PRESS RELEASE

EMBARGOED UNTIL 7.30PM ON 23RD NOVEMBER 2004

Bishop Donal Murray addresses Dublin Chapter of Legatus

in Four Seasons Hotel, Dublin

“The love of God is what gives life its taste” – Bishop Murray

Most Rev Donal Murray, Bishop of Limerick addressed the Dublin Chapter of Legatus
in the Four Seasons Hotel, Dublin earlier this evening.

In his address which was themed “to live as God’s people” Bishop Murray said that,
“there can be something tasteless, something not fully human, about life for lots
of people today.”

“There seem to be be so many different areas of life, family -work, political and
economic issues, social pressures – that we can feel disorientated, dragged in many
directions at once. There is a feeling of not being in control, of being at the mercy
of all sorts of forces. How many people can actually say that they feel on top of
things, that they can dedicate enough of their time and attention to what is really
important? How many people simply ‘learn to live with it’, ‘try to look on the bright
side’ or ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’,” he said.

Bishop Murray went on to say that, “even those whose lives, to the outside observer,
seem full of challenges, successes and opportunities sometimes find themselves wondering,
‘is this all there is to it?’ ‘What exactly is all this activity meant to achieve?’
‘What are my real priorities? Are they reflected in the way I actually use my time
and resources?’ As somebody put it, it is not too often that a person’s last words
are: ‘How I wish I’d spent more time in the office!'”.

“The horror of September 11th, is at least in part, the realisation that in those
towers were probably a greater number of affluent, successful, popular people than
could have been found together anywhere else on earth. The tragedy raised questions
about what the goal of life is; what do we live for? For those who are tempted to
live as though life were about affluence, status and power, 9/11 showed how
uncomfortably fragile such a view would be!”, he said.

In his address Bishop Murray also highlighted the failure through greed and
incompetence, to treat people with the dignity to which they are entitled and
that this needs to be addressed and redressed. He also spoke about the many people
who wonder whether there is any point to living. He spoke about one of the most
devastating signs of this desperation – when someone takes their own life. He
stated that “poverty and social marginalisation appear to increase the risk of
suicide, but these are not the only factors”.

Bishop Murray said that, “the love of God is what gives life its taste. God offers
us a love greater than we could ever have imagined – a love that unites us with
people of every race, culture and period of history…Life is an invitation to
taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Bishop Murray said that there is a task for every member of the Church. He said,
“there is no use bemoaning a word which seems to be less supportive of families,
less open to others, less committed to the faith which we have received unless
we are rising to those challenges ourselves. There is no use complaining that
the forces that shape our world are lacking in humanity, justice, wisdom, love,
if we are not trying to bring the Gospel into how we operate in these spheres
ourselves”.

He concluded his address by saying, “it is painful to dwell on the signs of
darkness that we see in the world….poverty, violence, war and terrorism….
we see suffering and tragedy all around us; we experience pain and loss,
disillusionment and disappointment in our own lives. But we followers of
Christ are bearers of a message. We are meant to be the light of the world.
During his time in Limerick, the Holy Father pointed to the images of the
building, strengthened by its cornerstone and of the city built strong and
safe on a hill and said, ‘These images contain an invitation for all of us,
for all Christians, to come close to Christ, the cornerstone, so that he
may become our support and the unifying principle which gives meaning and
coherence to our lives.'”

Further information:

Martin Long Director of Communications (086 172 7678)
Brenda Drumm Communications Officer (087 233 7797)

NOTES TO EDITORS:

* The full text of Bishop Murray’s address follows
* A photograph of Bishop Murray is available on request from the Catholic
Communications Office
* The Diocese of Limerick has:
60 parishes;
a Catholic population of 169,500;
94 Catholic Churches; and the
Patrons of the Diocese are St Munchin and St Ita.

