THE Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, in his Easter homily in the Pro Cathedral yesterday, warned that people were in danger of "enslaving themselves to the here and now and subjecting themselves to a fate that abandons hope at the end".
"Not long ago, our people lived with the kind of awareness of God that visitors to our country found striking", he said. People had "faced the challenge of life supported by a firm expectation of the life to come". But he wondered if we were now "locking ourselves into the world".
Enormous strides had been made in our standard of living, he observed, but these had been accompanied by "a readiness to cut corners to suit our convenience - and by a greater impatience with the burdens of life". These burdens were now all the more resented", he said, and they provided a "motive for breaking through the constraints of a Christian way of life".
It was possible to "admire the person of Christ, to think well of his teaching, to deplore the injustice and cruelty of his death, but then stop at the entrance to the tomb as if some great obstacle stood in the way of joy in his resurrection". If that obstacle was removed, "how wonderful then is the vision revealed to our faith".
The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Walton Empey, in his Easter address in Christ Church Cathedral, spoke of his "horror" at the scale of the rape and murder of women in Ireland. He noted how at every meeting with a woman Jesus had shown "respect mixed with compassion in a way that was in sharp contrast with the social attitudes of the rest of society."
Since Christianity had arrived here "nigh on 1,600 years ago", considerable strides had been made in many ways concerning the lot of women. But he had been "horrified" to read that the number of women murdered in the Republic had doubled in 1996. "The day on which I wrote this sermon, I read in one national newspaper of four rapes and one further murder."
It was, he said, "an appalling situation in a country which is frequently described as Christian". The churches were not blameless either, he said. He had been "deeply moved" while attending the annual general meeting of the National Council for Priests in Ireland last year when "female theologians spoke in anger and with great dignity about their position within the Roman Catholic Church". He felt that the Church of Ireland could not afford to be complacent on the matter either.
The general synod's governing body did not represent the "huge contribution made by them (women) at parish and diocesan level", he said, adding: "We, too, have a long way to go before women have attained their rightful place in the church."
