Articles

A complete chronological listing of shorter pieces written since 1995.

Any of these articles that are not the copyright of a specified publication may be freely copied and distributed.

Articles are listed in inverse chronological order – i.e. more recent articles first.

  • The Dark Materials of Children’s Fiction
    © Doctrine & Life Dec 2004
    A review article evaluating Philip Pullman’s fiction trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’, currently being filmed. Although this work is an attack on historical Catholicism, parents and teachers should not be unduly alarmed and should treat it as a useful starting point for a discussion with children - of huge mistakes made by the church in the past but also the nevertheless liberating power of Christian faith.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: X – The Emerging Church
    © Reality Dec 2004
    While Irish Catholic clericalism - the clerical desire to be in charge of everything - still deprives the Irish church of effective structures for dialogue and collaboration, the Trinity is moving lay people into lives of service nevertheless. This movement is set to grow, counteracting the decline of the clerical system that we currently see.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: IX – Catholicism and Sexuality
    © Reality Nov 2004
    Catholic teaching on the sacredness of sex and the importance of marital fidelity is far superior to a 'sexual revolution' that promotes sex as recreation. However, the Catholic restriction of priestly ministry to celibate males has mistakenly implied that sexuality is incompatible with spirituality, has deprived the teaching church of the wisdom acquired through the marital relationship, has invited ridicule and is now leaving the church seriously short of priests.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: VIII – Division in the Church
    © Reality Oct 2004
    Jesus never said 'thou shalt be right!' His command of love is binding both on those who fear change (the 'conservatives') and those who see change as essential to the recovery of the church (the 'progressives'). All of us are 'works in progress' whose minds will also change if we are open to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. That is what it is to 'repent', and we are all bidden to repentance.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: VII – The Power of Prayer
    © Reality Sep 2004

    Why prayer is essential to the realisation of the Kingdom of God. Without it we are too prone to lose that sense of our own dignity that enables us to award dignity unconditionally to all others.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: VI – The World and the Kingdom of God
    © Reality Aug 2004
    It is a mistake to think of the Kingdom of God as a pyramid of social esteem. It is not only entirely compatible with the principles of equality and democracy, but the only means by which these principles can be realised in the world.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: V – Snobbery and the Gospels
    © Reality Jul 2004
    Jesus was an anti-snob - someone who undermined the social pyramid of his own time by disregarding those at its summit and associating with and honouring the very poorest. To recover its dynamism in the West the Catholic Church will need to recognise and eliminate snobbery - the root of all clerical careerism - from its own culture.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: IV – Jesus the Layperson
    © Reality Jun 2004
    It was as a lay person, not a priest, that Jesus challenged the unjust religious system of his time. His gift of himself models for all Christians their mission in the world. Only the full recovery of this mission of lay people in the world can advance the Kingdom of God.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: III – A Portable Faith
    © Reality May 2004
    Why we need to prioritise the central truths of the Catholic faith if we are to pass it on - especially the truths that all of us are loved by God and that love is the greatest wisdom - while ostentatious knowledge can get in the way of the Good News.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: II – Clericalism
    © Reality Apr 2004
    We Irish Catholics are historically deeply attached to our priests, and for good reason. However, a continuing and widespread clerical denial of dialogue and initiative to lay people is diminishing the importance of the sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation - and delaying the recovery of the church from over a decade of traumatic scandal.

  • Is There an Haute Cuisine Catholicism?
    © Doctrine & Life Apr 2004
    A Review of Alain deBotton’s ‘Status Anxiety’, accepting deBotton’s interpretation of ‘worldliness’ as a desire for social status and examining the reasons for the historical failure of clericalist Catholicism to make this connection.

  • Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: I – Crisis
    © Reality Mar 2004
    Ten critical problems in the Irish Church in 2004.

  • ‘Saving Christianity: New Thinking for Old Beliefs’
    © Doctrine & Life Mar 2004
    A review article assessing Canon Hilary Wakeman's argument that the creeds can only be said with ‘crossed fingers’ - and the possible contribution of ‘progressive Christianity’ to the cause of 'Saving Christianity'.

