acknowledge the good and bad of the past, with the second that we need to be proactive in repairing the Church. It really is better, he said, to light a candle than curse the darkness.

“The Church isn’t just the Pope or bishops or priests or nuns. The Church is a people, it’s you and me who continue, despite (or, indeed, in and through) all our limits, to be Jesus Christ in this world. What’s most important in the Church is love. And this is why the family is so important. It’s the place where we first learn the ways of love. True, there’s no such thing as a perfect family. Each family is on a journey but it is the special place of love given, love received, love shared and experienced.”

The third element, he continued, was to look to the future with hope. “Catholics can be downbeat today because it is painful to acknowledge in our family story that we have wounded people. It isn’t easy, not least for those who are proud of their Church and the good work that it does and they do in it, to hear our own Catholic identity pilloried daily in one way or another.

“The group think that says to be Catholic is out of date seems sometimes overwhelming. But let’s remember, if Jesus had spent his time worrying about what people were saying about him or seeing how the numbers following him were declining - and the numbers following Jesus declined dramatically in his life time - he would have achieved little. Instead, he kept going forward in hope. Likewise, for us. We need to move forward, attentive to what the Spirit is saying to us,” he said.

Bishop Leahy said that it would be a shame to lose the memory of our Christian heritage.  “The Church of tomorrow will be very different,” he continued.  “To be Catholic isn’t simply about Mass on Sunday or certain moral rules or pious practices. Unfortunately, too often, and perhaps we ourselves are partly to blame, our Catholic faith has been reduced to this caricature.  Catholic faith is something much more alive and dynamic……

“It can seem at times in Ireland that religion has to be relegated to the private domain alone.  I acknowledge a Catholicism that spoke to a previous era might seem too confining to people today. There is a desire to break out, open new horizons, be in dialogue with world horizons, go beyond frontiers. But this is the very change the Catholic Church itself knows it needs.

“But in searching for the new, let’s be careful not to discard too easily what is valuable and noble and deep in our Irish Christian heritage. To throw away what seems no longer fit for purpose shouldn’t mean we end up eclipsing the huge resources of insight and wisdom, intellectual research and enlightenment within the Christian parameters that speak of human fulfilment and freedom.”

Addressing young people, he said: “There are many, many very fine young people today, with great values of respect and toleration and inclusiveness. Their difficulty with finding a connection with the Church isn’t their fault. We need young people to help Church-attending members to find the way forward on how to reconnect youth cultures and Church.  Might this visit of Pope Francis be a moment when young people might look again at what the Church really has to offer? We need you because you are part of our access to what God is saying to the Church today. We need you to help us find the ways towards the future that God has marked out for us all.”

Concluding, he added: “We’re here in a region associated with St. Ita, the great woman saint who built the Church community in her day. And today, Feast of the Assumption, we think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, our mother. She did the most important thing in history – she brought Jesus into the world and so transformed it. Now it’s our turn to do our part. Pope Francis’ visit is like an appointment with history for us. Let’s not miss it.”



Bishop Leahy’s full homily:

Limerick Diocese’s Preparation for Pope Francis

We are now beginning the Countdown to the World meeting of Families and the arrival of Pope Francis to our shores, the 266th Pope in history and only the second ever to visit Ireland. While the Pope is certainly a world celebrity and hugely popular for Catholics he is an instrument in the hands of God. Of course, he is a human being like all of us, a “sinner” as he defines himself, and yet he is a special person linked particularly to the Holy Spirit. As Catherine of Siena, one of the great women saints of the Church put it, the Pope is the gentle Christ on earth.

Our Lady of Knock - Queen of Ireland

Our Lady of Knock , Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to your people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow. You have inspired countless pilgrims to pray with confidence to your divine Son, remembering His promise, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find”. Help me to remember that we are all pilgrims on the road to Heaven. Fill me with love and concern for my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who live with me. Comfort me when I am sick, lonely or depressed. Teach me how to take part ever more reverently in the Holy Mass. Give me a greater love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Pray for me now and at the end of my death. Amen.

