Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30 Julia O'Donnell, (Anniv)
11.00 Christmas Novena.

As I Was Saying......

'The Scream' is back, or almost back. Earlier this week Norwegian police arrested a man whom they believe snatched Edvard Munch's famous painting from a museum in Oslo last August. The painter had said of the genesis of his masterpiece: "I stood trembling with fear as I sensed an endless scream passing through nature." The picture portrays that scream. I saw it again on the face of a man who survived the tsunami, the earthquake-induced tidal waves in the Indian Ocean. He was interviewed on TV. He told of how he had been in his hotel room when the great wave burst through the window. It left him with his head touching the ceiling, hardly able to breathe. As he relived the horror on camera, he might have been Munch's model for The Scream.

Indeed 2004 could, with great justification, be dubbed "The Year of the Scream." This day last year, I wrote here: "The terrible earthquake in Iran, killing over 30,000 people, brought the old year to a tragic conclusion. And the New Year began with the killing of Archbishop Michael Courtney in Burundi. These two tragedies symbolise the human condition: we can be singled out for slaughter by one of our own, or nature itself can betray humanity with dramatic cruelty." Now here we go again! But the atrocities were ongoing: Israel-Palestine, the Madrid bombing, Beslan, Darfur, and finally, the tsunami, the deadliest tidal wave for 200 years. If we didn't know it before, we know it now: that we live in a world that is ultimately unpredictable and dangerous and there's a limit to what we can do to protect ourselves.

At its root, religion enables human beings to come to terms with themselves, with one another, and with the formidable and mysterious universe into which they have been flung by some power greater than themselves. When the interviewer asked the man how he reacted when trapped by the tsunami, he replied fervently, "I prayed". And so did many others. Even if we were merely seeing it on our TV screen, the scream of startled disbelief was followed by the voluntary or involuntary prayer, "My God!" That man survived because such had been the power of the wave that it had broken down the door at the other side of the room and had gone on its destructive way, leaving him shaken but alive. Over 150,000 other victims are dead and millions of others are at risk from hunger and disease.

We've done the screaming, and started the praying. One of the answers to that prayer is human care. Much of this will be done by governments, more by aid agencies like Trócaire and Concern. They need our generous support. We need to urgently rebuilt the net of practical care which saves lives. This 'Year of the Scream' has been a dark year indeed, but as Adlai Stevenson once said, "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." Through our Trócaire collection next weekend, you will have an opportunity to light the candles of care so that the new year may be a little brighter.

- Dick Lyng.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

YEAR 12.00AM 11.00AM OTHERS TOTALS
1987 660.26 615.82 387.27 1,663.36
1988 746.61 844.38 438.06 2,029.04
1989 789.78 749.15 424.09 196,302
1993 967.54 1,155.46 415.2 2,538.21
1994 905.32 1,079.28 505.36 2,489.96
1995 747.88 985.32 444.41 2,177.60
1996 1,015.79 965 693.28 2,674.07
1997 975.16 1,615.11 359.34 2,949.60
1998 1,333.22 2,606.77 286.96 4,239.66
1999 1,263.39 2,010.00 366.95 3,640.34
2000 1,276.09 2,628.36 370.76 4,275.21
2001 1,508.45 2,602.96 366.95 4,478.37
2002 1,954.13 2,728.67 None 4,682.79
2003 1,875.00 3,395 None 5,270
2004 1,687.00 2,907 None 4,594
Change -10.02% -14.37   -12.82%

THE WEEK AHEAD

As luck would have it.......

America hailed Jack Whittaker (57) its luckiest multi-millionaire when he won a $315m lottery jackpot on Christmas Day, 2002. It was the largest payout in US lottery history. He pledged to give 10% to three preachers. The Tabernacle of Praise Church received $1.5 million in cash. That little red brick church is already being replaced with a 29,000-square-foot building. Construction should be finished early next year. The new church will seat more than 300 people - attendance on the first Sunday of the month was 53 - and will cost Whittaker more than $4 million.

But two years later, very few would still call Whitttaker lucky. An extraordinary sequence of family calamities culminated last week in the death from an apparent drug overdose of Whittaker' s 17-year-old grand-daughter, Brandi Bragg. The former West Virginian builder had lavished money and gifts on the teenager he described as "my world" .

Bragg was buried on Christmas Eve after her body was discovered wrapped in plastic tarpaulin on an isolated property owned by her boyfriend' s father. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests but are not treating the case as murder. Whittaker blamed Bragg' s death on her "drug-using friends" and vowed to "put them in jail".

Almost nothing has gone right for Whittaker since he won the record Powerball jackpot. In August 2003, a briefcase containing $545,000 in cash was stolen from his car as he visited a West Virginian strip club. Two employees of the club were later arrested and accused of trying to drug Whittaker's cocktail and take his cash. The money was recovered and the case is pending in court. Earlier this year he was charged with threatening to kill a bar manager and placed on probation.

His house and cars were repeatedly targeted by thieves. Three women sued him for allegedly groping them at a race-track. He was twice arrested for drink-driving and lost his licence earlier this month. He was also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

"The money is at the root of it all, I would say", said Becky Layton, a family friend. Jack's wife Jewel had her own 'take' on events: "I wish I had torn up that damn ticket on day one!"

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

My New Year's resolutions,
What a pleasure to describe:
To be more neat, watch what I eat,
Less frequently imbibe;
To be benign and patient,
Ever caring and polite,
With full aplomb serenely calm
And nevermore uptight;
To suffer asses gladly,
Cast aside pretense and pride,
In all I wear look debonair,
Genteel and dignified.
My New Year's resolutions,
How inspiring to review . . .
Spectacular! ... too bad they are
Impossible to do!

by John T. Baker

"Quote of the year 2004"

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