Which Side Would We Be On?

Jesus famously dismissed persons who called on the name of the Lord, while failing to obey His commandment that we love one another. His followers are called to be bridge-builders and peacemakers. While I have been preoccupied with the North/South axis, 'bridging' the Bay of Biscay and the gulf between, let us say, Anglo-Saxons and Latinos, we might say that our John has been at work on the East/West divide. Here he is with one result, marrying Andreea in the exquisite little Orthodox church of their local village in the midst of the luxuriant countryside of Transylvania.

The array of icons on the walls and the rood screen certainly made an impressive contrast with the somewhat pantheistic painting that we have on the wall above the altar in St Mona's church on Sherkin; and though on the whole I enjoy the folksy modern hymns that we sing, I have to admit that the Orthodox chant which accompanied the wedding was much more spiritually impressive. We do have wonderful chant in our own Roman Catholic tradition; we should try to use it more.

It all reminds me of the struggles at the time of Vatican II. The cry was to make the liturgy 'accessible' and 'relevent'. The problem arises - accessible and relevent to people living in what kind of cultural wasteland? There may sometimes be a lot to be said to keeping one's God shut up behind the rood screen, instead of interfering in one's dealings with, say, a communist dictatorship, which could be very dangerous indeed. What of our own relationship with the secular realities of our own time?

I understand very well what the people of Doonbeg owe to the Trump organisation, and the benefits of an investment like theirs in a remote and struggling community. I happen to have been the chairman of the West Clare Development Coop for a number of years. Apparently the resort is well run and the economic benefits enormous. Meanwhile do we just close our ears to the dangerous garbage that the man himself spouts, for example about climate change or the Irish border?

Said the Duckie at his press conference with the Taoseach in Shannon -"I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here.... There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it's going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The  border will work out."

Where does one go, what can one say, about such an ignorant statement from supposedly the most powerful man in the world? What sort of a grasp of reality can he have in the much more complex situation of the Middle East? If there is a total breakdown between power and truth, then necessarily democracy is dead. One is left with a situation where truth is merely a matter of what suits Il Duce. Give the salute, or else! The Great Leader of the Free World is now perilously close to that situation, though at least there are plenty of protestors but no cheering crowds for him in Europe; meanwhile Doonbeg gives him his best chance of basking in a little approbation. 

It is highly ironic that from there he popped across yesterday to celebrate the anniversary of D-day, unlikely though it is that his imagination might stretch to the situation from which so many gave their lives to liberate the people of Europe. Yet could it be that the attractive story of the result of big investment in a rural community in the West of Ireland is being deliberately used as cover for a much more sinister agenda? We know that many people in occupied Europe profited very well from collaboration with the Nazis, while the fate of those who stood up to them was often unspeakable. Which side would we have been on in their shoes? Where will we stand if, via Iran and so on, the Duckie stumbles into a massive conflagration? Yes, the Pope was very right to ask us to 'pray for Europe' , (and yes, Francis is right again, 'do not let us fall into temptation', as is already said in Portuguese and French, is more to the point than 'lead us not into temptation', though maybe 'let us not be led into temptation' would work too!)