The news of the death of Enda McDonagh has left me with a profound sadness and sense of loss. Enda was a dear friend, a wonderful person, a renowned theologian whose courage in speaking his truth, and his God’s truth, drew admiration from so many people worldwide and hostility from those challenged by the power of that truth. There will be many eloquent obituaries written about Enda, and about his extensive theological achievements, in the coming weeks. I write simply to offer a small tribute to a friend loved and admired by so many.
I got to know Enda when I worked in Cafod’s HIV team and he served as our theological consultant on HIV considerations. We worked and travelled together for over a decade from 1993, meeting with church programmes and hierarchy in a number of countries of Africa, and memorably, in Burma/Myanmar at a point when both the ruling junta and the Catholic church there were just beginning to open up to influences from outside. We formed a good team, I facilitated work on development issues raised by HIV, while Enda unfolded a theological framework that enabled church personnel to formulate a holistic faith-informed response to the challenges of the pandemic. We celebrated successes, fought battles together, we laughed and wept and shared our frustrations and delights. In all of this I came to enjoy and admire key gifts that were part and parcel of Enda.
Firstly, Enda’s theology was rooted not in his impeccable academic credentials, but in a deep sense of love for God and a strong personal relationship with that God. All that he said and wrote emanated from an attentive listening to God’s Word unfolding in the events that Enda was confronting.
Enda’s capacity to listen in order to speak, also showed itself in every workshop and seminar we shared. On many occasions I found him pacing a corridor before an event and he would say with genuine anguish that he didn’t know what he was going to say, even when he might have produced a carefully prepared text for the occasion. When it came time for him to speak, he shared amazing insights, theological and otherwise, born simply from what he had heard in proceedings up to then, and which were often richer and fuller than his pre-prepared text. For more formal occasions we quickly learned to ensure that Enda’s talk was recorded, as it was bound to deviate from, and be better than any text he submitted in advance.
Enda, the eminent theologian, was eminently human. He enjoyed the company of friends, women and men from all walks of life, he thrived on poetry and art and theatre and thrilled at news of sporting successes for Manchester United football club or his home county of Mayo in Gaelic football, or Ireland’s rugby team.
Enda the eminent theologian, was eminently humble. He was always eager to learn, to step back and make way for others. On one memorable occasion at an international meeting of Catholic aid agencies, he was asked to celebrate the Eucharist. The gospel chosen was the story of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak hoping to be healed. Enda said that a woman should preach on this, and, to my consternation, invited me to do so.
Finally, Enda was at once both at home in any and every culture, delighting in new cultural experiences, and rooted in his own culture, not in any nationalistic way but out of a sense of knowing his Irish identity as core to his personhood. And so he would welcome all sorts of diverse cultural celebrations in our meetings and, when we might celebrate the Eucharist with participants I would often hear soft murmurings of “Ár nAthair, atá ar Neamh”, as he prayed the Our Father in Irish.
In 1994 Enda published what became a seminal paper on Theology in a time of AIDS. In it he said there are four core values he regarded as kingdom values, and these needed to become our yardstick for formulating any ethical response to the pandemic.
These are:
Truth: without a continuous commitment to truth the pandemic is misunderstood and responses mistaken. Truth is often costly. We must ensure this cost is shared and the heavier burden is borne by those in the best position to pay.
Freedom: The freedom of God in creation and covenant forms the basis of human freedom of choice and of the progressive liberation of person and society which the kingdom of God seeks. Freedom is both gift and task.
Justice: The equality which justice demands focuses in God’s kingdom on the deprived and excluded including those excluded because of racial or gender exploitation. Many of the problems revealed by the pandemic are problems of justice, personal and social, and of structural injustice between the powerful and powerless, between rich and poor, and call for a radical re-orientation of attitudes, practices and structures.
Peace/Shalom: Acceptance of the other, the different, the discriminated against, the excluded, is Jesus’ pattern for the new community. The kingdom values of peace, shalom, flourishing together is to be the defining characteristic of that new community. For that peace to occur there must be a metanoia, repentance and conversion to one another in Christ, in a way that is personal, practical and systemic.
Identified by Enda as core kingdom values they are values that have marked and shaped his own life. His journey complete, may he now be rejoicing in the fullness of life of that new community embraced in God’s creative love. May we strive to live out these values day by day, in celebration of, and in tribute to, the gift of Enda’s life, lived in truth, freedom, justice and peace, underpinned by love.
Dr Ann Smith is a former HIV Corporate Strategist at Cafod.
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