THE LATE PADDY McGATH
Paddy McGath was born in Carrowbrowne, Headford Road in 1923. He spent the greater part of his life working in England. On retirement he moved to the new houses in Whitehall Close about 12 years ago. Paddy was a very healthy, active man and he was a central figure in the small Whitehall community. If a bulb needed changing or a window need fixing, Paddy was the 'doctor on call'. He looked out for his neighbours, in a literal way. He went to the shops for them when they were housebound. In fact, it was not unusual for him to arrive at the Priory Office with the information that 'Mary' had not been seen all day. He was a very effective volunteer worker with the Health Board's 'Meals-on-Wheels'. He was for a time Chairperson of the local Active Retirement organisation.
But he did not neglect his parish or his Parish Priest! He was very interested (far too interested sometimes!) in whatever was happening in St. Augustine's Church here. And he let his pleasure and displeasure be known in equal measure! But he was not the proverbial 'hurler on the ditch'. He actually volunteered his services regularly. He faithfully distributed and collected the 'Dues' envelopes in Whitehall every Christmas and Easter.
However, he was a true ecumenist in that his first loyalty, unfortunately, was to the Claddagh crowd! He was a Church collector there and he took his job very seriously. In fact he was on pilgrimage to Fatima with the Dominicans when he died suddenly on Sunday last. His remains will be removed from Irwin's Funeral Home to Castlegar Church this Sunday evening at 7.30. Funeral Mass at 11.00 on Monday and burial afterwards in Carrowbrowne.
May he rest in peace.
AS I WAS SAYING...
The week was dominated by 'Ground Zero', the echoes of that fateful morning two years ago reverberating throughout the world once again. Obviously, some of the debris from that explosion has yet to settle. And I don't mean just physically. It is estimated that up to three thousand people from more than sixty nations were killed that morning. That is merely a rough estimate of the casualties. Parts of human remains are still being found at the site. The real number of those killed will never be known.
Nothing really new there, you may say. Hiroshima, after all, claimed far more lives in an even more brief explosion. So why did the Twin Towers disaster have such an impact? 9/11 was never about numbers or 'the body count'; 9/11 was, in the vocabulary of terrorism, about the 'Spectacular'. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in the context of a world war. The explicit intention of that act was to bring that drawn-out war to an end. 9/11 was intended to provoke war of another kind, to set two distinct civilisations at each others throats.
9/11 was shocking at several levels. The primary level was human, of course. Ordinary workers were settling into another day's routine, commuters climbing up the gangway to take just one more flight. We have all been at the desk, or climbed the gangway. The fact that we could identify with them so readily made the atrocity all the more shocking. An additional dimension was the fact it happened 'live' on television. These real people had become bit actors in a surreal tragedy. Viewers pinched themselves: 'Is this for real?' Nonsensical questions flooded the mind: would I prefer to be in the death-dealing plane, or at my desk in the targeted tower? Yet the question is provoked by the knowledge that the powerless victims knew they were facing certain death: both those in the planes and those in the towers. The scenario is almost too awful to contemplate: such extraordinary evil engulfing and devouring such ordinary people.
The images of that day will remain imprinted forever on the mind. It has become another of those 'Where were you when....' questions. I had walked 22 KMs on my way to Compostela. We sat down in a cafe at 3pm in a little village named Portomarín. The TV in the corner played and replayed the same scene, over and over again. The truth slowly dawned. That evening, the village church was packed. On a frightening day, young and old reached out for the comforting anchor of religious ritual. The goodness and the nobility of humanity was so palpable in that little village church, a goodness exposed perhaps by contrast. The sheer vulnerability of humanity was brought home to us. Silence and prayer seemed natural there.
-Dick Lyng.
DONAL LAMONT
Donal Lamont, who became Bishop of Umtali (old Rhodesia) in 1957, was a doughty opponent of the Apartheid Government of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). An African bishop has recalled that in the 1960s Lamont told seminary students: "Today it's my duty to oppose injustice under a white government and tomorrow it might be yours to criticise injustices under a black leadership."
Lamont was born in Ballycastle, Co Antrim in 1911. He joined the Carmelite order in 1929, and he was ordained in 1937. He volunteered for the Rhodesian mission immediately and, in 1946 he was sent to Umtali, and became bishop there in 1953. By 1959 racial tensions were at boiling point under an increasingly oppressive and racist regime. Lamont, in his first pastoral letter, A Purchased People, roundly attacked the Government as racist, corrupt and inhumane. Racial segregation was morally indefensible, and he went so far as to discuss the conditions for rebellion against duly constituted authority. It was an amazingly radical document for a Catholic bishop in 1959.
Lamont's theological and political interests came together in the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. He was furious when he judged that the Church's missionary work was not given the priority it deserved. Even though the Pope himself had chaired the discussion of missionary work, Lamont attacked the document produced as "lifeless platitudes culled from some worm-cankered text of missiology". A mere Pope held no fear for a man who was accustomed to confronting military and political tyrants daily! Lamont's furious intervention resulted in the council sitting for longer than had been intended, and the visionary missionary decree, Ad Gentes, was the result. Lamont's unmistakable fingerprints are all over the document!
He received honorary doctorates from several universities, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. In 1979 Kenya issued a stamp in his honour.
During the Rhodesian civil war, which began in 1972, Lamont became much more obviously radical. His most important political work was a quite short open letter to the Rhodesian Government, published in August 1976. "Conscience compels me to state that your administration by its clearly racist and oppressive policies . . . is largely responsible for the injustices which have provoked the present disorder." He was soon charged under the Law and Order Maintenance Act. He had refused to forbid his priests and nuns to give food and medicine to guerrilla fighters, and would not report their movements to the authorities. When arrested he pleaded guilty in order to protect his colleagues, and was sentenced to ten years in prison, and eventually deported.
After his brief return to an independent Zimbabwe in 1981, Lamont lived at Terenure College until his death on August 14, 2003. On his retirement in 1981, he was described by his successor Alexio Muchabaiwa as 'by far the tallest and the strongest oak in our forest.' He had known President Mugabe, who visited him in Ireland, and was greatly pained by Zimbabwe's collapse in recent years. He was buried in his native Ballycastle in a Carmelite habit, rather than his episcopal robes.
Sepllnig Nwes
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearcr at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Ceehiro
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