CÉIDE AND CARDINAL CONNELL
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS
CÉIDE is a disingenuous magazine. It has adopted the motto Doras Feasa Fiafraighe which it translates as "The door to knowledge is questioning". Fiafraighe is more accurately translated as "asking" rather than "questioning".
Anyway, the Céide people are not good questioners. For example, while they insist upon questioning every aspect of Catholicism which readers of The Brandsma Review accept, why are they so confident about the fruits of the Second Vatican Council?
Why can they not see the irony of calling Céide a "review from the margins" while touting articles by such establishment figures as Garrett FitzGerald, Michael D. Higgins and Mary Robinson (who all have more than their share of questionable actions - unquestioned by an uninquisitive media)? Why do they accept the media's assertion that journalists, both print and broadcast, do not form but reflect public opinion?
But is anyone going to sit down and analyse the media presentation of the political protagonists in the intervening years: Messrs. Lynch, Gibbons, O'Malley, Haughey and Blaney? Céide correspondent Dr FitzGerald got away with referring to Mr Haughey's "flawed pedigree" in Dáil Éireann in 1979, by which he meant the arms trials rather than the more recent allegations of corruption.
Remember how bright the Progressive Democrats were painted in 1985, about two and a half years before they proposed their Godless Constitution on Trinity Sunday of 1988? But I am not dwelling on the political vagaries of the last 31 years, only the media's assertions about itself that Céide has no trouble accepting.
I would have thought Dr FitzGerald should be ashamed to comment on Ireland's birthrate, as he does in the April/May Céide. His 1982-1987 coalition closed Carysfort College, confident there would soon be a shortage of primary school children (Family Planning [Amendment] Act, 1985?). They got it badly wrong: this is a severe shortage of primary teachers now.
Forgive my brief partisan digression.
Knack of opening doors
Céide has a problem with Cardinal Connell. I must confess I had a good gloat over the commentary by Fathers Hegarty, Hoban and other anonymous sources sitting at the feet of Rev Michael Enda McDonagh - in quick succession Professor of Moral Theology in Maynooth; chaplain to Mary Robinson in the Park; and President of the People's Democratic Union of Priests. Can anyone tell me what Father McDonagh's handshake is like? I would love to know. He seems capable of opening so many doors - though his friend Dr FitzGerald failed to talk Monsignor Alibrandi into moving him into a big house in Tuam in the 1980s.
It is funny that these middle-aged established clerics were so shocked at the advent of a bright young orthodox priest called Fr David O'Hanlon, who was caricatured in Céide's commentary. (Hang out with Father David for too long and you won't be invited to suburban middle class semi-ds by non-practicing 30-somethings for Chablis and Brie). Well, they seem to find the septuagenarian cardinal as threatening as the notorious trigintarian curate.
They are hurting
They don't quite say that Cardinal Connell should not have got the red hat. But they are terribly hurt on behalf of liberal Irish Catholics and Protestant churchmen (who, Father Hegarty tells us, are also disciples.) Dominus Iesus and intercommunion are the stumbling blocks in regard to the latter.
I have already stated Céide's mantra "Vatican II" (Has anyone analysed this 36-year old fundamentalism - the cult of the Spirit-of-Vatican II?). So would it come to a surprise to them that Dominus Iesus might be a rehash of Dignatatus Humanae, the Declaration of Religious Liberty? Dominus Iesus is founded on the conciliar documents as it is written - not on what a manipulative intelligentsia, both ecclesiastical and secular has duped the tea-and-biscuit ecumenists into thinking it says.
Traditionalists have heard endless debates about the use of the Latin verb subsistere (which doesn't quite mean "to subsist") in regard to the Church of Christ in the visible Catholic Church. This led to a reaction against the document on the council floor. Dominus Iesus now apologetically uses the same verb, and largely repeats what was stated. Although it has been denounced as heresy by extreme Dominican supporters of the Society of St Pius X in Avrillé, the greatest opponents of the new document are those who purport to be loyal adherents to its mother-document.
Archbishop Wojtyla, who was influential in the debate on religious liberty at the Council and the framing of the Declaration, is now portrayed as the reactionary pontiff who tenaciously holds on to life. Rev Professor Joseph Ratzinger, friend of Rahner and Küng, is now the Grand Inquisitor of a reformation tract. And Dominus Iesus is open to vilification. One cannot help but question the leadership of the Pontifical Council Promoting Christian Unity, since the time of Cardinal Bea. So is it really a case of Bea culpa, Bea culpa, Bea maxima culpa?
