Events This Week
- HUNGER AWARENESS CAMPAIGN: The group involved in the Augustinian Hunger Awareness Campaign will meet in the Priory tomorrow, Monday night February 2nd, at 8.00pm. As this is our first meeting of the new year, a full house is desirable!
- CANDLEMAS DAY: Tomorrow, Monday, February 2nd is Candlemas Day, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. Traditionally, parishioners send in candles to the church to be blessed on that day. We usually bless them at the 11.00 Mass. Could those who left in candles for blessing collect them from the sacristy after the Mass or during the week.
- FEAST OF ST BLAISE: Tuesday, February 3rd is the Feast of St. Blaise. The Blessing of Throats is customary on that day in many churches. It will be conducted in the Augustinian after the three morning Masses. But, unlike Sunday Mass, the blessing is not compulsory!
- CHILDREN'S SUNDAY LITURGY: You will recall that, in more recent times, we have been exploring the feasibility of involving children and young people more creatively in our Sunday Liturgy. The problem may be summarised as follows: The Liturgy of the Word, as we celebrate it in the church every Sunday, is necessarily directed at adults. The children are ignored. As a result, of course, they are seriously bored. By 'children and young people' we have in mind people of school-going age. So, with this in mind, six adults met in the front parlour after 11.00 Mass last Sunday. Some delegates brought to the meeting the fruits of their research into children's liturgies in other churches, and in books. We discussed a few models for participation, and there was a general consensus that, with some work, it could be done! We will follow the general method we used for Advent and the Jesse Tree: for the Liturgy of the Word, the children will withdraw to the house for their own work. We will give it a try during the coming season of Lent. We will actually begin on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, or three short weeks from today!
AS I WAS SAYING...
How often has this Newsletter complained about the reticence (and even stony silence) of our Church hierarchy? Generally, they run for cover at the first sighting of a microphone! The underlying assumption, of course, was that this reticence was a bad thing for the Church and for humanity in general! That assumption was well and truly shattered this week. Now I am not so sure!
On the evening of October 6th, 2003, octogenarian parish priest Gustaaf Joos is tending his autumnal tulips in the presbytery garden in a rural Belgian backwater called Landskouter. Bearing a striking resemblance to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Gustaaf is fit and healthy as 80-year-olds go. And, we must presume, he was reasonably confident that God would leave him ministering to his beloved tulips for another couple of years.
However, God (or whoever) works in mysterious ways. That night Gustaaf gets a call at his presbytery from Rome, which must have led him to question his hearing or his sanity, or both: "Father Gustaff, you have been appointed Archbishop of the (non-existent) Titular See of Ieper in order that you may be elevated to the College of Cardinals on October 21, 2003. Sleep well, Your Eminence!" Macbeth's prophetic encounter with the three weird sisters must surely have crossed his mind: "Hail Thane of Glamis! Hail Thane of Cawdor! Thou shall be King hereafter!"
So what had the obscure Gustaaf done to trigger this rapid elevation? Indeed the move was so surprising that, when the story broke, the Belgian media descended on the doorstep of a more promising presbytery: the residence of one Monsignor Andre Joos. We must presume the Monsignor was not amused. He pointed the news-hungry hoards in the direction of his more lowly (but more favoured) namesake. It transpired that Father Gustaaf's 'claim to fame' was the fact that, as a theology student in Rome in the post-war years, he shared a room with one Karl Wojtyla, a man who could tell you a thing or two about being plucked from obscurity! Nobody has come up with any other more plausible explanation for the obscure pastor's belated promotion.
