HYSTORY AND MEMORY
Adressing a distinguished audience which had gathered to hear the words of their revered master at the beginning of the twentieth cencury, Sigmund Freud said that the only thing they could be sure of in the century which was dawning was that they would all die in it.
As we await the dawn of the twenty-first century we cannot even be sure that we will all die in it. The medical and scientific world have made such leaps in the past few decades with cloning, genetic engineering and embryonic research that it would be impossible to predict just what further discoveries are round the corner.
The year 2000
The “end of the world as we know it” is how a recent article in Time magazine described the year 2000. According to a poll taken by Time one in ten Americans believes that the world will come to an end in that fateful year. A quarter of those who travel by plane have decided against going aloft at the beginning of the New Year. Gold coins are considered by certain economists the only reliable form of currency that will see their owners safely through the financial rapids of the first decade of the new millennium.
A special AD 2000 Crisis Relief Tasks Force has been set up in Colorado to meet the problems that will result from the break-down of society because of the millennium bug. Some scientists believe that if the millennium bug is not disarmed by the end of this century it may attack more than just our washing machines and our telephones!
Presuming that we do survive the millennium meltdown, there will be plenty to wonder about as we take stock in January 2000. One thing is sure, the New Year will not just be a change of numbers. The deep psychological impact the dawning of the year 2000 will have could be compared to a person walking on a path beside the river. As long as he is on the path he is in continuity with the flow of the river that comes from way back. But once he turns off the path the river is lost to view and he finds himself in a very different landscape.
A perceptive journalist writes in one of the British newspapers: “The year 2000 has been called ‘The Year by Which?. Every big business, church, health authority and government has set targets for itself that reflect the contours of the calendar. The coming anniversary is both a deadline and a catalyst for social, political and economic change. Just as the first world war produced votes for women and the second world war the United Nations, so the millennium has given fresh impetus to European union. Can we predict what it will be like to live through the great rollover? The one thing we can say for sure is that it will be an unsettling experience” (Damian Thompson, Sunday Times, January 24 1999, 9).
Ireland faces 2000
Uncertainty touches not only the scientific world. Economics, political development and every other facet of social life have entered a Heraclian mix out of which practically anything can emerge.
All the countries of the world, especially the western world, are entering a period of uncertainty and transition that makes predictions and accurate forecasts of where we shall be in fifty of even twenty years practically impossible. In such a situation the “inculturation” of the Christian faith is no longer just a issue for the implanting of the gospel in far-off fields or strange societies. In places with an age-long history of religious practice the turn of the millennium presents new challenges.
Having come back to Ireland after an absence of fourteen years I find the rate of change really startling. The Common Market has rewarded the enthusiasm of the Irish voters for European union with billions of pounds of funding, most of which has been used to build up business and the infrastructure of the country.
What was once called the Land of Saints and Scholars has now become the Land of the Celtic Tiger. The economic boom of the nineties has astonished the world and Ireland is now a model of progressive capitalism. The country has one of the highest success rates in education and three year ago a survey put Ireland in second place after Singapore as having the world’s leading educational facilities. This has made investment, especially by American software companies, particularly attractive and the country is now one of the leaders in the export of computer software.
But with the new prosperity other, less positive factors, have made their presence felt. Crime figures are at an all-time high; there is a booming trade in drugs; family break-ups are common features and unemployment is at extremely high levels. There are all the elements for the increase of what sociologists call “the underclass” - that growing body of citizens which is not benefiting from the increased wealth and prosperity of the country.
For me as an SCJ, coming back to Ireland after an absence of 14 years, the biggest change is the fall of the Catholic church from the pedestal upon which is was so solidly perched for centuries. A number of factors have contributed to this. The growing secularization of the country made it inevitable that the old hold of the Catholic bishops on the lives, if not the minds and the hearts, of the people would be weakened. When I was a boy the Irish bishops were able to veto a government proposal to help mothers with special benefits. In 1948 the Mother and Child scheme proposed by the socialist parties was effectively destroyed by the bishops on the grounds that it did not sufficiently uphold the principles of Catholic family policy. This victory was a Pyrrhic one. It left a smoldering resentment against the power of the Church and its perceived interference in the working of the state. Many politicians were determined that never again would the Catholic bishops be able to undermine their policies in such a blatant fashion.
