I fell into a burning ring of fire: Life issues & culture wars in modern Australia
Pub Theology - Daniel O’Connell
Paul Russell, September 09
A burning ring of fire, indeed. Not a reflection, one hopes, on the fine food of this establishment!
I had not thought to ask Michael why he chose the title of the old Johnny Cash song to introduce the topic so I’ll offer some thoughts of my own a little later on.
By way of introduction, I had cause to reflect on the life of that great Irish Catholic from whom this fine establishment takes its name.
Daniel O’Connell is known to this day in Ireland as “The Liberator”. Often called a pacifist, O’Connell worked by peaceful means to liberate Ireland from the oppressive British rule that, from his earliest days, saw Catholics treated as second class citizens.
I would hardly call O’Connell a pacifist. Certainly, he urged his compatriots to action without recourse to the sword, but he fought with his whole being for what he believed in through public action and political means with all the talent and energy that God gave him.
At his death in 1847 he had achieved a great deal though the ultimate prize of independence and religious freedom was still not yet fully in sight. In the biographies that I have read it is worth noting, in terms of what I will talk of a little later on, that he changed his tactics a number of times. Politics is not a pure art and, while O’Connell would never betray his ultimate aim or his convictions, he legitimately employed a number of means in the pursuit of good ends.
At the close of his life he saw his people decimated by the potato famine and spoke passionately in the British House of Commons for relief and justice.
He was seriously ill as he travelled to Rome in a vain attempt to fulfill his wish to die in the Eternal City. He died at Genoa on May the 15th 1847. His heart was embalmed and sent to Rome and his body, back home to Ireland in accord with his wishes. “My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, my soul to God.”
“My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, my soul to God.”
We have a problem, you and I. It’s essentially a problem of credibility. There are battles to be fought in the public square for the hearts and minds of this generation. There will always be such battles just as there will always be some like O’Connell who are willing to lead. But I’m thinking mainly about issues such as abortion, human cloning, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and the like when I say that our credibility problem stems from the fact that along with the advancing secularization of our culture there is increasing inability in our society to understand what is at stake, even amongst Catholics.
We could argue about which is cause and which is effect, but that would be a distraction. The pressing problem is and remains that fewer and fewer people, including and especially fellow Catholics, have the basic knowledge and belief about core issues and that, even when they might intuit what is right, have either no skills or no interest (or both) in articulating such a point of view.
In the 1970s, in my high school years, a change took place in the way Catholic young men and women were educated. Certainly, this reflected a changing pedagogical worldview – we were not alone. However, in terms of a Catholic education we moved from formal doctrinal instruction on matters of faith and morals, where, it is fair to say, there was little if any explanation of the why of it all; to a more inquiring style where students were (and perhaps still are) left to judge for themselves about competing ideologies and precepts.
It would also be a distraction to debate the relative merit of these methodologies: both had deficiencies. I will say, however, that while the former method may have lacked the necessary intellectual engagement, the latter has a tendency to relativism.
It is this relativism: the idea that there are no moral absolutes; that there are no truths that we can know that hold in all circumstances and at all times, that all opinion is of equal value, that is at the root of our problem. The proof that such assertions are false can be seen most obviously in the fact that the statement: “There are no absolute truths” must be asserted as an absolute truth for it to be valid. Pope Benedict aptly describes this as the ‘Dictatorship of Relativism’.
Relativism finds expression in our modern world most often through false appeals to personal autonomy. How often do we here such luminous statements as:
“It’s my body, it’s my decision.”
“It’s my life to end as I please.”
“My love for my same-sex partner is no different to yours – why can’t I marry?”
And my favourites: “Well, I just think that…” and “That’s alright for you, but I have my own views on the matter.”
What’s missing from such statements and how do we answer them? How do we deal with surveys that suggest that most Australians support same-sex marriage and euthanasia, for example? What are we to say when the same surveys also claim that a majority of Catholics and other Christians also hold such views? Do we know enough about these issues ourselves and are we able to articulate a reasonable defence?
St Peter tells us: “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you…” 1 Peter 3:15.
Hope as a virtue can be said to be a matter of the heart for it is often, but not always, that hope finds expression in our emotions. Scripture also tells us that where our treasure is there also is our heart; so there is a clear relationship here and one, no doubt, that inspired Daniel O’Connell to declare his heart for Rome.
Friends, our faith and our hope must find expression in our daily lives. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi – This ancient aphorism says it all: rendered, “as we worship so do we believe and so do we live”, it is clear the Christian life makes certain demands of us. We must make a conscious decision in loving and following Christ to also love and follow His Church – it would be somewhat dysfunctional to do otherwise.