Follow the Lamb
(Source)

Right at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, there’s an extraordinary passage, rich in spiritual insight. Having sailed further than anyone before, the characters in the story have reached the edge of the world, and are on the border with ‘Aslan’s Country’ (an allegory of heaven). There, in this strange, liminal space, they meet a little lamb on a beach, a lamb ‘so white they could hardly look at it’. The lamb addresses the children ‘in its sweet milky voice’, and while Edmund and Lucy dialogue with him, a transformation takes place: ‘As [the Lamb] spoke, his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane’. Aslan the Lion, who of course represents Jesus Christ, had been showing himself to the children in the form of a Lamb.

If you’re familiar with the Book of Revelation, this Narnian scene might ring a few bells. In Chapter 5 of that book, John is shown a scroll sealed with seven seals which no-one can open. John weeps because the scroll cannot be opened, but is then told: ‘Weep not; behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals’. But when John looks up to see this great Lion, he sees instead ‘a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain’. The Lion of Judah is none other than the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

This scene from Revelation is essential to understanding the nature of Jesus Christ and his saving work, represented so clearly for us in the apparition at Knock. John is expecting to see a great strong beast who will tear the seals from the scroll, but is shown instead a slain little lamb, the very epitome of weakness, who is nevertheless ‘worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals’.

This gets to the heart of Christ’s saving work. Jesus Christ was true God, he created the entire universe, and holds it all in being, yet he came among us as a defenceless child, as a simple carpenter’s son, as one who weeps, is hungry, is rejected, and finally as one who suffers and dies on the Cross. At any point in his earthly life, he could have shown his omnipotence and vanquished all his assailants, but he deliberately chooses not to: the great Lion of the tribe of Judah shows himself as a slain Lamb.

And yet, in this deliberately chosen weakness lies the invincible strength of Christ’s work for our salvation. It is by means of his suffering and death that he saves us from our sins. The slain Lamb rises, victorious over death, scattering light on those who approach him, opening up the way to salvation. The Lamb of God is not a frolicking pet; He is powerful enough to ‘take away the sins of the world’. He is, as we love to sing in Knock, the Lamb who conquers.

What does all this mean for us? If the Lamb who appeared in Knock all those years ago is also the Lion of Judah, if his meek sweetness is allied to iron strength, how should we seek to follow him? How should we imitate his curious mix of weakness and strength?

There are many in the contemporary world, and especially in contemporary Ireland, who relish the idea of a weak Church. Some point to a time in the past when the Church had too much worldly power, and propose that the time is ripe for humility on the part of the Church. Others go further and suggest that the Church should have little to no role in official Ireland: no schools, no universities, no hospitals, no influence in public life. Christianity is thereby nicely neutered, and becomes so meek and mild as to be easily ignored. Strangely, this attitude is not just prevalent among those outside the fold, but also among many followers of Christ who are, perhaps, keen to avoid conflict.

There are others, far less numerous, who hope the Church will return to worldly power. Especially in the face of the rise of Islam, one hears murmurings of ‘new crusades’ and ‘muscular Christianity’. Strongman politicians in both east and west make gushing promises about the return of the Church to the corridors of power. What the Church needs, according to this approach, is more money, more buildings, greater manpower, and a new boldness.

Each of these approaches falls short of what it means to follow the Lamb-who-is-Lion, and each is boringly predictable. One is all Lamb and no Lion, the other is all Lion and no Lamb. To follow Christ authentically means being willing to be weak even when strength is an option, and being willing to be strong even when weakness is attractive. Christ is not ‘tame’, he is not domesticated or predictable, he does not fit into our worldly or political categories, and neither should his followers.

In our own times, perhaps the greatest example of such a follower was St Teresa of Calcutta, who visited this shrine in 1993. Think of how she deliberately chose weakness by responding to her ‘call within a call’: God’s invitation to leave the solid structures of the Loreto Sisters and serve the poorest of the poor by living among them. Here is the lamb who was slain. And yet, what a lion she was when she received her Nobel Peace Prize, shocking her bien pensant audience with her ringing denunciation of the violence of abortion.

