Disinterest is the “greatest professional sin or illness” in
politics, public administration and Church leadership, Archbishop
Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has said.
In his homily to mark the 175th anniversary of St Peter’s
Church in Phibsboro in the capital, the Archbishop said the unjust judge
in Sunday’s Gospel represented “the world around us and often too the
word within us when we put out of our sights and thoughts things that
are unpleasant and make us uncomfortable.”
In his address, he warned that lack of interest could result in just thinking about oneself or one’s institution.
He said unlike outright corruption, the sin of disinterest can be hard to identify.
“It is the classic sin of omission which we try to defend by saying
that, while perhaps we should have thought of that, we were never really
obliged to go beyond our definition of the call of duty,” he said.
Considering the unjust judge, Archbishop Martin suggested that most
likely he was not a corrupt judge who gave unjust sentences or took
bribes in order to be partial in his judgements.
He was simply not interested in the life and the good of the
community for which he had responsibility. He was inattentive and
disinterested and went about his own life without caring in depth for
those around him.
“In many ways one could say that in the parable he represents the
world in which we live and in which we have to develop our faith and our
life,” Archbishop Martin commented.
Elsewhere in his homily, he said the Gospel reading for Mission
Sunday was about faith and the widow was presented as a model of faith.
Looking back over the 175 years of the mission of St Peter’s, he said
it was possible to see in the “poor but determined widow” a model of
faith which has been repeated over those 175 years by the men and women
who have built up the parish community in Phibsboro.
Referring to the context of the establishment of St Peter’s, he noted
that the Vincentian Fathers had only just come to Ireland when the
request was made to them by Archbishop Daniel Murray to take over the
beginnings of a new community which was growing along Dublin’s elegant
North Circular Road – “which you might say was then the M50 of its
time.”
Paying tribute to the Vincentian charism which had established “true
and lasting roots” in the Dublin 175 years ago and which had continued
down to today, he noted the role played by the Society of Saint Vincent
de Paul in the church community.
The Daughters of Charity had brought care and support to the poor and the burdened, he commented.
“The influence of that Vincentian charism spread way beyond this
Church as missions were carried out around Ireland. These missions are
still today great models of renewal and evangelisation and a reawakening
in faith,” the Primate of Ireland said.
He also paid tribute to St Peter’s role as a centre of welcome to
people who in recent years have come to our shores and especially those
who found themselves in moments of difficulty and victims of
indifference and disinterest.