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Absent without leave; remembering the days of hope...
Dear Friends,
 I feel a little as though I have been absent without leave for 24 hours. After publishing yesterday's commentary I decided to watch the Cycling Road Race from Beijing on television. That took up most of the day, including a longish sleep on the couch in front of the tele — and then last night we travelled down to the city for a 50th Birthday celebration. That was very enjoyable — and interesting too. This was with a group of people, ten years younger than myself who were (still are to a significant extent) an important opinion leader group within the Church — not the institution so much today but, like us here, on the periphery, catching the crumbs that drop from the tables of the well-fed. Their heyday was the late 1970s, mine was the late 1960s. There is a deep sense of melancholy today. This from what was "the vibrant heart" of Catholicism in this country just a few decades ago. Chatting with Milly on the way home I ventured to suggest it is this — and I was remembering back to that period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when it was truly exciting to be a Catholic. Vatican II was a period of enormous vibrancy. I was at university from 1966 to 1969 — spanning the very best of it. The events of that dark day in 1968 were like a bad dream. Looking back I'm sure we thought of it as an aberration — a mistake had been made and sooner or later it would be corrected. The party last night reminded me of the vibrancy that still existed in young people even at the end of the 1970s — at least in the activist sectors of the Church. And the people I was with last night were a huge part of the "activist sector" who were largely "setting the agenda" during that period — at a national, even international level in a smaller way. They are now parents and grandparents — and I pick up this huge sense of disillusion. The dream and hopes have been crushed. The institution couldn't give a stuff about us, or our children and grandchildren. It is an institution led by old men who only care about the insecure — the 5% who hunger for certitude at any cost. They'll assemble them together from around the world at World Youth Day events, or watching EWTN and convince themselves that they've got a big audience, and that God is going to reward their faithfulness. I wish them luck. I honestly do not believe my salvation will come about following their direction. We are on our own folks — you and me and the Almighty as we search for meaning and our salvation without the support of the institution built by our ancestors. Those that control the institutional agendas today are more concerned for their own superannuation than they are for their own salvation — or anyone elses.
Tom McMahon's lead commentary today also captures some of this from the other side of the Pacific. We hunger for a sense of Church and Community that truly does echo the truths proclaimed by Jesus Christ — our first teacher. <Read Tom's commentary>
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