Céide and Cardinal Connell

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?

To digress from religion for a moment: consider the recent revelations about the 1970s Arms Trial.  Captain James Kelly has been referred to on the airwaves as the Dreyfus of modern Irish history and is guarranteed a more favourable reception than hitherto.  (It is true that a terrible injustice was done to him - and now that he is "politically correct" how many new supporters will gather round him?).

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

little hope to Irish Catholic liberals who need leadership

Don'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.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 54, May-June 2001

Céide Pops it Clogs - Shall we dance?

CÉIDE POPS ITS CLOGS - SHALL WE DANCE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

 I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him - Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar

THERE is a difference between writing an obituary and dancing on someone's grave and by the time I am finished this article, I am sure no one will have any doubt as to which of the two I am indulging in here.  (If you have not already guessed when you saw my name under the above headline on the cover.)  I have had occasion to comment upon Céide in the past, after my attention was drawn to the magazine by the late Mgr Cremin.  Mgr Cremin was furious that the pre-launch publicity should advertise a robust respect for dissent.  When it was launched in September 1997, I said:

Céide, my friends, is a bunch of ancient hippies talking to themselves.  For all their talk of imagination and creativity, they offer only the smae worn-out clichés.  Harmless as it seems, this medicine has well-nigh destroyed the Church in Holland, Canada and elsewhere.  These guys just don't get it.  (BR, Issue 33)

I returned to the theme last year:

This [the American National Catholic Reporter] has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council.  It has been losing steam for some time...The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support.  Would Céide profit by their example (BR, Issue 54)

Signs of the times
Well now, maybe it is time for the National Catholic Reporter to imitate Céide - and fold.  Liberals always talk of the sings of the times and how we must interpret them.  So, let us look at a few signs of the times.  The contrast between the National Catholic Reporter and another American Catholic paper, The Wanderer, was interesting.  Some time ago, both seemed to have similar circulations.  But on investigation, the NCR's source of revenue was due to priests who ordered multiple copies for their churches.  The more conservative Wanderer relied principally on individual subscriptions from laity who went to the trouble to order it in the post.  It takes no logic to deduce which of the two had the greater support of a committed laity.  So what did the signs of the times indicate?  And now, the Wanderer has a clearer lead.

I don't know what the circulation of Céide was.  It may well have been several times that of the Brandsma Review, but I doubt it.  The point is that the Brandsma Review has reached its tenth anniversary (ad multos annos!) since the horrible days in the immediate aftermath of the X Case, and Céide will not see its fifth anniversary.  The Brandsma Review has been for the most part a lay enterprise, notwithstanding the support of Father Brendan Purcell and many other priests over the years - between contributors, promoters and subscribers.  Céide has been first and foremost a clerical initiative, with some lay collaborators.

The Brandsma Review has always been run on a shoestring budget and seeks to present its message unadorned to those who will read it.  Céide, on the other hand, was always an elegant production, complete with coloured photographs and a glossy finish.  The lack of advertisements was sufficient evidence of generous donors.  Nevertheless, the quality of the magazine was not enough to generate the necessary readership to sustain the magazine.  Therefore, why not question the message?
Charter for a People's Church
The editorial team in Céide had absolutely no doubt about the message.  In the final edition, their anonymous critic of ecclesiastical politics, An Ridire (the knight - the only Irish word apparently derived from the German language, from Ritter) spells out what the message is:

The success of the divine conspiracy - enforced accountability, decline of vocations, the growth of lay structures, the end of oppressiveness of clericalism, the sweep of democracy - will ensure the continued implosion of structures that militate against the progress of the Church, sharing the Good News.  The game is up, lads.  God's hand will not be stayed.

I thought this rather ironic.  It came at the end of a charter for a People's Church.  A People's Church which will be governed by lay structures, with

...[a] more creative and compassionate response to issues like divorce and remarriage...the reconstitution of a new priesthood will lead to married clergy and in time the ordination of women.  The next concerted push of the forces of democratisation...will sweep aside the creaky structures that paid too much respect to élites and hierarchies.