Another key moment was 1968. The encyclical Humanae Vitae was submitted to unprecedented criticism. By then television held sway in every home and the people directing the media were determined to show their independence of any outside pressure group, most of all the Catholic church. Although the country as a whole did not change much in the high figures for the practice of Sunday Mass, doubts were sown in the minds of many.
As economic boom and crash succeeded each over the next two decades the steady decline in the numbers of practicing Catholics continued. All this came to a climax in the nineties. The election of the first woman president, Mary Robinson was a clear marker of the new order that was emerging in the country at large. In her first presidential speech she gave a call that was to echo through the land for the six years of her tenure of office. She called, significantly, on “the women of Ireland” to rock the boat instead of rocking the cradle. It would be hard to find a clearer expression of the new mood that was beginning to grip the country.
But what really gave the coup-de-grace to the former dominant position of the Catholic church, especially its leaders, were the clerical scandals that came to light. The first and most publicised of these was the case of Bishop Casey, up till then a highly respected and much-loved pastor. He was probably the best-know of the bishops because of his involvement with the human rights struggle in Latin America (he was present at the funeral of Archbishop Romero and sent back a gripping report of the shooting of innocent civilians). Casey admitted to having a grown-up son and in the ensuing reaction fled to the USA.
Hard on the heels of the Casey affair other and more sordid accusations began to emerge against a number of priests and religious. These were brought before the courts. The news of the misdemeanors of religious against children in their care and the sight of priests being lead in handcuffs to jail were a severe blow to their standing throughout the country. The people with long-felt but long-suppressed anger against the church were now able to give vent to their feelings. It became a hard time for a person to walk the streets of Dublin in clerical garb. Priests were even advised by their bishop to go about without the traditional roman collar.
Needless to say, all this has drastically lowered the number of young people who actively participate in the life of the church. Vocations to the priesthood and the religious life are now at an all-time low.
When Pope John Paul visited Ireland in 1979 he received a rapturous response from the people, both young and old. The intervening twenty years have brought a serious decline in the standing of the church. The papal visit in retrospect looks more like a glorious sunset than an inspiring new dawn.
The SCJs in Ireland
We arrived in Ireland in 1978, one year before the papal visit. Already by then the writing was on the walls as far as plentiful vocations were concerned. The glory years were already over.
However, we were fortunate to settle in quickly and find a site for our formation house that suited our needs. This presence was consolidated when we took over the running of a parish in the city. Both of these two points have been the focus of our presence in Ireland since the early 80s.
I was in the founding group of the first formation house and now I find myself the pastor of the parish. As we come to the end of the century it’s an opportunity to reflect on where we are going. But as I said already, any prediction for the future are not only difficult but practically impossible, given the state of flux in which the Catholic church and the country find themselves.
However, we are drawing up a “millennium project” in the parish. This project follows the classical Dehonian combination of the spiritual and the social. The spiritual dimension of the project centres of the Eucharist, again something dear to the hear of Father Dehon. The plan is to adapt the existing church by creating a special space for eucharistic adoration. In a new chapel near the church door there will be adoration all through the day during the week. We shall set up teams of adorers who will make sure that the adoration centre functions regularly. The people of the parish will have a change to contribute to the adornment of the chapel through specific contributions and we hope to create an attractive space that will begin to be operational by the end of 1999.
The other part of the “millennium project” is more complex and more ambitious. We wish to give a large piece of land behind the church to the city authorities so that they can build housing accommodation for elderly and disabled people. The plan is a good one but we have to navigate a number of obstacles, legal and otherwise, before the project can be realized. Housing is one of the most serious problems facing Dublin at the moment so we feel that the gesture is an appropriate one for the turn of the millennium.
Conclusion
“We do not know where we are going. We only know that history has brought us to this point and - if readers share the argument of this book - why. However, one thing is plain. If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on that basis, we shall fail. And the price of failure, that is to say, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness” (Age of Extremes, 585).
I conclude with this quotation from Eric Hobsbawn’s magisterial review of the twentieth century. The British historian looks towards the new millennium with a reminder of the uncertainty that lies ahead but also with a warning that we have to be ready to adapt and embrace the future. If this is true of secular society, it is even more imperative for the Christian church to meet the Year of the Lord’s favour with ready and open hearts.