A Time To Choose

 

No doubt many of you in Ireland will have heard of the TD (member of the Irish parliament) who has been told by his parish priest that he can no longer serve as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion following his support for the recent abortion bill.  The TD, as has become the norm now, has gone to the media to express his woes and pain.  In one article he is quoted as saying that he is horrified by attempts to intimidate him by "ultra right-wing elements in the Church" (by which I presume he means Catholics who reject abortion).  It also appears that the same TD was using Church premises to hold his clinics (where a TD meets constituents) and he has now been told that he can no longer do so.

 

First of all no TD should be permitted to use Catholic Church property for meetings.  Given we hear so much of the separation of Church and State, Catholic parishes should never facilitate politicians in their political work regardless of who that politician is, upstanding parishioner or not.

 

Secondly, I understand why the TD in question does not realise why he cannot be pro-abortion, or at least support the introduction of an abortion bill, and not continue to be a Minister of Holy Communion.  Given that the Church representatives in Ireland, and many other places, have dodged the issue of abortion and the consequences for Catholics who support and facilitate it, it is understandable that there is a lot of ignorance out there. 

 

Thirdly, what this TD's parish priest has done is entirely correct: this TD, having facilitated the introduction of abortion into this country, can no longer serve as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at Mass nor should he be receiving Communion at all, not until he has made a public repudiation of his position having sought the Sacrament of Confession and perhaps even after doing some public form of penance.  The same goes for all Catholic TDs in the Dail who supported the bill.  Whether they like it or not they had a choice and they made the choice to support the bill and that has consequences for their souls and for their place in the Church.

 

Reading what the TD has to say I get the impression that he thinks he has a right to be an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and that the priest has no right to exclude him.  This attitude is not unknown in Ireland today as some of those who are Extraordinary Ministers do actually believe it is their right.  This again is not always the fault of lay people who serve in this role, but rather reveals another failing at the heart of the Church in Ireland - another failure of catechesis.  No one has a right to be an Extraordinary Minister, it is a role whereby lay people may assist the priest with the distribution of Holy Communion at the priest's request if he honestly recognises that the distribution of the Eucharist will take an inordinately long time.  There are a lot of conditions in there you'll note.  But they are the conditions laid down by the Church for this role. 

 

Finally I note with interest, in the Irish Independent's article on this issue, what the spokesman for the Irish Bishops had to say - there is no diktat with regard to politicians and Communion nor to their current relationship with the Church i.e. excommunication.  There is a terrible fear in many Churchmen today to confront and challenge, a fear of offending people and a fear of the media.  Walking the tightrope between pastoral charity and defence of the faith can sometimes be a precarious thing, but it is certainly made more difficult when it is being conducted down in the trenches with heads held as low as physically possible. 

 

There are times when the truth most be proclaimed and action taken even if it offends people, even if people leave the Church, even if it means the media are going to drag you through the newspapers - that's the price we have to pay for proclaiming the Gospel.  If Jesus had stayed in the trenches he would never have been crucified, and we would not have been redeemed.  And today, how many souls are being lost because Churchmen and women are afraid to proclaim the truth?  If that TD had heard the Gospel of Life properly proclaimed he may well have been aware of the choice he was making on the day of the vote and the consequences for him with regard to the Church.  He may well have made the same choice but he would have been under no illusion that things could dandy along as per usual unchanged.  But then again he may have thought twice about it and may have chosen life instead of death.

 

On this issue I would suggest a good meditational reading of St Augustine's Sermon to the Shepherds (Office of Readings, Monday Week 24 to Thursday Week 25).

Bishops's Letter, Minister's Diktat, And A Twiddling Taoiseach

Enda and his mobile phone

What a week!  It seems that time is flying and more and more things are popping out of the woodwork to be dealt with.  Hence the spaces between posts - not that I have nothing to say - you should all know me by now, I tend to have too much to say at times.  I grab a few moments.....

Since my last post a few things of note have happened.  First of all the Bishops have released their statement for the Day for Life in Ireland which falls this year on the 7th October, feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (or as a friend pointed out this morning - the anniversary of Lepanto).   I have tried to find the statement online, but I do not think it is up yet - I trawled through the Bishop's Conference website and found nothing - it's not a great website and it can be difficult to find things on it, so maybe I missed it.

Anyway, the statement is good: it is clear and states quite catagorically that abortion is wrong, never necessary to save the life of a woman and that the child conceived is a human being worthy of the right to life.  There is a wonderful sentence in it worth noting: "From that moment [fertilisation], each of us did not grow and develop into a human being, but grew and developed as a human being" (emphasis in the text).  That is a marvellous way of stating the facts and undermine the argument proposed by those who promote and defend abortion that the "embryo" or "foetus" is not a human being. 

I am always amazed that in this era when science and medicine are so advanced, there are people out there who claim the embryo is not human, but becomes human (it seems) when the woman assents to the pregnancy.  Talk about hocus pocus and medieval ideas! The pro-abortion lobby are positively backward when it comes to scientific facts and then they have the gall to accuse those who respect human life as being stuck in the past and not as progressive as them.  Poor deluded creatures, their blindness has made fools of them all. 

The Bishops also point out that the government does not have to legislate for abortion to comply with the ruling of the European Court - someone should tell the bright sparks in the government because all we hear out of them is that we may have no choice.  Personally I believe they know, but well, politicians tend be selective when it comes to truth, and on this issue, even though it will cost innocent human lives, they'll fiddle the same old tune. 

Abortion, the bishops point out, is not a solution to a difficult problem, but the  delberate taking of human life and it can never be a genuinely humane or compassionate solution.  It is an evil that brings more evil, destroying not just the life of the baby who is killed, but the woman who has the abortion and society in general which becomes less humane and compassionate as it gets used to the killing of the innocent.  As the bishops correctly point out, as we listen to all the hard cases, it has proved by international experience that once abortion has been legalised, even if only for very restricted cases, it quickly becomes more widespread than was first intended (although to be honest, many of those arguing for abortion intend to have abortion on demand - their talk of restrictions is nothing more than a Trojan horse - as experience teaches us).

Meanwhile the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, is berating RTE for its unbiased coverage of the Children's Rights Referendum.  Now to be honest I never thought RTE could ever be accused of unbaised reporting, but if they are finally getting their act together, they should be supported. The issue is, once again, the McKenna judgement whereby both sides in a referendum campaign must be given equal time to explain their position: the government doesn't like this.

Meanwhile (you'll love this), after another minister in the same government told the Catholic Church to keep its nose out of the forthcoming abortion debate, Minister Noonan has told the Churches that he expects them to issue statements very soon supporting the government position on the Children's Rights Referendum.  This is an interesting development - a government minister telling the Christian Churches what positions they should take on certain issues: is this a diktat?  What about separation of Church and state?  This crowd just get worse. 

And meanwhile, our Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, on a visit to the Pope with other representatives of the European Political Group of which his party is a member, was twiddling away on his mobile phone during the Pope's speech.  Lord knows what people think about Ireland when they see our political representatives behave in such a childish way.  But really, is this the best we Irish can get to run our country?  Thanks their actions against the Pope and the Vatican, this government has already brought much criticism of Ireland from foreign diplomats and governments - when will they stop showing us up in public with their adolescent rebellion against Catholicism?

Not sure if you saw this, if not, please read it - John Water's excellent article on the Children's Rights Referendum.  As always, Waters sheds light on issues usually ignored in Irish Society today. That man deserves a knighthood!  We must drop a few hints with the bishops to put in a word with the Holy Father.

Irish State Fails Children

If there is one issue which reveals the double standard which is at the heart of modern Irish secular society it is the area of child abuse.  For the last number of years the Catholic Church has been torn to shreds in the media over her appalling recording on the care of children by some in the Church. Much of this was deserved, though at this stage the continued attacks are more of an ideological nature than righteous indignation. 

But compare this with the treatment the media give the state and its institutions when their record of appalling failures in the care of children is exposed.  Yes, a front page article, but where is the hysteria?  Where is the righteous indignation?  Where are the politicians demanding retribution?  Where are the resignations?   It is a very different affair.  We have people speaking calmly on television and radio, politicians in government wringing their hands and promises of implementing recommendations.  The item may be given first billing in news reports, but we then move on to something else, unlike news bulletins following the release of the Ryan and Murphy reports which dominated the bulletins and had teams of journalists on the job. 

For readers who do not know the Irish state's history of child care read this report in The Irish Times which details the publication of a report on the issue, a report which has been due out for a long time. Children have died in state care - over a hundred dying various unnatural deaths in recent times.  Children have disappeared without a trace - still missing, and yet self-righteous Ireland picking over the corpse of the Catholic Church barely raises an eyebrow.  Why?    As priests and religious sisters are named and shamed (legitimately if they are offenders), those in the HSE and other government departments hide behind anonymity, keep their jobs and no one is any the wiser.  Why?

A number of years ago we had a high profile case in which a young girl sued the state to allowed go to England to have an abortion.  She won and with the help of the then Health Board went on her merry way to an abortion clinic.  Only it was not as merry as we had been led to believe: we learned only recently that the girl did not want an abortion; that her parents did not consent to it - the girl was underage; yet officials in the then Health Board took it upon themselves to decide that an abortion was needed.  The girl was devastated when she realised what had happened her: "Where is my baby?"  she pleaded after the abortion.  And where are those state employees?  Why have they not been called to account and put behind bars not only for the murder of an innocent baby, but the abuse of young pregnant girl who did not know what they were doing to her.

And yet self-righteous secular Ireland - modern, "mature" Ireland, picking over the corpse of the "evil Catholic Church" barely raises an eyebrow.  But there is much more.  As the Church is condemned for her failures in area of child care, the state's part in this is airbrushed.  Yes, we had token expressions of regret, but if you examine the situation you see that more than such expressions are necessary.  In many cases the state dumped children on the religious orders and told them to look after them. Yes they provided funding, but it was paltry, not enough to feed a canary never mind look after growing children.

A number of sisters involved in the work told me that state officials would arrive at the door with a child, or a family in tow and basically tell the nuns or brothers that they had to look after them.  The children were abandoned by the state, put out of the way and burden fell on the Church to look after them.  These congregations, contrary to secular accusations, did not have a lot of money - they struggled to make ends meet.  Yes, unlike the state, the congregation had lots of dedicated staff who worked for nothing - religious who did not get a salary.  Let's remember the innocent, hard working religious who never harmed a child but devoted every waking moment trying to provide food, clothes, heat, education and some affection with inadequate resources. It was not always successful, and some of these religious were not naturally affectionate and some were struggling with "mother's vocations", so there were difficulties.  I think we can say that the Church has taken a beating for the state in recent years, it is a pity that politicians do not realise this: as priests and religious are made pariahs, the state slips out of the equation quite conveniently.

What is most interesting in all of this is that we have a Children's Rights referendum coming up in the Autumn. In this referendum the citizens of this mighty Republic will be asked to give the state more powers to protect children, to take them into care and leave parents with lesser rights.  The media and secular groups are all in favour of this.  Now, will we hear much bashing of the state over this recent report?  Will the media take the risk of even planting in people's minds a doubt: that this referendum may need to be defeated because the state has an appalling record of child care?  Well, I think we can all work that one out for ourselves.

Rendering Unto God

Our Gospel for today is the Lord's teaching on rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's - we all know it well, and we can all see the relevance of that teaching in age when governments and states seek more devotion and adherence from their citizens than they have a right to.

Related to this Gospel passage, Magnificat offers us a meditation from the writings of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko which is very apt.  As regular readers of this blog know I have a great love for Blessed Jerzy and see his life, example and experience to be of great importance for us in these times - hence the reason, I believe, God should glorify him so quickly.

Anyway, I would like to share these words of Blessed Jerzy with you:

"To serve God is to seek a way to human hearts, to serve God is to speak out about evil as a sickness which should be brought to light so it can be cured.  To serve God is to condemn evil in all its manifestations...

Government means service.  The first love of the authorities should be for those whom they govern.  And if this really were the case, if this basic Christian truth became part of real life, if the authorities were moral, if Christian ethics dominated the principles of government, how different our lives would be...

The whole activity of Jesus Christ was aimed at making people realise that they were created for the freedom of the children of God.  God created man in his image, so he is free; indeed man can accept or reject his Creator...

Let us be strong through love, praying for our brothers who have been misled, without condemning anybody but condemning and unmasking evil.  Let us pray with the words Christ spoke from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Lk 23:34).  And give us, O Christ, an ever greater awareness that love is stronger than violence or hatred...

The yearning for freedom cannot be stopped by violence, as violence is the weapon of those who do not possess the truth.  Man can be crushed by violence, but not enslaved...

A Christian fulfils his duty only when he is stalwart, when he professes his principles courageously, when h is neither ashamed of them nor renounces them because of fear or material needs.  Woe betide a society whose citizens do not live by fortitude.  They cease to be citizens and become more like slaves.  It is fortitude which creates citizens, for only a courageous man is conscious of all his rights and duties.  If a citizen lacks fortitude, he becomes a slave and causes immeasurable harm not only to himself but to his family, his country and the Church...Fortitude is an essantial part of one's life as a citizen.  That is why fortitude is, for a Christian, the most important duty after love.

In order to remain spiritually free men, we must live in truth.  To live in truth means to bear witness to it to the outside world at all times and in all situations.  The truth is unchangeable.  It cannot be destroyed by any decree or law...Courageous witnessing to the truth leads directly to freedom.  A man who witnesses to the truth can be free even though he might be in prison...We can overcome fear only if we accept suffering in the name of a greater value.  If the truth becomes for us a value, worthy of suffering and risk, then we shall overcome fear - the direct reason for our enslavement."

Time To Reassess Relationships

Prior to the General Election, Enda Kenny with Bishop Leo O'Reilly of Kilmore and others.

With Enda Kenny digging in his heels and refusing to admit he went too far in his criticism of the Holy See, it might be no harm for the Church in Ireland to begin to look again at the relationship with exists between the Catholic Church and the state which is the Republic of Ireland.  Speaking with fellow priests, a number of issues have come up which might need serious consideration.

First is the nature of the relationship between the two.  There is no doubt that for many years there has been an unhealthy relationship between the Church and the state.  Prelates of the Catholic Church had too much power over secular affairs and this has led many to see the role of a bishop in terms of power and control rather than as pastor and father.  A bishop is supposed to govern, teach and sanctify - ultimately  his role is above politics, nor must he let politicians use his office to promote themselves.  As Irish politicians gang up on the Church, they forget that many of them were happy enough to use the Church and to be seen in the company of the local bishop and clergy in order to win the votes of the flock. I saw it myself as recently as the last election when candidates turned up at Mass times to "say hello" to the priest in full view of parishioners.  

The Church is meant to be prophetic, and must have the freedom to challenge secular authority when necessary.  That is very difficult when one is compromised by too close relationships with the people in government.  Being prophetic requires a healthy distance, mutual respect, but also confidence to stand up to the state when necessary.  Separation of Church and state is absolutely necessary, but that does not mean, as secularists and politicians tend to think it means, the Church being subject to the state: she is not subject to the state - she must respect the state, and her members must obey the laws of the state in so far as these laws do not contradict or offend their faith.  However, the state must also respect the Church and her freedom, a freedom that is not confined to any one territory or the gift of any one government: the Church in Ireland, for example, exists within two jurisdictions: the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Given recent developments, it is time for the Church to examine how we proceed.  It may be that under the present government we will have many difficulties with the state and we may have to wait until the present Taoiseach is replaced or until another political party is elected to govern before Church-state relations are improved, that may take time.  But it is time for reflection.  One suggestion that has been made is that it is time for a Concordat between the Church and the Republic of Ireland. 

