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BOSTONIRISH |
 All Contents © Copyright 2006, Boston Neighborhood News, Inc. |
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Boston Irish Commentary |
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OFF THE BENCH Goodbye, Sister Chips As a product of St. Mark's, St. Matthew's, and, finally, St. Gregory's grammar schools, I regret the necessary and inevitable consolidation of our once- thriving parochial school system. I remember with affection and respect the good nuns who dedicated their lives to teaching. Sure, there were occasional excesses; corporal punishment was a regular part of controlling classes of 50 or more rambunctious boys, and sometimes fear was used to maintain discipline. Those nuns were tough; they had to be. Otherwise they never could have controlled classes more than twice the size of those in the public school system. Unlike some of my contemporaries, I acknowledge and appreciate their zeal and dedication while understanding their lapses. They did right by me and many others. Their critics are often those who blame their parents and others for their inability to cope with problems they encounter. Negativity and blame are now so much a part of our culture. It is more comfortable to export responsibility than accept it. School uniforms marked parochial school kids as a little bit different. More than other kids, they had something in common. It marked them as Catholics at a time when most were proud to bear the title. Recent events have dimmed that luster and adherents have slipped away, no longer confident their faith was well-placed. Church resources, human and financial, have shrunk dramatically. The schools are a luxury it can no longer afford, which leaves those parents who still cling to the importance of the message in a quandary. Knowing the importance of Christian values, particularly in a society where they are so often ignored and even despised, where do they turn? Sure the kids are supposed to learn those values at home, but do they? Even where the parents do their best, it is comforting knowing they are being reinforced in school. The church is being downsized at a time when more than ever faith is being challenged by secular humanism and its accompanying moral relativism. It is fair to acknowledge the church has brought some of this upon itself. It failed to address serious internal problems and has not been willing to adapt to social changes that would not conflict with truths fundamental to the depository of faith. What has been traditional is not necessarily essential. Unfortunately, a seriously weakened church with very limited vocations and fewer practicing members is being forced to reduce its most important teaching role. Those of us who were shaped by our Catholic education are getting older. We know what we learned was important and regret that our grandchildren may not have the same opportunity. We know the public school system may have the equivalent, or even stronger academics, but it is unable to include that in a value-based curriculum. There is no choice but to adapt to the new reality. Some schools will be consolidated and a few will struggle to continue operating without archdiocesan financial support. The lean years of the present and indefinite future have replaced the fat years of my youth and many decades before. By today's standards, many view the teaching nuns as having wasted their lives and sacrificed themselves for a dubious cause. My thanks to the many dedicated nuns (now replaced by dedicated laymen and laywomen) who in years past gave of themselves to teach Dorchester boys and girls right from wrong as well as the basic school curriculum. If their lives were "wasted" in the service of God and
their young charges, what of the successful (and presumably
fulfilled) seekers of wealth, fame and power? What is the
greater good? You be the judge. |
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New Ambassador's High Energy, Confidence Symbolic of Emerging Ireland's Sense
of Self "I bring you greetings from an Ireland at peace and an Ireland at work," the new Irish Ambassador to the United States said last month as he began his remarks at a special luncheon welcoming him to Boston. A forceful, vibrant, happy man, seeming quite comfortable in his job, Michael Collins used the occasion to call for continued close relationships between the United States and Ireland. The ambassador has been with Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs for 30 years, serving in various capacities in Dublin, New York, Washington, and as his country's ambassador to the Czech Republic. Before his assignment as ambassador in Washington, Collins was the Second Secretary General in the Department of the Taoiseach in Dublin for six years, which involved him in the highest workings of government. When asked in an interview how he enjoyed being with the Prime Minister, Collins said, "Working for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was a great privilege and honor. Mr. Ahern is an absolute gentleman." Collins's career in diplomacy has been remarkable. This is the part of Ireland's government where the best and brightest are found, Boston's current Consul General Barry among them. The ambassador's record and experience foretell a close and respectful working relationship between the United States and Ireland. At six-feet-four, with a ready smile and a tiger-swift mind, Collins should enjoy the attention and trust of our American leadership in Washington. Since well before Ireland became a separate, self governing country in 1922 the United States and Ireland have always been close. But conditions are different now. Though the Republic remains a small, even