This book evolved from two articles I wrote for The Furrow – A Candle in the Darkness and The Silent Schism. After their publication I received letters from Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia; from men and women, religious and lay. The Irish Religious Press Association awarded the second article its prize for the best article in 1994.
The problem of religious liberty is as old as man himself.
Published in a the first issue of “The Open Road”, a Capuchin student magazine.
An edited extract from my book, The Silent Schism.
We in the Church have a problem with change, and we are not very good at coping with it. We have a passion for permanence. We change in spasms and convulsions interspersed with long periods of inertia, stone-walling and entrenched resistance to movement.
We need an organic model for change so that we get away from the on-off, stop-go model we have been following.
A review of the book “Seeds of a New Church” by John O’Brien CSSp, Columba Press, Dublin, 1994.
This article was better received than anything I’ve written before or since. I received letters from men and women, religious and lay, from Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The Irish Religious Press Association awarded the article its prize for the best article in 1994. It was eventually expanded into a book: “The Silent Schism: Renewal of Catholic Spirit and Structures”, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1997.
When did you last meet a Catholic who was enthusiastic or joyful about the faith? For myself, it’s been so long I don’t remember. And others I’ve asked feel the same.
Every priest engaged in parish work is well aware – sadly, wearily or angrily – of being asked to baptize children of parents who rarely or never appear in the church. What should we do?
What can we learn from the abuse of children in Ireland?