Hopes of salvation based on scientific, social and economic progress are bound to deceive if the heart is indifferent to God and his truth, according to the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell.
In a pastoral letter entitled "The Joy of Salvation", read in churches yesterday, he said that a "deceitful challenge" we encountered today took the form of a claim that we had no need to look to God for salvation because we could work everything out for ourselves through scientific, social and economic progress.
But vast improvements in standards of living had done little to reduce the prevalence of crime, he said, while "dishonesty in dealing with others, betrayal of personal ties, single-minded pursuit of one's own advantage are no less prevalent and destructive in today's society than in societies of former times". Salvation was richer in promise than good use of the world's resources, he said, "because salvation has to do with the heart".
The claim was made, Dr Connell said, that improved education enabled us to decide for ourselves how we should live, that it was "nobody else's business to interfere with our freedom". Conscience might even be taken to mean feeling good about decisions we made with a view to our own fulfilment, he said. "But deep down we know that there is a truth about how we should live, that conscience is the voice of that truth, that seeking fulfilment can become the excuse for reducing that voice to silence".
Because Jesus was the truth, he was the Lord of conscience and the judge of the living and the dead. "He is the head of the Church . . . He speaks to this generation not just from Scripture, but through the voice of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As often as we refuse to heed that voice, we refuse to listen to Him, making our own responsibility the judgement about how we should live."
The Archbishop said many people today confused the reality of guilt with feelings of guilt (his italics) and thought they could rid themselves of guilt itself by overcoming their guilty feelings. "Guilt may be experienced even when the reality of guilt is absent in fact", he said. "Nothing but God's forgiveness can remove the reality of guilt." The penitent faced up to guilt in confession and "received the assurance of God's forgiveness through the authority He had given his minister".
Too often, non-directive counselling bypassed the reality of guilt, leaving the impression that all would be well when feelings of guilt had been quieted. "The pain may be deadened, but the cancer remains, and patients suspect that their cure is unreal", he said.
