Masses Today

6.30: Michael Murray, (Anniv)
11.00 Anne & James Sharkey, ( Anniv)
6.30 Laura Carr, (10th Anniv)

EVENTS THIS WEEK





AS I WAS SAYING...

Our Taoiseach, and our Minister for Finance in particular, are under siege. They stand accused of pulling the wool over our eyes during the last election campaign. They told us the cupboard was reasonably well stocked. We were gullible enough to believe them. The stroke was barely dry on the ballot paper when they announced that, on a more recent inspection, the cupboard was actually bare! Immediate cutbacks would be necessary.

Misleading, or good leadership? After all, what political party will face the electorate promising cutbacks, and survive the experience! What constitutes good leadership today? In Church or in State? Leaders have always been creatures of their own age and culture. Leaders are 'of an age'. For example, De Valera was the quintessential 1930s leader. He regarded himself as being in possession of that 'messianic streak' that proved so dangerous in his continental contemporaries. ("I need only to look into my heart to discover what the people of Ireland are thinking!") That sort of thing sat easily with that age. He really belonged to a pre-industrial age where his profound ignorance of economic matters would have been relatively harmless.

Politics is very different today. We like to think it is now a far more sophisticated science. But to use the term 'leadership' in connection with politics today is a misnomer. Generally speaking, no word is uttered, no action taken until the auguries of the modern world (the Opinion Polls) are consulted. This is not just true of our own country. It is true of the United States and of every western democracy. It is doubtful however if this would qualify as 'Leadership' in the traditional understanding of the term.

If there is a leadership vacuum in modern politics, there is an absolute 'Black Hole' in Church leadership today. Perhaps never before in her history has the Irish Church stood in need of strong and imaginative leadership. Traditionally, Armagh and Dublin could be relied upon to 'stand in the breach' in times of testing. But what do we get? Armagh is silent. Archbishop Brady seems to have run for cover. Where is he? Does he feel overshadowed by the continuing presence of Cardinal Daly? For whatever reason, he has remained silent throughout this present crisis.

There are many would wish that Dublin had remained silent also! Cardinal Connell is patently a good man. Unfortunately, the Peter Principle applies: 'Every man is promoted to the level of his own incompetence.' It was a grave mistake to snatch him from the academic life and to land him in the most pastorally sensitive position in the Irish Church at that hour of his life. We must presume the man himself didn't ask for it. But his promotion has been an utter disaster, for himself, for his diocese and for the Irish Church. He is an anachronism, a product of the 'Age of de Valera'.

But this surely is our problem: Where is the accountability? Who will put up his hand and say, "Yes, I was responsible for that appointment. Sorry, we got it wrong." Because, in the present context, imaginative leadership would be first and foremost honest leadership. People once expected honesty. They now demand it. And they are dead right.

-Dick Lyng.



Lip Service

"More than a generation has elapsed since the close of the Second Vatican Council. The tensions that simmered and sometimes erupted during its four-year duration continue to unsettle Catholics of every stripe. A step forward is taken and then followed by a step backward: Pope John Paul II beatifies the beloved John XXIII and then hastens to beatify the reactionary Pius IX. We move cautiously towards Christian unity and then take a step back with claims that our sister Churches aren't really sister Churches after all. We affirm the role of the laity as gift of the Spirit and continue to exclude competent women and men from meaningful leadership roles in the Church. We distinguish revealed truths from disciplinary customs and insist that such practices as mandatory celibacy for Latin rite priests may not be discussed. We deplore the victimisation of our children by clergy and Church personnel and exclude parents and adult victims from any meaningful role in shaping the policies put in place to deal with clergy abuse.

We insist on the central role of the Eucharist and the sacraments in the lives of believers and we tolerate the absence of a resident priest in almost half of the world's parishes. We speak of transparency and accountability, and maintain a feudal, clerical culture of secrecy. We solicit and accept contributions from parishioners and corporations and provide, at best, superficial financial reports. We speak authoritatively about human sexuality without listening to the lived experience of married, single, celibate, gay and lesbian Catholics. We affirm our bishops as true shepherds of our local Churches and treat them like branch managers. And perhaps saddest of all, we acclaim the equality and dignity of women and insist they maintain their distance - and their silence."

-Donal Cozzens, Sacred Silence, p. 157.



Table Quiz for Noel Hession

Noel Hession is home from Ecuador and is around this weekend. He is now in the final week of his holiday, since he returns to Ecuador on Sunday next, November 17th. He is getting on very well in Ecuador (according to himself, but he would, wouldn't he!).

A few parishioners here are planning a Table Quiz as a fund-raiser for Noel. We plan to have it in the first week of December, before the Christmas functions begin to swing seriously. We will be in a position to announce the venue and the exact date here next Sunday. As well as being a valuable fund-raiser for Noel, the night will also function as a very enjoyable Parish social night.





APOSTROPHE TO MAN

(On reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes,
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest,
be all but overcome,be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialise
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach,
expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay.



"Quote, Unquote........ "

  • "I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and, after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it." -S. J. Perelman.
  • "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination." -Andrew Lang.
  • "I have every sympathy for the American who was so horrified by what he had read on the effects of smoking that he gave up reading." -Henry G. Strauss.
  • "As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are much more serious." -Marcel Proust.
  • "There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine." -P. G. Wodehouse.
  • "Why do so many born-again people so often make you wish that they'd never been born in the first place?" -Katherine Whitehorn.
  • "The Right Honourable Gentleman has sat for so long on the fence that the very iron of that perch has now entered his soul." -Lloyd George.





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