tiny, country with fewer people (4.3 million) than Massachusetts (more than 6 million) it is growing ever stronger and today it evinces a positive impact on the world as a contributor rather than as a troubled poor cousin with a fractious population in its North. When asked about these welcome changes and how they affect the relationship between the USA and Ireland, Collins replied, "Ireland and America need one another now just as in the past. Ireland is a country that has changed enormously in the last number of years and we have enjoyed great success in developing our economy and forging peace in Northern Ireland. Nothing in any of this alters the relationship between Ireland and the US, which is profound, enduring, and unique. I believe the Irish in America applaud this success and wish us well. Ireland remains a very special place for so many people in the United States." American business investment is Ireland has been important to the success of the Irish economy. According to the United States Chamber of Commerce in Dublin, American companies now employ moré than 100,000 Irish with another 225,000 Irish employed by their suppliers. This did not happen by accident. The Industrial Development Authority &endash;IDA &endash; methodically and with great skill convinced American businesses of the value of Irish investment and the Irish Parliament continued to offer low corporate tax rates to foreign investors. But this may leave Ireland vulnerable. What if the high cost of doing business in Ireland discourages new investment or, even worse, causes some American companies to leave? Collins has a good answer: "I believe that business
everywhere is always faced with the challenge of staying
competitive and staying ahead. We have to work hard, but I
believe Ireland still offers an attractive destination for
US inward investment. We have low taxes, a well-educated
work force, longstanding stable social partnerships
[with unions], a successful peace process, and
attractive rates of return on investments." Collins agreed that great progress had been made -- this was said with some conviction since it was his department that played a strikingly effective role in the achievements. The 1994 first cease-fire, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly have produced "wonderment even in Ireland," he said. But he went on: "The change is a certainty &endash; a profound change &endash; and all parties have a firm commitment to making the Assembly an effective Northern Ireland government." This was a quick visit to Boston for the ambassador (less
than 36 hours later he was on his way back to official
business at the Embassy in Washington). But his time here
was reassuring. Our man in Washington is a professional,
"well able" as they say in Kerry. Issues like immigration
and our troops landing in Shannon will be handled well. |
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Christmas Season 2007 in the North: A Sense That Peace Has Come to
Stay For so many years, Christmas was the season of unfulfilled hope in Northern Ireland. As each year drew to a close, there was the hope that the joy and warmth of the season could somehow lead to a "Christmas peace." But year after year, aspirations were dashed and the holidays gave way to a new year of conflict and division. This year, Christmas 2007, it at long last seems that the hopes that burned like holiday lights have finally been realized and that Northern Ireland not only has peace but also is beginning to heal its ancient divisions. It's true that full-scale paramilitary violence has been gone for a number of years now, although reminders of the North's violent past crop up even in a post-ceasefire era. But even if it has been a while since Irish newspapers buzzed with speculation about a Christmas truce, 2007 was the year that saw the handshake that spanned the political divide, with republicans and unionists shelving bitter differences to create a new government that places Northern Ireland on a healing course. And, in the wake of that historic rapprochement, there are many signs indicating that the North is beginning to heal. On a literal level, there are a number of efforts afoot to try to make peace with past, ranging from the creation of a victims panel headed by former Church of Ireland leader Robin Eames and former Catholic priest Denis Bradley to the ongoing work of a special police unit reviewing all of the North's Troubles-related deaths. On a broader level, there are many indications that the progress that has been achieved in recent years, and most particularly this year's dramatic creation of a power-sharing government jointly led by unionist Ian Paisley and republican Martin McGuinness, is changing mindsets. A prime example of that can be seen in McGuinness's own reaction to the recent wounding of a Northern Ireland policeman. The officer was attacked by members of a fringe republican group. For a number of years, McGuinness, the deputy leader of Sinn Fein, staunchly defended republican violence, describing it is as the only means of ending partition and achieving Irish unification. But in the dawn of this new day, McGuinness said there is no place for political violence. "The war is over and it is time these people woke up to that reality," the republican leader said, adding: "I totally condemn the shooting of an off-duty police officer … and urge anyone with information regarding this shooting to bring it forward to the police. The people who carried this out have no popular support and have no strategy to achieve a united Ireland." At the same time, McGuinness's longtime partner in republican peacemaking, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, was traveling to London to discuss healing and