Events This Week
- THE TROUBLE WITH WARDENS: A first reading of our Summer Play takes place in the Priory tomorrow night, Monday May 5th at 8.00pm. The play will be staged on the nights of 14th, 15th and 16th of July as a fringe event to the Galway Arts Festival. The play takes a new look at a very old story. Anyone who wishes to help in any capacity whatsoever are healthily invited to this reading. You may not have much confidence in your acting ability, but you can surely make a cup of coffee!
- GOOD COUNSEL NOVENA: Our annual Novena, which began on Monday last under the direction of Fr. Jackie Power, will continue on Monday and Tuesday evenings at 7.30. The Novena will conclude with 7.30 Mass on the Feast itself, Wednesday next, May 7th. (As already noted, because of Easter the feast day was deferred until then). Thanks to all of you who supported the Novena in such great numbers and thanks in particular to Fr. Jackie for he efforts and his eloquence.
- GALWAY BOY SINGERS: Don't forget the musical "Oliver" in the Town Hall Theatre from tomorrow night, Monday May 5th until Wednesday May 7th. The O'Hares and the Cahalanes are very actively involved in this (if newspaper reports are to be believed!) so your support would be very welcome.
AS I WAS SAYING...
So Dubliner Diarmuid Martin is to succeed Desmond Connell in Dublin. I don't envy him his job. Leadership in the Irish Church is as vital as it is rare. Dr Connell came across as a man out of time, out of touch. If his successor is not to suffer the same fate he will avoid a few obvious pitfalls. Above all, he will accept modernity (or secularisation) as a given fact. He will strive to critically understand it and sift the wheat from the chaff. Modernity is a way of thinking, a way of life, and a mentality. I associate four characteristics with this world view, some positive, some negative:
- Measurable efficiency: If something doesn't work, discard it. This has enormous implications the unemployed, the sick, the aged, the handicapped and the unborn?
- The priority of structure over content: Increasingly, our energies are devoted to the organisation and categorisation of information; the actual content of the information is secondary. "Make the relevant information available, and the proper decision will almost inevitably be made." There is a naive faith in the power of information. And the type of information in question is rational, scientific and biological. Spiritual or moral information is seen to be out of place. "Give it if you must, but its usefulness is questionable,". This has obvious implications for moral or spiritual stance.
- Image has triumphed over thought: The image impacts immediately and painlessly. Hence the popularity of TV and the tabloids. Cultural particularism is being destroyed as we are all absorbed into a bland Americanisation. And the main value it has to offer is rampant consumerism. (Even Irish regional accents are disappearing).
- The promotion of 'activity' and 'doing' at the expense of wisdom and contemplation (closely related to points 1 & 2 above): Previous generations saw wisdom as something acquired over a long period. But in an age where instant gratification, "doing" and "producing" is all, contemplation will be seen as the preserve of those who have nothing better to do!
However, if we, and the new archbishop, are consistently negative in our attitude towards modernity, we will rightly be dismissed as foolish Neanderthals! For if we look with open eyes we will see much that is good in modernity. Beneath the secularising process we may discern the activity of God. This process enables human beings to attain to their freedom and maturity. It frees the gospel from false outmoded interpretations. Moreover, the hostility of secular culture toward certain defective forms of the religious experience (such as fanaticism or superstition) can actually purify religion of these distortions. Thus modernity can actually serve the gospel through operating as a corrective agent. If the new archbishop is interested in control only, modernity is certainly bad news. But if he sees himself as a servant of the flock, he must view things differently!
-Dick Lyng.
PAPAL ENCYCLICAL
The papal encyclical on the Eucharist is embarrassing. It's a bit like coming across a love letter and then realising that it's been written by your grandparents who should be past that kind of thing.
Pope John Paul is nakedly, passionately in love, and he not only wants the whole world to know about it, but to fall in love as well. In an age when ironic, hip detachment is the new orthodoxy, such blazing commitment makes us squirm on behalf of the person who displays it.
"It is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple and to feel the infinite love present in his heart!"As I said, it's embarrassing. And it gets worse. In a short encyclical, the word' "love" occurs 24 times. John Paul, you may wish to speak to us about love, about devotion. That's not exactly music to the ears of a generation who claim to have outgrown all that, we who have substituted the benign indifference of "whatever you're into" for the hard work of really understanding other people's beliefs.
On the other hand, those of us who work in the Irish media will recycle all our well-used headlines about "Nails in ecumenical coffins" and "Reactionary Pope offends Protestants".
Let's gleefully talk about the right-wing Pope, while ignoring this passage from the encyclical: "And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a 'globalised' world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope!" Well, we don't want you to say very much, actually, because it doesn't fit. Your pigeonhole is marked "rightwing" and we have no desire to change that.
Does the Pope have the right to be a Catholic? From the reaction to the encyclical, which I would wager most journalists have not read, the answer would seem to be "No". This denial of the right to be different is a travesty of pluralism.
This raises a further interesting question. But how many of us Catholics will hear preaching in our churches which will move us to the kind of devotion so nakedly displayed by the Pope? How many Catholics, whether lay or clergy, really feel the kind of "amazement and gratitude" talked about in the encyclical? Judging by the deadness of the atmosphere in many of our churches, fewer than we might think. Or is that just too embarrassing to talk about, too?
-Breda O'Brien, The Irish Times, 26 April, 2003.
GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY
For much of human history the average life expectancy at birth was less than 30 years. By 1900 this average had been pushed up to 48 years in western Europe and the United States. Then, in the 20th century, nearly 30 more years were added to life expectancy, an extension of life unprecedented in human history. Today the average life expectancy is 77 years. So more years were added to life expectancy in the last century than from all other increases across all prior millennia combined. In one short century, a new normative stage was added to the life cycle. Combined with a declining birth-rate, the overall demography of western society changed utterly.
This radical change is rooted in several important breakthroughs, including the remarkable triumph over childhood diseases. But mortality rates at all other ages have declined steadily as well. Almost 20 years was added to the average life expectancy in the last century. So society has been pressed into a new shape. This shape is reflected in the type of graphs favoured by social scientists: a shift from a pyramid, with large numbers of children at the bottom and very few aged individuals at the top, to something more like an unvariegated block, with all generations more equally represented.
This new reality is nearly always described as bad news. Much of the media coverage of ageing might lead one to think of it only as a series of unfolding crises. But longer lives have, for the most part, been accompanied by better lives. Men and women in their late 60s in the mid-1990s were in comparable health to those in their early 60s in the early 1960s. Moreover, contrary to public perception, 60 per cent of people over 80 years of age live independent lives.
(Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University, 2003)
"Quote, unquote..."
- "A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scoutmasters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted." -Malcolm Muggeridge (on reaching 90).
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