My Favourite Omagh Marxist, Gary MacLennan Reflects on "All Things Catholic"....

by Ciaron - Catholic Worker/Ploughshares Sun Sep 07, 2008 07:27

Gary makes an acknowledged and understable mistake here...
The priest at South Brisbane is Peter Kennedy not Ted Kennedy.

The late Ted Kennedy was the priest at Redfern Sydney ('70's, '80's, early '90's) who had taken a preferential
option for the indigeneous poor of that poverty stricken inner city area. Ted had previously been
university chaplain during the radicl '60's and brought a constituency with him from campus. In some ways
the drama being played out at South Brisbane St. Mary's (where the Greg Shackleton Catholic Worker had a base
focussed on East Timor solidarity/anti-war resistance '94-'96 before we were sent packing!) is a struggle between
liberal V conservative Catholicism. How protestant St. Mary's has become is a serious question.

The struggle at Redfern is more a struggle between conservative v radical (or at least liberation theology) Catholicism
.......it's questionable whether there is a radical Catholic tradition in Australia (In the early '80's we had to go looking to the U.S. tradtions of
Dorothy Day and the Berrigans to find some traction of pracitse and theological framework for reflection. The struggle in Redfern
escalated following the death of Ted (who had long ago turned over the church hall and the presbytery to the aboriginal. When I first met him he seemed to be bunked down in the sacristy!). Cardinal Pell ( known as "Pell Pot" by detractors!) imposed conservative neo-catacument priests on the rad. laity. I had been invited by bTed to give the homily at Redfern on a numebr of occassions, last time I had to wait unti the priest had finished mass and gone, befofe speaking. The tension between cleric and congregation was palpable. As I sadia few quiet Hail Mary's before mass I heard someone hiss behind me "fuckin's neocats!", I turned around to find a middle aged woman, sonservatvely dressed in sensible shoes and a major attitude. There were adudible criticalinterjections during the priests homily.

Mass at Redfern ends with a second collection by aboriginal homeless and also homeless folks coming into the church to share food brought by parishoners. Much to the disdain of the neocat priest, a soup kitchen is run from within the church itself a few days a week.

Here is an ABC radio in reference to that dispute....
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s1152547.htm

by lulu Sun Sep 07, 2008 14:07

It's good to be reminded of all the real good that's done by & around the Catholic Church, as a corrective to seeing old Papa Ratzinger giving out, with the Vatican's jewels and treasures weighing him down.

by Part 3 Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:31

I began these writings on Catholicism in response to Ciaron O’Reilly’s request that I review Harry Browne’s Hammered by the Irish. I have never met Harry but I am a long time friend of Ciaron O’Reilly one of the defendants in the series of trials that followed the Catholic Worker /Ploughshare Activists’ attack on an American War plane that was stationed in a hangar at Shannon Airport in clear violation of Irish neutrality.

I chose to position my review within the context of my thinking on Catholicism, because the defendants themselves are defiantly and embarrassingly religious. As a long term Marxist, I find their insistence on placing their actions within the context of ritual and prayer, to be as Ciaron O’Reilly would put it, “challenging”. It is not that the symbols they evoke are meaningless, rather it is because for me a collapsed Catholic they so evocative of Catholicism. This is the source of my trouble with the Ploughshares movement.

But let us leave all my neurotic prejudices aside, and begin the task of entering the world of Harry Browne’s book. I have chosen that metaphor deliberately as a form of homage to Browne’s ability as a writer. I knew nothing of him or his work up to now, but I realized after reading his prologue that the loss was mine. The prologue sets the scene for the verdict. It is full of significant detail and is indeed creative writing of the first rank. We are there with Browne, more surely than if we were watching a film of the event. When he tells us he cried at the acquittal verdict. I cried too because it was the victory of the decent ordinary people of Ireland over the “experts”, the professionals, the sell out merchants, the cynics, the opportunists, and all those who peddle despair about humanity. It was to borrow Roy Bhaskar’s phrase the very ‘pulse of freedom’.