reconciliation at a conference held at Canary Wharf, the site of a truce-shattering 1996 Irish Republican Army bombing. Adams, reputed to be a former IRA leader, attended the meeting at the invitation of Colin and Wendy Parry, the parents of a 12-year-old boy killed in 1993 by an IRA bomb. With the parents looking on, Adams said: "As we seek to move forward there's a requirement that we address the tragic human consequences of our actions … I therefore want to acknowledge Colin and Wendy Parry's personal journey. The fact that two children were killed obviously had a devastating impact, not just on their families and their communities, but on parents including me back in Ireland." The IRA's 1993 Warrington bomb took the lives of Tim Parry, 12, and toddler Johnathan Ball. Meanwhile, progress continues on the other side on what has been a sectarian divide, with Ian Paisley, so long the personification of hostility toward Catholics, working collaboratively with McGuinness and Sinn Fein, even staying the course in government with Sinn Fein in the face of a punishment murder that appears to have IRA connections. Continuing to take steps that as recently as a year ago would have been unthinkable, Paisley has agreed to travel to Washington with McGuinness for a White House meeting with President Bush. And, Northern Ireland's two largest Protestant paramilitary organizations, the Ulster Defense Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, have recently signaled their intentions to finally disarm. All of which is not to say that Northern Ireland has become a peaceful utopia, as it has not. The fact that the so-called Real IRA has been responsible for the shooting and wounding of two policemen and that members of the Provisional IRA may have carried out the beating death of 21-year-old Paul Quinn demonstrates that there are pockets of resistance on the republican side. And, the UDA and UVF disarmament declarations were met with skepticism as well as with hope, based on the widely held belief that the groups are now deeply involved in organized crime. But, at this special time, there is the undeniable sense that hopes and dreams that shone in so many past holiday seasons have finally been realized and the Northern Ireland, at long last, so many lost lives later, finally has its Christmas peace. |
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It was the poet T.S. Eliot who wrote the puzzling lines: I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark Come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. Almost instinctively, we tend to define darkness in negative terms &endash; the absence of light. And as we read the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, a book "describing" our beginnings, we note that light is one of God's primal blessings. It is above all a source of guidance and security. We might think from our own experience of children who are afraid of the dark and for whom a simple beam of light offers comfort. In our common use of the word, darkness connotes many other ideas: ignorance ("I am in the dark"), confusion, loss of direction. Thus it is somewhat strange that Isaiah the prophet proclaims that God is the "Creator of Darkness" ("I form light and create darkness" Is. 45,7). In his mind, there are redemptive qualities associated with the qualities and purposes of darkness. And in the light of the negative commentaries associated with the publishing of Blessed Mother Teresa's letters to her spiritual director about the "absence" of God, I believe that it would be helpful if we reflect upon the theme of the "darkness of God." Certainly, as we read God's word, we note how the heroes and heroines of faith experience darkness. We might think of our father in faith, Abraham, to whom God promised that he would have offspring as numerous as the stars. Yet decade after decade passed and he remained childless. And instinctively, he must have wondered "why?" It's a question that always plunges us into the darkness of God. Or we might think of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who was childless for so many years. Yet neither of the above turned from God. Indeed, they instinctively realized that such darkness was in invitation to cling more forcefully to God. And on those occasions when we experience darkness, confusion, hurt, and guilt, I believe that we should pray for the same grace. One of the incidences in the life of the mystic Blaise Pascal and the subsequent poetic commentary by W.H. Auden points to the same "remedy" &endash; the need for prayer in times of darkness. Pascal spent an entire night in prayer before God, bringing to Him all his hurts and struggles. Let us turn to the poet's description: His search had "doubt by doubt/ Restored the ruined chateau of his faith./ Until at last, one Autumn all was ready/ And in the night the Unexpected came." And Pascal summed up his mystical experience in the one word, "fire." His perseverance led to the burning Light that gave direction to his life. Though our struggles may with darkness not be so intense, continuing perseverance in prayer is essential to lead us out of our difficulties. But at this point another dimension of the darkness of God appears. Our prayers at time seem empty, sterile and lead us to wonder whether they are being heard: God, though to Thee our psalms we raise No answering voices come from the skies; To Thee the trembling sinner prays But no forgiving voice replies; Our prayers seem lost on desert ways, Our hopes in the vast silence dies. It is this darkness in our prayer-life as outlined above by Gerard Manley Hopkins that seems most troublesome for many of us. I will not touch upon the dark experiences of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Mother