Should more energy be put into sacramental preparation programmes?
Dear Editor, Chai Brady reported (July 10) that the percentage of baptised children making First Communion and Confirmation is declining. The Iona Institute argues that the decrease makes a strong argument for a further divestment of Catholic schools, perhaps arguing that the Church should focus on those who want to commit to the Catholic faith rather than facilitate what are sometimes described as ‘á la carte Catholics.’ Like many Parish Pastoral Councils, we are wondering about continuing with the status quo or putting more energy into preparing families who want to engage with sacramental preparation programmes.
There is no doubt that whatever we decide to do, we will have to make greater efforts to explain the meaning behind our sacraments in simple and concise language, but most especially why our Catholic faith is so important to us who try live it out each day.
Yours etc,
Deacon Frank Browne,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 14
Assisted suicide legality is devastating
Dear Editor, a documentary screened recently focused on an individual who was found to be the source of a poison bought and sold on the internet specifically to assist suicide.
The film followed the concerns of those family members bereaved and grieving the death of a loved one, who they discovered had been customers of this vendor of poison, and their futile efforts to get the police force to do something about it.
The elephant in the room is the lack of attention paid to the fact that the legislators of many countries in Europe and the Americas have made not only suicide legal, but the assistance of suicide legal.
If it’s legal, then no crime has been committed and therefore the police cannot intervene.
We may feel that it is wrong, but we will be told that this a privately held opinion, a moral judgement, or merely a religious conviction.
The reality of what happens when we make ‘assisted suicide’ legal has not yet hit home. Only when advertisements are placed in the media, on buses, bus shelters etc., where competitors in the suicide industry will have slogans to entice the public to purchase their ‘product’ will we wake up to the devastating reality of what we have made lawful.
Yours etc,
Maria Ni Mhurchu
Broadstone, Dublin 7
Archbishop Sherrington’s All Hallows days
Dear Editor, in the early 1990’s, All Hallows College opened its doors to mature lay students, men and women. They shared lectures with the remaining seminarians. There was an air of intimacy and friendliness. The priest lecturers were known as Bob, Brian, John, etc…
One morning the class was addressed by a young and popular English priest, Fr John Sherrington. He began by saying that he was going to speak about “Dorothy Day.” I rudely, and in some amusement interjected, “You mean John, ‘Doris Day.” With a smile he replied, “No, it will be ‘Dorothy’ this morning.”
I wonder when the newly installed Archbishop of Liverpool recalls his All Hallows day, he hardly remembers the cheeky extra mature student and Doris Day!
Yours etc,
Patrick Fleming
Glasnevin, Dublin 9
Is the subject of abortion regarded as done and dusted?
Dear Editor, why do pro-life people continue to march through the streets of Dublin in their thousands, still protesting against the Irish abortion law, seven years after its introduction? Do they not realise that for many Irish people, the subject of abortion is regarded as done and dusted? Could these people be delusional?
In a word, No. These people know that the future belongs to those who show up. On July 5, they showed up once again and marched through the Capital with their banners, fired up by a deep sense of injustice, recognising that every abortion ends a human life, however tiny. They marched to demand the right to conscientious objection for all healthcare workers who refuse to have hand, act or part in such a procedure. And at one point the marchers stood in dignified silence to grieve for the 50,000 innocent lives lost to abortion in Ireland since 2018.
One of the inspiring speakers was Dr Haywood Robinson, a former abortionist and co-author of the book The Scalpel and the Soul: Our Radical Transformation as Husband-and-Wife Abortion Doctors. Dr Robinson spoke of the untruths rampant in the abortion industry, especially the portrayal of abortion as healthcare and he deplored the culture of death that it has engendered worldwide.
Like another speaker, organiser Niamh Uí Bhriain, Dr Robinson believes that change will eventually come on this issue. He compared the present pro-life protests to the work of the Quaker preacher John Woolman and of President Abraham Lincoln who campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of slavery in the colonial era in America. With the passion of a convert, Dr Robinson now works towards the day when the very idea of deliberately destroying unborn human life will be as unthinkable as slave ownership.
Yours etc,
Sinéad Boland
Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow
A philosophical view on humour
Dear Editor, “Does God have a sense of humour?” Fr Rolheiser asked in his column of July 3. A very interesting topic, certainly, but one that calls for more analysis than the writer has given it here. What is missing, I feel, is some philosophical angle, some outline of a hierarchy of values that would allow us to rightly acknowledge the value of humour and wholesome light-heartedness.
Such light-heartedness can surely only come when our heavy-heartedness is lifted. Wordsworth, for example, found such relief when, out once again on the hills revisiting Tintern Abbey, “the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world / [Was] lightened”. Yes, once an anchor value is in place, the rest will happily, relaxedly circulate round it. “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given you besides” is the Christian form of such a value.
Another, more modern poet comes to mind, Philip Larkin. He visits a church in a curious, playful mood, even “larking” about (!) by reading at the lectern some “hectoring large-scale verses”. His mind continues exploring the whole topic of faith, however, until he gains an insight into what role a church has always played and can still do: “a serious house on serious earth it is”. Humour as a subordinate or auxiliary value, then, can liberate thought and lead it very gently up the steep slope to the heart of the matter.
Yours etc,
Donal McMahon
Saggart, Dublin 24