Address by Most Rev Donal Murray, Bishop of Limerick to
Dublin Chapter of LEGATUS
Four Seasons Hotel
23 November 2004
‘TO LIVE AS GOD’S PEOPLE’

In his homily in Limerick in 1979, Pope John Paul reminded us that we are meant to
be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He addressed the same theme
at the World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002. Speaking to a million young people,
and others like me who still try to convince ourselves that we are middle aged,
he said:

Salt seasons and improves the flavour of food. Following Jesus, you have to change
and improve the ‘taste’ of human history. With your faith, hope and love, with your
intelligence, courage and perseverance, you have to humanise the world we live in

The sad truth is that there can be something tasteless, something not fully human,
about life for lots of people today. There seem to be so many different areas of
life, family — work, political and economic issues, social pressures — that we
can feel disorientated, dragged in many directions at once. There is a feeling
of not being in control, of being at the mercy of all sorts of forces. How many
people can actually say that they feel on top of things, that they can dedicate
enough of their time and attention to what is really important? How many people
simply ‘learn to live with it’, ‘try to look on the bright side’ or ‘lead lives
of quiet desperation”.

Even those whose lives, to the outside observer, seem full of challenges, successes
and opportunities sometimes find themselves wondering, “Is this all there is to
it?” “VVhat exactly is all this activity meant to achieve?” “What are my real
priorities? Are they reflected in the way I actually use my time and resources.
As somebody put it, it is not too often that a person’s last words are: ‘How I
wish I’d spent more time in the office!”

The horror of September 11 is, at least in part, the realisation that in those
towers were probably a greater number of affluent, successful, popular people
than could have been found together anywhere else on earth. The tragedy raised
questions about what the goal of life is; what do we live for? For those who
are tempted to live as though life were about affluence, status and power,
9/11 showed how uncomfortably fragile such a view of life would be!

For others who see little sign or prospect of success and affluence in their
lives, the question of the meaning of life can pose itself in more dramatic
and even more unsettling ways. They wonder whether their lives are ever going
to amount to anything. They feel that they are regarded as unimportant and
having no clout. Most of the day the radio is full of people complaining
about the ways in which they have been mistreated or ‘given the run around’
or ignored by officials or by institutions or about how the new affluence
has completely passed them by. Many of their grievances are all too real.
And so, the airwaves, are filled with criticism of politicians, church people,
business people, hospitals, insurance companies, banks, shops and so on because
so many men and women feel that they don’t count in the places where the real
power is wielded, or is apparently wielded, and that they are constantly taken
advantage of.

Where there is real greed and incompetence and failure to treat people with
the dignity to which they are entitled, that needs to be addressed and redressed.
But I wonder whether there is an even deeper issue. We hear the individual
grievances and either feel outraged by them or are unsympathetic to them,
but the really frightening question is this — why do such huge numbers of
people feel alienated and trampled on? Why do so many feel overwhelmed and
walked over in a society that they regard as unresponsive to their needs and
their feelings? How many feel intimidated by forms and bureaucracies? How
many expect to be brushed off, by the officials they are dealing with? How
many of them, rightly, feel that a person with a different address or skin
colour would never have been treated as they have been? Are we seeing a breaking
down of society? How long can the kind of grievance and resentment so clearly
expressed on radio phone-ins continue without some kind of explosion?

But there is a corresponding, perhaps less popular, question to be asked: how
contented, how able to cope, how much in control do those who are the targets
of all this anger feet? Do they see themselves as being in highly pressurised
jobs, with inadequate resources always wondering when a piece of carelessness
a misjudgment or a mistake by themselves or by a colleague may result in their
being held up before the nation as callous, uncaring, arrogant and incompetent?
Does comparatively high pay and status really compensate for this, or do people
in such jobs frequently ask themselves whether it is worth continuing and look
forward to the earliest possible retirement? Now and again a politician, for
instance, unexpectedly steps down and the media run puzzled articles wondering
what ulterior motive may lie behind such a strange, inexplicable decision —
as if such people should enjoy the antagonism that they so often meet. Perhaps
the really puzzling question is why so many people subject themselves to such
scrutiny, hostility and ridicule in the first place!

Perhaps, in spite of what may seem to be the case, society is not neatly
divided into those who are trampled on and those who need to be taken down
a peg. I wonder whether I am alone in feeling a certain uneasiness at the
way in which tribunals can be made to provide the raw material for a form
of entertainment in which the humiliation of somebody provides the basis for
hilarious discussions and ridicule on late night radio or in newspaper
commentaries. Is the pleasure that we seem ready to take at their embarrassment,
their being, as the papers often put it, ‘shamed’ and ‘disgraced’, really
reconcilable with the Gospel? Wrongs need to be recognised and put right,
but one may wonder at a society in which so many people enjoy casting the
first stone or witnessing others doing so. It would, of course, be altogether
too uncomfortable to consider the possibility that the people in these
situations are lost and lonely and vulnerable human beings like ourselves!
Do we still believe that whatever we do to a brother or sister, even one
whose reputation is in tatters, is done to the Lord?

