What happened in Derry in 1972 was both unjustified and unjustifiable. Fourteen innocent people died as a result of that State’s collective injustice and immorality.
Not prosecuting the soldiers involved may have to be the price paid for restorative justice to temper retributive justice.
An Australian soldier wasn’t prosecuted in Afghanistan recently because money compensation had been paid to an Afghani family which had suffered fatalities in an incident of reckless or culpable soldering.
BP has to provide billions of dollars to an independently managed trust fund to “do penance” for what now looks like culpable negligence while drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Looks like accountability is back in town, at least for the time being.
Dr. Wodak, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, warns about putting on State and Federal election menus the perennial vote catcher of stiffer sentences and bigger prisons in an attempt to enforce accountability at the lower level of the social ladder. “Do the crime, do the time.”
After 200 years of the western cultural “enlightenment”, we were expected to have mastered ourselves to the extent that we’d all be living happily ever after by now.
Reason was supposed to be the saving feature distinguishing us humans from savage beasts of the wilderness.
Well, if we rely only on mass media reports about celebrated individuals but, also, ethnic groups around the globe struggling to reverse the post modern trend away from extreme local to extreme global the world has become more intensely bloody of tooth and nail than if ever was.
That’s the impression, anyway, probably preferred by militarists and industrialists with vested interest in endless conflict.
I don’t want to pursue this struggle and strife topic any further. You get enough of it daily, even nightly during the World Cup. It’s the vulture stalking humanity since the beginning.
But good news. The antidote to the virus is at hand. In fact, being dispensed here this very weekend.
Among my “mob” catholics it’s called First Communion. Not all about white dresses and dark suits at all! (Although, to be honest, that’s the impression given by exclusively devotional catholics.)
The real, helpful meaning of First Communion is a coming of spiritual age, a ritual of passage into an existing spiritual, but local, tribe.
We regularly read about the earlier arrival of physical maturity on our children.
Well, I’ve long suspected that spiritual/religious maturity dawns on children at a very early age.
They have insights we adults don’t have or have lost.
That’s what we at South Melbourne will be celebrating this Sunday. Another 20 children “communicating” with us adults for the first time as members of our parish community in a relationship of mutual respect and obligation.
RJM
I’m sure Father Bob appreciates an “occasional squirt of lubricant” as well, Lindsey!
Father Bob,
When are you going to stop watering down the Catholic Faith? Social justice is great! But you are primarily a priest and you should be able to help others while preaching the truth.
“Among my “mob” catholics it’s called First Communion. Not all about white dresses and dark suits at all! (Although, to be honest, that’s the impression given by exclusively devotional catholics.)”
I think any “devotional catholic”, and by that I assume you mean a Catholic who actually believes what the Church teaches, would tell you that First Communion is about receiving the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity so that we may share in his divinity. None would say it’s about pretty white dresses.
“The real, helpful meaning of First Communion is a coming of spiritual age, a ritual of passage into an existing spiritual, but local, tribe.”
No. Baptism is entry in the Church, first communion is the reception of Our Lord under the presence of mere bread.
Why do you feel the need to water down or faith and replace doctrine with humanitarianism? It leads to an empty religious and spiritual life, you don’t need God to be a nice person. Please act like a priest.
Sounds like the technological age will deliver to you, exactly what you need.
Robotic priest terminals presenting ritual with absolute doctrinal correctness, and no untidy emotional empathy or unnecessary compassion.
And all at bulk discount rates to the Church without any need for retirement funds, housing etc for retired priests. Just the occasional squirt of lubricant. Value plus!!
Jacob, how refreshingly insightful.Your ability to misread other catholics’ expressions of gospel/church faith is as staggering as that you attribute to me.Thanks.BobMaguire.
If selecting people to dramatise the parables, I would place Jacob in the role of the pious,rich man sitting in the front pew crowing the loudest and publishing his profound knowledge of the ‘written word’, whilst the humble and poor man sits without fanfare at the rear of the church in quiet communion with his lord.