Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Bridie McGinley ,Abbeygate St. (Anniv)
12.00: Petie Conneely, Lr. Merchant's Rd, (Anniv)
6.30: Martin Ryan, (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING.....

In some quarters, the word 'theology' has become a term of abuse. (The term has Greek origins: Theos=God, Logos=Word, the words combined to mean 'the study of the word of God.') For example, when politicians regard something as rarefied, irrelevant to the real world, they say, 'Let's not get into the theology of all this. Let's stick to the point!' Well, the events of the past week prove that theology is the point; it is impossible to understand suicide bombing in London, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and anywhere else without theology. In many places throughout the world, we are witnessing a growing worship of death.

Suicide bombers are not merely prepared to die in order to kill at random; they want to die, they embrace death eagerly, they cannot wait to enter another world beyond the grave. It is interesting that the 'suicide bomber', despite 30 years of bloody strife the north of Ireland, never secured a foothold in the pantheon of nationalist martyrs. The I.R.A. was a strictly secular movement, claiming to advance the cause of Irish nationalism, not of universal Catholicism. This position contrasts sharply with the stance of the Al Qaeda bomber. Allah, and his prophet Mohammed, are central to his (or her) motivation. Remember the police officer's comment about the video footage at King's Cross which captured the four bombers in a 'holy huddle' before they went about their destructive business? He said the presumed suicide bombers were laughing and joking as though they were going on holiday. After the Al Qaeda attack on the United States, their website said that the 9-11 bombers were now relaxing in paradise attended by virgins etc. This caused much hilarity in the West, but they meant it. It is an indication of how secular our society has become that we find it incomprehensible that anyone could prefer another world to the present one, or even that this other world exists at all. These suicide bombers believe you enter paradise by an act of martyrdom. And you don't become a martyr by dying in bed of old age or jumping with excitement from the upper deck of the Hogan Stand in Croke Park on All Ireland Sunday! You become a martyr by dying in a glorious cause, and there will never be any shortage of such causes.

Anger at western foreign policy may indeed be an element in the psyche of the suicide bomber, but I suspect the actual trigger is to be found not in the realm of politics but of theology, some alteration of religious consciousness, akin to conversion, which incites the most unlikely people to do the most extraordinary things; in this case, making paradise seem fatally attractive and the lives of the innocent expendable. I am not qualified to judge what relationship, if any, this cults has to Islam and its sacred texts. I suspect that at root, this is not a case of Islam versus Christianity at all, nor of one branch of Islam against another. At the most elemental level, it is death contending against life. Maybe Christianity and Islam have to revisit and reaffirm their doctrines of eternal life in order to repudiate utterly the ultimate egotism of those who believe they can achieve their eternal destiny at the expense of the innocent. Far from being recondite or irrelevant, theology is now a matter or life and death, unfortunately. And this particular brand of theology is giving Allah (and God) and bad name!

-Dick Lyng.

By the way.......

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This is not intended as a precise 'Progress Report', merely a series of personal impressions of the work to date. To begin at the beginning: On Friday afternoon last we conducted an 'inspection tour' of the Augustinian. We were working within a fairly tight time-frame, since we were not informed of the event until Monday last. However, we managed to send out 240 Invitations. (Only various committee members did not get invite by post. They were already aware of the happening). Over 80 people attended the 'viewing'. The amount of work already done is quite impressive. The most dramatic new feature is the new 'ceremonial door'. They actually carved out a new entrance in the porch of the Church. The following developments were striking:

THE TROJAN HORSE

Down the years, Ballybrit has featured more than its fair share of treacherous horses. It seems that the boxer Jack Doyle got it just about right when he claimed ruefully to have lost his considerable fortune on "fast woman and slow horses!" There are many Galway people who know exactly what Doyle is talking about. And it's a body of knowledge that was earned dearly, not picked up cheaply! Not even the Ballybrit races could provide a horse as treacherous as the legendary Trojan Horse. This particular animal is part of the myth of the Trojan War. The Greek siege of Troy had lasted for ten years, the Ballybrit Races a mere seven days! The Greeks devised a new ruse - a giant hollow wooden horse. It was built by and filled with Greek warriors, led by Odysseus. The rest of the Greek army pretended to retreat; they simply got lost! But before their supposed retreat, they sent a horse as "a peace offering for the goddess Athena". Despite the dire warnings of the Trojan priest Laocoon, and the prophetess Cassandra, the gullible citizens of Troy led the horse rejoicing within the city walls. The long-awaited victory was theirs; they now had the peace-offering to prove it. The Trojans were celebrating, and when the Greeks emerged from the horse, the city was in a drunken stupor (shades of Ballybrit here!). The Greek warriors opened the city gates to allow the rest of the army access and the city was ruthlessly pillaged; all the men were killed and all the women and children taken into slavery. The episode, recounted in Virgil's Aeneid, has given the Greeks a bad name! It was the priest, Laocoon, who voiced his misgivings most famously:

timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.
(I fear the Greeks, even bringing gifts!)

But he was equally sceptical of the benign intent of horses:

equo ne credite, Teucri.
("Never trust the horse, O Trojans!")

But surely the modern Greeks at Ballybrit are the Bookmakers, each mounted on his own Trojan Horse, offering painless victory to all! And, like their predecessors at Troy, they tend to "emerge from the horse when the city is in a drunken stupor!" And the Goddess under whose protection they trade this time is Lady Luck, that most fickle of all divine figures. But what is really now needed every day at Ballybrit is a latter-day Laocoon, a black-clad priest who will carry a placard around the betting enclosure bearing the inscription:

"I fear the Bookmakers, even bringing gifts."

HORSE SENSE

Many pilgrims to Ballybrit this week could, with great profit (literally!) attend to the foregoing little moral tale. Common advice from knowledgeable horse trainers includes the adage, "If the horse you're riding dies, get off!!" Seems simple enough, yet, in the education business we don't always follow that advice. Instead, we often choose from an array of other alternatives that include: