THE CATHOLIC primate Cardinal Seán Brady said yesterday, in reference to the clerical child sex abuse scandals, “we ask for the graces to accept humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal”.
He said “we ask, with Pope Benedict, what was wrong in our proclamation, in our way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen? So, we too ask for a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good and in doing penance”.
It was “also the moment to offer, with the Pope, heartfelt thanks to all those who work to help survivors, in helping to restore their trust in the church, and their capacity to believe her message. This is also the moment to give thanks for the many good priests who act as channels of the Lord’s goodness in humility and fidelity.”
Cardinal Brady was speaking in Armagh at the first anniversary Mass in remembrance of the late Cardinal Cahal Daly and what had been designated a special day of prayer for renewal of the faith in the church in Ireland. He recalled that, in his pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland last March, the Pope proposed some concrete initiatives.
“He asked that time be set aside to pray for an outpouring of God’s mercy. He urged us to implore the gifts of the Holy Spirit of holiness and strength upon the church in Ireland at this time. He suggested that the grace of healing and renewal for the church in Ireland be requested in prayer and fasting,” he said.
At their winter meeting last month, Ireland’s Catholic bishops decided to dedicate yesterday “the first Sunday of 2011, as a day of special prayer not only for the renewal of the faith in the church in Ireland, but also for a renewal of hope in the face of widespread doom and gloom which prevails,North and South, in Ireland at the present time,” he explained.
He observed “if you are like me, you are surprised and sad when people no longer walk with us in faith. We find it hard to understand how so many say no to the Lord and choose to go by another route,” he said. “But, remember, he was rejected before we ever experienced rejection and he was rejected right up to the end.”
Meanwhile, former archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor will begin his apostolic visitation to Armagh archdiocese next Sunday, January 9th.
He will be accompanied by Mgr Mark O’Toole, rector of Allen Hall seminary in Chelsea, and Dr Sheila Hollins, Professor of the UK Board of Psychiatry at St George’s University of London.
The visitation, as promised in Pope Benedict’s letter to Irish Catholics last March, is the latest to begin of those to the four Catholic archdioceses in Ireland, to the church’s Irish seminaries and to its religious congregations.
In a letter to the people of Armagh archdiocese Cardinal Murphy O’Connor said: “I echo the Holy Father’s expression of deep sorrow and regret regarding abuse perpetrated by priests and religious and the way in which such cases had been responded to in the past. I will endeavour to fulfil the Holy Father’s wishes as best I can, not least because of my deep affection and esteem for the Irish people.”
He said “in the first phase, my main responsibility is to listen. I am making myself available to meet and listen to people who may wish to see me and, most especially, anyone who has been a victim of clerical abuse, and their families. He was “also anxious to listen to priests, religious and lay people of the archdiocese”.
An announcement on the Cashel and Emly website states that the Archbishop of Toronto Thomas Collins, appointed apostolic visitor there, will arrive “for a number of weeks’’ later this month. He will meet with “anyone who wishes to contact him regarding anything related to sexual abuse by clergy in the achdiocese”.
