Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Christina O'Halloran; John Burke, (Anniv).
11.00: John & Margaret O'Mahoney, (Anniv).
6.30: Una & Michael Beatty, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

An opinion poll, conducted last year by Lansdowne Market Research, was published last week. It had been commissioned by an Irish Catholic-Evangelical group called 'The Iona Institute'. It involved a representative sample of 950 people nationwide. Church people and educationalists should find the results disturbing. Just a few of those findings will highlight just how disturbing those findings actually are:

The two institutions charged with passing on the faith in our society are of course (i) the family and, (ii) the school. The above findings would suggest that even the rudiments of the Christian faith are not being communicated today.

The Church has consistently held that the primary agent of faith transmission is the family. But, as a sociological unit, the family is not now as stable as it once was, obviously. And catechists the world over will hold that an unstable family unit is generally an unreliable agent for passing on the faith.

But the Irish family, specifically as 'a faith unit', is in some difficulty also. Even parents from the most stable and devout Christian families are swimming against a strong cultural tide in their efforts to pass on the faith.

What then of our schools? The Catholic Church always regarded the schools as 'auxiliary agents' in transmitting the faith. Not so long ago, you could confidently assume that parents and teachers shared the same religious convictions. This was not an unreal expectation, given that 90% of our 3,200 primary schools are still under the patronage of the Catholic Church.

However, in today's climate, I reckon that, in matters pertaining to religion, the common factor that would unite the greatest number of parents and teachers would be religious indifference.

However, from the various addresses to the two teachers' conferences over the last week, you would never guess that there was any problem in the area of religious knowledge. In fact, if you were to believe John Carr, secretary general of the INTO, you could be left with the impression that the insatiable hunger of the current crop of pupils for religious knowledge had exhausted the wellsprings of Catholic doctrine. This is how he reads the major problem:

We must face the reality that within the primary education system many of our schools give little or no formal knowledge or understanding of our relationships with some Christian and non-Christian religions. Children in many cases are not afforded the opportunity of exploring the beliefs and practices of other faiths and more.

This man obviously inhabits a parallel universe. There is little point in inviting kids to explore other religions if they have little or no idea of the contents of their own.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Good Counsel Triduum

Begins on Monday, April 23 Rosary, Sermon & Benediction Each Evening at 7.30

Preacher: Des Foley, OSA

Mass of the Feast on Thursday, April 26th

Novena Prayers from Tuesday April 17th at 11.00 Mass each day.

The Bigger Picture

More than 4,900 people die each day from waterborne illness; 90% are children under the age of five. Over 1.1 billion people worldwide (20% of the world population) must walk more than one kilometre to find water that is often unsafe to drink. Poor water and sanitation leads to illness, keeping children from school and parents from work, making access to improved water and sanitation the first step toward sustainable communities and the end of poverty.

Thought for The Day

In the street of 52 council houses in which I grew up, there was a man who sexually abused his adolescent daughter and who was imprisoned for the offence. His wife being dead, his children were looked after by relatives and he, after serving his time, came back to live in the same house.

There would be around 20 children in that street between the ages of eight and twelve. We all knew each other, and we all knew what the man had done, but none of our parents - whatever they may have said to each other - demonised him before us. He's a long time dead now, with no other offences to his name.

In the light of continual belligerence towards sex offenders, in no small way whipped up by the popular press, the resettlement of such a criminal in my hometown must seem grossly naive.

But then, everybody knew him and that diminished any threat he posed. Besides, people then as now were aware that the vast majority of offences against children are committed by relatives, though we have yet to see major newspaper campaigns warning mothers against the paedophilic potential in their brothers-in-law.

I would not be surprised if some of the most strident voices who want sex offenders continually named and shamed after their prison sentence might belong to people, men especially, who protest loudly to detract from their own sense of guilt or temptation.

I say that because there is a similar though not parallel situation depicted in the story of Jesus kneeling beside a woman who was caught in the act of adultery and who - by the law of the day - was liable to be stoned to death.

Her accusers, all men brim-full of self-righteousness, were sadly discomfited when Jesus encouraged them to start the stoning, with the person who was guiltless to pitch the first boulder. They walked away, the eldest first. Was that because they were all adulterers. or because they knew within themselves the strength of allurement?

More than adulterers, paedophiles are high on the receiving end of society's opprobrium, partly because they are easy targets but also because parents rightly want to protect their children.

So, with regard to their reintegration into society, I find myself asking two questions. Firstly: does it make a community more secure if - in the name of safety - we cavalierly demonise and ostracise those who have served their time? And secondly: If we subscribe to a society whose obsession with sexuality is the leitmotif of adverts, chat shows, tabloids and satellite television, can we expect that suggestible people will never become perverse?

-John Bell, BBC4.

Changed Utterly

Madam,

All has changed, changed utterly.

Indeed, I can well envisage the day when an Ireland cricket team has a good innings (against England!) at Croke Park; when Gerry Adams makes his maiden speech in the House of Lords; and when Ian Paisley has a private audience with the Pope.

OK, so the notion that cricket might one day be played in Croke Park is a bit far-fetched; but stranger things have happened.

- Yours, etc,
PAUL DELANEY, Beacon Hill, Dalkey, Co Dublin.

(Letter to Irish Times, Friday April 13th, 2007)

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