Whatever one’s walk of life, or social standing, or financial situation,
the challenge of meaning can express itself in remarkably similar terms:
life can seem empty, lonely, lost, subject to all sorts of pressures, making
all sorts of demands with which one feels unable to cope, bringing all sorts
of setbacks and anxieties and failures. Perhaps what all of this has in
common is an unwillingness to face our own limitations and an inability to
find ways of constructively addressing what is wrong in our situation.
Perhaps beyond the division between the haves and have-nots, between the
powerful and the weak, there is something deeper — a common search for
meaning, a common human vulnerability. How far are blaming and complaining,
corruption and indefensible shortcuts, attempts to escape from the
uncomfortable truth that there are no simple answers but that we are all
vulnerable and unsure of ourselves and in need of salvation?

Many people wonder whether there is any point to living or whether life
may not, in the end, be absurd. The Day for Life, last month, pointed to
one of the most devastating signs of this desperation — the heartbreak
that is experienced when someone takes his or her own life. Poverty and
social marginalisation appear to increase the risk of suicide, but these
are not the only factors.

“Taste and see”, the Psalm says, “for the Lord is good.” (Ps 34:8). That
means recognising the love of God for us — in the beauty of creation, in
the gift of our life and above all in the love that we receive from and
share with others, a love which is the presence in our lives of the
creative love of God. We sing on Holy Thursday, “Where charity and love
is, there is God’.

Pope John Paul wrote an encyclical in 1995 about “The Gospel of Life”. He
spoke about the growth of a “culture of death’, which is the opposite of
the Christian vision of the Good News of Jesus who came so that we may
have life to the full (Jn 10:10). He spoke about some elements in our
culture which amount to what he calls ‘a structure of sin’:

This reality is characterised by the emergence of a culture which denies
solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable ‘culture of
death’. This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic
and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively
concerned with efficiency

Some elements of this are not new. There have always been wars, oppression,
disrespect for human dignity. Nevertheless, there is a particular challenge
to build up the solidarity of the human family in a society that seems
increasingly to value people not for themselves but for their contribution
to the economy, their celebrity status, or their wealth. Solidarity is also
under threat from the depersonalisation and anonymity of modem life. We no
longer live surrounded by neighbours who know everything about us and about
our ancestors for several generations. In some respects that may be a relief,
but it does add to the sense of rootlessness, the sense of not belonging,
the sense that one does not really count. A similar threat to solidarity
arises because of the increasing distance from those who we see as being
in control — whether in the Oireachtas or in Brussels or in multinational
corporations — and because of the increasing complexity of the decisions
they make and the varied ways in which they affect our lives. In the case
of the European Union, for instance, it often seems that decisions are taken
in Brussels before the citizens of the Union are aware that they are even
being considered I

Such issues, like many important matters, are pushed into the background
by all the bustle and activity of modem life. That is why in his homily in
Limerick the Holy Father stressed the importance of our roots, of families,
of a rich community life. An important source of the tastelessness of life
it is the lack of a sense of belonging — a fear that my feelings, my
frustrations are not understood — perhaps not even by myself; a resentment
that I seem to be part of some great machine over which I have no control;
an uneasy apprehension that nobody will recognise or appreciate my gifts,
my ideals, my commitment; a sense of being caught up in a cutthroat world,
where everything is measured in terms of achievement and profit, competing
for prizes that, in the end, may not be worth the effort. In many hearts
the insistent question, ‘What’s it all for?’ lies unanswered, but never
completely silenced.

“Taste and see for the Lord is good”. The love of God is what gives life
its taste. God offers us a love greater than we could ever have imagined —
a love that unites us with people of every race, culture and period of
history, a love in which we can see the image of the infinite God in one
another, a love in which we hope to rejoice eternally together in the
vision of the divine glory. Our longings for truth and love and joy and
beauty are not illusions; our hope for a life beyond all that we fear —
failure and disillusionment and evil and death — is not unrealistic; our
ideals are not too ambitious but too timid. Life is an invitation to taste
and see that the Lord is good.