Many secularists in Ireland would be appalled at that idea since they think Concordats are signs of a close relationship.  Actually the opposite is true.  A Concordat normalises relationships and puts down in writing the nature of the relationship between the Church and a particular state so there will no longer be any misunderstandings.  It will safeguard the rights of Catholics within the territories governed by a particular government and ensure that the Church does not have undue influence in the state and that servants of the state do not have undue influence in the internal affairs of the Church.   Concordats set the boundaries and that is important particularly when the Church has to deal with hostile regimes as in the case of Nazi Germany, and who knows perhaps even in the case of a Fine Gael/Labour ruled Ireland.  The Church has a good record of respecting its part in Concordats, however problems tend to arise when the state, having committed itself to an agreement, wants to wriggle its way around that agreement, so problems might still emerge if a Concordat is made with an Irish government that wants the freedom to break the Concordat when it suits it.  Strong local bishops would be needed to make sure the state is respecting the boundaries. 

All areas of Church-state relations will come under scrutiny if it is decided that a Concordat is necessary.  One area which certainly needs attention is that of marriage.  At the moment Catholic priests serve as civil registrars or recognised solemnisers of civil marriages - when a Catholic priest marries a couple he does so as a minister of religion and as a representative of the state. Perhaps it is time for us to look at this and see that the time has come for this arrangement to come to an end. 

As in many other countries, even predominantly Catholic ones where the Church and state are on very good terms, Monaco for example, when a couple marries they have separate civil and religious ceremonies. Perhaps it is time for the Catholic Church to adopt that model - to conduct only Catholic ceremonies and let the state conduct the civil ceremony.  In Ireland the Church saves the state a fortune in personnel by the present arrangement and if the Church were to withdraw from this arrangement the state will be required to employ many more registrars to conduct civil wedding ceremonies, which may be costly unless they can persuade certain qualified citizens to do so voluntarily.  That issue of expense for the state is not the Church's problem.  Given that the Taoiseach and the government has many supporters in the criticism of the Vatican, I'm sure many of these supporters will only be too happy to give up their time to conduct civil wedding ceremonies free of charge.  I realise that there may be an inconvenience for couples, but I think genuinely Catholic couples will understand.

There are other issues which need to be examined, among them, perhaps the whole idea of permitting state funerals in the Catholic liturgy, providing Catholic Mass for state occasions and gatherings.  Even, for example, the practice of allowing the Blessed Sacrament to be reserved in the president's residence, a privilege not normally accorded a lay person.  And while the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a chapel, Aras an Uachtarain (the president's residence) is a state property, so there may be an issue of reserving the Sacrament in a place where the Church has no jurisdiction.  A chaplain is normally provided for the president; that can continue I suppose, if the individual president requires one.  All these issues, and more, probably need to be looked at. 

UPDATES: Good article by Rory Fitzgerald of the Catholic Herald on Enda Kenny's speech.  I see Kenny is defending his attack by saying he is a Catholic and wants the Church to be above reproach: if that's the case, he has yet to demonstrate  that he is willing to listen and take on board what the Church has said in its report. As a Catholic is he willing to admit that perhaps he made a mistake and that the Holy See might just be telling the truth?

Garry O'Sullivan has a very good article in this week's Irish Catholic in which he describes Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore's reaction to the Vatican report as "back of the trailer diplomacy".  Thanks to Fr Burke for this link to The Thirsty Gargoyle which has a splendid post on the Vatican's document and the Taoiseach and Tanaiste's response.

Time To Reassess!

Being out of the country is really good for allowing you think about what is happening in Ireland, a bit of space.  Many of our best writers had to get out of Ireland to write and think - there is something claustrophobic about Ireland.   Another good thing about getting out of Ireland, and the experience of the Church in Ireland, is that you see the Church in other countries and while there may be problems there, you can see where we are going wrong in Ireland, the areas in which we are blinkered and have cut ourselves off from the universal nature of the Church - where we have become "too local".  You can also see where we need to change.  Such an exercise is necessary in these times.  

