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An Informed Laity

A Reformed Irish Church

By

Sean Mac Gabhann

 

ISBN: 978-1-907107-73-3

 

Price:  TBA

 

About the Book:

 

This is a bold and inspiring book with a timely message. With the death of the Celtic Tiger and the thousands thrown on the dole, the next thing uppermost in peoples’ minds is the appalling state of the Catholic Church. This book offers a solution in a positive, comprehensive and fiercely challenging manner. The time has arrived for the laypeople to come into their own and take their God-given place, not in the Church, but as the Church. No other book sets out to inspire, inform, affirm and encourage the Catholic laypeople as does An Informed Laity: A Reformed Irish Church. The author maintains that it is the leaders, bishops and priests, not the laypeople, who need to be reformed, renewed and converted. He is convinced that only an informed laypeople will hold them accountable to this personal process. The book points out how the laypeople have actually begun the reform by the abused coming forward, going public and forcing changes that would never have taken place. From seeing themselves, negatively, through the eyes of the institutional church, this book offers the laypeople a fresh view: see themselves as God sees them. They are precious in his eyes. Their names are written on the palms of his hands. They are special, lovable and the apple of God’s eye. This is a far cry from a God they often experienced through the institutional church as distant, policeman-like, predominately male and impersonal. The writer presents the God of scripture as the only authentic image of God: one who is kind, loving, merciful, forgiving, compassionate and is most at home with thieves (tax-collectors), prostitutes, the marginalized and has a preferential option for the poor. The Irish Catholic laypeople will find this book a breath of fresh air that will inspire them to believe in themselves as God believes in them and be his instruments of conversion, reform and renewal.

 

 

About the Author:

Sean Mac Gabhann is an Irish missionary priest from Kill, Kildare. He worked in South America for thirteen years and is presently chaplain to a contemplative Order of Benedictine Nuns in the United States. He is a trained director of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius graduating from Creighton University (Jesuit) with a MA in Christian Spirituality. His previous book, The New Evangelisation of Catholics: In a New Language, can be seen on Amazon. Being a long time out of Ireland, might well pose the question: ‘what does he know about the Irish Church?’ Well, he grew up in that Church that has not changed a great deal! Having a worldwide experience of the universal Church, he can be objective and make comparisons. Part of the reason the Irish Church is in such a mess is because its leaders failed to be objective and make comparisons with the universal Church. He takes seriously the warning of Cardinal Sean O’Malley that if reform is delayed, within ten years, the Irish Catholic Church will go down the same road as European Catholics. Ireland is now a missionary Church with its leaders, not the laypeople, in urgent need of evangelisation. He is Irish to the core and a missionary in reverse!