Speaking recently on the Marian Finucane Show Archbishop Diarmuid Martin expressed the view that the time is not right for a visit to Ireland by the Pope.
Some days later, Cardinal Sean Brady expressed the opposite view.
My hope is that the moment would be right.
Most ordinary people would see this disagreement as simply two different interpretations of the current relationship between the Vatican and Ireland.
Irish Catholic columnist John Waters, however, is no ordinary man.
Mr. Waters has detected a mysterious force in the sentence voiced by Cardinal Brady (Irish Catholic).
The following quotes provide a good idea of Waters’ thinking.
Should we be thinking about such a matter (a visit by the Pope) on the basis of normal intuitive or rational criteria?
There is something deeply intriguing about that sentence: My hope is that the moment would be right.
Beneath the lightness of the tone, I detected a gentle emphasis in the cardinal’s intervention that seemed to draw attention to a wholly different way of looking at things.
Shouldn’t the criteria by which we consider such a vital question include some possibility for the intervention of the mysterious source of our existence, which is the very basis of Christian faith?
And, finally, the clincher conclusion.
I am probably reading too much into it, but this is what I see in that rather glancing difference of opinion between Archbishop Martin and Cardinal Brady.
One was speaking to a political context; the other was addressing the total spectrum of possibility implied by the Incarnation.
So there you have it.
It would seem the Pope will be visiting after all and that’s straight from the mouth of god almighty himself with just a slight detour through John Waters’ brain.
The less said, the better!
IT SEEMS DE GREAT JOHN WATER’S NEURONS ARE CROSS-WIRED IN HIS SMALL BRAIN.