Attitude Adjustment

Terrible pun in 3…2…1…

When a spaceship has to dock with a space station, the crew must orient the ship at just the right angle so that the airlocks actually connect. It’s kind of like parallel parking, except that it takes place in three dimensions, the parking space is moving almost thirty times faster than a Boeing 747 in mid-flight, and if you mess it up slightly Allianz probably won’t cough up the cash to cover the damage.

This is colloquially known as attitude adjustment.

Those who know me in person know that I will go to any length to deliver a cheap and terrible pun, so let me say that I think that we Irish Catholics need to make some serious attitude adjustments if we’re ever going get the Church in this country where we want it to go without a spectacular crash.

Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic, had a very clever article a short while back about what he calls the seven last words of the Irish Church, which kind of sums up the problem.

What are the seven last words of the Irish Church?

He gives two seven word sentences that hit the nail on the head when it comes to the attitudes we seem to have in the Church here:

“We’ve never done it that way before.”

And, paradoxically…

“We have always done it this way.”

He goes on to call for openness to new ideas in order to overcome the pessimism that paralyses the Church in Ireland.

You know, I have to own up to this. Every time I complain about something in the Irish Church, I’m also complaining about attitudes and problems I need to get over myself. I’m a cynic and I shoot first, ask questions later when I’m presented with a new idea.

But I’ve been presented with a few different concepts in my life that have pulled me up short and helped me to question some of the negative attitudes I’ve imbibed over the years, and I think that they’re worth sharing so that hopefully others can benefit from them. So a few vignettes are called for.

• I have a friend who used to work with the Church in Latin America, and he had a comment about the differences between Latin Americans and Irish. One of the biggest differences is the attitude towards obstacles. He said something along these lines: ‘An Irishman sees a tall, wide brick wall between him and what he wants, and he gives up and goes home. But your average Latin American sees a brick wall between him and what he wants, and he decides: “I’m going to go over that wall, or under that wall, or around that wall, or through that wall. It’s not going to stop me.”’ If only we were the same here!

 

• I heard a priest give a talk once on how we often tend to have a bit of a siege mentality in the Church. Things seem so bad that we feel the need to bunker down and protect what little we have rather than trying to evangelise and change the world. He pointed out something obvious about a Gospel passage that I hadn’t noticed and I think most people don’t notice. The passage is the one in which Jesus says ‘upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ This priest said quite simply, ‘The gates of hell shall not prevail. Gates are not an offensive weapon. They are a defensive Jesus isn’t saying that hell will try to overcome the Church and fail, He is saying that we can take the fight to the enemy and win.’ It’s a reminder that in the end, Jesus Christ is victorious, and we need to fight to bring that victory to as many people as possible. We can’t give in to despair and we can’t assume that we’ll be forever on the back foot. We need to seize the initiative, something the Church here in Ireland doesn’t seem to do.

 

• I heard another talk by a priest about another scripture passage, that of the parable of the unjust steward. This is a difficult passage, because it’s hard to tell what exactly Jesus is going for. A superficial reading of it might even suggest Jesus is advocating dishonest behaviour, even if we know that can’t be true. The key line this priest singled out was this: ‘For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.’ On one reading of this passage, it might appear that Jesus is saying that the forces of darkness will always be more cunning. But He also said elsewhere that we must be as cunning as serpents and gentle as doves, and in light of this the passage could be seen rather as an admonition from Jesus: we, the ‘people of the light,’ must learn to be more cunning than the ‘people of this world.’ In everything we do, we must try to outsmart those who oppose us, we must try to be more professional, hone our talents in whatever arena of the world we find ourselves so that we can be as good as the best in our field.

 

These are all lessons I’ve tried to take to heart. They could perhaps be summed up as:

• Whatever obstacles block our way, we can’t let them stop us; we just need to try harder to find the right way around them and if one doesn’t work we try another
• We have the final victory; we can’t allow ourselves to be cowed by the world or go on the defensive or give in to despair in the face of all the evils in the world
• We have an obligation to be as smart and as professional as our talents will allow wherever we are placed; if the people of this world are cunning and shrewd and hone their talents so as to oppose us, we must do the same

The forces that hamstring the Church in this country are often pessimism, cynicism, defeatism, an unwillingness to cooperate and hear out other people’s ideas, an unwillingness to take on board constructive criticism, an unwillingness to change as the situation demands it. It’s a very Joycean paralysis, and sometimes it makes me empathise with Yeats’ ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/It’s with O’Leary in the grave.’

We can’t allow this kind of cynicism to defeat us. We need to adjust our attitude, realise that we can win this, even if it’s a long victory, and we may be working towards a renewal of the Church we won’t see in our lifetimes.

Sometimes what we need is simply to try and see things a new way.