Reflecting on the fallout of the most recent report and the government's insane plans to strike at religious freedom, you see that, as Catholics in Ireland - practicing Catholics that is, not the nominal and the lapsed, we no longer have a political party which can represent our views and can be relied upon to seek to uphold our freedom to believe and practice the Christian faith in its orthodoxy. 

At one time both mainstream parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were, for the most part "Catholic" parties reflecting the fact that the majority of citizens are Catholic.  However in recent years this is no longer the case.  Our last government, led by Fianna Fail, introduced legislation which forces Catholic registrars and providers of wedding services to violate their consciences with regard to solemnising gay partnerships.   Now Fine Gael are trying to force priests to break their solemn oath of preserving the Seal of the Confessional. 

These two parties can no longer be relied upon to preserve the ancient freedom of Christian citizens in Ireland.  While there may be sincere Christians among the members of parliament in both parties, for the most part they will follow the party line, few if any will oppose anti-Christian legislation if the party whip demands it, so in reality they are no good to us.  So we are now left with a question: where do we Christians go from here?

For one thing I think we Catholics need to reassess our place in Irish society.  While Catholics make up the majority of the population, in reality the faithful are now a minority.  Perhaps now the Catholic Church in Ireland needs to start thinking like a minority, and like other religious minorities start figuring out how we can work within society to safeguard our faith and practices. That may sound silly to some in the Church today and I can already hear bishops and priests saying that we are not a minority and Hogan must cop himself on.  Well, look around.  Irish society is no longer a Catholic society - our values are no longer those adhered to by the majority of people in the state.  Some of our bishops and priests may know politicians and presidents, they think they may have influence - well they don't. The failure of the Church in Ireland to persuade the last Fianna Fail government to modify the Civil Partnership Bill to include a conscience clause reveals the reality - and this is the party most bishops and priests traditionally support.  Time to stop believing we can subtly get a word in here, a wink in there and so save Catholic Ireland.  Not so anymore: the crosier has no power.  Politicians will smile and seem friendly when required, but ultimately use the Church to get a few votes.

When we realise that, we must begin to form alliances with other religious groups - something which will seem alien to the Church in Ireland - indeed something which may hurt its pride.  During the weeks in which the Civil Partnership Bill was going through parliament I asked a number of figures in the Church to contact the leaders of other Christian denominations, the Jews and Muslims, to discuss a joint submission to the government seeking a conscience clause.  Since our credibility is gone, a partnership with the leaders of other faiths may have produced results. My suggestion fell on deaf ears and all we got was a mild pastoral letter that had as much clout with the government as a soap bubble on a bull.  

In other countries the Catholic Church works with other faith groups and denominations - the Vatican does so very successfully in the UN: why can't we learn from this?  Again for this to be a reality we need to start thinking like a minority.  This does not mean we give up on the mass who consider themselves "ethnically" Catholic, but we need to lay foundations for the future, for another evangelisation and how hard that will be will depend on how we act now.   But we must also be careful not to think the majority of the lapsed will support the Church - as in Spain in the 1930's the lapsed may become our greatest persecutors.  We need to look to the lessons of history.

After that we, as Catholics, with other faith groups, may need to start looking at the political landscape and see what we can do to increase our representation in parliament.  That may mean working within one political party to turn it around, or it may mean forming a new one which could pick up support from believers.  Such a party would need to be a real party and not a one trick pony - believers must take positions in secular society in order to influence it for the good, so such a party would need to develop credible positions in all areas, but positions influenced by sound values which respect human freedom and dignity.  If members of such a party even got a dozen seats that may be enough to start a change - given that coalition governments have now become the norm in Ireland, the mainstream parties look to smaller parties to become partners in government - and so there may be opportunities.

