Parish Newsletter
Masses Today
6.30: Peter & Bridie Berry, Tierney family members, (Anniv)12.00: Annie O'Mahoney, (Anniv).
6.30: Sarah Coyne, late of Whitehall, (Anniv).
- Masses for next weekend, October 30th: 6.30 (Vigil) Sarah Duggan; 12.00:Maureen Loughnane; 6.30: Joe Coyne, Margaret Griffin & Olga Mary Madden.
- Please pray for the late Kathleen Hickey, Lenaboy Gardens, who died on Tuesday last. Kathleen was wife of John Hickey, secretary of our Forthill Committee, and formerly of The Connaught Tribune. Kathleen was buried in Forthill after funeral Mass in Salthill. May she rest in peace.
- The collection last weekend was €1,140.00.
AS I WAS SAYING.....
With the publication of the Ferns Report into child sex abuse expected on Tuesday, the week ahead should prove to be a very difficult one for the Catholic Church. Expect a feeding-frenzy from a hysterical press!! But, without minimising the enormity of what has happened, or excusing in any way the criminal behaviour of some, the Church must hold its nerve and remain 'on message'. There should be no such thing as 'running for cover'. It was that sort of spineless behaviour which landed us in this mess in the first place. We should recognise too that the present situation, in all its sordidness, is infinitely preferable to one of ongoing cover-up.
If our bishops wish to retain a sane perspective, they have to hand an objective, sober report from December 2003 which they themselves commissioned. The report was conducted by three medical personnel attached to the Dept. Of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons. The study, the only independent general study on the problem in Ireland to date, examined the impact of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, as well as its impact on faith, and the manner in which the whole mess was managed by Church authorities. Some 1280 people contributed to the study, including 80% of the bishops, and 50 young people who had been abused by clergy.
Some key findings of that Report were as follows:
- General awareness of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was obtained exclusively through the media.
- Those abused were strongly of the view that, where Church leaders were concerned, legal concerns took precedence over a pastoral response
- Psychological damage was described as an ongoing process rather than a once off event.
- Confidence in the Church declined, but this was due more to the response to the disclosure than to the abuse itself.
- Colleagues of convicted clergy felt shamed and a loss of public credibility and felt they were not provided with information, guidance or support by Church leaders - this led to a loss of confidence in Church leadership.
- 93% of the public believe in God and 72% believe priests had been unfairly judged as a result of child sexual abuse.
- While the quality of today's Church was judged to be better than the past by 39% and worse by 16%, overall satisfaction with the Church at 44% was below satisfaction with individual priests at 54%.
- 41% felt it was the civil authorities' responsibility for managing the issue.
- 77% of the public felt that, due to ineffective leadership, the Church had managed the crisis poorly.
It is necessary to stress that this was a general report, reflecting the reaction of the general public, (unlike the impending Ferns, which is a different kettle of fish entirely) The sensationalism and hysteria that so often marked the media treatment of this topic would seem to be absent from the reaction of the wider public. The embattled hierarchy would do well to bear this in mind during the coming week!
-Dick Lyng.
By the way.......
- MISSION SUNDAY: Today is is 'Mission Sunday' throughout the Catholic world. (See posters) Our collections from all three Masses that day will go to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. .
- MONTH OF NOVEMBER (I): The first day of November falls on Tuesday week next. Traditionally, regardless of your tradition, this is the 'Month of Remembrance' when we honour the memory of those who have gone before us. We will share some of our 'customs and practices' of commemoration with the Church of Ireland community. We will continue the practice of placing two 'Memory Trees' in the St. Nicholas', as we did each year in St. Augustine's. From next Sunday, we will leave pens and cards available here in St. Nicolas'. As usual, you simply write down the names of you departed friends whom you wish to have prayed for in this Church. Then place the card on one of the two trees.
- MONTH OF NOVEMBER (2): We will hold a common 'Service of Commemoration' in St. Nicholas's Church on Wednesday week next, November 2nd at 7.30. All those who lost family members during the last year are asked to bring the names of the departed to our attention and we will light a candle in their memory at that Service. Again, members of both Churches are invited to participate.
- CONGRATULATIONS: Brenda Foy and Ray Walshe were married on Friday last and 'threw a bash' later in Glenloe Abbey, Moycullen. I noticed that the Augustinian had a strong representative contingent there and they behaved themselves in an exemplary manner throughout! Brenda and Ray are spending their honeymoon travelling around China. We wish them both a long and happy life together.
- NOVEMBER DEAD LIST: Envelopes for the traditional 'November Dead List' are now available at the Priory Office (and Oratory), Ozanam House. Just write out the names of those you wish to have prayed for on the sheet provided, place this in an envelope and hand it in to the girls at the Priory Office. The 11.00 Mass throughout the month of November will be offered for these intentions.
- ALTAR SERVERS REQUIRED: You will have observed over the years that perhaps our weakest sector is an absence of Altar Servers. As you know by now, we are moving back to St. Augustine's on the last Sunday of Advent, December 18th, 2005. We would dearly love to have a team of Altar Servers (boys & girls) together for that occasion. We already have five names from a previous 'campaign': Cora Lenihan, Sile Maguire Conneely, Grainne Maguire Conneely, Sam Ashmore and Saoirse Moran. We will attempt to add to this number over the next few Sundays. But we must then see to it that we secure appropriate dress, and conduct the necessary rehearsals. Lots of work needs to be done still in this department. This campaign begins as and from today!
An Acquired Taste!
Alan Bennett, playwright and broadcaster, has written a very funny book (Untold Stories, Faber & Faber, London, 2005, 657 pages). Its central concern is the author's relationship with his insane mother. As a boy, Alan Bennett was afraid of Catholic Churches. "I always entered them warily and with some sense of a spell cast. They were exotic places, tasteless and vulgar, the incense and images and explicit devotion making me nervous of stop- ping long in such an idolatrous lair," writes the playwright and man of letters in Untold Stories, this new collection of his eclectic writing over the past decade.
As an adult, he is much more favourably disposed. It occurs to him at a funeral "that one thing about the Catholic Mass is that it attracts and is open to anybody who just happens to be passing. There's almost an 'Ah, Bisto!' aspect to it so that even at the smartest requiems there are these oddities who, not having anything better to do, have just wandered in. And that way, maybe, salvation lies."
On "an appropriately monastic" Easter Saturday, he visits Mount Grace Priory in North Yorkshire. "Envy the nice life a Carthusian monk must have had in the early fifteenth century: meals brought to the door, sitting room, study and bedroom looking out on a little garden with, at the end of the colonnade, the loo." Unsurprisingly, he is depressed by the destruction and vandalism involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Reading the Benedictine David Knowles's Bare Ruined Choirs, he learns how King Henry VIII's commissioners even grubbed up the floor tiles at Fountains Abbey in 1538 in order to sell them off as architectural salvage. "I have never quite taken in the full horror of Henry VIII (whom, typically, the English just think of as a joke)".
There will be no Peace
There will be no peace:
till attitudes change;
till self-interest is seen as part of common interest;
till old wrongs, old scores, old mistakes
are deleted from the account;
till the aim becomes co-operation and mutual benefit
rather than revenge or seizing maximum
personal or group gain;
till justice and equality before the law
become the basis of government;
till basic freedoms exist;
till leaders - political, religious, educational -
and the police and media
wholeheartedly embrace the concepts of
justice, equality, freedom, tolerance, and
reconciliation as a basis for renewal;
till parents teach their children new ways
to think about people.
There will be no peace:
till enemies become fellow human beings.
-David Roberts