Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30 Sarah O'Toole, (Quay Lane) (Anniv).
11.00 Kathleen Brennan, (Anniv)
6.30 Paddy Kelly, (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

The annual Galway Novena closes this week. Once again, huge crowds attended, as they have been doing annually for almost 30 years now. Numerically, at any rate, this 'Festival of Faith' has been a phenomenal success. Remarkably, this success has been achieved in the face of a general decline in church attendance. Why do people go to the Novena in such numbers? The local City Tribune put the question very well this week:

"How do a group of visiting preachers succeed in keeping for an hour, or more, people who are very restless at a 15-minute Mass on Saturday and Sunday?...how do they turn many of them to singing hymns with gusto, when on the average weekend one sung response might be portrayed as little more than a shuffle and clearing of the throat, and the 'handshake of peace' is an even greater cause of embarrassment."

They certainly do not go there is search of the spectacular. The formula is simple, straight -forward and decidedly unspectacular. In fact you could even say that it is boringly predictable, without being dubbed 'the dog in the manger'!'. Yet the people go there in great numbers What, if anything, does this tell us about the Church in Galway at the beginning of the third millennium? The interpretation of this 'success' will be coloured by the particular perspective of the viewer. The first school of opinion could be called 'Ostrich Set'. Advocates of this viewpoint see in the Novena evidence of what they call 'a turn-around', an abandonment of religious indifference and a discernible increase in church practice. All that is required of the Church is a stoical patience. The 'prodigals' will inevitably return. It's just a matter of time. The Novena is firm evidence of this growing trend.

This is a recipe for pastoral passivity, for doing nothing. It cultivates an almost fatalistic indifference to reality, a denial of a growing crisis that has been scientifically tracked by every sociological survey conducted over the last fifteen years. There is a paradox at the heart of the Ostrich Set: while it identifies religious indifference as the problem, the remedy it proposes, by default, admittedly, results in pastoral indifference.

On the other side stands the 'Communal Sceptics' who will hold that the proper location for worship and Christian action is the church in which you worship every Sunday. All extra-parochial activity is a luxury, something in the nature of a recreational diversion. Into this category falls the annual Novena. In fact, the Novena may well be counter-productive in that it empties the local Churches for the nine days. What does this do for the local community?

But if this school is to be consistent, it must provide a satisfactory answer to the following question: "If the local parish is so inviting and life-giving, why are the parishioners flocking in such numbers to the Cathedral?" If the 'handshake of peace' is such an embarrassment in the local Church, as the City Tribune claims, what does this say about the quality of the community there? Obviously, people experience something at the Novena which is not provided locally. Until that elusive 'experience' is identified, it cannot be addressed locally. Meanwhile, well done to the Cathedral people!

-Dick Lyng

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Correction

Dear Editor,

We have read with interest your article on Auschwitz concentration camp in your "Sunday Message" of 23rd January 2005 under the heading 'As I was Saying..." It was signed by Dick Lyng. You wrote there that 1.5 million people had perished in the concentration camp. You named some of the ethnic groups and nationalities involved. We would like to draw you attention to the fact that 140,000 Polish people were also imprisoned in the camp. Over 50% of these died there. You made no reference to these victims. In fact, in the first period of the existence of the camp, it was primarily Poles who were sent there.

We come from Poland and many members of our families either gave their lives fighting the Nazi invaders, or they perished in concentration camps. That it why it is very important to us that the tragedy of Poles who lost their lives in many concentration camps (Auschwitz was one of them) is not ignored. We bring you attention to this fact because many people, including historians, chose to pass over the irony of history, namely, that despite of fact that the concentration camps were located on Polish territory, and that they were established by Nazi invaders, Poland and Polish people were first (and one of many others) victims of Hitlerite terror.

This grim fact is all too often forgotten. We would appreciate if you would bring this omission to the attention of your readers. We read your Newletter every Sunday and we think that it deals with many interesting topics.

Yours faithfully
Marysia and Bartek

LENTEN PRACTICES

In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church prescribed what was on the daily menu. Each week had at least one day, and more often 3 or 4 days, during which no meat was to be eaten. For Catholics Friday was still an obligatory "fish day" until well after Vatican II. It served as a weekly commemoration of the death of Jesus on Good Friday. Advent and Lent were strictly fasting seasons. When added up, meat was prohibited on about half the days of the year. The eating of fish was of course allowed. A simple explanation is that during the Biblical Flood, meant to punish mankind for its sins, all fish survived! It was clear that fish were free of all sin! When you lived near the coast, fishdays were no great hardship: seafish was easy to come by. When you lived inland you had to rely on either freshwater fish or conserved fish of some type. Those who could afford it owned fishponds to be assured of an ample supply of freshwater fish.

During the six weeks of Lent there was an extra prohibition. Not only meat, but also milk, butter, cheese and eggs were banned from the table. In February and March, at the end of winter, supplies ran low, and what was left of fruit and vegetables, was old, wrinkled and mouldy. The staple diet consisted of bread, porridge or gruel made of grain (rye, spelt, wheat), peas or beans, salted or dried vegetables, fish (fresh and preserved), onions, leeks, (old) apples, nuts, and for the wealthy dried dates, figs, raisins and currants, and almonds. Almonds were very important, because these were the basis for almond milk, almond butter, and even almond cheese. All of these were used as replacement for forbidden dairy products. Around the Mediterranean however, Lent was less drastic, because in those regions the basic cooking ingredient was olive oil, not butter or animal fat. The Italians were finding loopholes even then!

The Lent Lily

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.
And there' s the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there' s the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.
And since till girls go maying
You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
With every wind at will,
But not the daffodil,
Bring baskets now, and sally
Upon the spring's array,
And bear from hill and valley
The daffodil away
That dies on Easter day.

-A. E. Housman (1859-1936)