That is the greatest emptiness in modem life — it is very difficult to
touch the meaning, the depth, in the middle of frantic and pressurised
activity and of never ending stimuli. People today, as Pope John Paul
has written, are often unable to be silent for fear of meeting ourselves
and of feeling ‘the emptiness that asks itself about meaning’. That is
why, as he puts it, we deafen ourselves with noise

In order to be able to live the Gospel of Life and celebrate it, he said,
we need to foster ‘a contemplative outlook’ in ourselves and in others:

It is the outlook of those who see life in its deeper meaning, who grasp
its utter gratuitousness, its beauty and its invitation to freedom and
responsibility. it is the outlook of those who do not presume to take
possession of reality but instead accept it as a gift, discovering in
all things the reflection of the Creator and seeing in every person the
Creator’s living image

The Catch-22 of modem living is here: we keep ourselves busy in order to
avoid meeting ourselves, but the gap between what we spend our time at
and what we are in our deepest selves cannot be bridged except by taking
time out from our busyness to ‘meet ourselves’. If we fail to do so then
life becomes more and more incoherent.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that in order to engage
in that reflection: “It is important for every person to be sufficiently
present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience”
It reminds us of Saint Augustine’s warning that, if we do not realise how
deeply God is present within us, we may get lost on a more superficial
search that cannot lead to the one who is “higher than my highest and more
inward than my innermost self’ Prayer too is not just a matter of words:
“It is most important that the heart should be present to him to whom we
are speaking in prayer”

The fundamental reason why the life of any society or culture becomes
incoherent without such reflection is because, in the last analysis, any
coherent culture is founded on a view of what it means to be human and
about the ultimate destiny of human life:

At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest
mystery, the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different
ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When
this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are
corrupted.

Like every culture, ours, both in Ireland and in Europe, has known distortions
and betrayals and outrageous contradictions of our fundamental values. In
particular we have often failed to see people of other races and religious
traditions and people of a different social standing as our brothers and
sisters. But the true heart of the culture we have inherited, is the
conviction that “God so loved the world as to send his only Son so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”
(Jn 3:16). We believe that God loves us as a merciful Father and that in
the death and resurrection of his Son the final triumph of his love is
assured and has already begun:

And it is also the same Christ, the Son of God, who at the end of his
messianic mission — and in a certain sense, even beyond the end — reveals
himself as the inexhaustible source of mercy, of the same love that, in
a subsequent perspective of the history of salvation in the Church, is
to be everlastingly confirmed as more powerful than sin

In Galway, Pope John Paul warned the young people of Ireland:
You will hear people tell you that your religious practices are hopelessly
out of date, that they hamper your style and your future, that with everything
that social and scientific progress have to offer, you will be able to
organise your own lives, and that God has played out his role.

In fact the Gospel vision, far from limiting and restricting us, opens us
up to Jesus Christ who is the unlimited fulfilment of human history, human
desires and human aspirations “In Christ”, the Pope told the young people
in Galway, “you will discover the true greatness of your own humanity”

It is not surprising that, in speaking of the challenge to be the light
of the world and the salt of the earth, Pope John Paul should have turned,
in Limerick, to the family. The love of our parents is what first teaches
us that God loves us. God is with fathers and mothers because “all parenthood
in heaven and on earth takes its name from him” Parents are “the first
preachers of the faith for their children” But Pope John Paul also recognised
that the family is subject to many threatening forces and surrounded by
many pressures which give a very different message. Even the best families
may find it hard to overcome the conflicting influences that pour in from
all sides, and in a particular way on young people. But that is all the more
reason for families to believe in their essential role, and for everyone to
be aware of how vital it is to support families in that role. “The Christian
family”, the Pope told us in Limerick, “is more important for the Church and
the world than ever before.”

