God will lead you more places
than you ever dreamed possible.
You may not know exactly
where you are going,
but we guarantee:
follow Christ, and you will go
further than your wildest dreams.
question, with innocence and sincerity,
i gathered the whole student body into
the chapel again and gave them a class
on the basics of the Eucharist. That’s
our mission now—starting again from
scratch.”
Stay focused on vocation
Enter #108 at VocationMatch.com
to be our response.
Here was an intelligent
teenager from a Catholic
family, who had received
the sacraments, attended
a Catholic school for 14
years, studied three periods of religious instruction each week.
“one reaction to
stories like this is to
complain and blame
parents, teachers, and
parishes,” Father Richard
said. “However, when i
heard the student ask that
FATHER RICHARD preaches
at Mass in the Honan Cha-
pel at University College
Cork.
Hendrick knows more than most
about evangelization and youth
in ireland. He has spent all of his
time as a Capuchin friar working in
ministries aimed at the evangelization of ireland’s rapidly changing and
increasingly secular culture.
“i joined the Capuchins in dub-
lin in 1991 straight from school. At
the time it seemed a pretty normal
life choice. The Catholic Church
was still the conscience of the nation
and was prominent in everyday life.
Within a year of entering, everything
changed. We experienced our first
clerical scandal involving the resig-
nation of a popular bishop who had
fathered a child.”
That episode would pale into
relative insignificance in the years
ahead as a tidal wave of child
sexual abuse revelations engulfed the
church and angered the irish people.
Media investigations and govern-
ment reports over the past two
decades have documented in detail
the mishandling of abuse cases by
church leaders in the country.
so how has this turmoil affected
Father Richard? “The management
of such cases and the outreach to the
survivors have been deeply disappointing,” he says, “but i’ve never
lost hope. if prayer is at the heart of
your life and if God is at the heart
of your vocation, then the scandals
COURTESY OF TONY KEYA, GOSPEL REPUBLIC
110
VISION 2013
