Caitriona McClean presents twelve interviews she conducted with people involved for many years in pastoral ministry in Ireland. They are frank and open conversations, easy to read and with an infectious energy.
pp 129. Exposure Publishing, an imprint of Diggory Press, Three Rivers, Minions, Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 5LE UK. To purchase this book online go to www.diggorypress.com
CONTENTS
Introduction
Conclusion
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Review |
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CHAPTER EIGHT
AN INTERVIEW WITH LARRY WHITE, PP, BRAY, CO WICKLOW
How do you see the Catholic Church today?
Before I answer that question it is important to say that my opinion and my point of view come from my perspective. It is limited; it is a view from one point, namely my experience and my reflections on these experiences.
The Church as I see it is in a time of transition, it is in a process of change. That is nothing new: it has
always been like that. History is a process of evolution and change so we should not be surprised if the Church also is evolving in parallel with society. It is a painful process of letting go of certain securities and
moving on with trust and faith to face the issues and challenges of a changing world. The challenge for the Church as I see it is how to make the Gospel relevant to a modern world and to convince the world that it is something positive and life giving.
This insecurity of letting go and also of wanting to hold on always creates a tension both within the Church and within each person. I like the metaphor which is often at the heart of the old western movies where you have the tension between the ‘pioneer’ and the ‘settler’. The settler likes security and to know where they are. They like to feel settled and at home; they are attracted to boundaries, feeling safe and certain. They see life in terms of black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, and no grey areas. For a settler you want to stand on firm ground. It can appear like an attractive place to be and for many that is the kind of Church they crave. It provides roots and a sense of identity but there is also the pioneer and this is the person who is always looking for new pastures, always uneasy, unsettled, asking questions: the one who always wants to push the boat out into the deep and not remain settled in calm waters. It is sometimes a very uncomfortable place to be. I like to think that Jesus was a pioneer. He wanted to push the boat out.
He challenges us not to settle for the ordinary or mundane, but to grow and change: to develop as a human being both in ourselves and in our relationship with God. Perhaps Jesus challenges us to allow unfold the essence of who we truly are.
These polarizations create a tension within the Church but it is also a healthy tension. While I am personally attracted to the image of the pioneer it is important not to lose sight of the richness and wisdom of the settler.
While the Catholic Church in the western world is reeling and rocking and in crisis due to recent sex
abuse scandals and compounded by the inept and disastrous way they were handled by the Church, the Irish Church has an added problem that it is coming out of an era in Ireland where it wielded huge influence and control in Irish society. The backlash from the sex abuse scandals and how they were badly handled and the loss of the Church’s power and influence has damaged morale within the Church and brought it to its knees. There is a huge reaction against the Church as an authoritative, controlling and over-influencing organization. But to be fair perhaps the huge positive contribution that the Church has made to Irish society in the past has been conveniently forgotten.
The present situation may also be a time of great opportunity. It has forced us to ask some serious questions about what kind of a Church do we want to be. Maybe it has also forced us to revisit the message of Jesus in the Gospels. Anthony de Mello talks about the Church as a finger pointing to the moon. Sometimes we get distracted talking about the shape of the finger, its colour, and size, and forget where it is pointing. The Church is fundamentally a signpost. It does not have a meaning in itself. It only has a meaning insofar as it is promoting the Gospel and the vision of Jesus. It is about mission, evangelisation, and building the Kingdom of God. I often like to think that the time will come when the Church will cease to exist; which is to say that it is not about itself, but at the service of promoting the Kingdom of God. I am not sure that the Kingdom of God is just some future place or state we call heaven and yet that raises fundamental questions for all Christians. What is the meaning of our lives and is there life after death? The Kingdom of God may also be about the kind of society we want to live in and how we as human beings can grow and mature and fulfil our potential. This is a time of great challenge and great opportunity for the Church, painful as it may be, but also with great possibilities of potential.
I also see difficulties and so I am hopeful without being over optimistic. There is a danger of the Church “circling the wagons”, “battening down the hatches”, and hoping and praying that the recent storms will go away. To use another metaphor it may try to put the toothpaste back into the tube. The fearful settler may be afraid of new horizons and will try to stifle new growth and new hopes. A return to the old order of strict boundaries, false certainties, and a fundamentalist controlled Church.
