The Messenger - January 2008 - Editorial Jan 08, Past, Present and Future
By John Looby, SJ - 02 January 2008
It was much more a country thing than an urban one but you would be wise to be on your guard with the old country gent asking innocent questions. I remember one occasion, maybe about 1970, when I was talking with a relative at a time when I had recently returned from studying in Germany. ‘And is it true that the big cities there are all ablaze with lights at night?’ he asked. Just as I was slipping into an enthusiastic description of Frankfurt am Main, a certain caution suggested itself. Had not my relative, himself only slightly older than myself, lived for two or three years in New York, and had he not, while in the U.S. army, been stationed in Tokyo? Recognizing the age-old ruse of the country boy to make fun of the cityboy, I replied nonchalantly, ‘Oh you know yourself; but nothing like New York or Tokyo’. He nodded, nothing deterred by being outmanoeuvred, just waiting for another occasion.
I remembered that incident as I thought of the people who have read the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart over the last one hundred and twenty years. On 6 January 1888, Fr. James Cullen S.J. produced the first issue. It cost one penny and to modern eyes looked insignificant. In its first year it sold 9,000 copies a month. With the help of a network of promoters the little red book, as it was frequently called, eventually reached into almost all the Catholic homes in the island. And if it has remained the favourite magazine in Ireland over that 120 years it should be remembered that it has been speaking to a discerning people of what has been most personal and profound to them.
As we look to the future, increasingly people ask about handing on the faith. With this issue we begin a series of articles on handing on the faith, addressing a real concern of today’s Church. At the recent National Religious Education Congress held in Dublin, Michael Paul Gallagher S.J. suggested three new aims: disposition, decision and difference. The aim of the congress was to ‘re-energise, to enthuse and to give new heart to people of faith’. I felt it was a good definition for a Catholic magazine and my ears picked up as I accidentally overheard a conversation, which wondered how this message could get to all the people of Ireland. Imagined my gratification, when one man replied. ‘Thank God for The Sacred Heart Messenger; if it did not exist we would have to invent it!’
I am sure Father Cullen would be pleased that his simple little red book was seen as so significant.
John Looby, SJ