It would be another topic to address the question of the family as it deserves,
but let me just point to one aspect. What I have said about the need for
reflection and prayerfulness is true especially of the family. It is not
that parents have to be expert educators and to be able to answer all moral
and theological problems. Parents are teachers of the faith above all not
by what they know, not by their pedagogical skills, but by who they are.
They communicate the care and the mercy and the reliability of God’s love
by showing those qualities themselves. But it is important that they should
be ‘present to themselves’, searching for the God who is higher and more
inward than we imagine, that their hearts should be present to the God to
whom they speak in prayer. It is very difficult to share the wonder of the
Good News unless one appreciate its wonder oneself. Conversely, it would
be very difficult not to share that wonder if it captivates one’s own heart.

In spite of all our progress economically, technologically and educationally,
society will only become more human if it values the qualities that grow not
in laboratories or computer programmes or research facilities but in loving
families: awareness of the irreplaceable importance of each member — young
or old, sick or healthy, productive or unproductive; the ability to see the
gifts of one as a benefit rather than a threat to others; a sense of fairness
that will not allow any member to be marginalized. Society will be particularly
enriched if these qualities grow out of the conviction of God’s infinitely
merciful love.

That is why the Pope stressed in Limerick the importance of keeping contact
with our roots:

Keep in contact with your roots in the soil of Ireland, with your families
and your culture. Keep true to the faith, to the prayers and the values you
learned here, and pass on that heritage to your children, for it is rich and
good

Keeping in contact with our roots does not mean turning the clock back. It
means ensuring that when change occurs it is genuine progress; in other words
that it does not merely bring an increase in affluence and prestige and power
but that it helps to ‘humanise the world we live in’.

Pope John Paul gave the young people in Toronto the same message:
The world you are inheriting is a world which desperately needs a new sense
of brotherhood and human solidarity. It is a world which needs to be touched
and healed by the beauty and richness of God’s love. It needs witnesses to
that love. It needs salt. It needs you.

In order to do that, we have to try to be the light of the world. In his
homily in Limerick the Holy Father told us that there were urgent choices
to be made about where our society was going and what its priorities would
be. It was particularly to lay Christians that he voiced the challenge:

The laity are “a chosen race, a holy priesthood”, also called to be “the salt
of the earth” and “the light of the world”. It is their specific vocation
and mission to express the Gospel in their lives and thereby to insert the
Gospel as a leaven into the reality of the world in which they live and work.

He listed some of what he called ‘the great forces which shape the world —
“politics, the mass media, science, technology, culture, education, industry
and work”. These give a great variety of often conflicting messages and create
a great variety often conflicting priorities. But they are not just pressures
to be contended with. These are precisely the areas in which Christian people
have the ‘mission to express the Gospel’, to bring the light of Christ.

The Pope put an urgent choice before us: “Ireland must choose. You, the present
generation of Irish people must decide; your choice must be clear and your
decision firm.” “What would it profit Ireland to go the easy way of the world
and suffer the loss of her own soul?” We must choose our way forward: “Will
it be the way that so many nations have gone? The way of preferring economic
growth and material possessions to the things of the spirit?” “Material progress
has in so many places led to decline of faith and growth in Christ.”

The questions and the choices are, if anything, more urgent than ever today.
It is clear in a new way that the Church is all of us. The great forces that
shape our world can be influenced and inspired and enlightened if Christians,
especially lay Christians, fulfil their role in the evangelisation of the world.
Their mission as followers of Christ is to allow the light of his Gospel to
shine in all the different areas of our world — areas which can only be
effectively influenced from within by those who live and work in them.

If these forces are guided by people who are true disciples of Christ, and
who are, at the same time, fully competent in the relevant secular knowledge
and skill, then indeed will the world be transformed from within by Christ’s
redeeming power.

All of those areas of politics, mass media, science, technology and indeed
every area in which people operate — sport and community development,
organisations and associations of all kinds, the list is endless — can be
enlightened by the Gospel. Their deepest meaning is to be part of our journey
to the fulfilment that God promises to the human race.

