Do I hear the odd OINK from time to time? The annual distribution of Flu virus aka the Ekka, is over and we should all be able to get back to a normal life. Carmel and I escaped to the country and attended a multicultural food festival. Great fun, but a real blast from the past. The stall holders at the RNA would never have got away with the way things were done.
That raises the matter of changing standards. The church is just as involved as anyone else. We have had to adopt different protocols about how we interact with children, women, and the general public. While one can make a case for each of the changes individually, together they constitute a significant burden.
For instance; if I want to employ a youth worker in the parish there are eleven different forms to be completed and seven pages of questions that must be asked of the candidate. Unfortunately there is not a list of answers. Evaluating the answers is left to us. So much for objective selection criteria. Just what has been achieved after such an exercise is not clear. We are told that we must not discriminate; yet the questions seek grounds for discrimination. In a desperate struggle to avoid predatory lawsuits we are digging ourselves in deeper.
The rising fear of risk, and the distrust that it has engendered in society has a long way to go. These things take a couple of generations to work through a culture. The damage we have done thus far is becoming apparent. More is to come.
The Gospel is about another model for human relationships based not on fear but on love. And not just human love, which we all know to be fragile, but on God’s love. God’s love demonstrated in the incarnation crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sealed in our Baptism which makes us part of the risen Christ and therefore part of each other as well.
For a world desperately seeking a way out of the impasse of conflict and retribution the Good News is, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.