The Gazette 1975

Howtolive off friends after retirement.

Church. It is all too apparent to be cloaked or wished away. The Churches are caught in the trap-gate of public structure and private function. The hidden ideology of the present age cannot allow them to challenge the system but in order to cope with man's hidden fears and to prevent a breakdown from stress, the clerical profession is allowed to function in the private sphere, in the area of man's deepest uncertainty: those relating to death, suffering, disease and misery. But it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theo- logian, who was executed in the last war in a German concentration camp, who first expressed concern for the relevance of a Church which functioned exclusively within the sphere of human suffering, weakness and uncertainty. 4. The challenge to the Professions The Professions, as knowledge workers, cannot shrug off their responsibilities to man by calling on Institutions or the Professional Priest to deal with the victims of a system within which they earn a reasonable living. They, all of us, must now ask if ethical considerations demand that we question our role as "hired guns" in making smooth the path of the machine by furnishing drugs for the casualties and imposing uniform and bureaucratic rationality on the obstructive irrationalities of Nation, Culture and Community. If it is legal, is it right? The question need only be asked to remind us of Nazi Germany and to receive the ready answer. In the world of growing organisation which the contemporary industrial civilisation has ushered in, freedom can no longer be adequately defined in the traditional terms of economic, political and intellectual liberties. To-day we are face-to-face with the age-old question of individual meaning, individual purpose and individual freedom. In a free society it can be said the individual must have the right to opt out but this is not sufficient. The individual to-day has a greater responsibility in freedom: he must take responsibility for his society and its institutions. There are great opportunities and great perils but the responsibility cannot be passed to somebody else, priest, politician or bureaucrat. If the Professions collectively do not assume the responsibility which this challenge imposes, individualsof heroic dimen- sion must be willing to do so. The machine tem- porarily has been slowed down by the will of Allah and the followers of Mohammed. The shock has been salutary and opportune for Western man. We have been given time to draw our breath and think; to ask where the machine is leading us and having thought and asked, to re-programme the computer so that it too will understand and respond in a qualitative and essential mode to the first and final question What is Man, and What is his Goal?

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FRIENDS' PROVIDENT LIFE OFFICE 78 South Mall, Cork. 16 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2. 11 Eyre Square, Galway. 95 O'Connell Street, Limerick. Established 1832. Life sums assured in force exceed £1,500,000,000. Friends'forlife

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