Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

12.00: Pierce Murray, (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

It is no great secret that the Catholic Church here is now stumbling through a rather barren desert. (The fact that vast tracts of that desert was of its own making is not itself consoling!) But the desert has a very respectable pedigree in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was the archetypal 'learning experience'. Time and again in their history, the children of Israel transformed the arid, barren desert into productive, lush pastures. If approached wisely, our contemporary desert can be equally productive. Because of the desert, our Church today is a far less haughty, arrogant Church than it was, say, 20 years ago. It is a more open Church, more tolerant and 'indulgent' of its members. In short, it seems to be to be a more Christian Church today, precisely because it has been through the desert. So it isn't all bad news!

As you know only too well (and soon to your cost, literally!), the Augustinian here in Galway has embarked on a programme of very basic renewal: a fundamental revamping of our Church and priory. But the actual reconstruction itself is but one part of a more comprehensive 'project of renewal'. For a start, we had all to sit down together, to reflect on what the Church and worship means in our lives. We then had to explore, through the mind of the Church, what helped or hindered worship in our own environment, the Augustinian Church and Priory here in Galway.

A great number of very committed people have been involved with this renewal over the past four years at least, wrestling together with the questions and issues outlined above. I have in mind in particular the 44 people who work on the three committees: the Project Team, the Finance Team and the Steering Committee. In the very act of planning, implementing, and paying for this project, the overall community has been strengthened and offered a new sense of purpose.

We had wonderful news this week: for the first time in 15 years, two young men will be joining the Irish Augustinians. (OK, one swallow - or even two - never made a Summer I know, but at least it's the first sign of Summer we have had for years, and I can assure you we are very grateful for it!) Both men are in their 30s, from the midlands and from Cork respectively. And another bit of good news: they will spend at least the first year of their Formation here in the Priory in Galway. A new Student Master will be coming with them next month. That means of course that our community membership will double, from three to six, over the next few weeks. (Until such time as the Priory is ready for use, we will of course have to find temporary accommodation for them. But that won't be a major problem). This is great news for us on three counts: that fact that two young men are joining us, obviously; the fact that we are getting new blood here in Galway; the fact that our Provincial opted for Galway as a student base represents a massive endorsement of what we have been attempting here in recent years. Despite the desert, it has been a great week indeed. We look forward to a few more like that!

-Dick Lyng.

By the way.......

AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY

{Recently, Tainiste and Minister for Health, suggested that perhaps the 'morning after' pill she be made available to sexually active 11-year-old girls. Kevin Myers immediately swung into combative mode. He actually has some very interesting things to say.}

Perhaps, had Mary Harney had warning of the question, she would have phrased herself differently. We all know there's no right answer to the question of how to cope with a child whose precocious sexual instincts are beyond the power of her immature personality to control. Thus these totemic girls are a perfect example of what happens when we throw taboos about sexual conduct out of the window, without knowing what we are going to replace them with.

For in liberal, post-Christian Ireland, we have destigmatised sex. We no longer declare any personal behaviour to be intrinsically wrong. The possession of a personal moral order is virtually unacceptable: we certainly would not dare tell an 11-year-old girl that it is "sinful" to have sex, even if we thought it might prevent her from having intercourse. It is an interesting sense of priority - for in effect, we prefer her to be pregnant than to have a troubled conscience.

Taboos exist in all societies, for originally useful if later forgotten reasons, though often becoming irrational in form and cruel in application. The taboo on sexual activity by the unmarried was created to ensure social and economic harmony in all European societies. But here it reached a deviant form. We didn't literally kill our unmarried mothers, but we did metaphorically: we created cruel rituals of exclusion and punishment which placed them beyond the Pale of ordinary humanity.

However, we have apparently replaced that sex taboo with at least one other, one which protects the feminist agenda. Who would publicly dare to declare that stay-at-home mothers are better mothers than working mothers? The point is not the rightness of the argument, but whether one may even publicly make it. I once believed that if young people had proper sex education, all would be well: they would learn to have sex in a proper way, and in due course would grow into sexually responsible adults. But of course, this is utter rubbish. If youngsters are indifferent to learning generally, why should they be interested in sex education? They might be interested in sex, but that's a different matter entirely. The details of sex, like any other "interesting" subject, are actually quite boring.

But sex is not the possession of just a few travellers flying first class who don't need to pilot the plane; most people can fly first class sexually, and the consequences of indulging in it during your teenage years can cause you to fly the aircraft of your life into the ground. Today, the very concept of "sin" is taboo. Post-Christian Ireland shies away from discussing it. Is it therefore so very surprising, with conscience excluded as a moral guide to sexual conduct, that there are consequences which leave us dumbfounded and desperately reaching for the Dane: taboo, or not taboo? That is the question.