EVENTS THIS WEEK
- MEETING WITH PROVINCIAL: Thanks very much to all who attended last Monday night's meeting with the Provincial, Desmond Foley. (As flagged here on Sunday last, the meeting was in connection with the renovation of the church). Des was very impressed indeed with the thought and planning that had gone into the project already. He will now take that information to a meeting with his four Counsellors this week (I think). It is up to them then to make whatever recommendations they deem to be appropriate. Once again, thanks to all who worked so hard in putting together the presentation for the meeting. It was excellent.
- CHURCH RENOVATION GROUP: This group will begin their weekly meetings again on tomorrow (Monday) evening in the front parlour at 5.30. (Why don't you come along ten minutes early and help yourselves to a cup of tea and a sandwich?)
- EUCHARISTIC MINISTERS: Four new people showed up on Thursday night last for the first session of preparation for Eucharistic Ministers. We will have our next session on Thursday night next, September 26th, at 8.00 in the Priory. Incidentally, it is not yet too late to jump aboard this theological bandwagon!
- ANNUAL HARVEST FESTIVAL: At our Planning Meeting at the beginning of this year, we had designated Sunday September 29th as Harvest Sunday. A consensus is now emerging that we should postpone the celebration until Sunday October 13th. Any objections? We will meet after Mass on this.
- MASS ATTENDANCE: We counted the attendance at Masses last Sunday (6.30, 11.00 & 6.30). Remember we lost the 9.00 & the 12.15 recently. The 11.00 has increased to the extent that it has 'hoovered up' those who formerly attended the 9 & 12.15. However, there has been a rather serious decrease in attendances at the two evening Masses.
AS I WAS SAYING...
Between now and the 19th of October, the Nice Treaty will dominate all. (Some idiot actually claimed that the 30 day campaign was far too short! Spare me!). Despite the tedious nature of the topic, it does touch upon important issues worth exploring. The first issue is: Should we be voting at all? Did we not give a democratic decision on this matter in relatively recent times? When does 'no' mean 'NO'? (How would the Ayatollahs of The Irish Times react if this government attempted to revisit the Divorce Referendum? Not too kindly, I bet!) But the government will argue - with a certain degree of logic - that a second referendum was a central plank of their Election Manifesto. The people re-elected them. They are now simply honouring an important promise of that campaign. Who can argue with that?
It is over 30 years now since we joined Europe. In the interests of perspective, I have been browsing through some newspapers of 1972. At the beginning we were highly enthusiastic Europeans, 85 per cent of the electorate favouring accession in the Accession Referendum of May, 1972. It was a truly remarkable endorsement - in no one constituency did support for entry dip below 75 per cent! Neither of the two countries (U.K. and Denmark) who joined with us that year showed anything remotely like the same enthusiasm.
Many academics and politicians of the day viewed our accession as a restoration of the 'natural order' of things: Ireland was simply renewing cultural and economic connections with the European continent which had existed with varying degrees of intensity for many centuries. Irish trading links with the continent have been well documented. Great Irish monasteries were established in many parts of the continent, notable examples being those of Ratisbon, Constance and Vienna. Irish scholars were very influential in the Frankish Empire. But they were also to be found as far south as Italy and as far east as Czechoslovakia. So Irish cultural and commercial connections with the continent are by no means new or 'unnatural'. What was unnatural was the British intervention. Our overbearing 'sister island' isolated us from our continental cousins, resulting in centuries of cultural and economic imporverishment. Accession to Europe liberated us from that stultifying bilateral relationships. It permitted us to define ourselves in a new and more promising way through a more complex web of new relationships. I doubt if the Good Friday Agreement would have ever come about without the broader perspective offered by European Union membership.
Economically too, Ireland has done well from the new relationship. A drive through the countryside will highlight the improvement in living conditions over the last 30 years. Despite the sometimes valid criticism of 'ribbon development', the quality of housing has improved enormously in that time. And surely housing is the primary index of what we call 'living standards'?
However, very soon we will find ourselves net contributor rather than a net receiver. Was this the reason we rejected Nice in the first Referendum? A 'No' vote would deprive other of access to the Sacred Cow we have milked so effectively and with so much enthusiasm for 30 years. We have done well. We should now do good!
-Dick Lyng.
Learning to Pray?
Next Wednesday (8.00-9.30pm), September 25th, a six week course on various ways of praying begins in Suaimhneas (opposite Dawn Dairies), Ballyloughaun Road, Renmore. For bookings, phone 753515. Donations €5 per night or €25 for full course.
A Priest's Prayer
"Dear Lord, so far today, Lord, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, haven't lost my temper, haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or over-indulgent. And I'm very thankful to you for that. But...in a few minutes, Lord, I'm probably going to need a lot more help because I'm going to get out of bed."
-(A Canadian bishop.)
No Avail
Suddenly Christ closed his eyes
and the light died inside you.
Mother Church became hard frost
and her incense dropped cold dew.
Now your refuge seems to be
freedom in the world outside -
the song, the crowd and the dance,
the romance you were denied.
Now you see your brown-eyed prince
waiting with his song and kiss
there in the lost green demesne
in coverts where lovers hid.
But the sneering world turns on rusty cogs,
a middle-aged man is the prince you lost;
the green, lost demesne is sawdust and logs
and the frost of Christ is eternal frost.
-Michael Hartnett.
Lay Partnership
"Partnership has a powerful theological base. It is a shame to link this development of a sense of collaborative ministry with a comparative shortage of priests. The impression is that since there are not sufficient priests then we should delegate some tasks to the lay people. I would want to fight this impression because it is false. Partnership is a theological development of Vatican II and the way of future ministry even if we had thousands of young and energetic priests."
-Bishop John Boissoneau (Toronto)
Stamp of Greatness
Congratulations to Seán Duggan, College Road, whose face will adorn an Irish postage stamp from Tuesday next. Seán was chosen with three other sportstars (two footballers and two hurlers) to mark the contribution of the GAA to Irish life. He played minor, junior and senior hulling for Galway over a span of fourteen years. He is generally acknowledged to have been one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time. His last game for Galway was the All Ireland of 1953 which Galway lost to a Cork team led by an obscure little man called Christy Ring!
POWER TO CHANGE
Some of the more unusual responses to a detailed survey conducted on behalf of Power to Change campaign, last July came from a group of 25-34-year-old men in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. The research found them to be "the most difficult group to appeal to...cynical and do not see a place for Jesus Christ in their life right now...need a more flexible Jesus Christ than the one they learned about."
Asked "Who is Jesus Christ?" their replies included - "a virgin", "a man with a beard", "A swear word" and "he never did anything wrong".
Questioned as to how the Power to Change message -that Jesus is good for you- might fit into their lives, one responded "you don't want to listen to somebody throwing a bible down your throat." Another reacted simply, "Jehovah's Witness, wacko cult."
Still another: "I think I'd have to be at my lowest ebb before you'd believe something like that. You'd really have to be desperate. The research found that the men "have some beliefs but are anti-Church. They are quite laid-back and showed little concern for issues raised in other groups. " However, they still "enjoy a few pints with the lads, but also yearn for long term relationships."
-Patsy McGarry, Irish Times (21-09-20)
"Quote, Unquote........ "
- "Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything." -Evelyn Waugh.
- "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others." -Mark Twain.
- "A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time, and for one reader in a hundred years' time." -Arthur Koestler.
- "I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top." -John Keats.
- "The earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in." -Robert Heinlein.
- "Social tact is making your company feel at home, even though they wish they were!" -Jean Cocteau.
- "The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." -George Bernard Shaw.
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