The First Christmas
18th. December – Cork Unitarian Church – 18th. December
introductory comments
The late Rabbi Lionel Blue, who gently awakened me from my dogmatic slumbering, once told me a great story.
When Franco Zeffirelli was directing the acclaimed Jesus of Nazareth (starring Robert Powell), he had a problem. The child playing the boy Jesus kept stumbling through the words of his bar mitzvah (“Confirmation” for Christians).
Zefirelli had obviously read St.
The past year or two in the Irish Catholic Church was a largely positive time. This was due to the first stage of the Synodal Process, which turned out to be much better than was generally expected. There was, in my opinion, a real opening out, listening, learning, changing. Without naming anybody, I was really surprised by the way that some of the more traditional people, both in authority and in media, changed their views, and became open to the need for renewal and change.
This article contains nothing new; it is old ground that I have been over many times. But every now and again, when I hear of some other ‘skullduggery’ connected with the CDF, it all comes back to me again. So, here it is:
A few days ago I met someone who wanted to hear the story of my dealings with the Vatican. Going back over it stirred up many memories, and made me realise again what a ‘shower’ I was dealing with in the CDF (known now as the Dicastery for the Congregation of the Faith).