To the barracades, comrades!  When I read the above, I heard a choir singing in the back of my head: 

Partiya Lenina, sila narodnaya/Nas k torzhestvu Komunisma vedyot! (Party of Lenin, strength of the People/To Communism's triumph lead us on!)

For those who don't know, I am quoting the Hymn of the Soviet Union.  I am not accusing Der Ritter of being a Stalinist - only of being oblivious to the irony of using this type of rhetoric: the irony is that the game is actually up for Céide rather than for Our Mother, the Church.
On the margins? 
Since the first Pentecost, the Church has seen a lot of demagogues come and go, preaching all sorts of weird and wonderful things, just as she has seen all sorts of prophets of doom attacking her from the other side.  But Céide seems to have been frozen  into its own particular historical and geographical groove, unable in a serious way to engage either with contemporary cultures or - very importantly for Catholics (the Church does teach that tradition is a source of revelation) - with all the previous generations of Catholics in this and other Catholic cultures.  And the Céide people are themselves an élite and a hierarchy of sorts, supremely confident that they know best.

Céide forever prided itself on being on the margins.  Was it really?  It attracted some very heavyweight writers over the years.  It was very happy challenging the Church hierarchy, but did not relish opposing something like The Irish Times or the intelligentsia in this country.  Its target audience were not the underprivileged in Irish society - given the price and content of Céide and its failure to address their real concerns.

 The general views of this country's underclass on travellers and refugees, for example, would make the hair stand up straight or many politically-correct heads.  The only thing marginal about the magazine was how insignificant the Céide team were in the context of the bigger picture and how this reality was lost on them.
More mediaeval view
I am not sure any more if, strictly speaking, Céide was on the Left.  In some ways it was quite conservative.  I was personally educated in the Enlightenment ethos (which I have substantially rejected).  One of its tenets was the separation of Church and State and another was universal freedom of religion and conscience.

In one sense, it is of little significance how few in this country profess or practice Catholicism.  If it is a small minority, it is our duty to act as witnesses to the Faith in the hope of conversion through example, but we may not force the faith on anyone.  The Céide team seemed to have a more mediaeval view of the organic connexion between Church, State and society, believing society must be maintained within the Church at all costs.

If this meant the Church must embrace the mores of society, they seemed to regard this as preferable to writing off huge numbers of members.  Céide tended towards a form of Erastianism, based as much on public opinion as secular authority.  The imperative seemed to be to keep the 95% of citizens of the 26 counties who are nominally Catholic still actually calling themselves Catholic, in spite of deviations in faith and morals by a great proportion of them.
Crowning with Thorns
It would have been salutary for the Céide team to have reflected on the Third Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Crowning with Thorns.  Listen to the mob before Pilate: "We have no king but Caesar!"  Our Lord, with the mock crown on His head, clearly announces to Pilate that His kingdom is not of this world.  The Céide worldview did not seem to acknowledge the subtle distinction between sacred and secular authority.  You do not deny the kingship of Christ just to accommodate the crowd.

Given that Der Ritter gives divorce as an example of creative compassion, I seem to recall a particular divorce case where some creative compassion was demanded.  A certain progressive and very successful cleric reckoned he could acquire an annulment for his employer and failed, ending his life with the words "If only I served God as well as I have served my king..."  A reactionary layman stood up to the king at the time, at the cost of his life - and proclaimed himself at the scaffold to be "the king's good servant, but God's first".  If they don't know what I am talking about here, the writers in Céide would do well to rent the video A Man for All Seasons for a night.

 Well, Céide have not succeeded in accommodating the crowd.  Instead they have faded into oblivion, largely unnoticed by the world around them.  They have not impressed a new vision on the Catholic faithful in Ireland.  And for all their trumpet blowing, the desired innovations within the Church are as far away as ever.  And last time I checked, John Paul II was still Pope.

I do not believe this is the last we will hear from the Céide team - they will still be around for some time.  But they will not be so fast to launch a magazine like this again.  Their support base is not growing.  It is dwindling.

Now, can anybody strike up a hornpipe?  I think I want to dance.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 61, July-August 2002