Offering up a prayer of hope

Oct 3 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Some fight cancer with their brilliance, others with courage. Later this month, scientists, sufferers, doctors and nurses will kneel together and pray for a cure. David Charters reports

‘WHY did God allow it to happen? It’s the one question which unites us all, whether we are watching some faraway massacre on the TV news, or slipping a coin into a charity box on the shopping mall.

And then it is asked again with personal emphasis, rising in anger and sorrow and passion, as it clouds the eyes of the person, who struggles with confusion, frustration and emotional impotence.

“Why did God allow it to happen to my little baby . . . my husband, wife, brother, sister, dear friend?”

Tears and more rage, but then we continue to pray, to express our faith in something unknown and unseen, the Man in the sky. Again the question – why?

But now speaks the philosopher with the blue eyes and measured voice, who is happy to tell you that he walks and talks and breathes and eats with God.

“Love includes pain and suffering, as every parent knows, as every lover knows,” he says.

But isn’t it a bad or unforgiving God who would give a child pain and sadness in the first place?

“That’s the challenge,” says the man. “But it is a God who gave his own Son, and everybody worshipping underneath a crucifix has to face that question, that problem. Religion is joy and hope, beyond and in spite of those things, not because of those things.

“I say to people, ‘if you can come up with a better solution to those things, then let’s hear it’. But you cannot worship under a crucifix and not face the problem of suffering, the problem of sin, the problem of pain and so on.”

These are the words of one of Liverpool’s finest sons, Peter Moloney, 75, former rugby player and novice monk; continuing father, husband, wit, writer, scholar and devout Christian, who has made a strong recovery from prostate cancer.

On October 14, he will be the main speaker at one of the most important occasions in the faith calendar – the ninth annual Pause for Hope service, when people affected by cancer, including the doctors, nurses, and scientists engaged in the fight against the disease, gather at Liverpool’s Metropolitan (Catholic) Cathedral.

It will be attended by representatives of the North West Cancer Research Fund, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Macmillan Cancer Support, Alder Hey Hospital, the Woodlands Hospice (Fazakerley Hospital), the Roy Castle Foundation itself and other groups, all dedicated to the elimination of cancer.

The services were started by Professor Ray Donnelly, founder and President of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

Roy, husband, father of four, dancer, comedian, musician and actor, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. In 1993, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to raising money for research into the disease.

By the following year, the cancer had spread to other organs, including his brain. Only massive doses of morphine quelled the pain. But the little man, left bald but braver than ever after chemotherapy, embarked on a three-day Tour of Hope around Britain, which helped raise the £4m needed to build and equip the Roy Castle Foundation on London Road, Liverpool.

He died a few weeks later on September 22, aged 64.

Roy’s example, his spirit and his courage, will not be seen at the service, but it will be felt everywhere, amid the brilliant lights and shadows cast in that conical house of God.

“People get a lot of hope and consolation from the service,” says Ray, 71, a retired surgeon, renowned for his treatment of lung diseases at Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool. “It is very uplifting. It is not by any means gloom and doom, though some there will get quite emotional, remembering people who have died from cancer. But many people there will have recovered from cancer, and they will be grateful and they will want to say thank you for that.

“People will want to pray for the doctors and nurses who look after them and those who have the difficult job of finding and allocating the resources. They need our prayers as well. The big one is for the scientists trying to find a cure. That is a very important one, giving hope.”

Ray’s wife, Elizabeth, with whom he had five children, has an apt saying: “Hope helps us believe in the seemingly impossible”.

“It’s true,” says Ray. “Can we find a cure for cancer? It seems impossible, but we have the hope that it will come – if we pray hard enough, it will come more quickly. That is why we call it Pause for Hope, with a very positive message about the whole service.

“The various cancer charities are taking these moments to pause together. That is quite exceptional. Although all cancer charities are pulling the cart in the same direction, there is generally an element of competition.

“It was my aim from the very beginning to bring us all together. It is remarkable that we should be seen together in a religious service.

“There really is Cause for Hope. Not all cancers are curable, but many are nowadays. People still have the fear of cancer and they are another group we want to pray for. They might never get cancer, but they are frightened of it. We want to take that fear away.

“There are a series of bidding (spoken) prayers for people who have been bereaved, for children with cancer, for scientists. These will be read by children between the ages of eight and 13.”

In recent times, the notion has arisen that science and religion are opposing forces. But it is an opinion rejected absolutely by Ray, a devout Catholic.

“Science just proves more and more that true faith is real and correct,” he says. “Roy Castle was very up-front with his faith. He lived his faith. As he was dying from cancer, he was very positive in his attitude towards God and how it had happened to him. He didn’t want to die, but there must have been a reason. He used to say that if you got on the bus, you had to trust the driver.”

Peter Moloney is a long-standing friend of Ray’s and had worked with Roy Castle at charity functions before either of them had cancer.

He is recognised as one of the country’s finest public speakers, combining Scouse wit, sharpened at the St Francis Xavier School, Liverpool, with erudition and wisdom matured in an extraordinary career. Among his many activities, he spent 20 months as a novice monk with the Cistercians of the Strict Observance at the Santa Maria Abbey at Nunraw, near Edinburgh, and served with the Parachute Regiment in Cyprus.

He has graduated from Liverpool, London and Lancaster Universities, the College of Preceptors and the Royal College of Music, in subjects ranging through English, French, psychology and philosophy.

“I have,” he says with extraordinary modesty, “an enormous breadth of ignorance.”

As a magnificent debater, Peter was for 20 years a lecturer in communications at Liverpool Polytechnic (now John Moores University), while appearing on radio and TV and as an after-dinner speaker at venues across the UK.

“Seriousness of purpose with frivolity of approach,” is a description he has applied to his life. “I little dreamed in those days that, after retirement, I would be forced to put my theories to the test quite so strongly. A service in the cathedral for cancer is perhaps the ultimate test of seriousness of purpose and frivolity of approach.

“One of the great heresies of the last century was that religion implies the obligation to enjoy misery. It doesn’t. It imposes the duty of exuding supernatural joy, and one of the great heresies of the present century is going to be that happiness is going to be the end result of the pursuit of pleasure. It isn’t. It is the end result of the cultivation of love.

“That will be the serious part of the message with a few jokes thrown in to leaven the mix.”

His own prostate cancer was diagnosed a couple of years ago and he was treated at Clatterbridge Hospital, Bebington, Wirral, by a charming a young woman whose first letter to him ended with the words “radio the rapist” after her signature. The lesson is that typists should always be careful with their spaces.

Anyway, the radiotherapy was successful for Peter, who is married to Noelene. They have four grown-up daughters.

“Prayer to the spiritual life is what breathing is to the physical life,” he says.

IN TOMORROW’S Daily Post, Style City goes into the pink to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

davidcharters@dailypost.co.uk

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