Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Laura Carr, (Anniv).
11.00: Colm Ferguson & Rory Kavanagh, (Anniv).
6.30: Michael Murray, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Some very ugly chickens (hawks?) came home to roost this week. A caged Saddam Hussein attempted to shout down the judge as he pronounced the death sentence on the deposed dictator. Obviously, even after three years of captivity, Saddam still had problems coming to terms with this 'reversal of roles': the same Saddam had achieved a certain expertise over the years in pronouncing death sentences! He had no qualms about gassing to death 180,000 Kurdish civilians in the late 1980s. Fear of this monster had spread to even the most remote corners of Iraqi society.

And yet, when compared with day- to-day life in Iraq now, life had some semblance of normality during his cruel reign: water and electricity flowed, schools and shops remained open, people got on with their everyday lives as best they could. They kept their heads down and they tried to distance themselves from the oppression all around.

Ironically, with Saddam removed from the equation, sectarian death squads roam the streets of Baghdad, making life there a 'hell on earth'. The entire infrastructure which we associate with 'normal living' has collapsed entirely. And this happened AFTER Saddam!

In the 12th century, Thomas Aquinas, in seeking to arrive at a 'just war' theory, included a factor that, because all war involves disorder, it is better sometimes, rather than go to war, to put up with a degree of injustice and even oppression. Because, he stressed, a disordered society bears mostly heavily on the weak and powerless. It is fruitless to ask now whether the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam than they are today. Because there is no going back. The bell cannot be unrung! But the elections in America this week do indicate clearly that a majority of Americans are asking whether the war was worth it, and what the future holds for Iraq and America?

The English historian, Arnold Toynbee once wrote that America is like a large friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. I hope that the shifting furniture after the elections gives less influence to what are called 'Christian end-timers' - those apocalyptic dreamers who believe that history is about to be wound up and are quite prepared to give God a hand in winding it up more quickly. One of their leaders recently claimed that the Bush administration regularly called them up to ask: "What's your take on this issue?" Imagine!

It's instructive to realise that within two years, the four political leaders most closely involved with the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Tony Blair will all in different ways have left the world stage. Responsibility for the future of their countries will have passed into other hands. I hope they'll bear in mind that all significant moral decisions involve the questions, "Who at the end of the day gets hurt and how can that hurt be minimized?"

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

The Feast of St. Nicholas

This is One of Those

Poems in which the title is, in fact, the opening line.
And what appears to be the first line is really the second.
Failing to spot this device may result in the reader,
Unnerved and confused, giving up halfway through,

And either turning to another poem with a decent title
That invites him in, or (and this is more likely),
Throwing the book across the room and storming out
Into the voluptuous night* vowing never to return.

* 'The Voluptuous Night', for instance, would make a decent title.

-Roger McGough.

Quotes on War & Peace

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