chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk           Previous articles by Chris

   November 7, 2012                              Chris McDonnell, UK   

Of Presidents and Popes

By the time that this Posting appears on the blog the US election will be in full swing and depending on time zones, we will be staying up at night to get the result or sleeping in till morning to await the news over breakfast. Either way, we are in for a momentous week, after so many weeks and months of spending enormous sums on television adverts, mail shots and other means of propaganda aimed at many millions across the country.
And from it all will emerge the next President of the United States, by all accounts this time, a close run thing

Contrast that to the occasional gathering in Rome, when a hundred or so men, nearly all aged 55, 60 or over, elect one of their own to be the next leader of the Church and invest in that person enormous trust, power and influence. The collegiality of common concern would appear to be a matter of diminishing return fifty years on from the Council.

Whatever the issue if you don’t listen, you cannot respond and so the realisation of the real problems facing people goes unnoticed. Those who do voice their concern, who look for alternate ways forward, in faith,  are castigated as disloyal and asked to refrain from speaking, lecturing or otherwise publishing their views. The Twentieth Century is littered with their names and although we are only 12 years into this Twenty First Century, there are no immediate signs of a significant change to established habits.

Last week, BBC Northern Ireland broadcast an hour long programme on Brian D’Arcy, a Passionist with a high profile in Ireland, that was at times very painful to watch.  You can still pick it up on YouTube, go and have a look at it. Lasts just an hour. At the same time the outcry over the treatment of Prof Tina Beattie from the Roehamton Institute in West London has gathered pace and the blog war continues its vituperative tone.

And all this in the Year of Faith…. I would ask are we sincerely intending to seek a deepening of faith in the Mission of the Church or are we anxious to accept an ever-tightening control from Rome over the intellectual integrity of our fellow Christians? Is it Mission or Maintenance?

The challenge of contrasting opinions, however difficult the issues raised, will not be solved by attempts to silence their expression. We appreciate each other when we actually listen rather than vaguely hear, and then are willing to engage in a productive exchange of opinion.  We have so much to learn from each other and through our attentive listening to the Spirit of God.

Whoever wins on Tuesday, wakes up with a problem: the next four years. And the immediate issue is the aftermath of the Great Storm. The piece that follows was written a couple of days after that storm went through the North Eastern States and the damage trail became all too apparent. 

Hoboken, NJ

Across the Hudson River

in Jersey State,

Hoboken, hit by storm,

is somewhat changed.

Rising sea and driving rain

shifting sand and wearing wind

have re-arranged the shoreline.

The splintered wood of broadwalks

and ravaged, torn up timbered homes

are piled in mounds, unrecognisable.

               Trashed.

 “My city in ruins”

sang Springsteen.

The ragged, rough-edged ocean

under scattered, hunting skies

sheltering the silent cries

of homeless people

whose lives are paused

till help arrives

and somehow, somewhere,

they can start again.