Following the Lamb, in other words, being a Christian, is not something we can plan ahead of time. We can’t always know in advance when to be defiant in the face of injustice, and when to suffer it meekly, when to denounce wrongdoing, and when to tolerate it, when to preach the Gospel with words, and when to demonstrate it in silent actions. As followers of the Lamb-who-is-Lion we are called, not to predictable security, but to adventure. This adventure can be unsettling, but He is with us.

Together with all the living creatures and elders and angels of the Book of Revelation, let’s take this day in Knock as an opportunity to kneel before the Lamb and to say: ‘Lord, I let go of my own plans and projects, of my limited ideas and tame dreams. I let go of all these things and I choose to follow You, the Lamb who was slain, the Lion of Judah’.

Fr. Conor B. McDonough. O.P.

Bishop says church needs to recognise ‘dark aspects’ of its history

From The Irish Times

The visit of Pope Francis to Ireland is a pivotal moment for the church to acknowledge its past, good and bad, the Catholic Bishop of Limerick has said.

In a key homily delivered ahead of the second ever papal visit to Ireland, Bishop Brendan Leahy said, in some way, everyone in the church bears the shame of the dark aspects of its history.

Speaking at Mass Rock in Killeedy, Co Limerick, Bishop Leahy listed out the litany of grave issues that have damned the Catholic Church in Ireland over recent decades. He said, that as has been highlighted, cover up, wilful or otherwise, and mismanagement, had compounded the damage adding to the shame.

During what he described as his own personal pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families and visit of Pope Francis, the Bishop of Limerick said it was good to recall how much the Church contributed to Irish society. But to acknowledge with gratitude the good can never eclipse recognition of sin, criminality and evil, he added.

“We need to acknowledge the dark aspects of our Church’s history that have come to light especially in recent decades - a clericalism that ended up confusing power and ministry, the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and religious that did untold life-long damage to victims, the violent and repressive treatment by church representatives of young people sent to the State’s reformatory institutions, the dark experience of vulnerable women in places meant to be residences of refuge.

“Sadly, as has been highlighted, cover-up, wilful or otherwise, and mismanagement compounded the damage, adding to our shame.”

Bishop Leahy delivered his Feast of the Assumption of Mary homily on Wednesday morning at Mass Rock in Kileedy following earlier mass at Ashford Church. He chose the location as a symbolic gesture to bring, as is needed he said, the Catholic Church out into the open and to acknowledge the inspiration of not just Mary herself but also Limerick’s own St Ita, after whom the parish of Killeedy is named.

We need, he said, to prepare for the Pope’s coming with a desire to want to “repair” the Church first of all by seeking forgiveness for the sins of the past.

“We know that not every bishop or priest or sister or brother or lay person engaged in church circles was bad. And we know that not everyone was good. Those of us of a certain age, however, know many, many who were very kind, caring and helpful.

“But to acknowledge with gratitude the good can never eclipse recognition of sin, criminality and evil. In some way, everyone in the church bears the shame of these darks aspects of our history. Few of us can throw stones as if we ourselves were not somehow associated,” he continued.

Bishop Leahy said even though the Catholic Church in Ireland now has a range of services in place and very active training programmes in safeguarding, it needs to know how to stay with an awareness of the pervasiveness of abuse and those dark parts of our human nature that tend to exploit weakness and vulnerability.

“As well as needing to pray for those who have been wounded we need to keep listening and to learn from them how to clarify and repair our church,” he added.

Bishop Leahy said the church of tomorrow will be very different, and appealed directly to young people to find a way forward to reconnect youth cultures and church.

“Might this visit of Pope Francis be a moment when young people might look again at what the Church really has to offer? We need you because you are part of our access to what God is saying to the Church today. We need you to help us find the ways towards the future that God has marked out for us all.”