One of the things that have always attracted me to the Church is that it is Catholic, it is universal, it has a
vision of inclusiveness. That there is a space for free spirits. It would be sad if we define good Catholics as those who only attend Mass or as it is in certain parts of the world you have to sign up to be part of the Church, conform to defined rules and regulations and of course pay your contributions. It is like joining a club and a rather exclusive club at that. I am reminded of a story that spells out that danger and the consequences attached to it. It goes like this. On a sea coast where shipwrecks often occurred there was once a crude little life-saving station. Its volunteers would go out day and night in search of people who were shipwrecked and drowning. Many people were saved by this crude little life-saving station and so it became famous. Many people wanted to be associated with the station. They raised money, built a new clubhouse, got new boats and hired new crews. It became a popular gathering place for all involved. After a while many were not interested in going out on life-saving missions because it disturbed the normal social life of the club. At the next AGM there was a split in the membership. Those who wished to continue with life-saving activity were voted down and told that if they wished to continue with life-saving activity they should move down the coast. So they did. The same thing happened to the new station. It evolved into an exclusive club. If you visit that sea coast today you will see a number of exclusive clubs dotted along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in these waters but most of the people drown. Perhaps that is the challenge facing the Church today.
Is there a place in our Church where we can also deal with diversity, where we can deal with the messiness of life? The message of the Gospel is one of liberation, hope and good news that good will overcome evil, love is stronger than hatred and life will overcome death. It is also about trusting in the good that is in people. I think in the Church we tend to doubt people rather than trust them. We can over-emphasise the original sin image that we are fundamentally flawed, which we are; but this does not define all of who we are. I feel it is better to begin to understand the human person not as bad people who sometimes do good things but good people who are not perfect. If we begin from that starting point we build on the positive and encourage the good in people. I remember a lovely phrase from my training as a psychotherapist at the Institute of Psychosynthesis which describes the human journey as a process of the unfolding of the essence of who we are. I think that is a very healthy and positive principal at both the psychological and spiritual level. Perhaps part of the mission of the Church is to encourage, facilitate and enable that to unfold in each person. I like to see my role as a priest helping to remove the blocks that stop us from trusting and believing in our own spirit and of allowing us to be aware ‘of the spark of the divine that is within us’. I know from my own experience that when you encourage people it brings out the best in them. If you continue to criticize and condemn people it just creates victims.
Maybe the Church needs to remind us of our goodness and enable us to celebrate it and mark it. To tell us again and again of the all embracing love of God and that nobody is excluded or abandoned from that gift of God’s love. We often forget, we get distracted, we get brainwashed by our consumer society, and as a result we sell ourselves short when we worship in the new shopping centers that have become the shrines to the God of consumerism, or when we believe that supporting Manchester United is the new religion.
We do have to look more closely at what draws people to seek meaning and life from these things. As a Church we need to be in the marketplace. We have a good product but maybe as a Church we are not the best at promoting and marketing our product. I think we have to see religion and the spiritual dimension of the human person not as an optional or added-on dimension to the person but as an integral part of who we are.
It may come across to some people as a minority sport but I believe it is at the heart of who we are. I don’t think it is just about the Church bringing the message of the Gospel to the world but drawing it out and helping it find expression in the lives of people.
One important challenge today for the Church is to name the sacred in the secular and find ways of understanding it, celebrating it through ritual and sacred rites. The marketplace is where people live their lives and find their meaning, celebrate their lives and live their responsibility. This may be a big shift from the approach of ‘you have to join us and we will tell you what to do’ instead of going out there and walking the journey in people’s struggle and difficulties, and mutually sharing our faith and problems, and thus discovering the Spirit of God engendered in those experiences.
I am reminded of a lovely story that sums up what I am saying. There was once a priest who was sent to preach the Gospel in parts of Africa where they never heard of Jesus before. For some time he reflected on how he would go about it. He decided that he would meet with groups of people in the villages once a week and would tell them the stories of what Jesus said and did. They would then discuss them and see how they applied to their lives. This seemed to work very well. After some time the local bishop heard about his work and inquired whether the people knew that they were Catholics and what was a Sacrament. The priest
replied ‘we didn’t get to that yet’. The bishop said ‘they must know what a Sacrament is and you must baptise them as Catholics as soon as possible’. So at the next meeting the priest said to the people ‘today I want to tell you about a Sacrament. A Sacrament is an encounter with God and we have seven Sacraments’. At this the people began to talk among themselves. The priest was surprised. One of the leaders spoke up and said: ‘Father, did we hear you correctly a Sacrament is an encounter with God?’ ‘Yes’ said the priest ‘and we have seven such Sacraments.’ The leader said ‘We are very confused. We thought there would be at least seven hundred’. At that moment the priest realized that instead of enlarging their awareness of God he was limiting it. Maybe that is what I mean by naming and celebrating the sacred in the secular of people’s lives.