There is, however, one glaring problem in Ireland: Irish voters, particularly conservative voters, tend to vote according to civil war politics.  Fervent Catholics do not support Christian parties but continue to vote as they always have because of tribal loyalty even if their traditional party is undermining and attacking their faith.  We have seen Christian parties and Christian candidates fail in the polls because concerned Christians decided to give their vote to the usual party candidates who do not share their voters' faith or hopes.  There needs to be a change in the way believers vote, and that means looking beyond local politics, getting this or that fixed in the local area, and looking to the bigger picture.  Politicians know that if they get a few things for voters they can distract them from the bigger picture, from the policies. 

These are just a few thoughts and I offer them to the lay faithful for their reflection.  The world and government is the area in which the laity must exercise their ministry and proclamation of the Gospel, and so it is for them to figure out how we proceed.   In the meantime Church leadership has to have a good think and look at new ways of leading the flock - and let's face it letting the liberals run riot and weeping is not the way forward.

Peace and Truth

What happened in that tent when Pope St Leo the Great met with Attila the Hun?  That's a question which, I suppose will not be answered here, we'll have to wait until we meet St Leo in heaven.  More than likely he's up there today, the centre of attention, it being his feast day, and telling the gathered saints for the umpteenth time exactly what happened: "Well, he said to me...but I said to him....and that put him in his place..Isn't that right, Attila?"  "Yeahhh", comes the response.  Heaven will be great.

The collect of today's Mass asks the Lord that through the intercession of St Leo, that we will be kept "faithful to your truth and secure in your peace".  That sums up the pontificate of the holy Doctor we celebrate today.   Every one who has done theology knows (or should know of) Leo's Tome - his intervention in the Council of Chalcedon reiterating the orthodox teaching of the Church concerning the Incarnation and natures of Jesus Christ, in response to the decisions made by the "Robber Synod", the Second Council of Ephesus, which had embraced the heretical view that Christ had only one nature.  Now lest you think this is all mere history or theology, have a good look at the Church today and you will see that the very arguments and positions which tore the Church apart in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries are doing the same today.  Plus ça change...  How often have I spoken to Catholics who do not believe Jesus was God, but a "good man" who was put to death because he rebelled against dogma?   Unfortunately many of our young here in Ireland veer in the same direction, if they know anything about Jesus at all.  But that's down to a failure in catechesis - something the Apostolic Visitators are going to have to put very high on their agenda.

And of course there is Leo's dealing with political figures on the international stage - ie Attila.  He struggled with secular authorities who were trying to muscle in on the Church and control her councils and teachings - a curse that we inherited from the interference of Constantine and which continued up to recent times when certain monarchs and governments even had vetoes over papal conclaves.  One thing that gets my goat (here he goes again - Father on a rant) is the whole thing of separation of Church and state.  Here in Ireland not one week passes but some atheist or secularist or politician is lecturing the Church on the need for separation from the state.  It is obvious, of course, that they actually don't mean separation of Church and state, but rather control of the Church by the state.  We have no problem with separation - we get on with our bit and the state gets on with its own, and if the relationship is normal, both can assist the other, with the Church fulfilling her mission of advising and looking after her flock undisturbed.  But the secularists do not see it that way - they want to control the Church, silence her, even banish her from the public square, unless of course they want to use the Church for their own ends, as we saw here in Ireland with the last referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  When the Church says no to that little tyranny, they weep and wail and accuse the Church of interfering in politics. 

In Ireland we are moving somewhat towards control of the Church by the state, or at least desperate attempts at it.  The recent scandals have not helped, and it seems to me they have allowed the government to take control over some of the Church's activities in the interests of "child protection".  Now I have no problem with stringent child protection procedures - as Christians the last thing we should tolerate is child abuse and the first thing we do is deal with the offenders as quickly as possible - as we used to do before Canon Law was thrown out the window because it was not "pastoral" enough.  Secularists in Ireland have now seen a golden opportunity to dismantle the Church and her influence on modern society, and that is partly our own fault.  They are having a great deal of success. 

With the challenges that lie ahead, and the work that must be done, we certainly need the wisdom and assistance of St Leo the Great, hence the relevance of our collect this morning.  And that reminds us, we have to begin with prayer and with the truth of who Christ is.  Back to basics!