Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Elizabeth Coyne, (Anniv).
11.00: Martin & Mary Nora Duggan, (Anniv).
6.30: Patrick & Nora Cunningham, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Ireland's population is ageing, but ever so gradually. The number of people aged over-65 has increased at every Census since 1961, from 315,000 in that year to 468,000 in 2006. Older people account for 11% of the population.

By 2021, it is predicted 15% of the population will be over- 65. By 2036, one-fifth of the population will be over-65. By 2050, there will be more over-65 than under-18. The number of "oldest old" persons (aged 80 and over) is projected to more than treble from a 2001 level of 98,000 to about 320,000 in 2036.

In short, we need to start planning. The ageing trends are something to be celebrated, not feared. International experience shows that the extra years we are living are good years - years of good health.

However, for many people, old age is often a synonym for "problem people" - a liability to the optimism of our Brave New World. The elderly themselves fear the mortality of old age. But that's nothing new. W B Yeats, who felt old from the age of forty, went screaming into old age.

What shall I do with this absurdity,
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age which has been tied to me as to a dog's tail?

In some ways, little has changed since Yeats's day. In Western society at least, which seems obsessed with youth, retirement can be seen as a withdrawal from usefulness and active participation in society.

Such images as do exist of older people are likely to involve stereotypes - the cantankerous older man of a TV sitcom, the sweet but pathetic 'little old lady'. Such negative stereotyping produce negative attitudes. Attitudes have consequences. They become part of our everyday thinking. They reinforce institutionalised age discrimination and the widespread assumption that to retire is to opt out of life.

We have a 'Methuselan' roll call of people who have accomplished great things in their advancing years. Michelangelo completed his final frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at 75. Verdi finished 'Falstaff,' his final opera, just eight months shy of his 80th birthday. Pope John XXIII was 80 when he called Vatican II. Benjamin Franklin invented bifocal glasses at 78 to help correct his own poor vision. Austrian Jewish psychiatrist and survivor of the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl, was 80 when he took out his pilot's licence for the first time. He lived for another 12 years and died in his own bed. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was 80 when he married (for the fourth and last time!) That same gentleman was jailed at 89 years of age for his inflammatory language at anti-Vietnam war gatherings. He died at 99 in 1970, also in his own bed!

Don't let them fool you, folks! Age is no barrier to achievement. Nevertheless, don't overdo it! We're not all Bertrand Russells, fortunately!

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

African Cardinal for St Anthony's Novena.

The St Anthony's Novena at the Abbey is being led this year by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, OFM, from South Africa. The Novena is from Tuesday 5th June to Wednesday 13th June.

Masses are at 10.30 am and 7.30 pm each day; on Sunday at 12.30 pm only. A Blessing of Children will take place on Sunday 10th June at 4.00 pm.

Moving Statues

You may have noticed that some of the statues in the church are sorely in need of repair and repainting. Some of them are very badly damaged. We had intended to carry out this work during the general church renovations. But we found it almost impossible either to get new statues of similar proportions, or to get a painter with the required expertise or experience.

However, 'cometh the hour, cometh the man'! Emmet O'Toole from Mervue saw our predicament. Emmet painted the same statues many years ago. He also painted the statues in The Abbey for the Franciscans, so he is quite experienced in these matters. He extracted himself from a comfortable retirement and offered his services free of charge.

So, on Tuesday morning next at 10.30, a procession of six statues will wind their way slowly in the general direction of Emmet's workshop in Mervue. Vincent de Paul have kindly offered us their Hiace Van to expedite this delicate operation. The loading operation will be tricky enough. Some of the statues, like the Sacred Heart, are quite heavy as well as being quite delicate. We will need a team of four strong 'lifters' for the operation. Emmet himself will supervise the moving operation.

There are six statues involved altogether: The Sacred Heart, St. Nicholas, St. Joseph, The Pieta, St. Augustine and St. Rita. All are damaged to a greater or lesser extent.

Understandably enough, Emmet is not in a position to give us a precise timing for the entire operation. But, as soon as he finishes, we will bring them back. We ask the devotees of the respective icons to bear with us during this tedious operation.

Appalling evil, Infinite love

The snatching of a small child from its loving parents is an unfathomable act of evil, which is why the world has been so moved by the plight of the McCann family these last four weeks - moved also by their dignity and faith, and by their utter determination to restore their four-year-old daughter Madeleine to their arms. Any minute their search could end in the joy of her recovery or the grief of finding her dead - and the third possibility, almost unimaginable, that they will never know what happened to her, their cruel loss reawakened every day of their lives.

Yet Kate and Gerry McCann say again and again how grateful they are for the outpouring of prayerful compassion that has come their way, and how the experience has strengthened their faith in human nature and in God. If any couple ever had an excuse to be bitter, it was they.

The McCanns met Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday last. Both in Britain and in Portugal, where the abduction took place, Church and State have been straining every sinew for them. The McCanns made a calculated decision to seek the highest possible media profile in the search for Madeleine, once they realised that Portuguese detectives were inhibited by Portuguese law - and hampered perhaps by the fact that child abduction is a rare crime in their country - from making the sort of public appeal that a British police force would have quickly resorted to. But it is not an easy choice. The constant spotlight on the case could conceivably be deterring whoever holds the child from returning her.

What the McCanns are implicitly saying, however, is enormously important - that this child's life is, quite literally, infinitely precious. No amount of effort to recover her safe and well would be too much. This itself is an act of faith, for Madeleine's value as a person comes from God, not from any sentimental reckoning that she is amusing, pretty or sweet - which she clearly is, abundantly. Indeed, the stoical unsentimentality of the McCanns is striking. Swept by powerful emotions, they are relying on something deeper to hold themselves together. The spectacle of such suffering is hard to watch, but their courage and endurance, impossible not to admire.

And as they signal the infinite value of one small human being, they are met by an answering intuition from the community at large that this is right: Madeleine does matter, more than anyone could possibly say. In that way she therefore stands for abducted children everywhere, recovered or lost; and for every child who suffers from the misdeeds of adults, be they victims of isolated crime, or injured, killed or orphaned as a result of armed conflict all over the globe. There is no rationing of compassion, no place for the calculation that the outpouring of concern and love for Madeleine McCann has somehow been taken away from some other child in need. It is an extraordinary paradox, inexplicable without faith in God, that the appallingly wicked act of stealing her from her parents has increased the amount of good in the world.

-The Tablet, June 2, 2007.

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