Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Rita Mullins, (Anniv).
11.00: Bridget & Raymond Moloney (son), (Anniv).
6.30: Pascal Seery, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Nadia Eweida, a 55 year old British Airways check-in worker, caused some embarrassment to her employers recently when she insisted on wearing a cross around her neck. It contravened the dress code of the company. Such emblems may be worn, but under the uniform. The company offered her a new job where she would not have to conceal her cross. She rejected this compromise. In an interview she asked: "Why should I have to go and hide myself in a recruitment job out of sight of passengers and uniformed colleagues?" Why indeed! She now plans to sue BA for religious discrimination.

How times have changed! During the lifetime of Jesus, the cross was an ever present reminder of Roman power. It wasn't anything religious at all, rather, a hated symbol of occupation, a weapon of psychological terror that spelt out of the cost of resistance and kept people frightened. So why is it that Christians want to wear the cross as jewellery? After all, you wouldn't go round with a silver electric chair about your neck, or with a beautiful brocade noose. That would be astonishingly offensive.

So why isn't a cross likewise offensive?

I suspect it's because we've forgotten what the cross was originally all about. It has now become a dead metaphor, losing its association with humiliation and fear; with many people today, it is regarded as a desirable fashion accessory. Though it should be said that Ms. Eweida is without doubt motivated by religious conviction.

There is of course a 'freedom of religious expression' aspect to all of this. But many Christians are uneasy about turning it into a symbol of cultural identity - as if defending the cross is defending Christianity. But in some cases this is a mere cover for an attack upon multiculturalism in general and Islam in particular. For such as these, the cross has nothing to do the brutality of the Roman empire and, bizarrely, everything to do with the cultural politics of a little country that Jesus had never heard of.

In fact, the source of this theological mistake goes way back. When the Roman Empire converted to Christianity it was clearly unlikely that the cross could retain its anti-imperial significance. So it changed from being a mark of the brutality into the logo of the imperial cult itself. From this point on, the symbol of the cross became seriously detached from the essential "offensiveness" of the cross as spoken about by St Paul.

Which may be why, throughout history, the cross has been all too easily conscripted by various forms of objectionable propaganda. Like, for example, the way thirteenth century friars galvanised huge enthusiasm for the crusades by what was then called "the preaching of the cross".

Christians urgently need to offer a better account of the cross than simply that it's a badge of identity. The first thing that must be said is that the cross is actually God's act of solidarity with the disgraced and the powerless. The real battle for the cross has nothing whatsoever to do with jewellery.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Christmas Programme, 2006

Sunday, 10th at 11.00: Christmas Mass of Giving.
Sunday 17th at 11.00: Nativity Play & Mass.
Sunday, 17th at 3.00: Console 'Service of Light'.
Sunday, 17th at 4.30: Carol Service in St. Nicholas'.
PENITENTIAL SERVICES (AMNESTY)
Tuesday, 19th: 7.30pm.
Thursday, 21st: 7.30pm.
Saturday, 23rd: 4.30pm.
CONFESSIONS:
Tuesday, 19th: 11.30-12.30; 3.30-4.30.
Wednesday 20th: 12.00-12.45; 3.30-5.30.
Thursday 21st: 11.30-12.30; 3.30-5.30.
Friday, 22nd: 11.30-1.00; 3.30-5.30.
Saturday, 23rd: 11.30-1.00; 3.00-4.00.
Sunday, 24th: No 6.30 evening Mass
CHRISTMAS MASSES:
12.00 Midnight.
11.00am Christmas morning.
WEEKDAY PROGRAMME:
Tuesday, 26th Dec to Tuesday, Jan 2nd: 11.00am Mass only.
Sunday, December 31st: Usual Sunday Programme
PRIORY OFFICE
Office will reopen on Tuesday, January 2nd.

Advent & Christmas

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