The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity

in terms of building up the Church that, in turn, is building up the world towards greater and more aware communion with God is what not only the diaconate but the Church itself is all about’ and ‘not a sort of second-division auxiliary force to stop a few gaps.’ The book ends with an essay on beauty and the witness of the priest, more of which later. With a foreword by Archbishop Eamonn Martin and edited by Dr Eamonn Conway of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, the variety and breath of the writing here is a credit to his editorial choices. In one or two places, he might have brought authors back to an understanding of the overall subject of the book, but for the most part it is a fine collection of engaging essays. The wisdom and experience in the pages of the book gives a rich and profound reading of the priesthood at this time. Jim Corkery tells of a meeting of Jesuits a number of years ago: ‘it was through the telling of our “vocation stories” that we were able to find what we had in common and work together on a shared project.’ In many ways, this is the key to the book, each author telling their particular vocation story. It is easy to see what is common—an enthusiasm for the Church into the future, despite the inherent challenges with which we are faced and a task that will only be successful in collaboration. Whether in 50 or 100 years’ time Ireland will be still interested in the priesthood; it will be to this volume that it should return for its authentic voice, paradigm, and perspective and not Father Ted or The Savage Eye and not the films mentioned earlier. In the final essay, William Desmond quotes Jean Luc Marion’s distinction between idol and icon. ‘The idol is the mirror that only returns to us our gaze, the icon opens us up to the gaze of another and we are transported beyond the circuit of our own selfabsorption.’ While priesthood in the past might have suffered from the former, perhaps what we might aspire to is the latter—those whom we encounter might be opened up to the gaze of Another.