Another issue is the ongoing tension between the local Church and the Vatican. Where does the authority lie? Does the local Church have an identity and authority from the faith, wisdom and spirit within the local community or does it reside in Rome? This has fundamental questions regarding the structure in the hierarchical Church and right down the line to bishop-priest relationships and at parish level between priest and laity. The recent emergence of Parish Pastoral Councils and whether they are just consultative at best and cosmetic at worst needs open debate.
Has the local parish community a unique understanding of the issues and problems facing their parish and as a faith community the right to make decisions in partnership with its priests? Is it about a Church built on collegiality, collaboration and partnership where the Spirit of God resides; or on a hierarchical model of Church where God speaks with only one voice and that is from Rome? These are questions that need open and honest discussion. In my own parish we have gone through a whole process in the last two years in setting up a Parish Pastoral
Council. It has been a very good learning process and painful struggle because it is a change of model and of
mind set for both the priest and the people. We are inviting people in the parish to take ownership of their parish whereas before we tended to confine the laity to pay and pray and do what the priest tells them.
Perhaps we are coming to realize that the laity has an authority and power in virtue of their baptism and as members of the Christian community. I will never forget some years ago working with a group of local parishioners as we struggled to name the issues and challenges facing us as a parish. We needed first of all a vision to ground us of what kind of parish we would like to be. The vision we came up with was the symbol of CROI which is the Irish for heart.
How would you envisage the Church in twenty years time?
That’s a difficult question and one you are often asked; to project into the future. I think that it will still be a struggling church. I think that is healthy. I think that the day that we become contented or smug or comfortable is a bad day. I think that because life unfolds that it is a healthy thing for the Church to continue to ask questions; still struggle with its meaning and its direction. I would like to think of the Church in twenty years time being a more listening, trusting and inclusive Church working together in mutual respect, guided by and open to the spirit of God in us and among us. We need to be in this together.
There was once a famous organist who was on a worldwide tour. He came to give a recital in a small town where they had a very old organ that was kept going by somebody pumping bellows. A small boy was given the job during the recital. At the interval of the
oncert the famous organist was heading off to his dressing room for a break when he passed the young boy who said to him ‘Didn’t we do well, sir?’ ‘What do you mean we’ said the Organist rather gruffly and walked on. When the organist came out for the second half of his concert he sat down in front of the organ, pressed the keys of the organ; not a sound, tried again, nothing. Then he heard a small voice from behind the curtain. ‘Now you know what “we” means’. Maybe if we are to make the Gospel sound like good music to the ears of people in the world we have to work together, recognize people’s gifts and talents and listen to the voices of those who have not been heard in the past.
Now, I hope that in twenty years time we will be a much humbler church; I hope we will be a listening church. I am a little concerned that this won’t happen because of a crisis in vocations. Some of the things we are asked to do now is to encourage altar servers, to see whether we can get more priests, more male priests. I would also have my doubts concerning the establishment of the Deaconate in Ireland. This would reinforce a male clerical dominated Church that would exclude women and married men. I think we might miss the boat if we have that narrow focus. I think there is an opportunity here to create a much more inclusive Christian community where the dignity and creativity and the role of people in parishes is respected. I think that in most dioceses and in most parishes, to be fair, there is a move towards Parish Pastoral Councils which will have teeth and not just be
consultative and not just where the parish priest has the right to veto. I think that they are the positive sides. I think that within that kind of environment, there is the opportunity of asking questions such as: what do we want to be as a parish; and how can we keep this message that we have alive, so that it has a positive influence on people?
How can we integrate religion and spirituality? I think that is a big question. Religion tends to be seen to be something that we do on Sundays; something that we come to rather than something we bring from ourselves to the community and celebrate it and talk about it, live out of it and see what challenges are within it.
There is a tension between what we experience pastorally with people on the ground and sometimes the instructions or the dogma or the teaching of the Church. There is always a tension with priests in dealing with people who are in second relationships and people in different lifestyles. You have the teaching of the Church and you have the reality and you have the pastoral situation. Most of us struggle with that tension: to be pastorally able to encourage and see the good, and focus on that, rather than excluding people because their lifestyle might be suspect according to the teaching of the Church. But I think that it has to be guided by the Gospels. It is not
just laissez-faire, anything goes. I think also that one of the dangers is that we become so tolerant that we stand for nothing. I think that there are fundamental principles that we have to stand by. Sometimes we stand for something that is not really fundamental or central to our own beliefs.
There is a lovely story about the guru’s cat. The guru used to gather his people every day and pray, and the guru’s cat used to sit down beside the guru. Eventually the guru died and it was time to appoint a new guru. The new guru came in but they didn’t feel that they could have a session together unless there was a cat! Maybe that’s an example of priority and what’s fundamental and what’s not. Maybe we need more discernment.
