I called it ‘Disenchanted Evenings’ – a word-play on the old song, ‘Some Enchanted Evenings’, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, and recorded by among others, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
I choose the title, ‘Disenchanted Evenings’, because it seemed to fit with the tenor of the article which dealt with the mood of disenchantment among Catholic clergy back in 2013 as the Catholic Church faced what seemed innumerable difficulties. It was a depressing time and the article, in truth, was a depressing read.
But, in my own defence, at the time it could hardly be otherwise. The Church was in a storm of afflictions: clerical child sexual abuse scandals; the haemorrhaging of our congregations; rising age levels of priests; vocations in free-fall; perception of an anti-Catholic media bias and, not least, the feeling that priests had become the subject of endless and disparaging news coverage.
However, the article ended on a hopeful note inspired by the election of Pope Francis and the breath of fresh air that his pontificate ushered in.
This was the final paragraph:
Twelve years on, Francis has announced that 2025 will be a Jubilee Year of Hope, a theme that encourages us to be pilgrims of hope in a troubled world.
And while the appeal is principally to Catholics with the main events announced recently by the Irish Catholic bishops – including each diocese nominating a local pilgrimage site, commemorations to mark significant jubilees of Irish saints and martyrs, an event for teenagers in April, an ecumenical pilgrimage to Normandy in May, a youth pilgrimage to Rome in August – everyone is invited to participate.
Few would question the need for hope in our troubled world. Someone said once, ‘We can live without faith, and we can even live without love but we cannot live without hope’.
This is a time when climate change places a huge question mark over the very future of our planet; a time when what Pope Francis calls ‘a third world war’ is being fought ‘piecemeal’ around the world; a time when a new United States government is penalising the poor to support the rich and its president is instigating campaigns of attrition against institutions fundamental to the protection of the weak and vulnerable; and a time when bullying democratically elected and war-ravaged nations to concede territorial and financial resources is being lauded as a commendable policy.
In a world where it seems, to quote William Butler Yeats, ‘the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’ – in that world, at this point in history hope was never more needed. Little wonder that Francis has called his new autobiography, ‘Hope’.
As it happens, in the same issue of , Ned Pendergast has an article entitled, ‘Cutting the Ribbon of Hope’. Writing in 2013, the year of Francis, in a beautifully crafted elegiac piece of writing welcoming the reopening of a retreat house, in Killenard near Portarlington, Ned captured the positive mood that attended Francis’ election as pope:
Coincidentally too, in the same , there is a similar article by Peter Burke, a priest of the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, entitled ‘The Dawn of Hope’, which celebrates, in his words, ‘the arrival of a new shepherd of the flock marking a new chapter in our faith story, a moment of crossing over, a dawn of hope’.
The ‘new shepherd’ (or bishop) in question was Fr Francis Duffy who in 2013 was ordained Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, and who was transferred to Tuam in 2022 before being ‘gifted’ with additional responsibilities for the diocese of Killala in 2024.
As Tuam and Killala merge into one diocese and Archbishop Francis Duffy becomes officially Bishop of Killala, Peter Burke’s words 13 years ago, slightly adapted, strike a note of hope: