Madam, - Recent letters about the contributions of the Irish missionary movement over the past century suggest that that the work of mission is in decline. Far from it! While the clerical model of the Irish church has rightly come in for criticism in recent years, it should not be forgotten that the Irish laity also help and do the work of mission. The responsibility and obligation of fellowship towards the marginalised and the poor rests on the shoulders of all, lay and non-lay.
The decline in religious vocations, combined with the increasing age profile of religious missionaries, should not mislead people into thinking that the day of the missionary is gone. On the contrary, the evidence of a strong spirituality, mainly Christian, is seen through the work of lay organisations such as Goal and Concern, both of which owe much of their founding visions to the work of Irish missionaries. Meanwhile, Trócaire remains directly under the auspices of the Irish Catholic bishops.
The Government also directly fund the development work of missionary organisations thro- ugh a dedicated independent body, the Irish Missionary Resource Service (IMRS), whose budget is currently more than €20 million a year. Both Bob Geldof and Bono readily acknowledge the deep influences that their Irish Catholic backgrounds had on their ethical attitudes to the marginalised and the poor.
Lay organisations such as the Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) continue to attract significant numbers of professional development workers to work on mission overseas. Many of our people would formally have chosen the religious vocational route but now value the complementary role of the laity. Others see lay mission as an alternative, and certainly a less clericalised way, of practising their faith. While I don't believe that development work is the new religion, it can validly be seen as an echo from the work of our religious missionaries and a sign of God's spirit at work in the world today. - Yours, etc,
Dr VINCENT KENNY, Director, Volunteer Missionary Movement, Dublin 9.