Spirituality is much more about reflection, it is about silence, solitude going on the inner journey and exploring the inner landscape. It is about being open. How do we hear the inner spirit within us which I believe is God’s Spirit? I love that phrase, ‘that spark of the divine that is within us’. I think that we listen to that wisdom by stopping the thinking process. We tend to do more thinking than silence. And shutting down the thinking to allow the other dimension, the unconscious power of wisdom that’s within the heart of every person – how do we get in touch with that? I think that we do it the hard way, by silence and solitude, celebration and renewal.
I think that we are great at ritual and that is important; to name, honour and celebrate significant experiences in our lives. But I think that there is another side that is born out of the spiritual need to listen to the deeper element of reality as human beings. I don’t think that we are that good at providing those kind of opportunities. That hugely influences the direction we go in. That would be the focus; that would be the direction.
Thanks Larry. Now the third question is a more practical type of question. What do you think needs to be done?
Yes, that is a difficult question. Once again, the backdrop to it is just my opinion on it from a limited experience and one point of view. I think that we need to keep chipping away and not lose heart. There is a lovely story that keeps me going.
There was a man walking on the beach. There were loads of starfish on the beach; when the tide goes out they are left. There were hundreds and hundreds of starfish dying on the beach. This man comes along and he is picking up starfish and chucking them into the sea. Then this other guy comes along and says ‘What are you doing that for, it’s not going to make any difference; there are thousands of them.’ And the man picks up the starfish and says ‘It will mean something to this one.’
So that’s my hope; that we can do a little bit. There are massive problems in our society, in our world, and in our church. We keep throwing starfish back into the sea that they may come alive again. We can save some, we can make a contribution. I think that’s what keeps me going. That’s my hope for the future; that we won’t despair, that we won’t give up.
I get disheartened and I say I have had enough and I want to throw in the towel and move away, but something keeps me going. So, how do I see that; tapping into that energy, what changes can I see? I think in Dublin here there is great optimism and hope with Diarmuid Martin. I think one positive thing at parochial and diocesan level is that we start again and plan. I feel that if it is truly done as a partnership and as a listening process, and if it is not just inviting a few lay people in as token gestures, it would be very helpful in the future I think. I think we need honest and open debate with no ‘sacred cow’ that cannot be mentioned or discussed.
I think that we have to be braver on a pastoral level. The priests aren’t heard. Now I think that we have to take responsibility for that because we are not brave enough or courageous enough to speak up because we are watching our backs. We are afraid that if we really speak out that we will be alienated or censored. I see this at deanery level where we meet and talk about an awful lot of things from our own experience in parish pastoral ministry. But it never seems to permeate upwards. Now we have to take responsibility for that. I would like to see a braver clergy within the system voicing their experience. I would like to see in parishes a much more brave laity. People now are highly educated and have enormous experience and willingness and I think that the future is in that direction; that there would be a greater listening church at all phases and at all the levels.
That’s my hope for the future. I think society is unfolding and changing. I would hate to think that we have a plan and that would solve it all. I think that it’s about walking the journey. I think it’s allowing and believing that somewhere in the midst of all this that God’s Spirit is there. In spite of our fumbling and our mistakes, it will be kept on the road by that Spirit of God.
My fear is that we become insular; that we become a much more fundamentalist church in that we have
rules and regulations. I think there is a huge temptation to have rules and regulations that say you are a member or you are not a member. That is the settler mentality. I am not saying that we shouldn’t stand for anything. As I said earlier, I think that tolerance without conviction means nothing. Maybe we have to find out what are the fundamental principles of the church that we want to have.
I think there is more life in the Church now and more hope of life. I would also hope for the future that we would be more open to creative people in the Church. I think that it is rather sad that most of our musicians and our writers and our painters don’t want to belong. It is too narrow for them; too confining and restricting. It doesn’t allow the spirit they have in abundance to express itself. I think that we have got to find a way of saying that everybody is welcome; that we honour diversity in its richness.
I think my future church would be one in which we can hold differences together; that it is not right or wrong, it is either / or. Holding together opposites is a very difficult thing to do. The danger is that we go towards one side and exclude the other. So, my hope or vision for the Church is messy. But maybe life is messy, and the Church has to enter into that messiness and not try to control it and restrict it. Once again, we are a finger pointing to the moon; we are not the moon. We have something very important to say and so I think maybe we have to focus a little bit less on the kind of finger we are and more on what the signpost points towards.
To sum up, we need a Church that is brave, open, listening to the spirit and to each other; a Church that honours collegiality, partnership, collaboration, and diversity; a Church with a heart and a spirit.
Thanks
