EVENTS THIS WEEK
- STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING: A meeting of the above group will be held on Monday week next, November 17th in the Priory at 8.00pm. The following issues need to be addressed:
(A) CHURCH REORDERING: As you may have noticed, the Planning Permission notice in connection with the re-ordering of the Church was published in the local paper this weekend. We will need to discuss interim arrangements: (i) Where do we worship for the few months while the church is closed? (ii) Where do we live during that period? (iii) Where do we work during the period when the Priory is 'off limits'?
(B) ADVENT PREPARATIONS: We would need to sit down and plan our celebrations for the Advent and Christmas season. (This day three weeks is the First Sunday of Advent). Don't forget that, this year, we have both a Mass of Giving (Dec. 14th) and a Children's Christmas Mass (Dec. 21st). In reality, we would need two different groups working on the two celebrations.- CHRISTMAS NOVENA CARDS: Many have enquired about the availability of the Christmas cards. They are now available in the Priory Office.
- ECUADOR INFORMATION NIGHT: On Tuesday night next, Gerry Ferguson and Concilia Whyte will show some slides taken during their recent visit o Ecuador and they will answer any questions you may wish to ask in connection with he mission there. The session begins at 8.00pm in the Priory.
- FR PIERCE MAHONEY: Fr. Pearse is regaining his strength and rekindling his spirits at the Mystical Rose Nursing Home. You will be glad to hear that he has made great progress during the last week.
AS I WAS SAYING...
Aisling Walsh's 'Song For A Raggy Boy' was premiered at the annual Cork Film Festival this year. According to the Irish Times film critic, Michael Dwyer, Walsh's work 'is based on Patrick Galvin's book, set at a forbidding Christian Brothers institution in Co. Cork in 1939.' It deals with institutional abuse.
Aisling Walsh moves easily between fiction and polemic. In an interview with Michael Dwyer she states: "The religious orders have to pay their share [to abuse victims]. I think we probably have a collective guilt here about it, but we shouldn't be made to feel that." Reasonable enough, you may well say. But wait a minute: how reliable is a work of fiction in supporting a factual argument? Not reliable at all, claimed Edmund Garvey, spokesman for the Christian Brothers, in a letter to the Irish Times editor:Madam, -Your newspaper is not alone in reporting a connection between the film Song For a Raggy Boy and the Christian Brothers. Please permit me to set some aspects of the record straight in the interests of truth and fairness.
Patrick Galvin, the author of the book on which the film is based, never attended any residential or non-residential institution run by the Christian Brothers. In fact, they at no time ran a residential institution for boys in Cork.
The Christian Brothers had nothing to do with Patrick Galvin, his life experiences, his books or with any institution he attended as a child. They have had no contact with Aisling Walsh, who made the film. It would seem fair, therefore, that the Christian Brothers should not have to accept any responsibility for either the fiction or the non-fiction. Their name does not belong in this particular context.
- Yours, etc.,
Brother Edmund Garvey.Mud is by no means a surgical, laser-guided missile. It leaves lots of unsuspecting victims in its wake. Perhaps it was in an attempt to pull this difficult chestnut out of the fire that the Brothers issued a statement on October 22nd last, pointing out that the vast majority of their members "strenuously refute the allegations made against them and strongly proclaim their innocence". Furthermore, they stated that they did not accept "the now established perception that there was widespread systematic sexual abuse in their residential institutions", while at the same time they "have openly acknowledged that some abuse did take place".
Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times rightly stated that hysteria and justice are not easy bed-fellows! Victims spokesperson, John Kelly, felt that the brothers "may not have been found guilty yet, but they certainly haven't been found innocent either".
So there you have it. Because, as they acknowledge, "some abuse did take place" all are perceived as guilty without charge, without proof, until proved innocent. Just as with the Maguires, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, and Nicky Kelly.
