Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Margaret Egan, (Anniv).
11.00: Philomena Naughton & Mary Cahalan, (Anniv).
6.30: Noreen McEvoy, (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking, died this week aged 99. She was just 5 years old when she lost her father and three brothers when the "unsinkable" ship sank in the North Atlantic on April 15th, 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives. Lillian's mother and younger brother also survived. All travelled as Third Class passengers.

It's still less than a lifetime later, but the values of that morning are light years away! Remember those old black and white films of the sinking, with men handing women and children to safety, then staying on deck while the orchestra played in evening dress! It never occurred to me to question why the stronger should protect the weaker, but presumably because these values were still commonplace then?

There are misconceptions about survival rates on the Titanic. It's true that a larger proportion of First Class passengers lived - mainly because so many more of them were women. Far more Third Class women survived than First Class men; and overall, three quarters of women were saved and only a fifth of the men.

This is against all instinct. Rationalists tell us our genes are selfish. Alfred Tennyson's 'Nature is red in tooth and claw' and Charles Darwin's 'Survival of the fittest' expressed this conviction, both poetically and scientifically. When threatened with extinction, the strongest should survive. But they didn't. They laid down their lives. Why?

It's often said today that Christianity is sexist. No one's managed to label Jesus a misogynist (yet!), but Paul is often accused of it. In truth, the Bible describes male domination as a fact of life and a result of sin, nowhere condoning it; while Judeo-Christian teaching repeatedly fights to redress it - the ideal wife of the Old Testament being a successful business woman. In stark contrast to the values of his day, Jesus mixed with women and worked with them, taught them, and depended on them as witnesses and for financial support. Paul said distinctions of gender were set aside in Christ, insisted that women be educated, pronounced that they had authority over their husband's bodies, specified that a man should often make love to his wife, and supremely taught that he should live and - yes - die for her, as Jesus did for us.

In fact women have fared far better in Christian cultures than elsewhere. (And, even if this is sexism, I'll have more of it!) And, on that fateful morning of April 15th, 1912, men, steeped in hundreds of years of Christian teaching, unquestioningly gave up their lives, not just for their own women but for others, in this very vivid illustration of St Paul's revolutionary teaching: that a man should give up everything, even life, for the woman he loves.

And now? I think - I hope - we would still save the children. That much Christian influence lingers. But otherwise? One commentator has said that today the lifeboats would be filled with under 35s!

In other words, the strongest. St. Paul, Pray for us!

-Dick Lyng

Items of Interest

Request for Support

Rev. Sahr Yambasu of the United Methodist & Presbyterian Church, Victoria Place in Galway is organising a Fund Raising Barbecue to support the work of the Church in Galway City. This event will take place at the Sports Grounds in College Road, Galway on Sunday 18th June 2006 from 5.00pm -11.00pm. He sent out the following 'distress signal' earlier this week:

We are kindly asking for your support in this undertaking. We are aware that you have already been supporting our social work in the city through the Friendship Club. We count on your support for this event, praying and hoping that you'd give us your full support. We are finding it difficult at the moment to meet our financial needs and any help you'd give us in this undertaking will be much appreciated.

Confusion!

I was recently browsing the Web in an attempt to track the attitude of the American Catholics to the recent Drogheda 'Ecumenical Mass' saga. The Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Seán Brady, had said that in holding such a Mass there was "a real danger of causing widespread confusion...". It is clear that great confusion resulted. But the following posting (on a site called 'Open Book') suggests that it may be unfair to lay the entire responsibility for this confusion at the door of the hapless concelebrants!

On a recent trip to Ireland, I noticed that many Catholic churches are "shared" with the Church of Ireland. This caused quite a bit of confusion when going to Mass in Galway. We think the church itself was owned by the RCs, but the Church of Ireland was allowed usage. It had something to do with the return of land to Catholics after 1916. The Church of Ireland returned parishes that were historically Catholic and then sometime later that century (or early in this one) RCs (feeling bad? guilty?) allowed many in the Church of Ireland to conduct tours and services.

Posted by: CMick at Apr 18, 2006 12:53:49 PM

Now, he would be a foolish man indeed who would set out to clarify that one!! D.L.

Sayings, wise and unwise...

Lies, Truth, and the Code!

One of the world's best-selling novels is about to become one of the world's biggest blockbuster films. The Catholic Church, if one believes the more lurid headlines, is shaken to the core by the revelations at the heart of the book and movie, and is busy issuing angry - if somewhat futile - denunciations.

Rather than all this frantic anxiety, a little bit of common sense would go a long way. Dan Brown's work is fictional, as he himself declares in his novel. The adaptation of historical events for literary purposes is as old as literature itself.

The fact that there may be some people who believe The Da Vinci Code makes it a starting point of many a good conversation about the real content of faith. It is almost too easy to show that there is not a single shred of evidence for The Da Vinci Code's suggestion that Jesus did not die on the Cross but married Mary Magdalene and lived happily ever after (in France), where his descendants eventually became king and spawned a royal line; and that the Vatican, apparently well aware of this unsettling flaw in the seamless robe of faith, allows or encourages Opus Dei to protect the secret by assassinations.

An honest assessment of the material will quickly lead to the view that the version given in the New Testament is a lot more credible than any other. It requires the least suspension of disbelief of all of them. And that is really the only rebuttal necessary.

-(Adapted from 'The Tablet', 13/05/2006).

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