  • The Moral Universe of the Creeds
    The Irish Times Jan 2004
    As moral principles cannot be derived from empirical science it makes no sense to argue that modern science has destroyed the conceptual universe that we find in the Bible. There cannot be a moral reality unless our understanding of the universe - and of the meaning of our own lives - is moral as well as physical. The empiricism of e.g. Richard Dawkins cannot be a source of moral conviction or purpose, so the moral universe of scripture and the Christian Creeds - a universe poised between good and evil - is not only still valid but vital to human well-being.

  • The Search for Spiritual Intelligence
    Spirituality 2003
    The current 'buzz' about 'spiritual intelligence' needs to stop ignoring the biblical account of 'wisdom', an ability to discern the difference between love and desire, and to choose between them. It needs also to take account of the fear of shame that so often leads us to choose unwisely.

  • The Lost Sin
    The Furrow 2003
    As part of his ‘progressive’ assault on the Old Testament, the retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, J S Spong, inquired scornfully “Who nowadays covets his neighbour’s ox or donkey?” However, if we are to believe the French Catholic anthropologist René Girard, the whole of Christian revelation pivots on covetousness - wanting what seems to give our neighbour greater dignity. Why is it that the obvious human tendency to imitate the desires of others has so long escaped the attention of Christian moralists, including Catholic bishops?

  • Northern Ireland: Christians in Conflict?
    Doctrine and Life Sep 2003
    The clichéd opinion that violence in Northern Ireland is driven primarily by religious differences has never been tested against the evidence. In fact what drives the extremes on both sides in NI is reciprocal envy - imitation of the other's desire for ascendancy. This is covetousness - against which all Christians are warned by their shared sacred text. Secular ideologies can violently compete also, for exactly the same reason.

  • Reprieve!
    Reality 2003
    The lasting impact of a close encounter with the 'departure lounge' - especially gratitude for the avenue to hope provided by the Christian teaching I had received as a child.

  • ‘Ubi caritas …’
    Reality 2003
    'Where caring and love are, God is there also' - how this hymn came to change important relationships, and deepen my understanding, at a time of serious illness.

  • “You have possibly incurable cancer.”
    Reality Aug 2003
    How an experience of a possibly terminal cancer helped to change radically my understanding of prayer in the summer of 2003. And how that change impacted upon my entire worldview - and upon what I would then choose to write. The first of three 'notes from the departure lounge'.

  • Licensed to Kill
    Doctrine and Life 2003
    How the Popeye cartoon, the James Bond movie franchise and the Babylonian creation myth known as the Enuma Elish help to explain the foreign policy of the Bush administration in the US.

  • Consecrating the World?
    Doctrine and Life Sep 2003
    If the role of lay people in the church is to 'consecrate the world to God' why have Irish lay people never been convened to discuss and discern what this means? And how should this duty affect our attitudes towards secularism, which sought religious freedom before the Church ever did? These questions remain unaddressed in Ireland, in the year of the 'World Meeting of Families', 2018.

  • Christianity and the Environment
    Doctrine and Life 2003
    So often scapegoated for the western imperial expansion that led to globalisation, and for the environmental crisis that has followed, the Judeo-Christian texts we call be Bible reveal the roots of sinful exploitation of the Earth's resources and the only sustainable future.

  • Restoring the Authority of the Church
    Doctrine and Life 2003
    Having lost the authority of coercive power to the Enlightenment and the authority of moral influence to media revelations of its own lack of integrity, the leadership of the church needs to realise that its authority cannot be restored if it cannot regain the trust of its own people. In the end it is those who serve the needs of the most disadvantaged members of society who maintain what authority the church has left.

  • Ireland’s Moral Ground Zero
    The Irish Times Jan 2003
    The nadir (or so we thought) of Irish political and ecclesiastical leadership in 2002.

Views: 1776