Shooting the messenger
Monsignor Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, defends the document. This earns him the ire of liberals, who prefer the Second Vatican Council the way they imagined it rather than the way it was. Rev Patrick Jones of the National Liturgy Centre must find this every time some erudite lay observer reminds him that Sacrosanctum Concilium did not mandate the gutting of church sanctuaries, and can quote the document. It goes a lot further than church architecture: eg, it states that Latin should remain the language of the Mass; and that Gregorian chant should be the norm for sung Masses.
And there are more where that came from. The Council Documents also ask priests and religious to continue wearing a distinctive mode of dress. The Second Vatican Council did not, or could not, accept the reformed sects as "sister churches" and neither does Dominus Iesus. Cardinal Connell states this, and the liberal approach is to shoot the messenger. But that is to be expected from a clergy who are quite used to twisting their presentation of the faith to suit themselves.
Orthodox on intercommunion
As for intercommunion, ecumenism and ecumania - I lament we do not have a larger Eastern Orthodox community in this country. In that case, ecumenism would have a more balanced focus. I would relish seeing well-heeled liberal Catholics refused communion by bearded archimandrites at the iconostasis.
Over a decade ago, a delegation from the Russian Church (before the fall of the Soviet Union) visited Maynooth. An ill-informed deacon offered the Metropolitan of Odessa the chalice at Mass. The Metropolitan refused. This has not entered the lore of intercommunion on these islands. So when Archbishop Connell offends a number of religiously illiterate bourgeois housewives in BASIC who socialise with The Irish Times' Patsy McGarry (who also contributes to Céide), he gets vilified. And Father Hegarty sees Dr Connell's new red biretta as giving
Left losing support
Céide also names Father Vincent Twomey SVD, lecturer in Moral Theology in Maynooth as Connell's ultimate successor. As I have no access to their crystal ball, I will not comment. Fr Twomey studied under Ratzinger at Regensburg in the late 1960s, after the future Cardinal moved away from the jet-setting theologians who founded Concilium.
Céide's main source of information on Father Twomey is John Allen's new biography of Cardinal Ratzinger. John Allen is a correspondent with the American National Catholic Reporter. This has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council. It has been losing steam for some time recently, as it has noticed that the younger generation of American Catholics is either leaving the Church altogether (often to become Eastern Orthodox or evangelical protestants) or going to conservative, traditionalist or eastern Catholic movements. The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support. Would Céide profit by their example?
Swipe at St Thérèse
Céide have some solutions of their own. They suggested that when Jim Cantwell retired from the Catholic Press and Information Office, he be replaced by a bright young woman like Annette O'Donnell. Do they seriously believe that perception is everything? I think they seriously need to question the media. And they also propose Father John O'Donoghue as the perfect candidate to translate the Church's spiritual treasury into the language of the unchurched young (this is my terminology). Father O'Donoghue did not even identify himself as a priest in Anamchara, which was a highly questionable work anyway.
Father Hoban denigrates alternatives to Anamchara, such as trips to Medjugorje and tours of boxes of relics (a swipe at St Thérèse of Lisieux). In the first instance, the Medjurgorje phenonomen has not been (and is unlikely to be) authenticated by the Church, and pilgrimages there are private affairs. And the tour of St Thérèse's relics is based on an initiative of the laity - not the hierarchy, not the clergy and not the religious.
Spiritual bankruptcy
This is something that Father Hoban should reflect upon: the paternalistic liberals dominating the Irish clergy do not seem to accept the fact that the most dedicated among the laity now have a different vision to them. Has the faith they once possessed deserted them so completely that they react against anything tainted by traditional Catholicism - even though, in the majority of instances, this does not in fact come from traditionalists?
Do they not see that the apparitions and the prayer-groups and the new devotions are born out of the spiritual and sacramental bankruptcy of many pastoral settings? The present state of affairs has its origin in a false reading of the Second Vatican Council. Céide follows The National Catholic Reporter in this respect.
The Brandsma Review, Issue 54, May-June 2001Archbishop Wojtyla, who was influential in the debate on religious liberty at the Council and the framing of the Declaration, is now portrayed as the reactionary pontiff who tenaciously holds on to life. Rev Professor Joseph Ratzinger, friend of Rahner and Küng, is now the Grand Inquisitor of a reformation tract. And Dominus Iesus is open to vilification. One cannot help but question the leadership of the Pontifical Council Promoting Christian Unity, since the time of Cardinal Bea. So is it really a case of Bea culpa, Bea culpa, Bea maxima culpa?
Shooting the messenger
Monsignor Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, defends the document. This earns him the ire of liberals, who prefer the Second Vatican Council the way they imagined it rather than the way it was. Rev Patrick Jones of the National Liturgy Centre must find this every time some erudite lay observer reminds him that Sacrosanctum Concilium did not mandate the gutting of church sanctuaries, and can quote the document. It goes a lot further than church architecture: eg, it states that Latin should remain the language of the Mass; and that Gregorian chant should be the norm for sung Masses.
And there are more where that came from. The Council Documents also ask priests and religious to continue wearing a distinctive mode of dress. The Second Vatican Council did not, or could not, accept the reformed sects as "sister churches" and neither does Dominus Iesus. Cardinal Connell states this, and the liberal approach is to shoot the messenger. But that is to be expected from a clergy who are quite used to twisting their presentation of the faith to suit themselves.
Orthodox on intercommunion
As for intercommunion, ecumenism and ecumania - I lament we do not have a larger Eastern Orthodox community in this country. In that case, ecumenism would have a more balanced focus. I would relish seeing well-heeled liberal Catholics refused communion by bearded archimandrites at the iconostasis.
Over a decade ago, a delegation from the Russian Church (before the fall of the Soviet Union) visited Maynooth. An ill-informed deacon offered the Metropolitan of Odessa the chalice at Mass. The Metropolitan refused. This has not entered the lore of intercommunion on these islands. So when Archbishop Connell offends a number of religiously illiterate bourgeois housewives in BASIC who socialise with The Irish Times' Patsy McGarry (who also contributes to Céide), he gets vilified. And Father Hegarty sees Dr Connell's new red biretta as giving
little hope to Irish Catholic liberals who need leadershipDon't they have the media to lead them where they want to go?
Left losing support
Céide also names Father Vincent Twomey SVD, lecturer in Moral Theology in Maynooth as Connell's ultimate successor. As I have no access to their crystal ball, I will not comment. Fr Twomey studied under Ratzinger at Regensburg in the late 1960s, after the future Cardinal moved away from the jet-setting theologians who founded Concilium.
Céide's main source of information on Father Twomey is John Allen's new biography of Cardinal Ratzinger. John Allen is a correspondent with the American National Catholic Reporter. This has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council. It has been losing steam for some time recently, as it has noticed that the younger generation of American Catholics is either leaving the Church altogether (often to become Eastern Orthodox or evangelical protestants) or going to conservative, traditionalist or eastern Catholic movements. The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support. Would Céide profit by their example?
Swipe at St Thérèse
Céide have some solutions of their own. They suggested that when Jim Cantwell retired from the Catholic Press and Information Office, he be replaced by a bright young woman like Annette O'Donnell. Do they seriously believe that perception is everything? I think they seriously need to question the media. And they also propose Father John O'Donoghue as the perfect candidate to translate the Church's spiritual treasury into the language of the unchurched young (this is my terminology). Father O'Donoghue did not even identify himself as a priest in Anamchara, which was a highly questionable work anyway.
Father Hoban denigrates alternatives to Anamchara, such as trips to Medjugorje and tours of boxes of relics (a swipe at St Thérèse of Lisieux). In the first instance, the Medjurgorje phenonomen has not been (and is unlikely to be) authenticated by the Church, and pilgrimages there are private affairs. And the tour of St Thérèse's relics is based on an initiative of the laity - not the hierarchy, not the clergy and not the religious.
Spiritual bankruptcy
This is something that Father Hoban should reflect upon: the paternalistic liberals dominating the Irish clergy do not seem to accept the fact that the most dedicated among the laity now have a different vision to them. Has the faith they once possessed deserted them so completely that they react against anything tainted by traditional Catholicism - even though, in the majority of instances, this does not in fact come from traditionalists?
Do they not see that the apparitions and the prayer-groups and the new devotions are born out of the spiritual and sacramental bankruptcy of many pastoral settings? The present state of affairs has its origin in a false reading of the Second Vatican Council. Céide follows The National Catholic Reporter in this respect.
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