Masses Today

11.00:Jimmy Reade, (Anniv)
11.00: Pearse Murray, (Anniv)
6.30: James & Rita Keating, (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING...

Thirty years ago this week Richard Nixon was forced to admit his role in the Watergate scandal and to resign as President of the United States. Nixon had condoned the stealing of confidential papers and the bugging of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. He defended his actions by claiming that he believed he was acting in the best interests of the nation. In reality he was seeking to gain electoral advantage over his political rivals and his assured success in the polls by simply cheating. What a pity. Because, without Watergate, Nixon would have been regarded as a truly great and visionary president, especially in the field of foreign relations. With Nixon came the first significant thaws of the Cold War. It was he who first advocated dialogue with China and the Soviet Union. It was Nixon who signed the first anti-nuclear proliferation treaty. Yet this great man is now remembered only as a mean and miserable cheat.

Ireland has not been short of people who have sought the fast track to success through cheating. Some high-profile politicians and civil servants have been caught with their grubby hands in the greasy till. The major banks were caught cheating their customers. It appears that, at least in one area of the country, the Garda force was utterly corrupt. So politics and big business have been infected by the desire for instant success. And if it means cheating to achieve it, so be it.

The essence of sport has always been 'fairness', a question of pitting ones strength, stamina and skill against an unassisted peer. But, with the advent of commercialism, sport lost its innocence. In modern times, the ideal of fairness has been undermined from a variety of quarters. How could amateurism survive in the face of state-assisted athletes from the Soviet block? In the face of men masquerading as women? And now, in the face of performance-enhancing drugs? And the practice is no longer confined to the 'evil Soviet empire'.

We had our own 'home-grown' spectacular example of cheating this week in the exposure of the Olympic athlete Cathal Lombard. Sports people do not live, move and breathe in a vacuum. They absorb the ethos surrounding them. This of course does not excuse them, but it may explain them. Lombard himself claimed that, since cheating was so widespread, he was left with no other option. So should the new Olympic motto be 'If you can't beat them, join them?'

Commentators have reacted with fatalism. Drugs are now so sophisticated that swift detection is impossible, they argue. In any case, it is a law of life that the robber will almost always stay ahead of the cop! Moreover, the drugs used by today's athletes are produced naturally by the human body. All the doping athletes are doing is assisting nature! By all means, eliminate those drugs that are harmful; closely monitor the permitted ones. Then our athletes will once more compete on a level playing field! But, in effect, is this not handing over the Olympic torch to cheats? And the athlete with the best chemist will always win? All is forgiven, Richard Nixon. The Watergate break-in was merely aimed at enhancing the performance of yourself and your party. Welcome to the brave, new, ethics-free world. You did your bit to create it!

-Dick Lyng.

EVENTS THIS WEEK AND LAST

A VIEW FROM THE PEW

Essentially the Vatican Council accepted that the Protestant reformers were right in many areas: the democratisation of Christianity; the use of the vernacular; the primacy of the individual conscience; the dangers of idolatry; the over-emphasis on prescription and sin; an over-rigid interpretation of the sacraments and the importance of the laity in the Church. Sweeping changes had to come, not only to the design and fabric of the actual buildings but to the daily practice of Catholicism itself.

If the essence of Protestantism is the primacy of the individual, the essence of Catholicism is the primacy of the community. Protestants in Northern Ireland have often acknowledged their envy at the communal spirit of their Catholic neighbours. There is a stronger sense of working for, and with, each other and this is fundamental to the Catholic vision of the world. It is for this sense of solidarity that people turn to the Catholic Church. Catholics may no longer wish to be dictated to but they long for guidance, inspiration and consolation.

My own religious doubts at present seem to be mirrored throughout the Church and the country. 'Change and decay in all around I see' , as H. F. Lyte puts it in his well-known hymn. Decline in Mass attendances, fall-off in religious practices, drastic reductions in vocations, clerical scandals, public criticism and sheer hostility in places. Where will it all end? And if it all ends will it make any difference? Maybe religion and poverty go together and now that we seem to have overcome one we can discard the other.

I don't think so. I suspect that we need Christianity more than ever. As we sink into self-absorption and the non-stop search for material success and pleasure we need redemption, we need salvation. Whatever its faults in the past, the Catholic Church served two great purposes in Irish society: it was the cement which held society together by encouraging idealism and selflessness and it cared for the suffering and the poor. Whatever excesses may have been carried out by individual members of religious orders, it was these same congregations and orders who educated, nursed and cared for the people of Ireland when other agencies were not available.

-Joe Coy, Coláiste Seosaimh, Glenamaddy.

A MATTER OF LANGUAGE

'for us men ...' When people come to liturgical celebrations, they come with the everyday language of contemporary life in their ears. When people pray in their own words, they use the language with which they are conditioned daily. That language reflects the influence of television, videos, movies, newspapers, magazines, and best sellers. Our liturgical and scriptural language must be 'within the people's powers of comprehension and normally should not require much explanation' . How much longer will the Church in the English speaking world have to pray with liturgical and biblical texts that are exclusive, unintelligible, culturally insensitive and outmoded? How much longer must women pray, 'For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven' ?

-BISHOP DONALD TRAUTMAN, 'Inclusive Language and Revised Liturgical Books' (Origins, 10 April 1997) p. 690.

Letting Go

He came today to take away her things
(I' m glad I wasn' t there to see them go):
blouses and dresses, lingerie and rings,
even that tattered doll minus its toe.

I know we have to let them live their lives.
Not even love can change a thing like that.
Live and let live it was and it survived
the dramas of her love life and her hats.

But something deeper warns us to let go,
one of those things we never put in words.
Out of the darkness sunlit flowers grow,
under the silken cloak scabbards and swords.

Lives are for living: she must live her own.
The mystery of love is flesh and bone.

-Francis Harvey.

MEMORABLE QUOTES

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