Catechesis from Killaloe

CATECHESIS FROM KILLALOE

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Then Editor's note: Our writer Peadar Laighléis has been taken to task by the Bishop of Killaloe's Advisor on Primary Catechetics, Father David Carroll, over something he wrote in The Sunday Business Post on January 14 this year.  In the course of that article, Peadar analysed the vocations crisis in the light of the new catechetical programme, evaluated developments in sacred music and architecture, and examined the policies of conferences of bishops, priests and religious in regard to issuing official statements.  Here, he responds to Father Carroll's strictures:

WHILE I received the most positive feedback to The Sunday Business Post article from people I would never have expected of having an interest, I did notice none of those who supported its conclusions were priests.

In North America, the liberal National Catholic Reporter is described as the paper of the clergy and the conservative Wanderer is described as the laity's paper.  (They used to have the same circulation, but then the Wanderer began to soar ahead in the 1990s.  Recently, it began losing readers to the more reactionary Remnant.)

Does this suggest a dichotomy between clergy and laity here as in the United States and Canada?  I know The Irish Times would like to think the middle-aged, middle-class and middle-ability suburban wannabee priestesses Patsy McGarry has such a rapport with are representative of the Catholic laity.  But they are not, if for no better reason than that they have ceased to be Catholic.

Maybe most Irish priests believe what they read in The Irish Times.  I am reminded of Mgr Michael Nolan's assertion that the clergy read Irish newspapers which have an anti-Catholic bias, but have a problem with reading The Daily Telegraph, which is somewhat favourable towards Catholicism (relatively), because of its anti-Irish bias.  A very telling point.

Aimless meetings

I mentioned the aimless meetings parents are dragged to in preparation for their children's reception of the sacraments.  Fr Carroll says he puts a great deal of work into preparation and he states his aim as

to affirm parents in the difficult work of parenthood today

and

to offer support and information on their child's faith development.

Did I read this right? Surely Fr Carroll knows that both Church teaching and the Constitution establish the parents as the primary educators of their children?  If there is to be any transfer of information on a particular child's faith development, it should be the other way round.  I personally would be inclined to tell Fr Carroll, or his equivalent in my diocese, to mind his own business.  (I should say this question is academic, as I am not married and therefore do not have children.  Many graduates of the Children of God series do not seem to realise that there ought to be a connexion between the two.)

Fr Carroll is confident that the change in catechesis is welcome and that

Faith development and education takes account now of the age and learning abilities of the child

This is just an excuse: education is in trouble nowadays.  Illiteracy and innumeracy rates are rising.  Graduates, even in sciences and commerce, require calculators for the simplest mathematical problems.  Others rely on spell-check facilities on computers to write formal letters.  In spite of all the investment in the teaching of European languages in the schools, the average Leaving Certificate student can manage to be no more than a clever tourist.  Levels of knowledge of Irish have fallen contsiderably, in spite of rising investment.

Terrifying indictment

And then there is religion.  If I were to sit down and relate all the anecdotes I have heard regarding the lack of religious knowledge, I would put a very boring multi-volume series together.

About a century and a half ago, two Anglican clergymen thought they would have some fun with an eight-year-old peasant boy in the West of Ireland and see how much he knew about his faith.  They came away dumbstruck at the level of  knowledge he had gleaned from the catechism.

That boy contrasts quite well with the products of the newer techniques, reinforced with audio-visual aids.  Would one not expect to find the highest level of religious knowledge among seminarists or those preparing to be catechists?  Yet their frequent failure to distinguish between the Incarnation and the Immaculate Conception is well known.

The inability of those in the earlier years to distinguish between the Catholic teaching on the Mass and the teaching of Cramner, Calvin, Luther and Zwingli on the Lord's Supper is a terrifying indictment of the Catholic school system.  The poor understanding of the nature of the Redemption, consequent to the Incarnation, also indicates that we are in trouble.

Their lack of appreciation of other aspects of Catholicism, peripheral to the faith, is frightening.  I know of a priest of nearly 10 years standing who managed to get through six years in Maynooth, after 13 years in Catholic schools, and could still plead that he never heard of St  Joan of Arc (the editor knows this priest's name and diocese).  In this context, Fr Carroll's remark

helping children to understand what they are learning is hardly a crime.  Or would it be better to keep up levels of ignorance? [sic]

 is quite ironic

The role of Cathal Daly

Fr Carroll is perhaps unaware that a dedicated group of parents met the then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois in the early 1970s, Mgr Cahal Daly, with reservations about the Children of God series.  They were more concerned about what was omitted than what was included - things like original sin, grace and the soul - and things which were not developed adequately - Purgatory, Hell, the 10 Commandments, the Church, angels, the Holy Trinity.  (This is far from being an exhaustive list.)  The Bishop listened and then went to sing the praises of the new programme.

