IT IS A “grave concern that our nation’s financial crisis is rapidly becoming a profound social crisis”, the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, the Most Rev Jim Moriarty, has said in a Lenten message.
“For many people it has been a shattering experience at a deeply personal level,” Dr Moriarty said yesterday.
“There is now a collective sense of grief, fear, anger but also a kind of reawakening.
“We can all see that our position as a nation has been made much worse because we failed to regulate our society in the interests of community ahead of capital, in favour of family life before financial gain,” he said.
The bishop continued: “While it is necessary to point to past failures in governance, to move forward we each need to consider the deeper question – the Lenten question – what really governs my life?”
The collapse of the “double income/stamp duty” economic model “has left many families in a financial cul-de-sac. People already burdened with inflated mortgages are now overwhelmed by unemployment.”
Noting that there were “numerous policy areas needing attention”, Dr Moriarty said he felt that “first and foremost we need to speak up for measures designed to enable families to keep their homes.
“We need to do all we can to avoid a tide of repossessions sweeping across the land. What is needed here is a set of long-term solutions to the crisis, and not just a temporary deferral.”
Referring to this year’s Lenten campaign of Trócaire, the overseas development agency, Dr Moriarty said that “as always”, it “widens our horizons and allows us to look with a new eye on our own society. It brings us in touch with our common humanity, our deepest values.
“Human rights are universal rights and we need to be equally radical in their defence nationally and internationally.
“So as we encourage people to do what they can this Lent to help displaced people in Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere, we also need to make a deeper commitment to supporting family life in our own country.”
Looking ahead, the bishop said: “In the long economic recovery which lies ahead, I pray that a deeper strength may be revealed as we care for the weakest and most vulnerable at home as well as in the developing world.
“May the Lord’s grace empower us and give us his peace in this new season.”
The Trócaire 2009 Lenten campaign is focused on people in the developing world who have been forced to leave their homes because of armed conflict and to seek safety elsewhere.
The Kildare and Leighlin diocese works closely with the Trócaire agency.