In the first reading, St Peter tells us that, in Jesus, God “called us out
of darkness into his wonderful light” (i Pet 2:9). The world without its
Creator, and without the new life into which Jesus leads us, would, for all
its beauty and potential, be ultimately dark and hope-less. It is our task
to keep the vision of hope alive, to live as people who know that the efforts
of those who seek the glorious gathering of humanity in God’s love, beyond
evil and death, ‘will not be in vain’

That is a task for every member of the Church. There is no use bemoaning a
world which seems to be less supportive of families, less open to others,
less committed to the faith which we have received unless we are rising to
those challenges ourselves. There is no use complaining that the forces that
shape our world are lacking in humanity, justice, wisdom, love, if we are
not trying to bring the Gospel into how we operate in these spheres ourselves:

The laity are given this special vocation: to make the church present and
fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them
that it can become the salt of the earth

People can see the need, but they feel that someone should be giving them
directions and guidelines. There may be some truth in that, but the real
challenge is to those who are engaged in all of these areas of life “who
are true disciples of Christ, and who are, at the same time, fully competent
in the relevant secular knowledge and skill”.

The reaction that says, why doesn’t someone tell me what to do?’ ‘I would act
if knew what I was supposed to do’, really misses the nature of the challenge.
As the Pope said in Knock:
Every generation, with its own mentality and characteristics, is like a new
continent to be won for Christ. The Church must constantly look for new ways
that will enable her to understand more profoundly and to carry out with renewed
vigour the mission received from her Founder

In other words, this generation is a new mission territory. It is unexplored.
All of the areas mentioned by the Pope — politics, mass media, science, technology,
culture, education, industry and work — have changed beyond recognition. No
Christian has ever been in this territory before. We are all pioneering missionaries.
It is we who have to discover what the Gospel has to say to all of this new
territory.

Once again, we come back to the importance of prayer and reflection. We do not
discover and respond to Jesus and his challenge in these areas, in ourselves,
in the impacts we are capable of having in our own lives, for our neighbours,
for the world, without seeking him. We will discover and respond to his challenge
only if each member of the Church is one of the people “who see life in its deeper
meaning, who grasp its utter gratuitousness, its beauty and its invitation to
freedom and responsibility.., who do not presume to take possession of reality
but instead accept it as a gift, discovering in all things the reflection of the
Creator and seeing in every person the Creators living image” °

It is painful to dwell on the signs of darkness that we see in the world. We see
poverty, violence, war and terrorism. The horror of the children and teachers of
Beslan, the cruelty in Iraq, make us wonder if there are any limits to human cruelty.
We see suffering and tragedy all around us; we experience pain and loss, disillusionment
and disappointment in our own lives.

But we followers of Christ are bearers of a message. We are meant to be the light
of the world. All of that darkness should prompt in us the realisation voiced by
Simon Peter “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).

In Limerick, the Holy Father pointed to the images of the building, strengthened
by its cornerstone and of the city built strong and safe on a hill. He went on:

These images contain and invitation for all of us, for all Christians, to come
close to Christ, the cornerstone, so that he may become our support and the unifying
principle which gives meaning and coherence to our lives.

Once again at the World Youth Day in Toronto, the challenge spoken in Limerick
twenty three years earlier appeared fresh, vigorous and as relevant as ever:

If your friendship with Christ, your knowledge of his mystery, your giving of
yourselves to him, are genuine and deep, you will be ‘children of the light and
you will become ‘the light of the word’.

The challenge is summed up in the words with which he concluded his visit to
Ireland on the tarmac at Shannon. He asked us to preserve the great treasure of
Ireland’s fidelity to Jesus Christ and his Church. He then spoke words which were
at once a tribute to our past and a prayer for our future:

“Ireland: simper fidelis, always faithful!
Ireland: always faithful! Moladh go deo le Dial”

+Donal Murray

1 Solemn Mass, Downsview Park Toronto, 28 July 2002.
2 Thoreau, H. D., Walden, Economy, 9.
3. Evangelium Vitae, 12.
4. Cf. Orientale Lumen, 16.
5 .Evengelium Vitae, 83.
6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1779.
7 Confessions, 3,6,11, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 300.
8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2700.
9 JOHN PAUL II, Centesimus Annus, 24.
10 JOHN PAUL II, Dives in Misericordia, 8.
11 Homily in Galway 30 September 1979.
12 Cf. VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spes, 45.
13 Homily in Galway 30 September 1979
14 Eph 3:15, quoted in Limerick homily.
15 VATICAN II, Lumen Gentium, 11.
16 Homily in Limerick.
17 VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spas 38.
18 VATICAN 11, Lumen Gentium 33.
19 Homily in Knock.
20 Evangellum Vitae, 83.