Archbishop of Dublin lauds the SVDP at international meeting

John Freund, CM
June 13, 2011

“The society of Saint Vincent de Paul in Ireland enjoys a  remarkable  reputation and is one of the organizations in the Church which has totally maintained its credibility even in  the  face  of  scandals in  the  Church  and  has  continued  to  elicit  generosity  even  in times  of  deep  recession. I  believe that this is  due to the fact that it  has retained that sense  of  gratuitousness  and  superabundance  that  it  so  often  missing  in  today’s’ society.”  Excerpts from Archbishop from Archbishop Dairmuid Martin’s welcome  to  Ireland for  this year’s  International  Meeting  of the Society.

He continues “Those who work in the name of the society go out asking for nothing. People know that theirs is  true voluntarism.  They  bring  not just  material  help but  the  witness  of  lives which mirror the generous love of Jesus Christ. In today’s complicated world, any large organization or movement must recognise the need for effective management and for establishing a level of scale which will enable it to be more efficient.

But how do we define efficiency? The danger is that if we define efficiency only measurable and calculable economic terms, we may miss the ability to bring the surprising and at times irrational generosity of Jesus into people lives.The Church’s work with the poor must be professional, but again our understanding of professionalism  must  be  different  from  a  market-driven, professional-client one.  To reveal the love of God to others we have to get our hands and our shoes dirty in the

Christians cannot  sit  on the  sidelines observing from a safe place. We are not just social commentators or lobbyists of simply advocates.  Our  most  effective advocacy  is witness  rather  than  though slogans or mission statements or smart marketing strategies. Catechesis requires witness if it is to be turned into evangelization. There  is  indeed  a  danger  that many  reforms  agendas regarding the future  of  the Church in Ireland – on the left and on the right – may be so “Church too inward-looking” and polemical and polarised that they fail in their witness to that service in love which is an essential dimensions of the Church.

Our service to the poor must  go beyond professionalism but must also  recognise  that  the  poor  person  is  a brother and a sister and just as we would wish for any brother or sister of ours: the poor deserve the best. The poor deserve the best in the sense that they should never encounter in the Church substandard services. They deserve  above  all the  best  that is  in  us,  the  best of ourselves which share with them in selfless generosity. We pray that the Spirit of Saint Vincent de Paul may flourish in Ireland and around the world today in the generosity of its members.

http://www.ssvpglobal.org


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