EVENTS THIS WEEK
- CHRISTMAS MEETING: We are holding a meeting in preparation for Christmas on Thursday night next November 21st at 8.00 in the Priory. There are many aspects of the season to be attended to: Liturgy, decoration of church and house, organising the Mass of Giving, the children's Mass, and so on. Some work has already been done. We had our previous meeting in this connection on Thursday week last, November 7th. Once again, just to remind you that there is a lot of stuff to be addressed and we would really welcome a good crowd at the meeting!
- QUIET TIME: The composition of an Advent tape to be played in the church in the run-up to Christmas will begin this week. Those involved have been given their 'slotted spans'!
- CHRISTINA NOBLE: A 'Bargain Hunt' is being held by the Christina Noble Children's Foundation in the Salthill Hotel on Sunday December 1st at 11.00am and will continue until 5.00pm. Sell all your unwanted items for cash and donate all or half of proceeds to the work being done by Christina for the 'Street Children' of Mongolia and Vietnam To book your stall, phone 582007.
- FATHER GRIFFIN MASS: The Father Griffin Memorial Committee will hold the Annual Memorial Mass on Sunday next, November 24th in Barna Church at 12.00 midday. There will be a Rosary and Wreath laying ceremony at the Father Griffin monument afterwards.
AS I WAS SAYING...
'Reform' will remain a challenge for every Christian, regardless of age, or the age. The ideal proposed by Jesus will remain beyond our reach. That is as it should be: any ideal worth its salt will stretch us, will challenge us, will occasionally drive us mad! That is the nature of idealism.
All this is true on a personal level. But it is also true on a communal level, on an institutional level. The Church too, like every individual, stands in need of reform. This has always been so. No century has elapsed without the call for reform being raised. It was raised most dramatically in the early 16th century when an Augustinian priest called Fr Martin Luther called for a 'root and branch' reform. It was never his intention -initially at any rate- to divide Christendom. But every movement tends to generate a life of its own, to move beyond the control of its original inspiration. That is precisely what happened. Luther's conservative instincts withered in the face of Calvin's radicalism. The rest, as they say, is history. And if there is one lesson to be learned from that sad episode, it is that division compounds rather than alleviates the difficulties.
There are calls for Church reform today too. These calls are made in response to the crisis confronting Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular. There is no need to spell out the ways in which that crisis is seen to manifest itself. Many regard the decline both in vocations and in Church attendance as the most obvious manifestation of this crisis. The scandals that have bedeviled the Church in relatively recent years provide further evidence of course.
So what reforms could be introduced that would directly address these particular aspects of the contemporary crisis? If these maladies are being generated by the institution itself, then what is it within the institution that needs to be addressed?
Voices both from within and outside the Church have long called for a decentralisation of power, for a recognition of the reality and validity of the local Church. Those who pull the levers of power are too far removed from the lived reality. This cumbersome system militates again a rapid, effective response to a major crisis. In today's dispensation, this school will argue, bishops are no long authentic local leader, but rather, necessarily compliant 'branch managers'.
The clerical scandals aspect of the crisis would best be addressed by the abolition of mandatory celibacy and the introduction of women priests. This 'double reform', married clergy and women priests, would go a long way towards 'normalising' Church leadership. (A caveat here: statistically, the highest proportion of sex abusers is to be found among married male relatives of the victims. So marriage is no antidote to sex abuse!).
This sounds very sensible. No prelate or theologian in modern times has offered a convincing argument against the ordination of women priests. All agree that clerical celibacy is a matter of human discipline rather than divine doctrine. But, unfortunately, the Churches that have embraced these reforms -married clergy and women priests- are themselves experiencing declining numbers and clerical scandals. Life, it would seem, is more complex still.
-Dick Lyng.The Late Paddy O'Flynn
Paddy O'Flynn will be a familiar face to the patrons of St. Augustine's here. He died on Tuesday, after a long illness, last in Merlin Park Hospital.
He was born in Annaghdown in 1911. His long life was blessed with good health up to December 31st, New Years Eve, 2001. However, there can be very few who would not settle for 90 years of unblemished health. Nono, who survives him, was his partner in life and in business for over 60 years.
Paddy was blessed too in that he was a man of strong faith and iron convictions. He was to be found in this Church around midday ever day, come rain, hail or snow; Paddy was as much part of the furniture of this church as any one of the pews you are sitting in. He was a staunch Catholic of the traditional variety, and a keen devotee of Our Lady of Good Counsel.
However, Paddy was not a one-dimensional, flat character. There were -and are- many interesting sides to this prism. He was as stubborn as hell and would hold his ground when convinced he was right. He showed this stubborn streak and good judgment at an early age! In 1924, when he was 14 years of age, his father sent him as a boarder to St. Jarlath's College in Tuam to begin his secondary education. Paddy concluded that his education was not being noticeably advanced by his presence in Jarlath's so he ran away. Paddy's father eventually caught up with him and took him to Galway here. He set Paddy up as an apprentice in Kane's shop in Shop Street, where Sasha's now is. Paddy formed a relationship with this church that was to last for 77 years.
In 1958 Paddy moved from Kane's to set up his own business with Nono in Woodquay, where MacSwiggan's pub is today. There he had a groceries shop; he supplied candles, incense, and altar wine to many of the Churches of Galway city and county. I said earlier that Paddy had been blessed in many, many ways in this life. Sometimes blessings have to be prepared for and accepted graciously. Well, Paddy conspired with his maker in working very hard, in caring for his family, and in consolidating his faith through extensive daily prayer. He enjoyed his daily wagers on the horses, and he never lost his love for and interest in football, an interest which had its origins and its high point in his winning a championship medal with Annaghdown. He had an avid interest in history and biography but he blunted the value of that interest by reading history from a flawed Fine Gael perspective! When contemporaries were retiring and taking things easy, Paddy took up golf and swimming and kept himself very trim and fit throughout his later years.
This chapter of Paddy's story has now ended. A great crowd gathered on Wednesday night and Thursday morning at the Augustinian to sympathise with Nono, with his daughter Mary and with his son Seán. But I am sure that they gather too to share their own conviction that Paddy O'Flynn was a decent, honest man. Paddy would have been happy with that judgment. In fact he would have been very unhappy with anything less!
May he rest in peace.
Table Quiz for Noel Hession
As you read this item, Noel Hession will be winging his way to Ecuador. Michael O'Hare and Peter Cunnane have been exploring the possibilities of organising a Table Quiz to bankroll a couple of projects he has going in his Parish out there. One of his main projects is the construction of a Parish Centre, a job he has almost completed. It contains a crèche, recreation facilities and education facilities. It sounds fabulous. So a date and a venue has been established: 8.00pm on Tuesday, December 3rd at the Ardilaun Hotel. We would like to kill two birds with one stone and to treat this as a Parish Social Night too. So please persuade your three or four friends to come along and, better still, to bring a Spot Prize with them. So, keep your diary free for Tuesday, December 3rd. It should be a really good night.
"Quote, Unquote........ "
- "I saw him even now going the way of all flesh, that is to say towards the kitchen." -John Webster.
- "Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nosebags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer's mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops." -Frank Muir.
- "Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty people have described a day at the seaside." -George Bernard Shaw.
- "Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.." -Agatha Christie.
- "The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." -James Cabell.