Masses Today

6.30 Phyllis & Paddy Mannion (Anniv)
11.00 Jimmy & John Lally, (Anniv)



END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS?

How's this for divorce, Malaysian-style? Marriages can now be ended by simple text message: I d4c U. Islamic experts and courts have advised that a man can use this message to divorce his wife, provided he sends it the requisite three times!

There is no advice on what the spurned wives can send back in reply, but they should be able to come up with something equally succinct!

(The Tablet, 9 August, 2003)




AS I WAS SAYING...

In preparing an article in recent days, I came across material that may be of interest to you. A survey conducted among Dublin Catholics in the 1960s was published in 1976. It will provide us with some idea of the extent the Catholic Church travelled in Ireland.

As Fr Noel Barber, SJ remarked in connection with these statistics 'These results show an extraordinary reverence for the church, and exceptional regard for its authority, and an amazing esteem for its ministers.'

But such reverence was not reserved for the Church only; all figures of authority and all institutions were accorded a level of respect that would be regarded today a 'fawning'. From our perspective now at the beginning of the 21st century, it is hard to believe that such a universal level of compliance and deference once existed here! But surely the statistics reflect a society that was homogenous to an unhealthy degree? (All this of course with the benefit of hindsight!) A compliant society craves conformity, cohesion and 'respectability'; it abhors disruption, 'stepping out of line' and all behaviour it perceives to be rebellious. Those who do step out of line are banished, or, at the very least, marginalised.

In this context such institution as the Magdalene Penitentiaries, the Industrial schools and the religious-run orphanages made perfect sense. Those who violated the tight conventions of society -like getting pregnant outside marriage, tor example -were banished. The distinction between 'sin' and 'crime' all but disappeared. Church and State sheltered under the same umbrella. It is unfortunate now (but probably inevitable) that the Church should function as the sole' lightening conductor' for the historical failures of this dysfunctional society. In this whole discussion (and it will continue for many years to come), four very important but obvious points should be noted:
  1. While we must never attempt to excuse the sins of the past, we should be very careful not to judge past behaviour by present day standards.
  2. A cosy relationship between Church and State is unhealthy for society in general. When the Church snuggled up too closely to the State, it sacrificed its prophetic voice.
  3. Those who pine for 'the good old days' (either socially or theologically) should take a 'reality check'!
  4. We should acknowledge that irish society has improved enormously.
-Dick Lyng.




ST AUGUSTINE THE AFRICAN

Augustine was born in North Africa on November 13, 354, and died on August 28th, 430. Even a bnef outline of his life will show how thoroughly 'modern' a man he was. A warm, restless, passionate man, he pursued truth in his later life with the same burning zeal that he had sought out pleasure in his younger days.

Augustine depicts himself as a rather ordinary sort of child, good at his lessons but not fond of school. He went to university at Carthage at 17 years. Not long after, his father died anld , Augustine himself quickly moved in with a young woman he met in Carthage, by whom a son was born not long after. She would stay with Augustine for over a decade and, though we do not know her name, he would say that when he had to give her up for the sake of a 'respectable' marriage in Milan "his heart ran blood" with grief as she went off to Africa-perhaps to enter a convent The son, Adeodatus, stayed with Augustine until premature death took him in late adolescence.

Augustine, steeped by now in classical learning, attached himself to various exotic religious groups. However, once initial enthusiasm faded, his attention drifted to the realities of his career. Education in a university town like Carthage at that time was a free-market enterprise. You simply set up shop and touted for business! Augustine prospered, however, for when he became unhappy with conditions there (the students were rowdy, and tried to cheat the teachers of their fees), he could think only of one place to which to move - Rome.

There his rapid climb as a young professor of rhetoric and imperial advocate makes it safe to assume that if Augustine had stayed in public life, he would have found very few limits to his advancement. But Rome was by now a backwater and Milan beckoned. The imperial court now resided there. When his mother followed him to Milan, he allowed her to arrange a good society marriage, for which he gave up his mistress. (But then he still had to wait two years until his fiancee was of age and promptly took up in the meantime with another woman.)

However, his intellectual restlessness began to show itself again and his mother was there to press the claims of Christianity. The most influential man in Milan was the bishop Ambrose, and Augustine needed the connections of influential men. Augustine began to sit through a few of the bishop's sermons. Here Christianity began to appear to him in a new, intellectually respectable light. Augustine had always regarded the bible as a barbaric text, but the eloquent homilies of Ambrose revealed the scriptures in a new, elegant light.

In the summer of 386, not quite two years after his arrival in Milan, Augustine gave up his academic position on grounds "of ill health" and retired for the winter to a nearby country villa. He took along his family (son, mother, brother, and cousins) and friends, plus a couple of paying students who were the sons of friends. There they spent their days in philosophical and literary study and debate. Augustine says he often spent half the night awake in prayer and meditation.

In the spring of 387, Augustine and his friends returned to Milan for the forty days of preparation for baptism that preceded Easter. Then at the Easter vigil service on the night of Holy Saturday Augustine was baptized by Ambrose. Many people at that time, when Christianity was the fashionable road to success in the empire, may have taken such a step casually and returned to their old ways, but Augustine was not one of them.

He decided to return to Africa with his fnends to live in Christian retirement, praying and studying scnpture. While Augustine's party was at the port of Ostia near Rome, waiting for a boat back to Africa, Monica died.

He settled down at Tagaste in 389 with a few friends to form a monastery. But such talent and devotion could not be left alone. Two years later, he found himself virtually conscripted into the priesthood by the local congregation. He broke into tears as they laid hands on him in the church and his fate became clear. Now he devoted himself to Study and writing. His abilities were quickly recognised however, and by 393 he was being asked to preach sermons in place of his bishop. The old man passed on in 395 and Augustine assumed responsibility for the church at Hippo and remained bishop there until his death thirty-four years later.

Christianity was not, he claimed, something external and visible; it was not to be found in obedience to certain clearly-defined laws. Christianity was a matter of spirit rather than law, something inside people rather than outside. Most important, the church had room within itself for sinners as well as saints, for the imperfections of those in whom God's grace was still working as well as for the holiness of the blessed.

Augustine drew the boundary of the church not between one group of people and another but rather straight through the middle of the hearts of all those who belonged to it. The visible church contained the visible Christians, sins and all; the invisible church, whose true home lay in heaven, held only those who were redeemed. Charity dictated that the visible church be open to all, not lorded over by a few self-appointed paragons choosing to admit only their own kind.

In the summer of 430, as Augustine lay dying, the Vandals laid siege to the city of Hippo. Rome itself had already fallen. He died on August 28th, 430. With his death, a brilliant light was extinguished. The Dark Ages had begun.






A SAINT BE AINT

Good St. Paul and Vincent Peale
Are men of wholly different steel,
Yet both of holy calling,
St, Paul is more appealing,
And Peale is most appalling.

-E. Y. Harburg.




"Quote, Unquote........ "






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