A Radiant Letter

Pope Benedict's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland


The key word in the Letter is ‘renewal’


I downloaded the Pope Benedict’s Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland from the website of the Dublin Diocese http://www.dublindiocese.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1836&Itemid=906 , printed it off and read it.

The key word in this Letter is ‘renewal’. It occurs over ten times, and at least ten other related words express the same idea.


‘A new vision is needed’
The message of the Letter, what Pope Benedict is saying to us, is that our response as individuals, as families, as communities, and as the Church in Ireland, has to go far beyond and beneath the presenting issues of individual and institutional abuse of children, and mismanagement of these by the Church authorities.

‘In confronting the present crisis, measures to deal justly with individual crimes are essential, yet on their own they are not enough: a new vision is needed, to inspire present and future generations to treasure the gift of our common faith.’

He warns us that we are in for a long haul: ‘No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly.’


‘A path of healing, renewal and reparation’

What he calls ‘the crisis’ is a crisis for all of us. Not just the bishops. The rest of us too. And to lift us all up again, he says, we need a new vision of how to live our Christianity. What he proposes that we all need to undergo substantial renewal:

‘For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation.’


‘Remember “the rock from which you were hewn”’
He asks us, quoting Isaiah, to remember “the rock from which you were hewn”’, to reflect on the generous and often heroic contributions made by Irish Christians in our past and to ‘let this provide the impetus for honest self-examination and a committed programme of ecclesial and individual renewal.’

What is shocking and surprising about all of this is that it is directed to all of not just to the bishops. He does not say, only some bishops messed up so only they need to change.

‘The need for unity, charity and mutual support in the long-term process of restoration and ecclesial renewal’
Just to make sure that’s what he is really saying, let’s consider another sentence where he makes it inescapably clear that it is all of us he is addressing and asking to walk the path of renewal:

‘With this Letter, I wish to exhort all of you as God’s people in Ireland, to reflect on the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body, the sometimes painful remedies needed to bind and heal them, and the need for unity, charity and mutual support in the long-term process of restoration and ecclesial renewal.’

‘All of you’ - we all have to change. Why all of us? Partly so that in the long run, we may become the kind of community that brings forth people of quality who will make it more likely that such abuses will not happen again in the future and that if they do they will be better dealt with by those responsible for overseeing things.

Underlying this is a profound but brutally realistic vision of the communal, social and political as well as ecclesial dimension of our lives. We are all ‘one body’, not only because as Christians we are drawn into Christ, but also because as human beings we are intertwined – the mystery of human solidarity and moral interconnectedness is part of the human condition.

We really are one moral body and soul as a Church, but also as a society, a people. Our leaders represenus, uncomfortable thought that reality may be for us to face. Society is the average Joe written large - I write this as a Joe. If many of us become a bit more sensible, restrained, responsible, then the tenor of society is leavened a bit in that direction. And the same applies in the other direction.

If we really are committed to a ‘never again’ then we need to be people of character. In order to be able to see what is right and do what is right we have to be right in mind and heart, and that’s where renewal comes in.

There has been a shortage of people sensible and mature enough to see what is fair and insist that it is done, strong enough in character to say the uncomfortable things, to take the lonely stand against the way things were always done, to go against the current, to speak the truth to power, to know and do what justice requires.

And brings us to the radiant centre of Pope Benedict’s Letter – what is it that brings about this change in us, and maintains and develops it?


‘Seek a personal relationship with him within the communion of his Church’
Speaking directly to the children and young people of Ireland he comes to the heart of the matter.

‘It is in the Church that you will find Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. He loves you and he has offered himself on the cross for you. Seek a personal relationship with him within the communion of his Church, for he will never betray your trust! He alone can satisfy your deepest longings and give your lives their fullest meaning by directing them to the service of others. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and his goodness, and shelter the flame of faith in your heart.’

This is the radiant centre of the Letter – to seek and find a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – seen at first alive in the fellowship of people we come to see are authentic Christians, and then coming alive in us, as if by the jumping across of a spark.

‘A personal and life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ within a loving, nourishing community’
How on earth are we to live so that we have some chance of passing on this animating heart of our lives to our children and their children? Benedict’s answer is tough but as realistic as a rock. They have to see us living it.

‘A young person’s experience of the Church should always bear fruit in a personal and life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ within a loving, nourishing community.’

The young will know it is possible when they see it is real. That is what ‘experiencing the Church’ must become.

The aim for each of us has to be to become a one of a cluster of those in whom this relationship is alive so that others may behold and catch it there – living this way is the evangelical renewal that spark-leaps from generation to generation.

‘New ways to pass on to young people … friendship with Jesus Christ’
Benedict is aware that in today’s increasingly secularised society ‘even we Christians often find it difficult to speak of the transcendent dimension of our existence’ – we ourselves have become unable, sometimes to put into words what is the heart of our spiritual and communal experience and lives as Christians. The language that worked for previous generations may simply not speak to young people today.

So what are we to do? ‘We need to find new ways to pass on to young people the beauty and richness of friendship with Jesus Christ in the communion of his Church.’

With clinical bluntness, Benedict lays it on the line – ‘In confronting the present crisis, measures to deal justly with individual crimes are essential, yet on their own they are not enough: a new vision is needed, to inspire present and future generations the treasure the gift of our common faith.’

Either one of those tasks would be daunting, but our crisis consists in the necessity to address both of them at the same time.

Benedict has done us the inestimable service of reminding us that neither can be adequately addressed unless the both are.

The radiance at the centre of Benedict’s Letter
Pope Benedict’s Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland is a light in the long darkness we are working through.

There is a radiance at its centre, the friendship with Jesus Christ, the personal and life-giving encounter with him within a loving, nourishing community. This is the fulcrum that is going to move the Catholic Church in Ireland, to lift it up, and give it the push it needs to start upwards again on the long night’s journey into day that we know and feel in the heart of all our hearts it needs.