What's "Cardinal-Nepos" in Gaelic?

As he's being so hotly tipped to succeed Sodano that his office is seeking to put out the fires, the words of the saintly archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, are even more worth noting than usual -- and Our Diarmuid is so exemplary that he's always worth noting, San Damaso or not.

ZENIT reports on an adress Martin gave on "A Contribution for Freedom -- Ireland for Europe" at the annual Communione e Liberazione plenary last week at Rimini.

"Very often," the Irish prelate said, "people think of freedom as being a freedom 'from' but there's also a freedom 'for' -- a freedom to be able to do something, construct something differently and use one's talents and capabilities in a responsible way, in the service of God's plan for society. And this naturally requires a different type of faith....

"Young people are the future leaders of our nations," he said. "My hope is that they will develop as a faith community or society whose values spring from a belief in God and they will go out into their professional and family lives, inspired by the principles of the Gospel with a certain coherence and that they will not be caught up in the superficial visions of one moment or another."

"[S]uperficial visions of one moment or another...." I wonder what he's talking about there.... Probably the religion as "negative, exacting rule book" school of thought he discredited a few weeks back.

He said one of the biggest challenges for bishops is "that we have available for people […] the structures that will help them deepen their faith as they go along their paths in life."

"If we want to arrive in Ireland to a new maturity between Church and state," he explained, "the first thing we must do as Church is to create a new generation of mature Christians who understand their faith and who are able to interpret that faith and live it out in our modern society ... living it in a way that brings hope and meaning in theirs and others lives."

Mature Christians. We haven't heard much praise of the concept of maturity vis-a-vis faith these last few decades. But note that Martin reemphasizes it, as he has always done. Note further that "mature faith" was the first major Benedictine buzzword, one hammered home several times in this Pope's programmatic address at mass the morning after his election in the Sistina.

"It's no longer a question that you just learn your Catechism or your religious education in school and that will take you clearly through life. ... We have to have a constant dialogue and deepening of the realization of what it means to be a believer in a world where things change so much for the future."

All this from the man of the future... I said it yesterday, I'll say it again -- "An Irish Secretary of State is a blessing."

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