It is so often a conundrum of human experience that those who have suffered horribly can yet go on to inflict great pain without reflection. You have only to consider what Israel has done to the Palestinians, despite the appalling history of the Jewish people. The Brothers, most of them now old, have joined the sad parade of innocent victims.
-Dick Lyng.
BLESSED ROSALIE RENDUE
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, renowned here in Ireland, traces its origins to Paris where it was founded in by a young student, Fredric Ozanam, in 1833. But less well-known is the co-founder of the society, Sister Rosalie Rendu. Today, 9 Novemeber, in Rome John Paul II declared her Blessed. She was an extraordinary woman.
She was born Jeanne Maria in 1786 in eastern France. The eldest of four girls, her parents were middle class farmers. She was 3 years old when the French Revolution. During the Terror, thousands of priests and lay people were executed or imprisoned, others went into hiding. Jeanne Marie's parents sheltered some of the refugee priests.
In 1802, at the age of 16, Jeanne Marie joined the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Paris. She never visited her home again, though she wrote regularly to her mother and sisters. She was given the name Sister Rosalie and while still a novice she was sent to a convent in Mouffetard, the poorest district in Paris, where she was to remain for 54 years.
The writer Balzac said that Mouffetard had the highest unemployment in the city, the most beggars and that two-thirds of the people there had no firewood for heating in winter. Disease and destitution were the daily lot of the thousands of poor people who tried to survive in its dreadful slums. Young Sister Rosalie began her lifelong work there by visiting the sick and the poor and teaching catechism, reading and writing to the children.
After she was made Superior of the convent, at the age of 29, she started a medical clinic, a school, an orphanage, a child care centre, a youth club and a home for elderly destitute men and women. During the cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1846, when about 20 people a day died there from the disease, she was often seen helping to carry dead bodies in the streets. Her reputation soon grew all over Paris and beyond.
When Ozanam and his companions decided to do something to help the poor in Paris, it was to Sister Rosalie they went for direction. As a result the Society of St. Vincent de Paul was born in 1833. She gave them a room for their meetings and told them about the most needy families, to whom they brought help regularly. She also taught them how to visit the poor, how to respect them as brothers and sisters and to see Christ in them. They regarded her as co-founder of their new Society.
She witnessed much violence during her lifetime. During violent riots by angry workers in Paris on three days in July 1830, Sister Rosalie climbed the barricades to help the wounded, both workers and soldiers. When she heard that General Montmahaut, a benefactor of the poor, was missing, she risked her life to find him, seriously wounded, and saved his life.She was present again at the barricades during the 1848 Revolution, attending to the wounded and the dying on both sides.
During the last two years of her life she went progressively blind. She died aged 70 from pneumonia on 7 February 1856, three days after the death of her mother. Huge crowds of poor people went to her funeral, which was also attended by the Mayor and the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris. On her simple tomb in Montparnasse cemetery are inscribed the words, 'To Sister Rosalie from her grateful friends, the rich and the poor.'
HUNGER AWARENESS
It was most heartening to see about 20 people attended the meeting of the Hunger Awareness Campaign in the Priory on Thursday evening last. Another positive feature was the fact that we had a good number of 'new faces' . Cathal took the chair and led us through what was, of necessity, an exploratory meeting. We are, if you like, a very 'new group' , so we should first get to know each others talents and experience. This group will meet again on Thursday at 8.00.
THE ART OF SONG
Three Galway teenage girls have come together to form a group, called BELCANTO. The idea behind the project is where three voices seamlessly create the sound of one. Directed by Mark Keane, the girls - Sandra Murphy and Aoife Ní Chúláin, both from Salthill, and Niamh O'Hare from Newcastle, are all members of the Galway Choral Association, where they received their initial training. Their first concert will take place in St. Nicholas Collegiate Church on Thursday, November 13th at 8pm. The concert is entitled 'The Art of Song' and aims to capture the main musical development of song styles from the Baroque period through to contemporary arrangements of Irish Ballads. Tickets are €10 and will be available at the door on the night.
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