Trying, Canute-like, to keep the tide out and finding themselves holding grimly to some jagged rock with the seeds of change threatening to envelop them. Others embrace change, seeing freedom and possibility and life in the altering patterns of society today.
I’m in the second constituency. I believe that this is a wonderful time to be alive. Despite our present worries about the anarchy that Trump is visiting on the world and on us, we are conscious of the prosperity we now enjoy. And of our progressive educational system. And the ethos of accountability and transparency in Irish public life. And for so much more.
While it’s natural to sometimes look back fondly on the past, who in their right mind would want to live in the dismal 1950s in comparison to the land of freedom and opportunity we now enjoy.
The same is true of the Roman Catholic Church. Isn't it a wonderful time to be a Catholic now, as the future opens up all kinds of possibilities. Remember when we were told that it was a serious sin to eat a rasher on a Friday.
Or for a priest not to read the designated breviary within a specified time frame of 24 hours – Greenwich time notwithstanding. It was a land of rules and regulations, when in John O’Donohue’s words, ‘you could hardly stir at all without committing a sin’. A land of debilitating subservience and obedience.
Then we were told to grow up. That, in effect, was what the Second Vatican Council (1962-'65) represented. Inevitably there was confusion and insecurity but there was too a glorious sense of freedom and ease. And the greatest freedom of all was the knowledge that change, in terms of church, is not something to be avoided or defined out of existence but the great constant in any institution that wishes to survive and grow.
That’s why the recent commissioning of 62 adult women and men as ‘Lay leaders’ in Killala diocese had such an inspiring and uplifting effect on those who attended a memorable Mass of the Chrism in Ballina Cathedral. After participating in a course in the Newman Institute spanning two years and three months, the 62 graduated with a Certificate in Lay Leadership: Theology, Culture and Ministry on March 28th, and on Tuesday, April 15th, they were commissioned in a number of lay ministries, not least in Funeral ministry, in which they will co-lead all the standard elements of a funeral liturgy – praying for the deceased in their home or in a funeral home, receiving the remains at the church, leading the final prayers after the funeral Mass and the prayers at the graveside; in effect, every element apart from the funeral Mass.
It looks as if this initiative seems simply a reaction to the steep decline in priest numbers but its purpose is more fundamental than that. It represents a release of what Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich at a Roman Synod once called ‘the sleeping giant of the laity’ – the lavish gifts that the people in the pews enjoy but that, up to now, were not given a credible opportunity to use. Now, not just because of priest numbers but because, by virtue of their baptism, the rights of ‘lay’ women and men to exercise their gifts in the service of their church, in co-operation with the priests, is being facilitated.
This change was graphically illustrated as the 35 priests of Killala diocese (in their vestments) joined in procession with the 62 lay leaders wearing their white albs (representing their baptismal garment). At one level it represented 62 women and men, bringing to bear on parish ministry the addition of their faith, energy and commitment, enhancing the pastoral care of the people of our parishes; but, at another level, it represented, in the combined strength of numbers – 90 in all, or should I say, so far – of priests and lay leaders working together in putting their shoulders to the wheel to enhance the service of the people.
It represents too an official diocesan endorsement of the imperative and substance that lay leaders, working side-by-side with their priests, offer the Catholic Church at this critical juncture in our history. The world-weary and the cynical may quote Eric Erickson’s adage about institutions only changing with they have to change but surely there is a providential imperative of change now at work in the Roman Catholic Church.
Even though the gap between the ending of the Second Vatican Council and the present time is all of 60 years ago this year – and so many opportunities for bringing the insights of that council to bear on our Church were lost and sometimes jettisoned along the way – Pope John XXIII’s calling of the Council which produced a series of fundamental documents voted through by up to 90%-plus of the bishops of the world received, just over a decade or so ago, the shot in the arm it needed when Francis I was elected pope.
The commissioning of 62 lay leaders a week or so ago represents an historic step backwards to embrace the vision of a People’s Church represented by the documents of Vatican Two as well as a confident step forward in realising the potential in Killala diocese for a developing appreciation of the lavish gifts lay ministries now offer to our parishes and our Church.
At a parish level, that change was graphically represented too when Noeleen O’Connell (née Healy), one of the 62, on Tuesday last co-led with her parish priest, Michael Gilroy, the funeral liturgies for her mother, Eileen Healy, in Templeboy Church. If at a diocesan level, in Ballina Cathedral, our hearts lifted at the sight of serried ranks of lay leaders being afforded their rightful place in the work of our parishes, how, even more so for the Healy family, to witness their sister in her alb representing her baptismal garment, co-leading their mother’s funeral Mass. How must the angels have danced in heaven as Eileen was reunited with her late husband, Noel, and rewarded for the faith, the hope and the love they and their family have borne witness to for so long?
Thanks be to God.
