Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Nellie Carter, (Anniv).
11.00 Richard & Jeanne Byrne, (Anniv).
6.30: Sheila Keane, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Matt Cooper interviewed an Augustinian priest on radio. (I will not name him for fear it might damage further his faltering career.) The topic was a rather broad one: "Catholicism as experienced by a pastorally active priest in Ireland today."

"What", asked Cooper, "was the most bizarre pastoral situation you ever came across?" Father had to think long and hard, not, one suspects, for reasons of scarcity but, rather, for reasons of abundance! He gave a few examples, all of which centred on the ceremony of baptism. He had arranged to do a baptism one Saturday afternoon. The baptismal party of about fifty duly assembled. A central figure appeared to be 'a lady of uncertain age,' wrapped a long loud robe, wielding a wand in her hand, and sporting a tiara. She was obviously dressed for a part! When Father politely inquired as to what this part might be, she responded with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm, "But I am her fairy godmother!"

His second story was similar. However, this time he was dealing with a multiple baptism ceremony. As often happens in busy parishes, five babies were being baptised together in the one ceremony. The celebrant begins the ceremony as follows: "Dear parents and godparents, do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?" The answer of course is, "I do". However, in this instance, one of the godfathers, presumably moved by a spirit, broke rank and piped up: "I understand it but I don't believe a word of it!" Then, obviously emboldened by his own words, and gesturing to the entire group, he added: "And not one of these believe it either!"

The gauntlet was thrown down. "Did you go ahead with the ceremony?" asked Cooper. "Oh yes," said Father. "I had no option. It was a multiple baptism." Sorting the goats from the sheep must await a more opportune, happier day, obviously!

Inevitably, I suppose, the discussion turned to exploring the criteria used by parents for selecting godparents. One panelist stated that the ideal godmother would be unmarried, childless, and reasonably well-heeled. Only such a woman would be in a suitable position to address the material and emotional demands of the onerous role. She was speaking from personal experience, she claimed. That's why she was chosen. However, she did confess to some irrational guilt-pangs, inexplicably sparked off by her robust agnosticism!

Her scruples are supported by The New Catechism: "For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents's help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptised - child or adult - on the road of the Christian life. Their task is truly an ecclesial function." {#1255} It seems that no sacramental role is visualised for the fairy godmother! But there is nothing in the Catechism to prevent her coming into her own in the hotel later!

-Dick Lyng

A Lapsed Agnostic Reflects...

Perhaps the most unhelpful, if not damaging, word in Irish political discourse in my lifetime has been the word 'moral'. Time and again, we have engaged in discussions about whether or not we should go the 'modern' way or the 'moral' way, when really we should have been talking about what was useful. It has often struck me, for example, that debates about the 'liberal agenda' have been won, not on objective merits, but largely on the back of a neurotic reaction against Catholicism.

Because the counter arguments originated in Catholic traditionalism, it was easy to present the liberal agenda as representing some more modern, progressive and beneficially liberating option. At issue, we came to believe, was whether or not we wanted a bunch of misanthropic, dandruffed old men to continue dictating how we should live our lives. During the divorce referendums, for example, the discussion became embroiled in the 'moral' dimensions of marital break-up, when really the focus needed to be on the functionality of a society in which divorce was available. The debate was therefore dominated by false opposites: church teaching versus personal rights and 'compassion'. A more useful discussion would have been defined by a different set of opposites: personal rights versus a concept of collective rights centred on the idea that, though ostensibly individuated, human beings achieve autonomy in harmony with their society or not at all.

Most of us no longer hear this language of 'morality' as we did a generation ago. Then, we were inside the tent of whatever logic pertained; now, most of us are outside. In Ireland the relationship of the general public to the Catholic Church and its personnel is ambivalent at best, and increasingly hostile in the main. Today, when an Irish Catholic hears a priest complain about the dangers of a general loss of morality or faith, he or she hears only a self-interested lamentation or an admonition of the ebbing tide. When the speaker makes a connection between godlessness and public decadence, moral blackmail is suspected: reject the Church and you will rue the day! Those still inside the tent nod sanctimoniously and cast their eyes upwards; the rest shrug complacently, sensing the dismay of a cleric at the decline of his business. The general neurosis and sense of resentment about the Church leads people either to reject the message or apprehend its delivery in a way that discounts the cost of disbelief to the disbelieving. We hear in any attempt to invoke religious or spiritual values, or warn of the consequences of their decline, only the vested interest of a vanquished institution seeking to bring us back to our knees.

That we are brought to our knees in manifold other ways (not least by drink at two in the morning) is treated as the inevitable collateral damage of 'progress' or as a dissociated phenomenon of ambiguous meaning. Our dominant sense is not that we have lost control of ourselves, which might strike us as bad, but that 'They' had lost control of us, which seemed to us to be good. There exists no neutral voice to assert that the problem is perhaps that we have sought to gain excessive control of ourselves, that, in banishing God from his throne, we have burdened ourselves with more than we can handle.

-John Waters, Lapsed Agnostic, (2007), P.180-181.

On Being Born at all

The Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services (AIMS) are holding a fundraising Film Premier of the new Ricke Lake (who he?) movie, 'The Business of Being Born', in the Menlo Hotel on Thursday 17th at 8.00. Tickets €20. A Panel Discussion on Maternity Care in the Region will follow. Requests for tickets to Breda Keane at 086 1276316.

The Trouble With Snowmen..

'The trouble with snowmen,'
Said my father one year
'They are no sooner made
Than they just disappear.

I'll build you a snowman
And I'll build it to last
Add sand and cement
And then have it cast.

And so every winter,'
He went on to explain
'You shall have a snowman
Be it sunshine or rain.'

And that snowman still stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an unmarked gravestone.

Staring up at the house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.

For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.

The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away.

-Roger McGough.

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