Scheiding der geesten in Ierland? Limmericken

...
Showing moral courage by her attendance, but bringing with her no extra cash demanded by the Government and survivors to top up the meagre redress deal negotiated by former education minister Michael Woods, Sr Marianne O’Connor, secretary general of Cori, the Conference of religious of Ireland, said the Humbert School was “the first public forum to which religious have been invited since the publication of the Ryan”.

There was no prize for the religious orders from the Humbert School.
Only two of the local clergy were present. It was noted by many that the Bishop of Killala, John Fleming, away on pilgrimage to Lourdes, had not sent a special delegate to witness both the awards, and there was a series of scathing criticisms of the secrecy deployed by the Catholic hierarchy and their lack of direct engagement with the survivors.

....Maar vooral ook ging hij in op de uitdagingen waar “de theologie” voor staat binnen de academische wereld, de Kerk en de maatschappij als geheel.

Dat in ieder geval de Ierse Kerk en maatschappij belang hechtte aan dit congres bleek uit de betrokkenheid van zowel de bisschop van Limerick, Donal Murray als de aartsbisschop van Ierland kardinaal Brady. Beiden waren aanwezig op het congres. Kardinaal Brady ging voor in de Eucharistieviering in de kathedraal van Limerick.

Grote mediabelangstelling

Dat Ierland trots was op deze gebeurtenis bleek uit de grote media-aandacht voor het congres. Landelijke kranten berichtten er over en iedere taxichauffeur in Limerick was op de hoogte van het evenement.

Het thema was een zeer actueel thema. Welke bijdrage moet de theologie leveren aan het denken over ecologie en economie? In deze tijd van een financiële crisis en uitbuiting van de planeet zijn dit geen hobbythema’s, maar realiteiten waar vanuit katholiek perspectief actief een bijdrage aan moet worden geleverd.

EDUCATION (IRELAND)—ST. GEORGE'S INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, LIMERICK.

HC Deb 15 April 1886 vol 304 c1619 1619
§ MR. H. J. GILL (Limerick) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the fact that St. George's Industrial School, Limerick, has been duly certified as capable of accommodating one hundred and seventy children, but that a grant for only eighty has been given; and, whether he will bring the matter under the consideration of the Treasury, with a view of obtaining a grant for the full number?

THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. JOHN MORLEY) (Newcastle-on-Tyne) Yes, Sir; my attention has been called to this case in a correspondence I have had with the hon. Member, to whom I wrote on the subject yesterday. The purport of the letter was that the utmost I could promise was that the case will be considered, with many others of a similar character, when next year's Estimates are being framed.

Vanuit verschillende disciplines van de theologie werd het thema belicht. Prof. Sean Freyne uit Dublin ging vanuit Bijbels exegetisch perspectief in op de verantwoordelijkheden voor een verantwoorde omgang met de schepping in al haar facetten.

The criticism came from Augustinian priest Fr Iggy O’Donovan and Fr Kevin Hegarty, two courageous priests who want the Irish Church to move out of its closed cloisters into the more participative church of the Second Vatican Council, in which bishops share decision-making with priests and laity in a national synod.

Fr Hegarty, exiled to the remotest parish in north Mayo for publishing articles on clerical child abuse in the mid-1990s, noted how today’s bishops tried “to establish clear blue water between themselves and the religious congregations” in the wake of the Ryan Report.

“As they sought to sail away from the wreckage revealed in the Ryan Report, room on the Episcopal lifeboats was extremely limited,” Fr Hegarty lamented, while Michael Kelly, deputy editor of the traditionally conservative ‘Irish Catholic’ newspaper, bemoaned that following Ryan the Irish Church now stood “in the gutter, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, humiliated, hopefully repentant”.

Fr O’Donovan, who was reprimanded for con-celebrating an Easter Sunday Mass in Drogheda three years ago with an Anglican rector, explained that he belonged to a Church which, as an institution, “rarely if ever admits to having been wrong or to having inflicted harm on people”.

Most strikingly of all, Michael O’Brien accused the Irish bishops of not telling Pope Benedict the full scale of the Irish abuse crisis — and he demanded that the Pope should meet two survivors to listen to their stories.

Rome, Maynooth and Cori needed to take seriously the alarm bells rung in Mayo this weekend, or their Church is moribund as far as the next generation is concerned, he said. However, while Rome, Cori and Maynooth continue to man the breached ramparts of their closed walls, the danger is that like the Church, the Cowen government will shrink from its financial responsibilities to abuse victims.

The unspoken hope of Maynooth and Government Buildings is that the survivors’ group will divide and fight among themselves, and that the media and the public will weary of their plight.

John Cooney, the director of the Humbert School, is Religion Correspondent of the Irish Independent