Well, Alive-O takes this a stage futher.  In addition to all the omissions, one has a series of New Age inspired rituals which I could only call weird, that the children are expected to perform.  When Rod Pead, editor of Christian Order, showed me some of the Alive-O materials, I told him I believed it went beyond mere deficiency - and that I would describe it as being unhealthy.  The Constitution of Ireland, thankfully, gives parents a right to withdraw their children from the religion class.

Then we have this howler from Fr Carroll:

Indeed if Alive-O or Children of God did ignore the teachings of the Church, then one would imagine that the Bishops of Ireland would not approve the texts for use in Catholic schools throughout Ireland.

Passing the buck

Is this guy for real?  Can anyone remember an interview on catechetics given to The Irish Catholic by Mgr Thomas Finnegan, Bishop of Killala - then spokesman for the Federated Union of Bishops?  My recollection is that His Lordship of Killala said that had there been anything wrong with the Alive-O programme, then the Roman Curia would have objected to its use.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam says "it was her", and points at the flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, and then Eve says "the devil made me do it".  If the children were taught this episode, they would have a splendid example of passing the buck - a very unoriginal sin.

There is a wealth of material in ecclesiastical documents on sex education, which the Church would prefer to see as the province of the home and family rather than the school.  The RSE programme is part of a greater Social, Health and Personal Education, which is cross-curricular.  So it can creep into lessons in arithmetic, art, history, geography - or religion.  The objectives of RSE and Alive-O may be very different, but the latter made no effort to restrict the former, in spite of the fact that some RSE is explicit to the point of being pornographic.

Laughable suggestion?

Then Fr Carroll goes to what he believes was the most important point to make about the entire article.  I said of the prospective seminarist:

He probably lacks the support of family or local clergy enjoyed by previous generations.

This I intended as a sympathetic assessment of the situation from the student's point of view.  Fr Carroll retorts:

But never since the day I entered seminary have I experienced a lack of support from family or friends.  To suggest that one could make such a decision without such support is laughable.

Who is laughing at whom?  If Fr Carroll has this marvelous support, he is very fortunate.  But he says more than that.  First of all he sees his priesthood as based on a decision.  Not a vocation from God?  Decisions relate to lifestyle options.

Secondly, he believes that to suggest this decision could be made without the support of family and friends is laughable.  So, St Thomas Aquinas resistance to his family to join the Dominicans is laughable?  Ss Edmund Campion and John Ogilvie joined the Jesuits and were martyred  - nobody supported these men.

If Fr Carroll really believes priesthood depends on support of family or friends, I wonder what he would do if this support were ever withdrawn.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 53, February-March 2001

An Insular Look at Irish Catholicism

AN INSULAR LOOK AT IRISH CATHOLICISM

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

IRISH AND CATHOLIC? Towards an understanding of identity.  Edited by Louise Fuller, John Littleton and Éamon Maher.  The Columba Press, Dublin, 2006.  256pp

A CAMEL could be a horse designed by a committee.  One would think that 16 academics might do better on the topic of Irish Catholic identity.

The phrase "Irish Catholic" rolls off the tongue easily, but neither word follows from the other.  As the universal faith, Catholicism does not mix with any particular ethnicity.  It is the very contrary of what Judaism is to the Jews or the Armenian Apostolic Church is to Armenians.  Nevertheless, Catholicism has left its mark on a great many nations, regions and peoples globally - of which Ireland is one.

This is why I find this book puzzling.  Why is France the only other model of a Catholic nation/culture with which Ireland is compared? It is probably true that most Irish Catholics, if asked to name a number of Catholic countries, would mention France, Spain, Portugal, Italy or Poland.  Though Ireland has much in common with each of these, they are not the best comparisons.  Four have long histories as sovereign Catholic states, whose Catholic communities have had to learn to live with major anti-Catholic influence since the 19th century.  The fifth was so big that none of its occupiers tried to impose another faith upon it and its 45 years of communist persecution did not come near what its neighbours suffered.
Netherlands and Quebec
The better models are less obvious.  For example, the Netherlands.  The Dutch Church was a minority that withstood centuries of persecution, to be one of the most religious societies in Europe, producing more missionaries in absolute terms than any other country.  The Dutch Church collapsed in the 1960s.  Outside Europe, Quebec was a similar example - an oasis of Catholicism in North America until the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s.  This saw Quebec go from being one of the most Catholic cultures on earth to being one of the most secular.

