Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30 (Vigil) Bridie McGinley, (Anniv).
11.00: John Moylan, (Anniv).
6.30: Michael John O'Connor, St. Augustine St. (Annniv).

Masses for next weekend, July 30th: 6.30 (Vigil): Martin & Kate Cleary (Anniv); 11.00: Christina Foy (Anniv); 6.30: Mary Barrett (Anniv).
COLLECTION: The collection last Sunday came to €925.00.
TODAY'S COLLECTION: This is an annual collection taken up by the Diocese to finance the various Bishops' Commissions established to run the Irish church after the Second Vatican Council.
OUTDOOR COLLECTION TODAY: The Galway Simon Community will be holding their annual church gate collection this weekend.
ATTRACTIVE AUCTION: We are now flagging a 'Fundraising Auction' in aid of the restoration of the Augustinian here. The auction, to be conducted by a professional auctioneer, will be held in Ross Castle by kind permission of George and Elizabeth McLoughlin, regular patrons of the Augustinian. We need your help on three fronts: (1) to promote the auction itself; (2) to donate materials to be auctioned there, (and remember, don't regard this as a good opportunity to offload rubbish!) and (3) to encourage your friends to go along there and to buy the stuff. We are just flagging this now in good time. The actual date has not yet been set, but you are getting a clear six weeks notice.
MAIDUGURI: Bishop Matthew Man-oso Ndagoso of Maiduguri visited our house in Galway during the week and he asked us to convey his deep gratitude to you for your marvellous response to the Maiduguri appeal made here by Des Foley three weeks ago. He is making a similar 'trip-of-gratitude' to all the other Irish Augustinian Houses. His only regret was that he could not meet the Sunday congregations.

AS I WAS SAYING.....

By coincidence, two reports into the behaviour of two police forces were published this week: one in Dublin and the other in London. The Dublin report, or, more properly, the Report of the Barr Tribunal, investigated the fatal shooting of a young, innocent (if disturbed) young man in Abberlara by a Special Response Unit of the Gardai six years ago last Easter. In London, the Crown Prosecution Service issued its report this week too into the shooting of an innocent man on the Stockwell tube twelve months ago. In this London version of Abbeylara, the shooting was nobody's fault, apparently! Mr. de Menezes died, according to the report, because of a breach of health and safety on the underground! No individual officer is to be charged, although the force itself, as a collective, will face health and safety charges. Big bloody deal!

Admittedly, Mr. De Menezes was murdered in the context of a highly charged atmosphere of fear in London. The wounds of the Underground bombs of the previous day were still fresh. This may explain the actions of the police; but it should never excuse them.

The shooting of Mr. de Menezes resulted from a flawed police system, compounded by mistakes by individual officers. These will never be named, let alone prosecuted. The Report charitably assumed that the police were doing their best in very stressful times. But their best was not good enough, obviously. An innocent man was shot in cold blood by an arm of a democratic state.

It was in the context of terrorism too that innocent Irishmen, in the 1970s, were consigned to jail -some for for 40 years- for crimes they could not have committed. In the face of terrorism, police forces have themselves become terrorists. And that is terrorism's real victory!

But where was the terrorist threat from poor John Carthy in Abbeylara? None whatsoever! Which makes Abbeylara even worse than London. And yet the Emergency Response Unit, more at home with facing down Provo thugs, was called in. The road outside the Carthy cottage was cluttered with armed and unarmed Gardai. Justice Barr recommended that the ERU should never again be employed in a situation such as Abbeylara.

Abbeylara was a tragedy for the Carthy family. It was an absolute disaster for the Gardai. Two people emerged from the debacle with their dignity intact: Justice Barr was one. Unlike his counterparts across the water, he made no attempt to pull his punches: he named names, and pointed out the precise heels and hinges of the Garda force that had malfunctioned. Barr did well.

But the tragic debacle produced one very brave hero indeed: the victim's only surviving sibling, Marie Carthy. (I must declare a personal interest here in that I got to know her from the time she worked behind the counter in our local shop here on Middle St! She was still working there at the time of the tragedy.) From the outset, she saw clearly that a terrible injustice had been visited on her unfortunate brother, her mother, and indeed on herself. (The press were fed lines about Marie herself which turned out to be utterly untrue).

But she also realised that she was up against one of the strongest arms of the state: the police force. She remained undaunted, and unfazed, and utterly dignified throughout. She won her case, and she deserves the gratitude of every Irish person. Well done, Marie.

-Dick Lyng

Galway's ConTempo Quartet and Friends
at the Augustinian This Week

Galway's ConTempo Quartet and Galway Arts Festival come together to present this series of concerts with special guests from Ireland, Argentina and Canada. Founded in Bucharest in 1995, ConTempo have been Galway's Ensemble-in-Residence since 2003.

4 evenings in the Augustinian Church: all at 8.30 p.m.

Sunday 23 July: Galway's ConTempo Quartet; Galway Baroque Singers, director Audrey Corbett

Tuesday 25 July: Galway's ConTempo Quartet; Douglas McNabney, viola

Thursday 27 July: Galway's ConTempo Quartet; Niamh O'Connell, mezzo-soprano; John Feeley, guitar

Saturday 29 July: Galway's ConTempo Quartet; Dermot Dunne, accordion; Ariel Hernandez, guitar/voice

Individual Concert Tickets: €15/€12 Series Season Ticket: €48

Bookings: 091 566577 or www.galwayartsfestival.ie

Items of Some Interest

I attended a gathering of lay associates of the Augustinian Order in Rome this week. Obviously, Conferences are limited in their scope and effectiveness! But, on the first day, people were asked to get together and come up with ten 'Areas of Urgent concern' that would then guide our reflections over the following days. It is interesting to read the ten areas that the various nationalities agreed upon as urgent:

The fundamentals of our faith and therefore the substance of our religion remain the same. What is needed is that we change the way of communicating this reality in today's society.
Option for the poor and option for the young people. Topics not given much emphasis considering their importance for Vatican Council.
We still have a long way to go in realizing the goals and the vision of Vatican Council II especially with regards to the role of the laity in the church.
The importance of changing the form of communicating our faith to others.
It is a time of major change and opportunity for the church. We must act urgently to develop a new language to speak to today's questioning society otherwise we may be risking that our faith becomes irrelevant to today's needs. We must make full use of modern means of communication.
We need a global vision which takes into account the situation in Africa, Latin America and Asia and elsewhere where human rights are not respected.
The church today must be a healing and listening church.
In the post modern world action not intellect will allow Christians to achieve the high moral ground
The need to develop the role of women and the laity in the challenges we face.
The language of love should be fundamental in the witness of faith in the evangelisation process.

MORE DRAMA