Saturday 19 November 2016

THE CARDINAL WHO COULDN'T CRY

THE CARDINAL WHO COULD NOT CRY
Some years ago Cardinal Cahal Daly told Gay Byrne on the RTE Late Late Show that he had never cried !
People were amazed that a human being - especially someone who claimed to be a Christian leader had never cried. I published this response to Daly's claim. It was first published in the homeless magazine: THE BIG ISSUE Here I read it on my FIRST EVER PODCAST. It only lasts 7 MINUTES :-) CLICK ON RED CLICK BUTTON AFTER THIS TO LISTEN (left click and listen) I hope you find it INTERESTING.  When I last spoke to God he told me that Cahal was still in LIMBO playing with the animals learning how to laugh and cry with them. Later he will be introduced to learning how to laugh and cry with humans.

20 comments:

  1. Tears of joy sorrow and regret are an essential part of being human and Christian. Jesus wept. Being unable to cry is either some sort of medical issue or psychological barrier. How many clergy have barriers. I wonder why

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    1. Many clergy are unable to love. I think the celibacy thing can lead to a distorted self love - narcissism.

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    2. I think the ex opere opetato element of sacraments has been emphasized so much in the past that religion for Roman Catholics has been reduced to a painting by numbers exercise. When the human mind and common sense rebel there is no mechanism to manage the Dialectic. Enter the monsters

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  2. Pat, well done. This is a modern parable. Parables, as Jesus knew, are a powerful way of communicating messages.

    This is a parable about love v law, the self v others, honesty v self fooling, control v freedom. You should write and podcast some others. What about podcasting your Larne Sunday sermons as I suggested to you before?

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    1. Thank you :-) I do have another Parable in mind - this time about a visit I made to a rural Presbyterian church - The Parable of the Blind Man of Glenwherry :-)

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    2. What about my Sunday sermons idea?

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    3. I am a Larne Catholic and I do not to to The Oratory but to the parish church. But I do have to admit that Bishop Buckley's sermons in Larne when he was curate here were the best we heard in a long time. Some of us used to follow him on a Sunday between our two churches to hear him speak. I love all our priests but no one could preach like Fr Pat. Pity the split. We have had to live with it for 30 years. Not good. AR.

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    4. I once asked our parish priest in Larne, Father McVeigh, in confession, if it was a sin to go to Father Buckley's Mass. He said no, a priest is always a priest and the Mass is always the Mass.

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    5. Why did you even need to ask that question? How could it be a "sin" to pray and worship anywhere? It just shows that far too many Catholics think that the priest is God. And after all that we see priests have done and are doing is it not time we took our moral compass from Jesus himself and his teachings rather than from men who have shown for over 2,000 years that they cannot be trusted as guides?

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    6. Sins are not mathematical or viral elements that that can be extracted and analyzed resulting in a penance that will cure the I'll. The definition I used years ago with children was that a sin is a wrong action done on purpose

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  3. God has given us faculties of expression so that we can manifest outwardly in the inner quality of his nature but If there is a wounding within my spirit then the Holy Spirit cannot function properly and the character and nature of Jesus will be marred. Wounding can start far back as in the womb. In the book of Proverbs it says ‘grief of heart wounds the spirit’. So when we say that someone is ‘grief-stricken’, it means that they cannot express their emotions. We tend to put on ‘plasters’ to protect the area that has been wounded. If I am continually being rejected then the enemy will come in through that wounding and will cause my spirit to slumber and those emotions will become walls (plasters) around my spirit to prevent me from being wounded again.
    (Pro 25:28) tells us that ‘a man with no rule over his spirit is like a city without walls’. Our emotions are the walls around our spirit. It sounds that the Cardinal needed inner healing that could have come down through the family line. As a nation Ireland has suffered a lot of grief and these can be passed on to the 3rd & 4th generation, they are called ‘iniquities’ which are weaknesses that have been passed on and can be broken by renunciation. Like many of the Prophets in the Old Testament they took accountability for their fathers and forefathers iniquities and were then set free. So don’t be too hard on the Cardinal, there is always a reason for the way we act or react

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    1. Thank you for that very profound comment.

      I do understand and agree with what you say.

      I suppose the sad thing about being wounded is that if we do not get healing and handle our woundedness properly we can go on to wound others.

      Maybe we should be very careful about putting wounded people in positions of power over others?

      Maybe we should strive to make sure that those in leadership positions are fully integrated and spiritually?

