Ireland was represented by President Micheal D Higgins, his wife Sabina, and Taoiseach Leo Varadker.
The first time an Irish President and Taoiseach attended a coronation in Westminster Abbey. The world and its mother know of the significant relevance of the attendance of President and Taoiseach. But maybe it has escaped people’s attention that the Holy See was represented by its Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. Also present was the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who formally participated in the ceremony.
It was the first time since the Reformation that a Catholic prelate was invited to give a blessing to the new monarch. Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin was another invited guest.
Whatever about my own personal views on kings and queens, the pomp and ceremony, and the €100 million the coronation cost the British tax payer, it was wonderful to see the high-ranking Catholic bishops at the ceremony.
We need far more inter church exchange and dialogue. Parolin is Pope Francis’ righthand man and Nichols is the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
It was great to see them there and of course it’s the only way to go. But it did set me thinking.
I’m old enough to remember a time when it was forbidden for Catholics to attend Church of Ireland services, indeed any Protestant religious function.
I recall my mother telling stories about the nonsense that bishops went on with, warning her generation to stay away from non-Catholic churches. And they kept it up in the early years of my generation too.
It’s easy to look back in history and see the silly things that people, organisations, states and churches do. But I have a problem. How can the institutional church keep a straight face when it tries to tell us, down to the last detail, what sin is. I like to think of sin as the breaking of a relationship with God. How can the church tell us that not going to Mass on Sunday is a mortal sin? And then all the minutiae which the Code of Canon Law deals with, especially in matters of human sexuality.
What actually is the stance of Irish bishops on the use of contraception? Does every priest in Ireland believe it is a grave sin to use contraception? I doubt it. Of course they don’t but would they say it in public?
Back to the coronation: Camilla is a divorced woman. Would Pietro Parolin, Vincent Nichols or Eamon Martin bless my friends who are divorced and remarried?
Pope Benedict had serious problems with a la carte Catholicism and there is a strong emphasis within the Catholic Church that says truth can’t be changed. But what exactly is truth and who exactly knows how to deduce or discover it?
I was delighted to see Pietro Parolin, Vincent Nichols and Eamon Martin at the coronation. May it be a metaphor or example for all of us how the church is willing to change and see life in the light of the now.
2 comments:
Bravo Michael ! K C
Michael, what "minutiae" in Canon Law are you criticising? It doesn't seem to me to be strange as a body of law to deal with certain details...and sexual sin hardly arises at all within it, basically only with respect to clerics, religious and others with an ecclesiastical job.
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