These are two remarkable articles by Jim Good, published in Hibernia in the early nineteen seventies. They perfectly illustrate how he was a man well ahead of his time, and full of courage, without fear.
The reproduction isn’t great, but if you can manage to read them, it is well worth the effort.
The word ‘closure’ is being used very commonly nowadays, and has taken on a specific meaning. I has to do with putting an end to a traumatic experience in a person’s life. It is often used in terms of physical or emotional assault, injury, murder of a friend or family, sexual abuse of a minor, or various other situations. We hear claims being made outside a courtroom for example, by families or an individual that a conviction and sentencing of a perpetrator has brought ‘closure’ to the case.
In my recent article in this paper about the imminent closure of Esker monastery I briefly mentioned that the monastery was considered by many people as a place with a healing ministry. This ministry was intimately connected with one of the earliest Redemptorists, an Italian from the eighteenth century, Gerard Majella, who is now a canonised saint. My memory of the monastery in my young days was that there was always one particular priest associated with the gift, and who used a relic of the saint in his ministry.
