Five little wishes for 2019

Nothing too ambitious, of course:

For an end to the stupidity that is Brexit. That sensible politicians on all sides of the House of Commons will insist on a People’s Vote, which will lead to a reversal of the decision made on the basis of lies and disinformation in June 2016.

For an end to the treachery that is the Trump administration. That publication of the Mueller report will finally force Republican members of Congress to realize that the rule of law and even personal self-interest far outweighs loyalty to a president who is loyal to no one but himself and his crooked family.

For an end to the scandal of homelessness in Ireland. An economy that is doing as well as ours should have no problem providing shelter for all its people. What is missing is the will to do it.

For an end to the sin of racism and xenophobia. That the increase in racism that has been enabled and encouraged by trumpism, Brexit and the growth in right-wing populism will be resisted and repelled by all right-thinking people at home and abroad. Calling out racists and shaming them on social media is a good way to go.

For an end to the culture of clericalism and cover up in the church. Despite Pope Francis’ best efforts, unreconstructed clericalism continues to do untold damage to the body of Christ. The careerists in the Curia are simply biding their time until Francis is gone. What is needed is a new council of the church, Vatican III, an assembly where voting rights would extend to lay men and women and not only to ordained clerics, to consider the mountain of pressing issues – vocations crisis, sex abuse scandals, the rights of women, mandatory celibacy, financial transparency, sexual ethics and attitude to those who are gay – that confront the church and threaten its future in large parts of the globe. It’s unlikely to happen this year, but then back in January 1958, no one expected that John XXIII would call a council that year either.

Miracles do happen, as the Limerick hurlers showed last year. And so we hope.

Author: frommypulpit

I'm a Redemptorist preacher and writer, with an interest in history, politics, and sport, who is living with chronic back pain.

3 thoughts on “Five little wishes for 2019”

  2. Dear Gerard,

    I hope you are surviving – the first rule in any business! – and managing your pain and discomfort reasonably well.

    I am delighted to see you nonetheless writing and publishing – a ‘voice of sanity’, as the late, lamented Seamus Heaney would say!

    I agree wholeheartedly with your Five Little Wishes for 2019, and can, at this juncture, add nothing to them, if they came true the world would be such a better place for us all!

    Bravissimo!

    Strength & Honour!

    Mark Edmund Hutcheson

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  3. That’s a lot of wishing and it would take a lot more time to deal with each and every aspect of your proffered arguments than I am minded to spend right now.
    However. I don’t buy into your position on Brexit. The EU that we have now is not the concept as sold as outset.
    It is clearly a stepping stone, toward One World Ordef, which I interpret as a very dangerous development which is akin to the emergence of new age slavery.

    We live in a world of clever deception where corporate money effectively seeds and nurtures perceptions.

    You Gerard, I feel, have bought into the MSM objective. When it comes down to political lies there are seemingly no boundaries. Image, lies and deception are the very elements of politics as we know the same.

    We are hamstrung already, with EU buricracy, to the point where regional need has been sacrificed upon the altar of corporate greed.

    We are enslaved in debt, because we bought into an image of prosperity based upon false promises. We now have so many parasitic jobs that remain has by default to be the choice of all too many.

    As for the Catholic Church, within the space of one lifetime, I for one have witnessed so many reversals or changes that it makes a mockery out of all that I was taught as a child at outset.

    I have my own personal grievances, in that my parents were in effect forced to part with their first born son, in order to protect the image of the Catholic Church.

    I don’t buy into the ‘power house’ that is the Catholic Church. Christ when her on earth did no advocate the building of an empire with obscene wealth, notwithstanding the level of abject poverty that engulfs the masses thougout the world.

    There has been little evidence of remorse or reform, with regard to the sins of the Catholic Church throughout the ages. Projection of image takes precedence over justice.

    I could go on and would like to but I have more to do Geróid

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