Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: O'Donnell Family members (RIP).
11.00: Rita Monaghan, (Surgery on Tuesday).
6.30: James Cogavin, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

I'm afraid Tony Blair will be remembered for Iraq rather than for Ireland. But from this standpoint, Blair was Britain's best Prime Minister since 1169! From a religious point of view, he was also the most interesting. His last act was to visit the Pope. This was a very unusual step for a British Prime Minister. But it did show once again Blair's intense if ambiguous relationship with his own Anglican Church, and with Catholicism.

Tony Blair is a complex man. He has been flirting with Catholicism for years. But he hasn't permitted that flirtation to interfere with his politics! His liberal stance on homosexuality and abortion are at odds with mainstream Catholicism. Perhaps he has made his own the quip of his theological hero, Cardinal Newman: "I'll drink the health of the Pope, but I'll drink to conscience first."

Blair is a great admirer of both Hans Kung and the late Pope John Paul II. Bets have never been so spectacularly hedged! To his own archbishop, George Carey of Canterbury, Blair remained an enigma. "Tony is a Robinson Crusoe believer", Carey observed. "He is a Christian island in a sea of unbelieving ministers. But that sea is of his own making, as they are HIS ministers!"

Dr. Carey has a point here. All of Blair's close advisers were unapologetic atheists: Campbell ('We don't do God'!), Powell, Hunter, and Mandelson. If his cronies were unashamed atheists, Blair himself was an unashamed, thinking Christian. "We must establish in the public mind the coincidence between the values of democratic socialism and those of Christianity" he told the Labour Party in 1992.

In 1980 Blair married Cherie Booth, a practicing Catholic and the outstanding lawyer of their generation. Both attended the local Catholic Church together every Sunday. The children were all baptised into the Catholic Church. Blair himself at one stage said he was drawn to 'the certainties and liturgies of Catholicism'. Up to 1992, his personal faith had not been subjected to public scrutiny. It was he himself who dragged this 'personal' dimension into the public arena with his 'confession of faith' at that Labour Party Conference of 1992.

Blair's faith is an intensely practical faith, uninterested in doctrinal details, or in the world to come. Blair's faith linked him to the here-and-now. 'Humanity is one and religion should remain the bedrock of civilisation,' he declared. But what served him well on Ireland failed him miserably on Iraq. By his own admission, both adventures were driven by his religious convictions.

In Ireland, his confident personal conviction enabled him to plough ahead, to turn a deaf ear to the prophets of doom.

But, in the case of Iraq, that same self-confidence hardened into arrogance as he rejected all contrary advice. From that point, his reputation was tied inextricably to Iraq. Blair's reputation would never survive the destruction of Iraq. And so it was. But he did serve us well and we wish him well. He was interesting.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Welcome!

This is of course a very special weekend when we celebrate our annual Midsummer Festival. We welcome in a very particular way our friends from St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland parish, together with their Rector, The Rev'd Patrick Towers. They will join us for our Summer Liturgy and for our Barbeque afterwards.

Patrick has agreed (in the face of enormous pressure) to preach at the Liturgy. We are delighted that your visit to us this year coincides with our annual Peter's Pence collection also, our annual effort to provide papal infallibility with some financial teeth!

The celebrations this weekend would not have been possible without the help of a busy army of willing volunteers. You will appreciate that an awful lot of strands had to be woven together. You will also appreciate how precarious an exercise the naming of names can be. So these acknowledgements are of a very general and very safe nature!

You will see that the Church has been wonderfully decorated with the now customary floral display for the occasion. Thanks to the ladies involved. It required a lot of time and not a little skill.

Our car park too was in need of much attention. An eager posse assembled at 2.00pm on Saturday afternoon and transformed what had been bare strip of unattractive tarmac into something resembling an inviting Mediterranean beach! Tents sprouted like massive mushrooms, and with equal speed too. (We'll say nothing of the presence of that material said to be so essential to the health of all mushrooms! And it's not darkness I have in mind!)

I will stick my neck out now and name a few names: Martina and Michael Freeney arrived here on Friday morning, bearing a few kegs of Guinness and Beer, together with a mindboggling mechanism for dispensing same. It will not be the fault of the Freeney family if we expire from thirst!

The centrepiece of the weekend is our Barbecue. Apart from the sermon at the Liturgy itself (!), the actual act of barbecuing is the single most demanding feature of the entire festival. And the man who very kindly steps into the breach year after year is one Peter O'Neill. Peter sets up shop about 2.00pm and works away in the heat until after 9.00. It is a huge undertaking and we are very grateful to him for placing his expertise and his energy at our disposal once more.

Finally, thanks to all of you who supported our festival through your attendance. We just hope you enjoy the night and contribute to the fun!

Bethlehem Art

On Sunday next a group of artists will be displaying and (hopefully) disposing of their work in the Church here after the Masses. They came to us through the Diocesan Office. They are trying to provide an income for the few Christian families still living in Bethlehem.

There are now very few pilgrims and visitors to the Holy Places and so the families have no means of selling their work. The result is that many families are facing great poverty and distress as this is for many their main livelihood.

The items produced by local craftsmen are individually hand carved from the wood of olive trees that are common throughout the Holy Land. So do what you can to support these good people on Sunday next.

The Happy Couple

You will be aware that our Parish Secretary, Anne Marie Kennedy, married an acquaintance of hers named Tom Mulvey on Friday week last in her home parish of The Neale. Now I know the weather has been bad, but wasn't it a bit pessimistic to arrive in a boat! Seriously though, Anne Marie looked radiant and a wonderful day was had by all. We wish both of you a long and a very happy life together.

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