Diocesan News18 Sep 04

Meath and Kildare Diocesan Synod presidential address

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

delivered by
The Most Rev. Dr. Richard Clarke, Bishop of Meath and Kildare
to
The Synod of the Diocese
on
Saturday 18th September 2004
in
Wilson's Hospital School, Multyfarnham, Co. Westmeath

- central section of the address..... -

We cannot say for certain before this month is over, but it seems more than likely that September 2004 will be remembered in history for the way it began - the mass murder of hundreds of small terrified children in a primary school in a town in Russia which none of us had heard of until then, but the name of which none of us will now ever forget - Beslan..

It happened that a couple of days later I was at a meeting of religious leaders, not only Christians but representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, and eastern faiths. The opening ceremony began with a children?s choir singing John Rutter?s setting of the lovely hymn For the beauty of the earth, a hymn which continues with words which at that moment - in the shadow of Beslan - sounded genuinely heartbreaking, sung in English by young Italian voices :

For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.

...

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
Pleasures pure and undefiled.

...

For that great great love of thine,
Peace on earth and joy in heaven..

Clearly not for any intentional melodramatic effect, but the children?s singing was followed immediately by an addition to the planned programme.. The Russian Orthodox Bishop for Ossetia was asked to speak to us all, because he had been there, in Beslan, on that terrible day, Friday 3 rd September, two days earlier. And he told us something about the scene at the school, about frantic and fearful parents, weeping for their children.. and about helping to carry the bodies of children out from the school, and closing their eyes for their mothers and fathers. The immediate progression from children singing about the beauty of creation and of human love into that harrowing speech of Bishop Feofan, who had been there on that terrible morning, was without doubt one of the most poignant moments of my life.

But it did - probably inevitably - set me thinking again about that crucial question, What we actually find important in life. What do I find important in life? What do we, as individual Christian disciples, think is important? What do we, as a Church or a diocese, think is important? And what do we all so often waste our time, belongings, emotions and energy on - shamefully, disgracefully and indefensibly? We make light of God?s love, the beauty of the earth, the joys of human love and of Christian companionship. We take what we have around us totally for granted. We indulge ourselves with pettiness and rivalry and self-obsession. But what really matters?

And so during our synod, I want us to keep that question before us constantly. In the aftermath of a Beslan, of a cruelty and inhumanity on a scale of which we could not even have dreamt, even in our worst nightmares, what really matters in life? What matters to us as a Christian community? What matters to God, in the way we as Christians spend our time, energy and resources?

Later in this synod, I will be asking for the suspension of standing orders so that we may have our now customary slot, when together we think through some aspect of life which might influence the way in which we as a diocese do our Christian business. We will be thinking about the impact we make (or fail to make) on the world in which we live. We will therefore be hearing a little about what we might do to help those beyond our shores who need not only our money but also our awareness and interest in the work of Bishops? Appeal. We will also be thinking about what we might do as Christian communities for the wider community of which we are each a part in our own local setting.

I am not going to pre-empt that discussion, but I do want us to think in more immediate terms about our more direct context - the perspective of parish and of diocese. Late last year, through the Ministry Matters project, we asked people as to what was important for them about church life. By now you have heard many of the answers. One thing which came through clearly was that many people seemed to recognise that ministryis not just something to be done by clergy. Each one of us was called to a full Christian ministry in our baptism, and this means that we have all to take responsibility - even an equal responsibility - for bringing Christ into the lives of those around us.

One of the next tasks for the diocesan Ministry Matters group is to look closely at what we have learnt, not just from our own internal investigations as a diocese, but also from the civil census of two years ago. We now have the data which allows us to see, in far more detail, how many people there are, living within our diocesan borders, who claim to be ? Church of Ireland?, but of whom we have no knowledge or record. One of the things which is already becoming apparent is that this diocese may well be fifty percent larger than it thinks it is..

In the most recent census forms, one has to make a particular conscious decision to indicate one?s religious affiliation; one is perfectly entitled to mark a box for ?no religion?. In other words, far more people than we have any awareness of explicitly regard themselves as Church of Ireland. Within the counties of Meath and Westmeath (both totally within the diocesan boundary), there are now over one and a half thousand more Church of Ireland people than were there in the census year of 1991, adding up to almost 5000 people declaring themselves as Church of Ireland in those counties alone.. In one area within County Kildare, there are now one thousand more ?declared? Church of Ireland people than in the early 1990s.