And so, when faced with an issue of moral significance, we must allow ourselves to be formed by the mind of the Church. At the very least, this should mean that we know and accept first principles. In terms of debates concerning abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, IVF and surrogacy to name a few, the first principle is the right to life – that inalienable right that underpins all other rights and, without which, all other rights lose something of their meaning and force.
At the very least, accepting the right to life and human dignity as base line non-negotiables will help us intuit that something’s perhaps not right when complex moral issues arise. We will be able to ‘smell-the-rat’; to know that something’s not right.
Cardinal Cardijn, the founder of the Catholic Young Worker movements advocated a simple process that we would do well to consider: See – judge – act.
Seeing the issue we might ‘smell-a-rat’ – all okay so far. Making a judgment (or discerning) the matter requires that we seek both ‘primary sources’ and sound commentary so as to understand what is at stake. For a Catholic, this also requires us to adopt a ‘default’ position that, in the first instance, finds what the Church has to say and accepts it as true.
This should be the case regardless of whether or not we understand why the Church says what she does; following faithfully St. Anselm’s motif: ‘faith seeking understanding’ (fides quaerens intellectum) or St. Augustine’s ‘I believe that I might understand’ (credo ut intelligam). It is often the case when we accept what the Church says with our hearts that the understanding follows.
Only once we have both seen and discerned are we in a place where we might act. Action is necessary. Pope John Paul II often exhorted us that we are not to see ourselves as passive observers of our history – that we have a solemn duty to bring the light of truth to bear in our world. So we See, Judge AND act.
Action is a little harder to speak of in definitive terms. The possibilities of action stem from the individual and his or her station in life but can also become collective where a number of so-motivated people associate towards a good end. One action that I urge you all to consider is being able and ready to give account for the hope that is in you to your friends and acquaintances. Be not afraid.
Just as Daniel O’Connell employed various tactical maneuvers in his pursuit of freedom, we need to give thought to what we say and how we say it depending on circumstances. Arguments based on faith and Church teaching will do fine when you’re talking to other Christians, but they’re likely to fall flat when dealing with others. Reason will always provide us with answers on such occasions.
John Paul II opened his great encyclical on the subject by saying that: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” Reason is the handmaiden of faith; sound reason (what is often called Natural Law) is in harmony with faith. Don’t be afraid to use it.
As an example: If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard of a letter to a politician being couched in religious terms I’d be a rich man. Even if your MP is a Christian he or she will be looking for arguments that they can raise in the debate. ‘God says so’ or, unfortunately too often, ‘you’ll burn in hell if you support this bill’ just will not do.
In his book The Common Man, G.K. Chesterton described the practice of philosophy as simply ‘thought that has been thought out’. He went on to say that, although philosophy is ‘often a great bore’, that ‘Man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.’ No alternative.
We may never formally study philosophy, but reasoned argument is available to all of us. Are we simply going to let ourselves be influenced by the many forms of media that bombard us constantly without thought, or are we going to set for ourselves a lifelong pursuit of the truth by giving our hearts to Rome as we give our souls to God?
I admit this is a hard sell. I’m not apologizing for that. As you grow away from home and hearth to build your own lives you will constantly find challenges that will test you. Having developed a modus operandi that seeks the truth in prayerful reflection will stand you in good stead.
In respect to my original premise regarding the secularization of our society, there is no doubt that the pressing need for articulate young people who have taken the time to understand the issues will make a difference overtime. The world is often taken by fads of one sort or another and the pendulum will eventually swing back – the observation that it rarely finds equilibrium simply means that there will always be issues that will concern us.
I’ll close this talk shortly to give time for discussion. With Michael’s permission, I’d like to open the discussion with a précis on some of the current and recurring issues of our time to hopefully stimulate your thinking.
Returning once more to Daniel O’Connell, we should not fall into the trap of believing that he was a lone warrior. His magnificent statue in O’Connell Street Dublin adjacent to the Liffey is as much a reminder of the cause and those that struggled with him as it is about the man himself. He could never have achieved what he did if there were not, a) people who were willing to follow and, b) a broad understanding within the community of the problem and the objectives in addressing it.
And in closing, in his book ‘God and Caesar’ and the chapter on Catholicism and Democracy, Cardinal Pell offers this summary observation and challenge to us all in respect to the pressing moral issues of our time:
“The quality of the Christian and Catholic response to these challenges will determine not only the future level of religious vitality in the Catholic community, but how much and for how long the Western world remains basically Christian.”
The pursuit of truth, as Pope John Paul said, is the desire to know God. The truth is intrinsic to God’s nature. If Michael’s use of the ‘burning ring of fire’ reference has any meaning at all, then let it be the cry of the disciples when Our Lord revealed the meaning of the scriptures on the road to Emmaus: “Did not our hearts burn within us.”
Thank you.
