- Padraig MacAnespie, brother of Mrs. Phil O'Connor, will be buried in Coventry on Tuesday next.
- The collection last Sunday was €1001.00.
- Since tomorrow is a Public Holiday there will be no 8.30 Mass and the Priory Office will remain closed all day.
- The Church Gate collection next weekend is for the support of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
- Next week's Sunday Masses: 11.00: John O'Connor (Anniv); 6.30: Kathleen Walsh (Anniv)
AS I WAS SAYING...
As you well know, there was a time when the Catholic Church in Ireland spoke out in a very forthright on matters of sexual morality. It does seem to have been a pet topic in the 40s and 50s. The pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction. You will travel a long distance today before you hear a decent hell-fire sermon on sex! In fact you could be forgiven for wondering if there is a moral component to sexuality at all!
A report this week concluded that Irish people are less happy today than they were in the days prior to the Celtic Tiger. Various individual reports (on the increased consumption of alcohol, the dramatic rise in the reported cases of STD among young people, the continued increase in the numbers of young women travelling to the UK for abortion, and so on) would all seem to point to the fact that modernity and affluence have not solved all our problems.
In the 1970s, those who advocated a more liberal approach to contraception and related matters saw this as a sure means of reducing unwanted pregnancies. Those on the other side of the debate pointed to the experience of more 'progressive' European countries: with few exceptions, the more freely available contraceptives are, the greater the number of unwanted pregnancies. It is neither logical or reasonable; but then again sex is primarily biological rather than logical! The same applies to STDs. The greater availability of contraceptives is inevitably accompanied by a considerable increase in sexual diseases. This was verified in the recent report on crisis pregnancies commissioned by the Department of Health.
I am not for a moment advocating a return to the old dark, repressive days. Retrospectively, the rantings of the Church on such matters in the past now appear foolish in the extreme. Nevertheless, things were and are more complex than advocates of 'the liberal agenda' would have us believe.
This week the residents of Bohermore became, in a rather remote way, victims of a more liberal social atmosphere. A 'Sex Shop' appeared there overnight. The residents have argued that a residential area is entirely unsuitable for such an enterprise. Which begs the question: who or what authority granted permission for this sordid venture in a residential area?
The Augustinian and its patrons will follow the fortunes of the Bohermore residents with a very keen interest in this matter. Because we too had a similarly sleazy outfit foisted on us overnight in Buttermilk Walk. Neither the residents in the vicinity, (and there are some left still!) or the Augustinians themselves, were alerted to the fact that this dump was opening beside us. We woke up one morning and it was simply a fait accompli. Similar questions to those now being asked by the residents of Bohermore should have been asked more stridently by us Augustinians some years ago: What authority in its right mind would permit the establishment of a sex shop beside a Church? Would they have allowed it beside a mosque? Because it lends to the whole area a tacky, tasteless tone. I don't blame people for treating Buttermilk Walk as a dump, literally. If the residents of Bohermore are seen to back down now, if they ease off on their protest, they may live with sleaze for the rest of their days. At least that has been our experience here in the Augustinian.
-Dick Lyng.
EVENTS THIS WEEK AND LAST
- VIDEO VIEWING: Up to thirty people gathered to view the video version of our Arts Festival production of The Mikado on Thursday night last. The large number of viewers is possibly explained by the fact that the Galway Races had already run for four days and money was rather scarce. (Only one Bookie attended, which tells its own story!) After some early technical hitches had been successfully overcome, we sat down to admire ourselves once more! (There are some harmless hobbies one never grows tired of!) Thanks very much to the ladies who purchased and prepared the food and drinks, and of course to Gearóid Lacey who videoed the show initially, and showed it eventually! Incidentally, it was great to see Mrs. Julie Freeney back among us again after her recent illness.
- COFFEE MORNING: A coffee morning, in aid of the Share a Dream Foundation, will be held in the Priory, today, Sunday, the 1st of August, after the eleven o'clock Mass. This group of people organise holidays for sick children and their families. This year the foundation is bringing 150 families to Galway during August. They also own a holiday home in Salthill, which is occupied on a weekly basis, all year round. The coffee morning next Sunday is organised by Betty Ferguson and friends.
NEW TRENDS IN FAMILY LIFE
In family life the most significant new trends are:
- Late marriages, rarely entered into before age 28-30, combined with, in an important minority of cases, abandonment of marriage in favour of indefinite cohabitation.
- In the great majority of cases, cohabitation of couples prior to marriage, often for a long period of years.
- The fact that in so many marriages, both partners work - and that often both of them work full-time. This creates strains on the marriage - on the wife in particular in view of her special parental responsibility when children are young - and also on the children of such couples. Traditional patterns of employment that developed during the period when in most cases only the male parent worked, have not adjusted to this phenomenon.
- Increased marriage breakdown, which, however, in the Irish State shows signs of levelling off at under 25%, with divorce perhaps stabilising in the 15-20% range - less than half the British and US rate.
- Associated with these changes there has been a very large increase in non-marital pregnancies, which by 1998 in our State constitute over one-half of all first pregnancies. Three out of every eight of those first non-marital pregnancies were aborted in Britain.
-Dr. Garret FitzGerald.
Headgear
We're on our way to Italy,
to live a year before life passes by,
and I' ve jettisoned my Guinness cap
along a mountain road not on the map.
Living in hope has proved a lie;
the less things change, the more
they stay the same: get an eye
full of the Alps before you die.
Bask in the sun before you croak.
When sun came out, the traveller shed his cloak,
what storm wanted him to do,
but when the cold wind blew
he wrapped it closer round.
I threw my Guinness cap to ground
on an unmapped road and let it lie amid majestic scenery.
Fill me another and another jug
of Southern wine till bankers pull the plug;
and here's to grazing in rich grass,
a year away from the middle class.
I've gained a zest for life; I'll do without
my headgear advertising Irish stout.
-Ciaran O'Driscoll.
FUNDAMENTALISM
"In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks there has been a surge of interest in both Islam and its relation with Christianity and the West. The fanatical motivation of the Al Quaeda network raises many questions, including theological ones. What is religious fundamentalism?
Fundamentalism is not found only in Islam. Christianity has its own versions, as do Judaism and Hinduism. From the televangelists in the US to the reactionary movement of Archbishop Lefebvre, Christian fundamentalists all hold to a narrow and rigid understanding of a religious creed. These groups centre on a teacher or guru whose interpretation of Christianity, as they see it, is the only valid one. Frenzied preaching with an emphasis on the miraculous is accompanied by denunciations of those who do not share such convictions. This is a hostile and exclusivist Christianity that conveniently overlooks the biblical injunction to love one's enemies.
Fundamentalists find it difficult to cope with the fact that biblical texts were not verbally dictated by God directly, but were the product of many human authors. The bible will not for long withstand this fundamentalist, literal reading. Thus fundamentalists claim to read the Bible at 'face value', without interpreting it. But this in itself is a literal interpretation! A fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity usually goes hand in hand with a desire for religious certitude. Such a sectarian and simplistic attitude knows no grey areas, no vocabulary of compromise. One quickly learns that one cannot discuss faith or theology with fundamentalists since their goal is to convert, not to discuss."
-Declan Marmion, The Furrow, January, 2003.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
- "Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, like poker, paralysis, - no one is born with morals." -Mark Twain.
- "Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth." -Peter Ustinov.
- "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.
- "No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb, unless the lamb is inside!" -D.H. Lawrence.
- "I have come to regard the law courts not as a cathedral but as a casino." -Richard Ingrams.
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