      I have often thought that Cahal Daly did not have enough love in his life and maybe therefore found it hard to love others?

      He approached life very much from the academic and intellectual point of view.

      He did not understand I think what Brother Charles de Foucauld spoke of when he said:

      "Our religion is all about love. Its emblem is the heart".

      I often wonder if there is such a condition as SMS - Small Man Syndrome ?

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  4. In the Orthodox Church the gift of tears has an important place in their devotional life. I quote from a blogger (pittsburghoratory.blogspot.ie):
    “Blessed are they that mourn,” our Lord said in the second Beatitude. But mourn, weep, for what? Life certainly is filled with its sorrows and losses and often we may be moved to tears. Yet, how are we to understand our Lord’s teaching and the blessing that comes to those who weep?
    This is a question that the Fathers of the Philokalia often asked and through them we discover that such mourning is a spiritual gift and the fruit of true repentance. In the Christian East, the Greek word for such sorrow is Penthos… we can define it as “joyful sorrow”: a sorrow that arises from a broken and contrite heart, an inner sorrow for the sins that one has committed. However, such tears of compunction, the Fathers tell us, lead to a true and abiding joy…‘These tears,’ writes St. John Chrysostom, ‘do not bring sorrow; they bring more joy than all the laughter of the world can gain for you.’ ‘Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting,’ says the psalmist (126:5). Archim. Sophrony writes, ‘Stemming originally from bitter repentance, weeping develops into tears of rapture with Divine love. And this is a sign that our prayer is heard and through its action we are led into new imperishable life’” (Coniaris, “Philokalia: Bible of Orthodox Spirituality”, 175).
    Such tears of compunction are a gift of God, the fruit of baptismal grace and the renewal of our baptism. St. John Climacus wrote: “God in His love for mankind gave us tears. . . If God in His mercy had not granted to men this second baptism, then few indeed would be saved. . .. such tears are merely the fruit of the grace already acquired in baptism and have been described as “the infallible sign that the heart has been overwhelmed by the love of God . . . These charismatic tears, which are the consummation of repentance are at the same time the first fruits of infinite joy: ‘Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.’ Tears purify our nature, for repentance is not merely our effort, our anguish, but it is also the resplendent gift of the Holy Spirit, penetrating and transforming our hearts” (Ibid., 173). Obsessive guilt or scrupulosity only leads to hopelessness and despair, but true compunction and the cleansing tears that accompany it are a true gift of God meant to lead us back to Him and the embrace of His love. Indeed it has been described as the most precious thing on earth:
    “There is an old legend according to which God said to one of His angels: ‘Go down to earth and bring back the most precious thing in the world.’ One angel brought a drop of blood back from a person who had sacrificed his life to save another: God said, ‘Indeed, O Angel, this is precious in my sight, but it is not the most precious thing in the world.’ Another angel caught the last breath of a nurse who died from a dread disease she contracted in nursing others to health. God smiled at the angel and said, “Indeed, O Angel, sacrifice in behalf of others is very precious in my sight, but it is not the most precious thing in the world.’ Finally one angel captured and brought a small vial containing the tear of a sinner who had repented and returned to God. God beamed upon the angel as He said: “Indeed, O Angel, you have brought me the most precious thing in the world - the tear of repentance which opens the gates in heaven.”

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  5. I see the Nuncio Charles Brown is going to be on Gay Byrne's programme Meaning of Life tonight on RTE1 at 10.30. Should be interesting. Or maybe not.

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    1. Aul charlie won't have to wash his arse for a month gay will it well licked

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  6. There you are now, Pat, Gay is suggesting that you could be forgiven ha ha
    Of course your name hasn't been mentioned...yet

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    1. I was amazed to hear Charlie Brown say that he has never met Frs Darcy or Flannery the two "rebel priests". I would have thought that as the Pope's representative it would be his duty to meet them and discuss their problems or at least it would be the Christian thing to do.

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  7. There are countless human beings who do not cry, and are none the less human for that. The inhumanity shown here toward Cathal Daly is the worst sort of pharisaism.

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  8. Pat as a Cleric, please show respect for the dead. It's the least example you could lead us with, starting to lose Faith and respect in you, sorry!
    Bitterly opposed and disappointed with you and this blog and that on Fr McAnenery whom seemed on all accounts to been a man loved by all who he touched.
    Let the dead rest.
    I can feel the hurt that this would inflict to the families left behind and still mourning. You wouldn't like anyone write about your deceased family members and neither would I.

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