Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Doreen Lydon, (Anniv).
11.00: Lily, Joe & Lucia Magliocco
6.30: Thomas Talbot (late Shop St.), (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

Pope Benedict was rather fierce in one of his Easter meditations. Seeing the world in the grip of Satan and praying for mankind to open its eyes to what he called the filth around us, he expressed fears about genetic modification and said that it was insane arrogance to play with the grammar of creation. Mixing Satan and genetics in the one cocktail is, I would suggest, a rather heady mix!)

Now there is no doubt that there are scientists today who pursue their calling with the fervour of a Christian fundamentalist. Nevertheless, it would be sad if there were to be a return to the suspicious hostility between Christianity and Science which did so much damage to both in the centuries following the discoveries of Galileo.

Science and religion can serve each other, must serve each other. The most obvious benign intersection of the two disciplines is in the pastoral care of the sick. Minister and Medic will meet at the sickbed. But blindness to each other's gifts will only make the unfortunate patient worse! If either reverts to a fundamentalist approach to their profession, then great damage can be done.

I will take an obvious, if now extreme, example: demonic possession! Most people believe today that human personality is incommunicable - that it cannot be shared or "possessed" by any other being, whether human, demonic, or even by God himself. Science (this time in the form of psychiatry) has made, and continues to make, great strides in identifying many forms of mental illness which in former times would have been labelled demonic possession.

The church abolished the Order of Exorcist in 1972. Around the same time it cancelled the dreadful exorcism which formed part of the rite of baptism. Imagine parents of today hearing the form of exorcism used on their new-born baby: "I exorcise you, unclean spirit...Come forth, depart from this servant of God...accursed Devil, acknowledge your condemnation...You, O Devil, depart: for the judgment of God has come..."

One of my prized possessions is a Roman Ritual, printed in 1938, which gives instructions to exorcists. The instructions are 21 in number, and are childish in their credulity. Among the signs of demonic possession given are the following: the demon may be expected to speak many words in an unknown language, or to understand someone speaking this; to reveal faraway or hidden things; to show strength above the level of his age or condition...and so on.

The language used by Pope Benedict was lifted straight from a world that has now banished. And the 'exorcists' who exorcised Exorcism itself were the psychiatrists! In this, they provided a wonderful service to the Church and to humanity in general. But if our leaders reach back for medieval imagery to make sense of the modern world, we mustn't be surprised if modern human beings rub their eyes in disbelief. But worse still, and unwittingly I presume, he gave the impression that religion and science were at loggerheads. But, as we have seen, they can be good friends too, servants of God and humanity.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Interest

An Atheist joke...

Dr William Revile, Science Correspondent for The Irish Times, ended his column with the following joke this week:

An atheist is swimming in the ocean. Suddenly he sees a shark in the water, so he starts swimming as fast as he can towards his boat. As he looks back he sees the shark turn and head towards him. He's scared to death, and as he turns to see the jaws of the great white beast open, revealing its teeth in horrific splendour, the atheist screams, "Oh God! Save me!"

In an instant time is frozen, a bright light shines down from above and he hears the voice of God say, "You are an atheist. Why do you call upon me when you do not believe in me?" Confused, but knowing he can't lie, the man replies, "Well, that's true, I don't believe in you, but how about the shark? Can you make the shark believe in you?" The Lord replies, "As you wish," and the light retracts back into the heavens. As the atheist looks back he can see the jaws of the shark start to close down on him, when all of a sudden the shark stops and pulls back. Shocked, the man looks at the shark as the huge beast closes its eyes and bows its head and says, "Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts, which of thy bounty I am about to receive . . ."

The complex factors of suicide

Some weeks ago, Peter McCloskey died in tragic circumstances, leaving behind a devastated young family. Peter was in negotiations with the diocese of Limerick concerning an allegation of child abuse by a priest from the archdiocese of Sydney. His death occurred 2 days after talks broke down.

Since then, his story has been increasingly framed as someone driven to take his own life because of the callousness of the church. His mother, Mary McCloskey, said publicly, "I believe the actions of the Limerick diocese are directly responsible for Peter's death." She also called for the immediate resignation of the Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donald Murray.

When people are fuelled by grief, it is completely understandable that they project their feelings of anger. My difficulty is with the fact that her press conference was hosted by the support group One in Four. In 1999, using a pen name, Peter produced a self-published memoir called The Irish Virus. It paints his relationship with his mother in an appalling light. Ms McCloskey acknowledges the difficulties in her relationship with Peter. She says she encountered "serious behavioural and discipline difficulties with him" and that despite her best efforts, "my response to Peter was wholly inadequate". She says her relationship with Peter was healed in 2002 when she realised what he had suffered because of alleged clerical abuse at the age of 10. Peter dates his difficulties with her to when he was three. He never mentions clerical abuse, which of course proves nothing either way.

It does no justice to the complexity of factors that lead to people taking their own lives to portray (as 'One in Four' did) Peter McCloskey only as a heroic victim, battling for truth against an intransigent and secretive church. Then on Prime Time Miriam O'Callaghan asked Bishop Murray: "Do you believe the church, your diocese, yourself, bear any responsibility for his death?" This is an incendiary question, reinforcing the overly simplistic idea that a person or organisation can be "responsible" for another person's decision to take his or her life.

All we know is that there are predisposing factors, such as mental illness, addiction, childhood trauma and abuse. By his own account, Peter suffered them all. But suicide prediction is still a blunt science. It is dangerous to imply that an individual or organisation is to blame, because it suggests that suicide is a legitimate response to particular life crises.

Are we incubating suicide as a society? We thought raising awareness would work, but instead we have an epidemic of young males dying by suicide. All we seem to have succeeded in doing is imprinting suicide as a legitimate choice in the problem-solving pathways of young people's minds.

We also need to scrupulously avoid anything that even hints to other vulnerable people that the choice of suicide will lead to investigative programmers, press conferences and calls for the heads of people in authority. It does nothing to advance the cause of suicide prevention when such responses are reinforced by publicly-funded bodies.

(from Breda O'Brien, Irish Times, Saturday, April 22, 2006)

APRIL

Through the meadow April comes,
Leaving, as he passes,
Companies of daffodils
All among the grasses.
Tulips round about the door,
Ranged in martial order;
Violets in sweet array,
Up and down the border.
And beside the lily-pond,
Mindful of its sleepers,
Guards of light fritillaries,
For its fairy keepers.
Sow your fine chrysanthemums
While he blithely passes,
Dahlias too, and thrift, to blow
All among your grasses.

Anon.

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