Editorial: A time for prayer

Sydney
11 November 2001

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Editorial: A time for prayer

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Editorial: A time for prayer

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” we are told, and nowhere is this truer than when we are close to human pain and grief. An insensitive denial of world pain and grief in the wake of the September 11 catastrophe, especially in the case of surviving victims and their mourners, is emphatically the last thing intended by the following sobering reflections. But a recent news item, Fuller Churches and Public Prayer – Could a Renewal Be Near? puts before us happenings in the US and in Britain whose meaning needs to be pondered.

Thus we find many people gathering renewed strength and courage in prayer and the desire for traditional values, and even signs of a yearning for public religious expressions of grief which normally would be considered unconstitutional in the US.

Atheists have been able to accept God. On September 13, one stood at the door of a New York church inviting passers-by to go in. TV ratings for religious programs are up. Attendances have soared in the US and Britain, at cathedrals like St Paul’s in London, at Exeter and Winchester. In England the Bible and the Koran have sold out.

In the US there has been a long running battle over prayer in schools and public places. The Supreme Court ruled such prayer over a public address system unconstitutional in 1985. On October 23, a prayer circle formed by the players at a public school football game appeared to defy this ruling. South Carolina is proposing to transform the short period of silence that begins each school day into a moment of prayer. Such ideas are not universally approved, of course. School-sponsored prayer has been repeatedly struck down by the courts, but councils, state legislatures – even the US Congress – open their meetings with prayer. Tragic events have thrown into confusion the nation’s sense of self-sufficiency; and the yearning to entrust oneself to a higher power is growing.

Tomas Halik, a professor at Charles University in Prague, favours a “new moral ecology” that fosters values. “This environment of values would reject the fantasy world created by the entertainment industry in which the glorification of violence may well have become the most popular drug for suppressing the deeper anxieties of civilisation. Another value needing promotion is life, and a respect for life.”

This is breathtaking in its implications and reinforces the hope in the words of Pope John Paul: “Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death do not have the final say.”

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

This Sunday we remember Catherine McAuley, who founded the Sisters of Mercy in 1841. You might call her the Reluctant Founder. Not that Catherine McAuley was ever anything but stoutly enthusiastic about the apostolate of her Sisters of Mercy: teaching poor children, providing lodging for working women and establishing an employment agency and an orphanage. But, as she said: “I never intended to found a religious congregation; all I wanted to do was serve the poor.”

Catherine certainly did this. She bought a large corner block in a fashionable part of Dublin and built schoolrooms, a dormitory and a chapel – the ‘House of Mercy’. In the schoolrooms poor girls received an education and religious instruction. The dormitory was to provide a refuge for unemployed servant girls. Situated in a fashionable area, the House of Mercy attracted local wealthy women who volunteered time each week to help. They adopted a simple uniform, a regular timetable including Mass, prayer, shared meals and evening recreation. They worked in the House of Mercy and visited Dublin’s tenements and hospitals.

In the early 19th century, women working thus in the slums without male chaperones or formal Church sanction risked public censure. Archbishop Murray advised Catherine to make her group a religious congregation. She agreed, so long as their activities were not restricted and they could take permanent vows.

Catherine chose the Presentation Convent at George’s Hill as the place for herself and two companions to receive their novitiate training. She felt that Nano Nagle, the Presentation founder, had held ideals similar to her own, particularly with regard to work among the sick poor. Her Rule, though based on that of the Presentation Sisters, went further. Catherine believed that preaching the gospel had a limited effect, unless accompanied by the provision of food, a bed, literacy and a profession. How radical she seemed to her contemporaries!

And her congregation became the largest in the English-speaking world! Today is her anniversary.