Where is the contrast?  Irish Catholicism, like Dutch and Quebecois Catholicism, is a case of a persecuted people who collectively and successfully resist that persecution.  But the resistance is based on a strong community effort - and when people collectively fail, that is it.  It will be interesting, maybe terrifying, to see how Lithuania copes with western secularisation.  Further removed are Bavaria and Slovakia, where Catholicism was a strong badge of regional identity in the face of oppression (Prussia and the Czech lands respectively), but this was not sustained for such a long time in either case.

That is personal opinion - the contributors don't deal in such analysis.  So their response to the particular crisis in Irish Catholicism, or the relationship between Ireland or the Irish and Catholicism is made in isolation.  Ireland is not even properly defined.  It appears to me that most contributors use it to mean the territory of the independent Irish state, ignoring the Catholics in the North, for whom the identity as Irish Catholics is a lot more important than south of the border.
Mother and Child Scheme
In respect of the Catholics in the South, there are many question marks.  I would ask the next commentator who refers to the Mother and Child Scheme two questions:

• Why was this piece of legislation passed without substantial amendment in the administration immediately following the First Inter-party Government? (Yes, I mean the Fianna Fáil administration led by Éamon de Valera).
• Why do commentators, particularly liberal churchmen, never mention that Noel Browne had a theological advisor - Rev. Professor P. Francis Cremin?

I could add more. For example, one of the reasons de Valera lost power in 1948 was the manner in which Fianna Fáil handled the striking national teachers.  This group normally voted Fianna Fáil.  In the course of the dispute, the government ignored entreaties by John Charles McQuaid.

Similarly, the 1937 Bunreacht an hÉireann is presented as an unequivocally Catholic document.  It is nothing of the sort.  Essentially it is the application of Anglo-American constitutional tradition to Ireland.  It does contain some very theological-sounding language in its human rights clauses.  But there are secular schools of natural law which use similar language.  The American Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, all of which had a huge influence on de Valera's republican movement, often used the same sort of language.

Landmark Supreme Court cases draw on American precedents in constitutional cases - not on Apostolic Signatura judgements.  Right now, the United States Supreme Court, with its Catholic majority, probably takes more from Thomism and the Irish Supreme Court probably looks more to the Enlightenment.  The Constitution in each country is what their respective Supreme Court says it is.  I officer this as a criticism of the view that the constitution is ipso facto a Catholic document.
Example to other countries
The Constitution is a deocument in which we ought to take a great deal of pride.  It is the oldest constitution in use in any state in which the human rights articles are part of the original document.  In 1949, Adenauer looked to the Irish Constitution as one of the models for the German Federal Constitution.  At roughly the same time, Nehru used it as an important model for the Constitution of India.  Somehow, I think this needs to be pointed out.

If the contributors do not see the constitution in context, neither do they see other facets of Irish and/or Catholic life in context.  More than a few contributors refer to the problems of sexual and physical abuse by priests and religious.  I deny neither that this is a major problem nor that the response of dioceses and religious congregations has been inadequate to say the least.

However, if one were to do a vox pop on the streets of major Irish cities, I would bet that many people perceive paedophilia as exclusively a problem of Catholic clergy and religious.  In fact the rate of offence is pretty consistent across all religious denominations, and offence by clergy (including rabbis, imams, bonzes, etc) is but a small percentage of the total.  This is something opinion makers should point out.

I suppose the most fatuous remark in the book comes from Dr Colum Kenny:

It is my belief that there is little evidence that the media in general was ever hostile to the Catholic Church in Ireland.  (p.98)

I cannot accept this - though I would agree with Dr Kenny's thesis that the media cannot be primarily blamed for the current crisis in the Catholic Church in Ireland.  When Mrs Margaret Heckler was stepping down as United States ambassador to Ireland in January 1989, she singled out the manner in which the Irish media dealt with the Church for special mention.  Others have repeated this: Damien Kiberd, former editor of The Sunday Business Post; and Dr Desmond Fennell come to mind.  Father Brian McKevitt OP has concerned himself with this problem for more than 20 years.