Perhaps here might be a good place to tackle the “objectivity” issue. Browne’s narrative as , Dan Berrigan points out in his introduction, is not that of the observer. If anything he tends towards the participant end of the continuum and lets it be very clearly known that he was and is on the side of those who hammered the war plane. I have no trouble with that because I interpret objectivity in the Bhaskarian rather than in the Kantian tradition or in the Neo-Nietzschean traditions. Neo- Kantians cannot make up their minds as to where to locate objectivity in the phenomenal or the noumenal realm. So objectivity becomes most often reduced to the impersonal. The neo-Nietzscheans deny the very possibility of objectivity and so everything is reduced to the perspective of the speaker and truth is equated with power. For the Critical Realist the objective manifold exists and indeed guarantees the very possibility of the subjective. Truth is possible and even at its highest level alethia or the reason for things is both the goal of science and all emancipatory movements. By the Critical Realist test, Browne’s books is indeed objective in that it so patiently and faithfully seeks the truth. It endeavors to both bear witness and to uncover the reason for things.

This is especially clear perhaps in Browne’s attempt to create a context for the actions of Ciaron O’ Reilly and the other Ploughshare activists. Thus we are given sympathetic pen portraits of all the five defendants and also an interesting account of contemporary Irish Catholicism. We are also given some account of the Irish Peace movement and why it imploded like all the peace movements that sprung up around the world. Browne as well touches upon why the Ploughshare Activists were and probably always will be on the margins of any peace movement.

From these preliminary chapters we move fairly swiftly to a superb account of the action – the attack on the plane itself. I got caught up in the detail. Again the quality of the writing transports the reader to the scene. We see and rejoice when the plane is smashed. We urge the activists on to more damage, but no these are the most difficult people. They actually stop hammering at the plane to pray and sing. I almost screamed out my frustration. How could they? And above all things they started up the rosary – something which always brings to my mind the phrase – “the whine of Irish Catholicism”. I shuddered in near horror.

From this, to my mind, low point the narrative takes us swiftly to the trials. I have to be honest here and confess that I was most reluctant to read these chapters. There were after all three trials. I have myself been in court too many times to have anything but the greatest contempt for the legal system. I also come from the reductionist tradition of “One solution – Revolution”. So I have no interest in or patience for the fine points of law. I also know from personal experience how deadening and alienating a place the court room can be.

However a strict sense of my duty as a reviewer more or less compelled me to tackle the trial chapters. I am genuinely glad I did so. Browne with a true master’s touch condenses all the boredom into a few paragraphs and instead takes us through a truly tense drama. Will the truth come out? Will justice survive the law? The actual details of the law are made clear even to the likes of me. And the drama is peopled with real flesh and blood characters. Moreover I am truly grateful for the splendid testimony given by Nuin Dunlop (p147). It is even from this distance deeply moving to read her account of the reason why she took part in the attack on the plane. She spoke of responsibility, solidarity, urgency and prayer and though I have often raged against the tradition she represents, I thank her for her words.

I am also grateful for Browne’s account of the great speech by the defense lawyer Brendan Nix (pp163-5). He spoke of our shared humanity. For me it is in the full and true implications of that phrase that the justification for the actions of the Ploughshare activists lie. To paraphrase Brecht –“What is the crime of damaging a warplane compared to the crime of owning one or letting one be stationed in one’s country?”

There is much then to praise in this fine book and it is my pleasure to offer my congratulations to the author and to urge everyone to read it.

by epilogue Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:43

Faith of our Fathers 4 –an epilogue

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so'

(Thomas Hardy)

I began this series of posts with an article on the Irish mystic Larry Cummins. That was followed by an article on the crisis in the Catholic Church in Brisbane centered on the radical church of St Mary's in South Brisbane. It must be said though that to call the church "radical" makes only sense to the likes of Opus Dei. "Moderate & social democratic" would be much more appropriate. Nevertheless St Mary's is the church of the intellectuals and it is, however reluctantly, in conflict with the core church. What the outcome of that struggle is likely to be is impossible to say at this stage. However I note that as I write this, rumors are circulating that Fr Kennedy and his curate have compromised and are keeping a very low profile in terms of liturgical innovation. The statue of the Buddha, that so offended Archbishop Batttersby, is also rumored to have disappeared. No doubt Fr Peter Kennedy and the Arch Bishop have come to a compromise that will keep the right wing fanatics of the Archbishop's back.

