Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil Mass) Nora & Martin Flaherty, (Anniv).
11.00: Monica Duggan & Gerry Glynn, (Anniv).
6.30: Clare O'Connor, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

The week gone by was dominated by bureaucratic bungling, ranging from the tragic, through the serious, to the farcical. As our world gets technologically more complex, the simple things go wrong. To paraphrase Albert Reynolds on the day he was forced to resign from office: 'You clear the major hurdles without difficulty. Then a little one will bring you crashing down.' How very true!

Take the case of the Four Courts, the nerve centre of our legal system. Two bags of mail are delivered there on Tuesday morning last. The letters would have included legal documents and court-imposed fines that had been sent to the District Court offices in the Four Courts, post for the High Court, the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court, all sent for processing in the Four Courts mailroom. So far, so good.

Along comes the bin-man who has specialist training in the shredding of legal documents of a sensitive nature. "The mail arrived at the same time as the contractor was taking off bags for shredding. The contractor took two bags by mistake," said the Court Services. He dumped the lot into an on-site industrial shredder! The incident was captured on CCTV. But every cloud has a silver lining: "There are no concerns that the mail has been lost" said a spokesperson helpfully, "It is clear from our CCTV images that all was shredded!" We haven't heard the end of this yet. We'll keep you posted!

If you thought we were bad, spare a thought for our bungling brethren on our offshore island. Three years ago, a senior civil servant from the Revenue and Customs Office in Britain thought it would be a great idea to gather the personal details of 25 million Britons together on one database. The information included the names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers and bank account details of every child benefit claimant in the country. All this information was downloaded to two CDs and placed in the post by a junior civil servant two months ago. They have not been seen since.

This blunder comes comes at a politically sensitive time; the British government is preparing to further centralize data as it prepares to introduce national ID cards next year. The total cost to the UK of identity fraud stands at £1.7bn a year. Identity theft has risen over five-fold, from 20,000 cases in 1999 to 137,000 in 2005. They can expect a major jump next year, thanks to the bunglers!

This matter goes beyond the material or financial. My identity belongs only to me. Steal it, and you hurt me, because just like everyone else, for better or for worse, I'm unique, a one-off. But what gives us our uniqueness, our true identity, is rooted in what makes us human - with our quirks and foibles, with our own ways of being ourselves, as we say.

But there's more, too. In Genesis' poetic picture of our beginnings, God creates not a race or a tribe, but two individuals. They get their identities because they bear something of his likeness. In their capacity to make choices, they reflect him. They make a mess of it, of course. But that divine image is never obliterated. It insists on bursting through in some of the unlikeliest of their children. If we hold fast to that central core of our selves, even the bungling bureaucrats will leave us unscathed.

-Dick Lyng

The Christmas Programme

Items of Interest

Brendan Kelly Moves On, and Up

Father Brendan Kelly was appointed Bishop of Achonry this week. Brendan was a regular visitor to St. Augustine's here. He followed our recent restorations with a supportive interest. Born near Loughrea in 1946, he was ordained by Bishop Browne in Galway Cathedral in June 1971. He spent most of his priestly life in education, divided between Coláiste Einde (1972-80), and Our Lady's College, Gort (1982-1995).

A fluent Irish speaker, he was appointed Parish Priest of Spiddal in 2003. There he lived a relatively tranquil life until Thursday morning last. Then, at about dawn, Big Men came knocking.....

Brendan will find the move a painful wrench, for a while at least. His life was Galway Diocese and he loved everything about it. His love of the Irish language made him 'a natural' in Spiddal. But if Brendan misses Galway Diocese, Galway Diocese will miss him even more. He made a wonderful contribution. Achonry has done very well.

Advent in St. Nicholas'

The Rev'd Patrick Towers insisted that I bring to your attention the following important set of notices:

THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH INVITES ALL AUGUSTINIANS TO JOIN US AT THE FOLLOWING:

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