Gospel Nonviolence Reflections-Donnycarney Le Cheile Community Centre 8pm

dublin | anti-war / imperialism | event notice Saturday March 27, 2010 21:05 by Mairtin MacMaolain mairtinmachuca at gmail dot com

The Future of the Irish Church?

Leo Tolstoy, acclaimed Russian author of such classics like "War and Peace" once wrote a book entitled, "The Kingdom of God is within you". He envisaged that this book would be read by very few and those who did read it, religious and secular alike, would arrogantly dismiss it as rambling nonsense. Yet this book inspired celebrated figures of the 20th Century like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day to leave their mark on history. Might it be that this book if read and understood by Christians worldwide, might just be a catalyst for ridding the mainstream Christian Churches of their corruption and superstition and instead turn people towards looking at Christianity as a new way of living, just like it was intended to be...the mind boggles...

In light of the scandal of sexual abuse of children and subsequent cover-up that continues daily to haunt the Catholic Church, this reflection looks at what what living out the true message of Christianity looks like, not a Christianity that hangs on to the survival of an institution corrupted by wealth, power and status, temptations which Jesus rejected in the desert but ultimately have gotten the better of men's hearts who pose as pillars of Christian morality. Perhaps the time for talking about a renewal of the Church should stop and some of that renewal starts now...getting back to teaching and doing the basics..taking courage from the early Christians and those who have faithfully and humbly tried in the modern time to live out this new concept of living as taught and lived by Jesus. This reflection aims at charting the way forward for a broken institution that is the Irish Church and seeing its potential to be the light of the world it was intended to be, if true repentance takes place.