Irish Monastic Sites: Back To The Future
Dark November, when I fly to that greatest of monastics sites, Clonmacnoise, a monastic university which reconciled warring tribes and brought learning even to Oxford, England.
I learn that when Pope John Paul 11 came here he wept, because it was now just a monument. No longer will this be so. 'Reconnections', a process that links people in diverse lands who live near Irish sites with new monastic experiments, studies, and creative networks is launched. It's the first of a series of Clonmacnoise Summer Schools. Fred Carney illustrates the Legacy of the Monks, I speak on 'The Great Emergence' and groups brainstorm. On Saturday we have a guided tour, a new App that re-creates Clonmacnoise as a living village through the ages, an ecumenical service at St. Brendan's Clonfert Cathedral, food and private dialogues.
My address is available as a download 'The Great Emergence'. The front page of The Irish Times tells me that Pope Francis wants churches to be homes for everyone, not chapels for a selected few. I remind my listeners that is precisely what those early Irish monastery churches were. Sean Ascough, who has had hundreds of young Catholics in tents at Clonmacnoise, has a vision of an archipelago - small new groups of Christians, each with their own charism, each encouraging the others without a spirit of competition, will emerge around the great River Shannon at Clonmacnoise. I offer to lead study weeks for small groups in between summer schools. Someone suggests a House of Prayer that might accommodate us. Pray for this. Watch this space.
P.S. Something else I said in my talk: 'When Ryanair adopts monastic values the Kingdom of God will truly have arrived on earth.'!