There were two Opinion pieces in The Irish Times about the Drogheda Mass [ie. Mass on Easter Sunday 2006 in the Augustinian Church in Drogheda, where the principal celebrant, Rev Iggy O'Donovan OSA invited the local Anglican rector to concelebrate with him and his two confreres] by another contributor to this book, Patsy McGarry - one after the Mass itself and then again after the apology [Fathers Iggy O'Donovan, Noel Hession and Richard Good were required by the Augustinian provincial to apologise to Cardinal Brady, in whose diocese the Mass took place, for their public breach of canon law in doing so].  This sort of partisan approach is seen across the whole media.  Views of people such as David Quinn are the exception which proves the rule.  Mr McGarry's own contribution essentially makes the point that the Catholic Church was nice and liberal until the Famine, but that then it became overly prudish and controlling.
Political correctness
What academics do to appear sophisticated is too predictable.  So when Eugene O'Brien deals with Father Ted and deconstuction, he seems to derive pleasure in repeating a four-letter word.  The comedy was discussed in this Review by Joe McCarroll, who pointed out it is was little more than a rehash of the drunken Irishman and the idiotic Irishman, but that they put on clerical collars to make it more politically correct.

There is nothing new about satirising clergy.  Even Dermot Morgan had an earlier clerical persona, Father Brian Trendy.  Some of us remember the insufferable Leave it to Mrs O'Brien, in which the central character was a priest's housekeeper.  The parish priest there was played by Pat Daly, who himself featured in Hall's Pictorial Weekly as Canon Romulus O'Dowd.

Long before the advent of electronic media, priests featured in jokes and folktales.  Not all were complimentary and some even had teeth.  But the extent to which these academics would rely on folklorists and/or anthropologists to demonstrate the evolution of Father Ted.... I would have thought deconstructionists would have an interest in this.

In relation to literary criticism, what the contributors are determined to see in a collection of second-rate writers, I am not sure.  It is true that good points are made by three of the analysed writers - John Broderick is noted as having hated the new Mass; Brian Moore wrote a novel, Catholics, about a monastery off the south-west coast continuing to use the old Mass, but the novel is a vehicle to express the disappointment of Ireland's Massgoers at the liturgical changes.  This would be a very interesting point to examine: in particular why, in spite of so much discontent, no formal traditional movement emerged in Ireland until much later.

Patsy McGarry makes a very fair point, which needs development, that the changes shook the older generations' faith.  They continued to practice out of cultural habit, but the younger people detected a shock.  I believe this was true, and I am waiting for some analysis of the monies spent on re-ordering of churches in the face of widespread objection - in spite of the fact that the Second Vatican Council provided no mandate for such changes.  I think this, rather than Humanae Vitae, ate into religious practice.  It is true that reaction to Humanae Vitae kicked in later, but not immediately.

This brings me to a third author in the survey - Dermot Bolger.  There is no doubt that Dermot Bolger is a liberal who broadly accepts the sexual revolution as a good thing.  But he also loves to shock.  In his earlier writings, he attacked Catholic icons.  Now, he uses religion to make his secular audiences uncomfortable.  But he does raise questions about the present direction of Irish society.  The only other contributor who raises this question is Father Patrick Claffey SVD.  Father Claffey gives a reminiscence of his formative years in Co Roscommon prior to joining the Divine Word Missionaries and leaving Ireland, then his experience on return.  Father Claffey gives no nostalgic account of the past, but does give a critical view of the present.
Missed opportunities
This book is filled with missed opportunities.  It is easy, and even popular, to dismiss the past.  It is a lot more important to criticise the present.  The contributors fail to do this.  They fail to address the question of Catholic identity in general and the world-wide crisis of identity  among Latin-rite Catholics.  This is because they approach Irish Catholicism in isolation.

Though it is true that the concept of Irish identity which was popular between independence and the outbreak of the Northern Ireland conflict was very narrow and even flawed, the contributors fail to criticise the absence of a common view of Irish identity ever since, or how patriotism devolved into following the triumph (or otherwise) of international sports contestants.

Northern Ireland need not exist for all the attention it gets in this volume.  And if you thought the book was directed at an educated readership, Father John Littleton gives a translation of all the Latin terms he quotes in his article.

One of the contributors adapts a line from Frank McGuinness's play Innocence, about the artist Caravaggio: "I have looked on God and found him lacking".  To paraphrase both, I read the book...and found it lacking.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 84, May-June 2006.

I have added notes in square brackets to explain the significance of the Drogheda Mass referred to above which was current when this article appeared.