Comment and Debate on Faith Issues in Scotland August/September 2019 Issue No 283 £2.50 Editorial the Next Steps
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Comment and debate on faith issues in Scotland August/September 2019 www.openhousescotland.co.uk Issue No 283 £2.50 Editorial The next steps What next for the conversation on new directions for the ecclesial structures and suggested the need for a new focus Catholic Church in Scotland which began at the Open on process and dialogue. Many people want a regular House conference in June? Reflections from participants on gathering to become part of the ongoing conversation, the lessons they learned (see Letters Special pp 14-17) offer echoing Pope Francis’ call for a synodal church at all levels. some pointers. Participants were inspired by local initiatives (‘nothing at The first is context. We are living at time of transition from all will change unless we individuals make it happen’) and a dying model of church. There are no easy answers to by the way in which people adapted tools to meet local changing an institution with deeply embedded structures of needs. These experiences have already prompted further power. This was reflected by those who felt that the conversations. conversation about new directions has been going on for a Then there is the suggestion that we need to develop a way long time, that clergy are still able to block progress at local of turning the thoughts and ideas generated by the level, and that opposition to Pope Francis’ reforms is deeply conference into practical possibilities for change. The damaging. The importance of leadership was raised by conference organisers and facilitators plan to meet soon to several people. Bishop Leahy was commended for his discuss how this part of the process might be taken forward. leadership skills as well as his all-embracing vision of We’ll keep you posted. church. Thank you to all those who responded to the invitation to People found that gathering together and listening with share their thoughts on the conference. We can all take respect to one another was a powerful experience of church heart from Pope Francis’ encouragement to continue along (‘an inspiring gathering unimaginable until recent times’). It the path of synodality which began at Vatican II. The world demonstrated the potential for transformation when in which we live and which we are called to serve, he says, everyone’s gifts and insights are acknowledged and demands that the church strengthen co-operation in all honoured. The facilitator’s skill in setting the context for areas of its mission (Address commemorating the 50th effective conversation exposed the failure of existing anniversary of the institution of the synod of bishops). Life on earth It was not a small step for man but neither was it a giant would have fed everyone on planet earth. But that was leap for mankind. It may have been a gigantic never on the agenda. achievement by the Americans to put a man on the moon It now appears that the moon might be a useful base for in 1969. But humankind was then concerned about many taking off to explore earth’s sister planet Mars. Within the other things. The Vietnam War for a start. More people next generation it may be possible to set up living quarters went to Woodstock the following month for a music on the moon. What is driving this is the question of the festival than to the Kennedy Space Centre for the source of life. Was there life on Mars billions of years ago? launching of the moon rocket. Despite the current media There are people rich enough to pay for a trip to find out. hype few remember where they then were when That is the mystery confronting science today – the Armstrong stepped on to the lunar surface. It was all over source of life. More people now have faith in science than in a few years. Since 1972 nobody has been back. in religion. In 1969 Buzz Aldrin took communion before The moon was in fact just another target in the military stepping on to the moon. Mission Control wished the race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It astronauts ‘Godspeed’. Now the only time the Deity or was won by America and bankrupted Russia. That having the Christ is mentioned it is as an expletive. Science and been decided upon, interest in peopling the moon religion shouldn’t be so separate. diminished. It was possible to return to earth and get on Meanwhile there is an abundance of life on earth. Some of with proxy wars against other enemies. it isn’t very pleasant. Millions live on the edge of starvation. George MacLeod of the Iona Community was one of the Food is produced on an industrial scale to offer variation to first to ask why if it was possible to bring rocks from the those who already have enough. Efforts to do this are moon then why was it so difficult to take food to places driving climate change which may make parts of the world on earth where there was famine. The cost of the moon uninhabitable. Two billionaires are competing in the new race was literally astronomical. A fraction of the expense space race. Is their money being well spent? 2 OPEN HOUSE August 2019 Contents Interview LYNN JOLLY Page 3 Mary McAleese interview Lynn Jolly Mary McAleese in Pages 5 The Kirk’s Radical Action Plan Glasgow Jennifer Stark Page 7 Faith in fiction The former President of Ireland and advocate Mary Cullen for human rights explains her current research Page 9 Thomas Merton revisited into the implication of children’s rights for the Catholic Church’s teaching and practice. Michael L O’Neill Page 10 An education pioneer Stephen J. McKinney My meeting with Mary McAleese, Glasgow since Page 12 Notebook lawyer, academic and former President October 2018. of Ireland, takes place in a very old I begin by Page 14 Letters special: your haunt, a room with which I was asking how she Mary McAleese. response to the Open House once very familiar. She currently is enjoying her conference holds a professorship in the theology Glasgow sojourn. Without hesitation department of Glasgow University and she affirms some familiar Glaswegian Page 18 Reviews: books, film we meet in a small room on the first tropes: we are friendly; we are open and music floor where I used to look out of the and mildly gregarious compared to window during systematic theology some of the dourer corners of the Page 22 Bishop Devine: an seminars. I remark on this as we shake country; we are, in fact, very familiar; appreciation hands. a bit like the Irish. Quite Irish actually. A native Catholic of north Belfast she Many of her childhood holidays were Page 24 Moments in Time grew up familiar with the sharp end of spent in Scotland and there is, she sectarianism and the discriminations says, an ease here that is making this that came with it. From school she period in her life and work feel like a ascended to Queen’s University, return to a known place. Belfast then Trinity College, Dublin, Her response, which is immediately graduating in law and becoming a eloquent and delivered without pause, member of the Irish Bar in 1974. takes a more serious turn when she Her academic career began at Trinity highlights some less appealing shared where she taught Criminal Law, laying characteristics. Sectarianism is still Thank you to all those who contributed the groundwork for a professional around she thinks, but this isn’t to this edition of Open House. life marked by association with, something to be necessarily surprised Open House, which was founded in and promotion of, the values of or overly troubled about. It’s part of Dundee in 1990, is an independent human rights, inclusivity and anti- our history, culture and psyche and the journal of comment and debate on faith discrimination. healthy flip side of it is an openness to issues in Scotland. It is rooted in the She was elected to the Irish discussing religion and politics. None reforms of the Second Vatican Council presidency in 1997 and served until of that embarassed reticence that may (1962-65) and committed to the 2004 when she was re-elected for a exist elsewhere on the island of Great dialogue which began at the Council - second term, finally stepping down in Britain. Not for us. within the Catholic Church, in other 2011. Since then she has continued There’s an immediacy about this churches, and with all those committed to advocate for the rights of those early exchange that somehow reflects the very commonalities she’s to issues of justice and peace. vulnerable to the harsh consequences of unjust discrimination, particularly describing. I remember that although www.openhousescotland.co.uk women, the LGBT community, and we sit in a university faculty building children. It is the latter group which and she is an accomplished academic, Cover by Dominic Cullen. form the basis of her current doctoral she is also a lawyer and a politician studies as Professor of Children, Law of standing and experience. It is and Religion which she has held at the impactful communication skills August 2019 OPEN HOUSE 3 associated with those professions that campaign to it, again resonant of the regard myself an internationalist, I had are initially striking. No reflective politician and advocate that she is. This voted for a nationalist party because wall gazing to gather thoughts; no is clearly not a disinterested academic it offered the clearest policy position professorial ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’. project. It is a work of passion, of the on staying in the EU.