Well, this week the new Cardinal decided to shed the 'obscurity' tag for once and for all. And he did it with some flourish. He chose a soft core porn magazine as his platform. From its unpromising pages he unburdened himself of some of his more profound thoughts, making an instant impression on his readers:I am prepared to write down in blood that, of all the people who say they are gay or lesbian, only 5 to 10 per cent actually are. The rest are just sexual perverts. Democracy? Politics? Don't make me laugh! I find it strange that a snot-nosed 18-year-old has the same vote as a father of seven. One has no responsibility whatsoever, the other provides tomorrow's citizens. Don't make me laugh!Belgium is the most politically correct society in Europe. Cant you imagine the reaction there! The outburst too must have led His Holiness to seriously questioned the whole doctrine of Papal Infallibility, not to mention his choice of room mate! He must have wondered, "Why ever did I pluck him from among his roses?" So there is, after all, something worse than episcopal reticence!
-Dick Lyng.
CHILD MINDING
A meeting will be held to inform the public of the National Childminder Initiative. This includes training for childminders and specific information on the grant schemes at present available to enable that training. Funded by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, this scheme will be administered locally by the Galway City and County Child Care Committee. The meeting will take place at the Clybaun Hotel at 8.00pm on Tuesday, February 10th.
ATTENTION ALL ASPIRING ACTORS
A three-evening training course for those interested in acting will be held in the Radisson Hotel, beginning on Monday, February 16th at 7.00pm. Particular attention will be paid to training in Acting for Camera, with TV work in mind. Minimum age is 17 and over 30s are particularly welcome. There are only 8 places available on the course, so booking is essential. Contact 07491 26994.
The Poet Down
(for Patrick Kavanagh)
He sits between the doctor and the law,
Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw
one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man:
the poet down, and his fell caravan.
They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks
in his tongue for the honey of his works.
The poet is at bay, the hounds baying,
dig his grave with careful kindness, saying:
'Another whiskey, and make it a large one!'
Priests within, acolytes at the margin
the red impaled bull's roar must fascinate
they love the dead, the living man they hate.
They were designing monuments - in case -
and making furtive sketches of his face,
and he could hear, above their straining laughs,
the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs.
-Michael Hartnett.
PENDING COURSES IN ESKER RETREAT HOUSE
1. Self Esteem & Self Worth: February 2nd-Day Course.
2. Overcoming Anger: March 13th-Day Course.
3. Cana for Married Couples: March 19th-21st.
For further information, contact the secretary at 091-844549.
Memorable Quotes
- "He was an embittered atheist: the sort who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him." -George Orwell.
- "Beauty and lust for learning have yet to be allied." Max Beerbohm.
- "Early to rise and early to bed, makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead!" -James Thurber.
- "The Americans don't really understand what is going on in Bosnia. To them it's simply the unspellables killing the unpronouncables." -P. J. O'Rourke.
- "A memorandum is written, not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer."- Dean Acheson.
- "A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." -Barnett Cocks.
- "God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things." -Pablo Picasso.
STATE AND CHURCH IN IRELAND
"Unhappily, the theological revolution initiated by the Second Vatican Council was subsequently blocked by counter-revolutionary forces in Rome and elsewhere. By falling back again upon authority at the very time when authority was finally losing its grip on society, and also by misjudging its approach to the contraception issue and failing to move closer to the prophetic role towards the recovery of which Vatican II had been feeling its way, the Catholic Church has, for the moment at least, lost its way, failing to maximise its potential role for good in the modern world.
The impact of all this in Ireland has been dramatic. If the Church in Ireland had been better manned at its higher levels it might, perhaps, have ridden this flood more successfully. But from the late 1960s onwards - a full decade before the emergence of John Paul II as pope - a traditionally conservative Irish hierarchy saw its role further eroded by an appointments system which gave priority to conformity to teaching on contraception over any other consideration.
Save in a handful of cases where the system seems to have slipped up, the absolutism of this anti-contraception stance effectively ruled out the appointment as bishops of people of intellectual distinction and leadership capacity. Just at a time when the extraordinary pace of change in Ireland demanded Church leadership of exceptional quality, the intellectual level of appointments to bishoprics declined. Instead of being drawn upon as a resource to revive the Irish Church, the laity have instead been regarded as a threat."
-Garret FitzGerald.
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