Soon I will be 70 and I can dustinguis two distinct phases in my life.
THE FIRST STAGE – From my childhood until I was on the cusp of 40.
THE SECOND STAGE – From 40-ish until now.
As a younq man, deeply form by an all surrounding Irish Roman Catholicism, I was in a place of dark shadows.
Guilt, shame self-rejection, sense of sinfulness and unworthiness were the constant clouds in my daily sky.
And yet from the age of 4 wanting to be a priest.
And the strangling feeling that this horrible, sinful me could never be good enough and holy enough to be the perfect priests I watched going about.
This constant tension made childhood, schooling and even seminary a great daily struggle.
I was obviously extremely immature, conflicted.
Being expelled from one seminary before getting another, being ordained and seeing the clergy as they really are and eventually coming into conflict with authority caused questioning within and for reassessment.
And of course, the obvious place to start was with myself.
And so I engaged on a 5 year journey of spiritual and psychological exploration and was fortunate to meet the right people and have the right experiences.
And I found myself emerging into a new freedom that cast off inappropriate guilt and shame.
With that came self acceptance and a whole new way of seeing myself, others, faith, spirituality the Church and life.
I have often said that during the first half of my life I was stuck at Calvary.
And in the second half I moved to the Empty Tomb and Resurrection
A very valid question for us all at Easter is the question:
Am I stuck at some place of darkness, unhappiness and unfulfillment in my life?
And
How an I now prepared to move on from there and discover my very own version of the Empty Tomb?
CAROLE’S PROPERTY IN CLARE HAS BEEN ATTACKED
The home of “Carole”, the second woman to come forward who was involves with Fr Ger Fitzgerald has come under attack.
A window was broken the the property gates were interfered with.
This is the first time ever the property has been attacked.
A very worrying development.
The Gardai are investigating.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 