Teresa. Rather I will address the more common darkness that seems to be a part of our ordinary experience. I would begin, however, by asserting that our very perseverance in prayer when we lack satisfaction is in itself a prayer pleasing to God. The following may help us through our difficulties. First of all, we must pray for the grace to truly pray. Moreover, we must make an act of trust that our God is a caring Father who listens to us. Moreover, we must step back and reflect upon the fact that the aim of the Christian life is to foster an ever-deepening relationship with Christ. This cannot be forced. And perhaps it may be that the feelings of sterility we experience are part of our particular Cross. Finally, we must realize that such emptiness may be caused by excessive concentration on self. We must always be trying to reach out and touch others. For those of us who are still neophytes in the spiritual life, we might keep in mind the words of the 14th century mystic Meister Eckhart: "The soul must long for God in order to aflame for God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must beg for this longing. To beg for this longing is also from God." |
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The bombshell landed, rolled around for a little, then skittered off the edge of relevance. It wouldn't be accurate to say the projectile had been launched from Lake Street, because the Brighton chancery is no longer the administrative seat of the Archdiocese and symbol of its power. But Cardinal Archbishop Sean Patrick O'Malley's mid-November broadside against Democrats for their position on abortion was as much a part of the historical Boston fabric as a dominant Celtics team. The difference this time around was that the equation between the Church and the state has changed. In a time-honored fashion, Rome's local representative was looking to influence the course of the political discourse. Like the string of Boston cardinals before him, O'Malley was voicing Church position in the face a local power structure that remains heavily Catholic. O'Malley's diagnosis that the trend of Catholics backing Democrats who tout abortion rights "borders on scandal" came down two days after Beacon Hill's top figures stood together to sign legislation expanding the no-protest zone around abortion clinics. The bill barely stirred a ripple on its way through the Legislature, meeting with virtually undetectable dissent from start to finish. And the cardinal's words had little effect. When the State House News Service asked whether she had picked up on a great deal of concern among her colleagues, Senate President Therese Murray replied, tellingly, "I haven't talked to anybody about it, so I don't know whether they're concerned or not." Because, already in flux due to a range of modern and modernizing factors, including suburbanization and the rise of the "cafeteria Catholic," the local Church's clout during the Bernard Law era went into a swan dive over the last decade. The word used among Catholics who are incredulous that the Church would dare dictate their beliefs is "credibility." From 30,000 feet, of course, there's really nothing unusual about a religious leader looking to shape his followers' thinking on moral and social matters. It is, as Murray and others acknowledged, what the religious hierarchy is there to do. The echo from the backlash, though, has quickly faded &endash; locally, anyway. Not only did the Church's say in public affairs have very little impact; few people even talked about how there was very little impact. Since the gay marriage imbroglio a few years ago, when pastors used -- to little tangible effect -- the pulpit to ream legislators in the congregation who had opposed the ban, the socially conservative forces here have suffered in watching outcomes go against them, and in losing face. In fact, no incumbent legislators have lost seats over support for gay marriage. Despite statewide polls evincing voters' deep misgivings, opposition to gay marriage is a political loser here. In a sense, O'Malley's tack in pushing Democrats to embrace anti-abortion positions approximates what some political analysts call "Bush politics." (That's not a derogatory phrase, despite the president's poll numbers and reputation around these parts.) "Bush politics" are the politics of base, of motivating a pre-existing bloc of voters (pew-dwellers, say) to do its utmost for its cause, rather than working to bridge an ideological divide. Coincidentally, perhaps, one of the brightest examples of this strategy was the push in 2004 for a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage. It put John Kerry in an awkward position, and helped George W. Bush win the election. From a political strategy standpoint, the Church's problem is that its hierarchy's scandalous actions in the face of sexual abuse have compromised what the communications gurus like to call its "message." For many Catholics, that embarrassment has left an easy out. For others the scandal too thoroughly muffles the good things the Church still does. Another, less preventable problem, comes in the form of
the permanent departures of the excellent priests now
finishing their long lives of service. One of those, Father
Ed Boyle, passed away Nov. 13 after fighting cancer. Boyle
was the chaplain and executive secretary of the
Archdiocese's Labor Guild, a Jesuit, Naval veteran, and
graduate of Dartmouth College and the its Amos Tuck School
for business. In his memory, the Father Ed Fund will help
subsidize graduate students working with the Guild to
promote workers' rights: To help, send your donation to the
Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston, 85 Commercial St.,
Weymouth, MA 02118. |