The Pope, at one of his recent jubilee celebrations, asked us to return to the Second Vatican Council, to recapture its vision and rediscover its message. It is not just to involvement in so-called "churchy" affairs that the council called us, but also to active involvement in the life and wellbeing of our communities and our society.
Scarcely more than a generation separates us from the council. Is it not paradoxical that, in spite of its call to us to become involved in the option for the poor and in the struggle for social justice and in work for peace and reconciliation, most of our voluntary organisations find it more and more difficult to recruit new members and find themselves increasingly dependent on older members to cope with growing needs and demands?
It is widely agreed that movement in the peace process in the North is held up ultimately by lack of mutual understanding and trust. Do sufficient numbers of church people, Catholics and others, take steps to become actively involved, either through groups or individually, in reaching out to those who differ from us politically or religiously, so as to try to lessen the areas of misunderstanding and push out the boundaries of trust?
Do we accept responsibility for building peace?
Politics is a vital medium for the transformation of society. Is it not strange that, alongside all the criticism of politicians, fewer and fewer talented and committed people are willing to enter politics and make a difference?
Is it not strange that the Irish, a people who still have a remarkably high degree of religious practice, have contributed so little to the development and practical application of Christian thinking in the world of industry and business and the politics and economics of social justice?
With some honourable exceptions - such as the Catholic Bishops' document Prosperity with a Purpose, and the Justice Commission of CORI - there has been little public analysis and critique of neo-capitalist ideology and of its untrammelled "free market", recognising and utilising its positive dimensions, but also identifying its flaws and its failure to deliver a more just society?
Is it not a shame on a Christian people that, when blessed as never before with the opportunity to do so, we have not mobilised the political will to make it a national priority to eliminate poverty and injustice and to reduce the glaring gap between the super-rich and the miserably poor? Is it not a rebuke to us that all the caring professions and the public service generally find it so difficult to recruit personnel?
We seem to be accepting, passively and complacently, that "value added" has no meaning except in purely financial terms, and that the value and status of one's work can be measured only by financial income. To the question, "How much is he or she worth?" the answer is invariably given in terms of income.
The Christian knows that the true answer is, the lifeblood of the Son of God. Each person is of immeasurable dignity; and the true "value added" is in terms of our service to others.
LOVE and fidelity in marriage, good parenting, loving family life, honesty in work, respect for the rights and dignity of others, service to the community, concern for the common good - all these, in whatever profession, deserve recognition by society, and, where appropriate, due remuneration or financial support or, at least, the removal of fiscal disincentives.
They represent real "value added", but their value for society cannot be measured in money terms. What is the financial worth of courtesy and civic virtue, of respect for public amenities and for the environment, of making strangers and refugees welcome, of consideration for the elderly, of making time to visit, time to care, time to listen? But society is immeasurably poorer without these qualities. "Be on your guard against avarice", the Lord tells us, "for a man's life does not consist in the number of his possessions".
THE Gospel of Christ challenges the individualism of the "me generation". "Christ gave his life for us", St John reminds us, "and if he gave his life for us we, too, ought to give our lives for our brothers and sisters". That great public servant of the international community, Dag Hammarskjold, said, "the only value of a life is its content - for others".
Eric Gill wrote an impassioned book in 1939, Social Justice and the Stations of the Cross. Meditating on the twelfth station, "Jesus dies on the Cross", he wrote: "Nothing, nothing, nothing can be won except by the giving of oneself. Against the sky it is written."
He invited readers to ask whether, living as we do "in a time famous as no former time has been for its material triumphs", the same material triumph "because it is hollow in itself" might be "the very cause of our spiritual and physical misery". He pointed to the scandal that we have conquered what we call "nature" but we have not yet conquered our own greed and avarice.
He spoke of our "greed and lust for commercial advantage" and asked whether "the power of money in the State" comes from the fact that "it is the ruling power in our own hearts".
There are many dark corners in our personal lives and in society; it is to these that we must carry the light of Christ. We must not separate the transcendent Christ of prayer and worship and meditation from the radical Christ of unconditional love, even for enemies, of justice and of social involvement and the struggle for transformation of society by the stewards of the Gospel.
The most radical critique of contemporary materialism is the gospel of Christ. The truest radical of today is the committed and active Christian, the one who takes the challenge of Christ with total seriousness, in prayer and also in action.
Cardinal Cahal Daly is the retired Catholic Primate of All-Ireland