And please don?t say ? don?t even think, ?If these people haven?t already got involved in the parish, they are not going to be much use to us anyway..? That attitude, I can only say sadly, is actually blasphemous.. The Church does not exist for those who are useful or useless to it or to us. It is not a club. The Church exists to bring God?s love into the world. And if people - for whatever reason - are prepared to think of themselves, however loosely, as having a relationship with any Christian community, we are disgracing our own Christian calling by ignoring their existence. I do not think we can be blamed for not having known that there were so many people in our areas who regarded themselves as Church of Ireland; there have been huge movements of population in Ireland over the past few years. But now that we do know the facts, and can even establish with some accuracy where these people might be, it is our responsibility to do something about it. We might of course add that more people today describe themselves in the census as of ?no religion? than claim Church of Ireland affiliation. It is the basis of Christian mission rather than sectarian proselytisation for us to ask solemnly if we are actually content that people have given up on religion altogether. Do we not realise that we have responsibility for them as well as for those who may claim a Church of Ireland label ? And this cannot just be a task for clergy. The next step for ministry in these dioceses is to enable lay people to be fully part of the mission of the Church to those who know us but whom we do not know, and also to be central to our mission and witness to those who have given up on all of us. That will require work, it will require sacrifices from everyone, it will mean turning our back on many of our petty little parochial obsessions in order to face ourselves outwards towards the world. But will we ever be able to face God if we do not do it?

But the implications of what we think is truly important for the Church in Ireland today reaches further down than the life of the diocese. In this country, we live - as I think we all realise - in a culture where people?s main preoccupation is self-protection. This has infected all of us. People do not wish to be held responsible for anything, and hence are rarely prepared to take any responsibility whatsoever for themselves or for their actions. They would much rather hoist responsibility on to others ?further up the pecking order? so to speak, even though the particular responsibility is clearly theirs. It is always safer to turn anything and everything into someone else?s problem, even if it is clearly their own responsibility to sort out. In part it may be a concern that they will get into legal trouble if they take any responsibility for anything, but I believe the problem goes further.

The bringing together of what is now called a victim culture with a so-called blame culture means not only that we all wish to regard ourselves as victims of someone or something, but that we also feel an overwhelming need to find someone else to blame for our woes, however much they may in fact be of our own making. This is not only unwholesome and pathetically immature, but it is also extraordinarily prevalent in our society and hence in our local communities. My observation is that it is far more noticeable here in Ireland than in other cultures with which I would have some contact ? ?I?m a victim (but never of my own stupidity), and I?ve got to find someone else to blame for it..? We all need to grow up. It is in those moments when we become aware of the real victims of the world, such as those children in the school in Beslan, that we may somehow learn to become less self-obsessed, and to realise that there is more to life than protecting ourselves ? there is the goodness of others that we are taking for granted and are even protecting oursleves against.. there are the joys of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, pleasures pure and undefiled. To learn again mutual respect, to learn again the common courtesies of good manners, to learn again that others around us often deserve our appreciation rather than our watchfulness or resentment ? this will not happen automatically, and yet without those necessary re-adjustments, we have little to show to those around us of the nature of Christian community.

As I think you may now have realised, I am by nature someone who looks forward to the future with genuine enthusiasm. I believe that, as a diocese, we have a proverbial ?ball at our feet?..

• we have plenty of people in our communities,
• we have a genuine Christian commitment from many of those people - young and old,
• we have many around us, literally thousands, whom we do not yet know but who recognise us sufficiently, that they regard themselves as of the Church of Ireland tradition,
• we therefore have huge opportunities to reach out to those in the society around us who are frightened, rudderless and disillusioned, and who are deeply uneasy about what the future may bring to them.

All we need to do is to recall again what the Church - the whole Church, clergy and laity - is actually for : to bring the light of Jesus Christ into the world.. and then we need to align all our work as a diocese to that single end. We do not have time to waste on trivialities, on constant self-protection as parishes or individuals, on pointing blame, or on perpetual victimhood for ourselves.

The future, a great future in the cause of Christ, is there for us to grasp. The past is only ever there for what it can give to the future. That is the message of Christianity. It should be our message as well, for this synod and diocese, and for the years ahead. What really matters?