My meditations on mystics and intellectuals were followed by a review of Harry Browne's great book Hammered by the Irish. I have urged everyone to buy and read the book. I repeat that message now. So what remains? Well for some reason or other like the knight who is alone and palely loitering, I am reluctant to quit the field as it were. The book with its gripping accounts of the action and the trials has had an almost disturbing effect on me. It is as if in reading of the account of the Ploughshare Activists and the aftermath of their action that life had somehow taken on the quality of the 'comet's pulsating rose' and now I am left amidst the dull demi-reality of what surely must be the most dishonest of all capitalist crises.

But I also want to ask and attempt to answer a question or two. I am puzzled to begin with why mystics like Larry Cummins when they hearken to the Blessed Virgin, the mother of God, never seem to hear anything about atrocities like Abu Ghraib or even obscenities like credit default swaps which have pushed millions into penury. The likes of Larry never seem to come out with a message that cannot be accommodated within the status quo. All that seems to be needed is a little bit of push and shove and make do.

The Blessed Virgin appears to be as reluctant as Rupert Murdoch to use words like capitalism, imperialism, class warfare, or even domination and exploitation. The secrets, she passes on, never tell us anything such as why the rich get richer and richer, why 1% control 70% of the world's wealth and why children must starve to death while there are whole mountains of wheat and now it would be nice to have a word or two about where the invisible hand of the market has gone and why it would seem absolutely necessary that the public's money be used not on schools and hospitals but on the rich in order to save them from themselves.

I may seem to be mocking here, but nothing is further from my intention. The point I wish to make is that mystics like Larry Cummins must of course continue to pray for the dead, but I wish as Bhaskar does to urge them to also pray for the living. And that prayer must be linked to action to create the foundation of the Kingdom of God here on Earth. To put this in its simplest terms the church that Larry represents must meet with the church that Ciaron O'Reilly represents.

As an outsider it seems to me that they have much to give each other. Ciaron could explain to Larry that there is really more to worry about than the repair man who cannot fix his TV because he has been watching pornography. Ciaron could no doubt explain to Larry that there is nothing more obscene than war and torture and the creation of poverty. Let it also be said that I believe that a meeting with Larry would renew Ciaron's faith and hope in the future based on a recognition that there lives the greatest freshness deep down things.

Finally on Ciaron himself: he is 48 now and I have known him since he was 18. I won't recount the number of times we have disagreed. Personally I find the Plowshares approach to be much too substitutionist. The danger of choosing the role of the prophet is that one can fall into the fatal trap of complaining of the people because their consciousness does not match up to one's own. Having said that , I am 100% behind Ciaron in his efforts to disrupt the American machinery of death.

However I would also like to point that there is another side to Ciaron besides that of the man of heroic and often dangerous deeds. He reminds me of the poem Tall Nettles by Edward Thomas.

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done

These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough

Long worn out, and the roller made of stone;

Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like most:

As well as any bloom upon a flower

I like the dust on the nettles, never lost

Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

Just so with Ciaron, though come to think of it he might not overly fancy being compared to a bunch of tall nettles! Whatever the case, I admire his public activism and his courage and his willingness to go to prison for his beliefs and the fact that he will never let go of the dream of a better world, but what I really like most about him is that away from the often spectacular limelight, he has led a life full of the little unremembered acts of kindness and of love that are the best part of a good man's life. So last year when I got into strife and when I came out hours later from the ordeal there was Ciaron who had stayed all afternoon out of solidarity.

I am also grateful for Ciaron for introducing me to Dorothy Day and I will quote now to him something of hers that I think he might benefit from as he contemplates yet again the apathy of the young amidst the terrible suffering that is all around us. It comes at the end of a letter to a young migrant woman, Felicia, who is living in desperate straits. Day writes "Never mind Felicia. God is not mocked. As things are they will not be".

Gary MacLennan

Institute for Social Ecology

Brisbane

20th Oct 2008

by Jemma Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:42

the demise of the church can only be welcomed-all that ridiculous kneeling,sitting,standing-please!
Church buildings could be used for wonderful healing-singing, chanting, esoteric dancing, wonderful philosophical debates, theatre. it's the 21st century we've got to be brave and look to something new instead of always looking back!

by Stan Mon Oct 20, 2008 15:13

In that case why not go ahead and found your own new age church or cult? It could become a good money spinner earning fees from healing courses, new age wedding services held at dolmens or on the sides of mountains, shops selling books, trinkets and cookery recipes. Business is business - in the republic you might apply to the Industrial Development Authority or Failte Ireland for start-up grants if there is a production element in the enterprise or tourism potential in new age festivals and courses.