Alarm Bells in Modern Ireland

I sat down early this morning to write an article about Transhumanism. Then I went out to 8.30am mass in Ennistymon and the day went awry in a way that I can’t fully explain. It involved the arrival of a visitor, a couple of phonecalls and too many coincidences.

Many of you have already figured out that I am no longer with my job at Citizen Go. Oddly enough, the people I have told in person have not been surprised. I still think it is a worthy organisation, tackling important topics. It’s just that I had begun to feel physically sick at my desk, programming ‘global’ emails about the great battle against the elites. Which is obviously real. It’s just that I am not sure this is what I am supposed to be doing in the world.

So I’ve been having some quiet time. Trying to tune into what it is that God wants for me. To follow the purpose for which I was created.

A lady who’s been very sick rang this afternoon telling me her neighbour had dropped over a cooked dinner and she was just so thrilled to receive this act of kindness.

“I felt so loved,” she said.

This cooked dinner had a really profound effect. I know the neighbour so I phoned her just to let her know, that what she’d done had completely changed the outlook of our mutual friend.

“You know it’s funny you say that.” she said. “Because that was the intention of it, to do it with love. And I really felt promtped by the Holy Spirit to do that for her today.”

This is the philosophy of Saint Therese of Lisieux - to do small things with love.

The conversation turned then to an event we are due to attend on Sunday.

“It’s with Father Mark Quinn, a young priest based in Tuam who’s gained some attention recently due to a homily he gave in which he spoke about suicide,” she said.

I’m familiar with the homily, it keeps on cropping up. It was captured on the church service live stream and posted on social media. Since then it’s been making its way around the world, picked up by various channels and commentators. The number of views has reached hundreds of thousands.

But what’s interesting about the homily, is that this priest was nervous about its delivery before the fact. He’d asked friends to pray for him. He had to discern that it was the right thing to do.

In the homily delivered on October 26, Fr Mark talked about a particularly difficult week he experienced in his short ministry, in which he buried three middle aged men.

All three had died by suicide.

“Many people who spoke to me that week questioned the complete senselessness of it, the complete devastation of it all. What’s going on they said, what is the cause of it. What can be done?”

“As a community and a nation we can choose to move on or bury our heads in the sand. Or we can try to address this as best we can, however insignificant that might be. As a pastor of souls I can only choose the second option.”

Statistics show around 450 to 500 people in this country die by suicide every year, Fr Mark told the Conregation at Tuam Cathedral. Around 80 per cent are men.

“There is no easy answer to this but there are certain factors that must be addressed. Each of us has to take some responsibility for reversing the trend of this terrible epidemic,” he said.

Loved and Cherished by God

In a homily of less than seven minutes, he appealed to the media, the government, his brother priests, to those offering condolences and finally, to those contemplating suicide.

This is what he said to the Irish media:

“Please, please stop your relentless attack on the faith in this country. The constant demonisation of the church and the people of faith has resulted in thousands if not millions walking away from the one thing that can offer people refuge and hope and that is the person of Jesus Christ and the Church he founded.

“When people are lost or have no guidance or no understanding of the real purpose and meaning in life they will go to very dark places.

“There is also so many people out there who have no idea how loved and cherished they are by God because we have a culture that has told them there is no place for them to go, that religion and faith are a thing of antiquity.”

His message to the media struck me, obviously because I am a journalist, but more profoundly in the method of it’s non-judgemental delivery. Imagine, if I or we or any or all of us, were responsible for creating a situation where someone in turmoil suffering suicidal thoughts had no idea how loved and cherished they are by God.

I suppose this hits home because it took me an exceptionally long time to even contemplate that I might be loved and cherished by God. And it remains a process. And I don’t think that, even the most virulently anti-Catholic of my colleagues would rest easy in the knowledge that they might have contributed to the blocking of that concept for some unknown soul somewhere, who desperately needed it.

Having delivered reports for many years from Coroners Courts, I had direct sight of the devastation wreaked by suicide. There is a particular and distinctive grief attached to it that sets these bereaved families apart. It is etched in their faces as they listen to the grim details of the ordinary actions that preceded an extraordinary act of desperation. They are forever haunted by questions that can never be answered.

This priest is asking all of us to ‘take responsibility to reverse this terrible epidemic.’ And ‘all of us’ includes Fr Mark himself and his brother priests.

Life Changing Miracles

The next item that struck me, is how he speaks about the Sacrament of Confession. He talks about the life changing miracles he has witnessed through that ministry. I have first hand experience of this, which I wrote about here and here, so I can attest to this message.

“I appeal also to my brother priests. We have seven Sacraments in the church. Two of these are what’s known as the healing Sacraments. The Sacrament of Anointing and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Over the past thirty or forty years, the latter has been incredibly neglected if not outright ignored.

“In my short time as a priest I have seen more life changing miracles in the confessional than I could ever have hoped to imagine. In the confessional the life changing power of Jesus is at work. So many people go through their entire lives and have never encountered God’s reality, of the love he has for them through this Sacrament.”

“Jesus gave us this Sacrament not as a Sacrament to judge but as a Sacrament to set us free. So please give it the attention it deserves. Not only will it save souls, but it can save lives too.”

In closing, to those suffering in what he calls the ‘dark tunnel’ Fr Mark said:

“Please hold on. Speak to someone. Reach out. Pray. Come to me. I will pray with you. Remember this; you cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

I’m sharing Fr Brendan Kilcoyne’s ‘The Brendan Option’ presentation of the homily itself because it includes something important that he says by way of introduction:

“There is a clear alarm bell in that sermon which needs to be sounded as to the condition of people in modern Ireland.”

Watch ‘Suicide in Modern Ireland’ on The Brendan Option here

(Fr Mark Quinn’s homily begins around 11mins)