Deaf Sheperds
admin admin • 1 June 2020
There was much sweet talk about shepherds and sheep as we celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday on 3rd May 2020.....
There was much sweet talk about shepherds and sheep as we celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday on 3rd May 2020 in a strange new Covid-19 world of isolation and social distancing. However, as always, we continued the clerical charade of praying for restricted vocations even though we know there is an abundance of talented people in every parish capable of gathering us in the name of Jesus and revealing Sacred Presence. It seems like an insult to God’s Providence and our intelligence as Catholics to persist in demanding vocations to a limited male only priesthood under the duress of enforced celibacy. Most parents and priests in the developed world are clearly not encouraging young men into that patriarchal system. Apart from the growing cohort of lay people who have studied theology, pastoral care and related disciplines, we are aware of learned nuns who took Vatican II very seriously and are already available as teachers, pastoral workers, musicians, spiritual guides and chaplains. The clerics, who alone set the script for our liturgy, must be aware that there is a majority consensus of Irish Catholic people who value Mass and Parish Community and are now convinced that the priest/parish servant leader can be male or female, married or single. Tragically, the shepherds are deaf or refuse to respect and listen to their flock. Priests and people are concerned about the Eucharistic Famine over many decades in various countries as well as the awful injustice of excessive demands now being visited on a diminishing cohort of overburdened and elderly priests. All this injustice could be remedied if the shepherds listened to the sheep and applied common sense. Sadly, Rome is very slow to concede that reform is needed and, unwittingly, obedient men become “dogs in the manger” withholding sustenance from those in need. Jesus wept. Woman at the well and Mary of Magdala pray for us!
Talking of shepherds and sheep, my father chose not to be a shepherd since he was respectful and wary of those deceptive and woolly creatures. He ruled out sheep as one element of our small mixed farming venture on the Ox Mountains in 1950’s Sligo. He regarded sheep as “cute hoors” even though they present as timid and deferential. He knew that sheep are single-minded and expert in breaking through all fences in pursuit of further sustenance. Their trespass could always lead to trouble with neighbours. However, many people regard sheep as stupid and lacking in education. Some regard sheep as silly creatures with no competence, conscience, or wisdom despite receipt of many Sacraments. Others hope that Covid-19 will panic the wandering sheep back into the fold and that they will forget about all the abuse issues and refusal to reform. Many people today have seen television pictures showing sheep being rounded up by dogs and shepherds. An elite caste of shepherds alone have maps, answers, education, authority and power. No shepherdesses need ever apply even though the insulting charade of praying for limited vocations speaks of a critical shortage of male shepherds prepared to submit to mandatory celibacy. Is it any wonder that many adults and younger people have walked away from the sheep treatment, entrenched clericalism, lack of real power sharing, Roman intransigence and the danger for practising Catholics of collusion in abuse, misogyny and homophobia.? A vaccine for the global and virulent patriarchal virus is urgently needed. The core Good News of Jesus Christ is a treasure. However, the patriarchal packaging and lack of reform in regard to so many lesser issues, clerical opinions, systems and structures remains problematic for many people.
Such thoughts whirled through my mind on Good Shepherd Sunday. I listened to a number of webcam offerings as well as the RTE1 Sunday Mass with Bishop Cullinane. All the clerics adhered to their control group script about men only and enforced celibacy for priests. Copious words rolled forth as always into the strange silence of the sheep and the ongoing absence of healthy challenge, discussion or dialogue. Those intelligent and holy men seemed to be tone deaf in a medieval pastoral setting as they parroted on about shepherds and sheep in modern Ireland 2020. I think that there are lots of alternative words and concepts which could be used more meaningfully today e.g. servant leader, influencer, inspirer, animator, coordinator of parish services, moderator, facilitator, Christian community leader for shepherd and People of God or Friends of Jesus instead of sheep. You have many better words. There were plenty of shepherds and sheep in the Holy Lands in the time of Jesus. They are not as plentiful today. The world has moved on and words carry new meanings and nuances. The words sheep and shepherds carry all kinds of negative overtones in the wake of all the abuse reports over the past decades. We are ashamed that we acted like sheep while cruelty, oppression and abuse was perpetrated on women and children during our watch. Irish Catholic people are now aware that in past years obedient bishops/good shepherds colluded in Roman cover up of clerical child abuse and pontifical secrecy to preserve the institution rather than the children. Irish Catholics know that Rome today will only appoint as good shepherds those men prepared to forever uphold the clerical line on contraception, homophobia and a steadfast refusal to ever grant equality and justice to women in the governance, teaching office and ministry of the Catholic Church. Excellent whistle-blower priests, nuns and bishops have been denounced as bad shepherds and then abused and blackguarded by the Roman Control group. BAA! BAA! BAA!
As a believer, I want the treasure within the core Good News of Jesus Christ to be accessible and available to all in good times and in bad within the Catholic Church. Failure to listen humbly to the consensus of the faithful and to reform makes the above ideal very difficult. Serious problems with autocratic systems, entrenched clericalism, misogyny and patriarchal entitlement remain blocking access to rich fare. God’s Revelation did not end with the Book of Revelation two thousand years ago. God is among us today and is being revealed in all of Creation. The Minister of Word and the Eucharistic Leader together with the People of God should be able to proclaim/present/articulate nourishing Word of God in language/concepts/facts/ideas/stories/narrative that make sense to people today. Deafness or inability to listen, dialogue and change is not helpful in that project. Deliberate resistance and denial of modern realities is also negative. Literal words and concepts from the folk memory, local agendas and oral traditions at the base of the Bible need to be translated into modern categories while fully aware of meanings today. There is a need for new language, stories and narrative centred around the best of modern knowledge in presentation of the Good News and Project. All believers can play their part in building up the Kingdom of God. Pope Francis is right to promote open discussion and synods as long as there is listening, consensus and real change. There is a great need for honest conversation and robust dialogue in every parish and diocese leading to consensus and change in Vatican III as soon as possible. We Catholics are honest people. Let us speak out for reform in the Catholic Church using every modern means available to us.
Joe Mulvaney
Email: speakoutforreform@gmail.com
Interview with Soline Humbert Irish Daily Mail 15 March 2025
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
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