Well known priest and sociologist Fr Harry Bohan has called on all those who have let themselves and the country down including many ''bankers, lawyers, and politicians'' to ''put on sackcloth and ashes this Lent and repent for their greed and selfish ways which have brought the country to its knees''.Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.
Speaking from the Ceifin centre in Shannon Fr Bohan added: ''More of the same won't work. Society doesn't need any more greed, or selfishness.''
The Shannon-based priest called for a return to truth, trust and thrift: ''Trust was broken but from now on must be earned. Everyday there are new revelations from the banks. The same from the Church. What people want most of all now is honesty.''
Speaking to The Irish Catholic ahead of a talk to the Catholic agency CURA at the weekend, Fr Bohan said that ''Greed became the all-pervasive driver of behaviour and civilised values and a sense of community has been sacrificed on the altar of conspicuous consumption.
''Our society now obviously needs inspirational leadership. It needs a return to core values of Truth, Trust, Thrift. It needs us to come together in co-operative, community gatherings with all that is basic in the goodness and common sense of people. It needs us to return to God and the basic messages of Gospel values. But above all, it needs those in authority to listen to and support a mobilised grass-root.'' The cure for the failings of the past he said would be ''Vision, inspirational leadership, idealism all come to mind now. People need people but shaped by core values.''
Fr Bohan said that Ireland had ignored the family and the community to its determent. ''Unlike many traditional European societies we stopped socialising as families. Ireland decided to facilitate the rampant consumerism that gripped it with sackcloth and ashes for the greedy bankers, shops opening seven days a week and some 24 hours a day. The shopping mall became the social outlet for many families on Sunday afternoons. Financial pressures, driven by the need to maintain a bloated lifestyle, resulted in couples being forced to commute for hours to get to and from work.''
He added, ''The family and local community - the two systems which held Irish society together for generations were seriously ignored and undermined in the face of market values and the onward march of big corporations. This is not to say that the economic miracle was unwelcome but we forgot the values that underpin the priceless things in life.''
On the Church, he said that many Catholics still see the Church as an end in itself. ''A new discovery and vision of ourselves as Church as Servant of God's Kingdom would energise us as a Community at the Service of Humanity for real engagement with the culture and world in which we find ourselves.
''It would help us to see that the Church does not exist for itself, that the liturgy and sacraments are not ends in themselves, but exist to form us as Church community and give us a mission of engaging with and transforming human history.''
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(Source: IC)