Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) Mary Hamilton, (Anniv).
11.00 Nellie Brennan, (Anniv).
6.30: Pascal Ayres, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

It has been a week of great performances. Harrington winning the PGA; swimmer Michael Phelps secured his record 6th straight Olympic Gold Medal. Michael Meehan's impeccable performance against Kerry; and, dare I mention it in this wounded city, Kilkenny's routing of Cork on Sunday last. The usual questions present themselves: is Harrington the greatest Irish sportsman ever? Is this Kilkenny team the finest ever? We saw other great performances with the Leaving Cert results this week. When compared with 1995, the numbers securing the perfect Leaving Cert (600 points) is up by 500 per cent, while the numbers getting 500 points or more is up by 125 per cent.

So what's going on? Have standards dropped? Or are they all on drugs? Of course not! We're just more clever today than we were in 1995! After all, when swimmer Michael Phelps secured his record 6th Olympic Gold Medal this week, did we conclude that water is more 'human-friendly' today? But does it mean that Mankind is getting bigger and better all the time? Why else would we dismiss ideas as medieval, if we weren't confidently superior to our forebears? The 19th century German philosopher Nietzsche maintained that Mankind is evolving towards a 'Super-species', (rather than 'Super-race): What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock and a painful embarrassment. And man as we know him today shall be just that to the future 'Superman': a laughing-stock and a painful embarrassment.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet! In some ways, we have made great progress. Medicine and physics have certainly improved. I'd much rather have a modern dentist digging at my teeth than an 18th century blacksmith.

But not all disciplines move on. Not many moderns are writing plays like Shakespeare. Likewise in musical circles: Bachs or Mozarts are thin on the ground today. These trends are echoed in education. The average essay submitted at University is of a lower standard to those my colleagues and I were doing for Master Curran in National School. Yet these kids would leave me for dead when it comes to science and technology.

And still we assume that we are continually improving.

CS Lewis called this 'chronological snobbery'. For example, we dismiss the miracles of Jesus saying, "they believed that sort of thing in those days". But rising from a tomb was no more likely then than now. If his hearers hadn't been openly sceptical, why would St Paul have referred them to 500 eyewitnesses, most still living at the time of writing? The first century needed as much evidence to believe the unbelievable as does the twenty first.

Yet the cardinal error is to condemn previous generations for failing to think (or to play) as we do. Weren't the Victorians stupid prudes? Shouldn't the 1947 team have hurled like the present one? Each generation is graced (and disgraced) in its own unique way. Nietzsche's Superman died in the bunker with Hitler. Inter-generational superiority is an illusion. Individual moral integrity is the only constant. Congratulations on all those A1's, by the way. Enjoy them thoroughly, exploit them fully, but don't take them too seriously.

-Dick Lyng

MARRIAGES IN ST AUGUSTINE'S CHURCH:

Marriages in St. Augustine's have increased noticeably in recent times. Seven happy couples (well, relatively!) will tie the knot here during August alone. Walking the plank on Friday last were Vanessa O'Toole from Headford and Graham Agnew from Melbourne, Australia. The couple plan to settle down here in Galway. We wish you both a long life together and every happiness.

The Cure of Troy

(Chorus)

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

T

he innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

-Seamus Heaney

Weasel Words

Italian animal rights activists have appealed to Pope Benedict XVI to help "save the ermine" by asking him to refrain from wearing clothing trimmed with the animal's fur. The ermine (vermin?) is a small mammal also known as the stoat or short-tailed weasel.

"Arent there more important battles to be fought?" asked an annoyed Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo. "It's fine to defend the ermine, but there are human beings whose well-being warrants priority and yet no-one seems to care," the cardinal told Milan-based daily Corriere dell Sera.

Animal Rights Activists aim to collect 10,000 signatures by September 30. They reached 2,235 this week. Campaign leader, Lorenzo Croce, fired off a 'finger-wagging' theological tract to Benedict on Tuesday last, asking the pontiff to engage in "an act of charity towards animals, creatures of God." Croce said he was hoping to receive a positive response, given that the pontiff's love of cats was well known, as was his concern for environmental issues. (But is Signore Croce aware of the long history of animosity that exists between cats and weasels?)

Benedict has a renowned penchant for white ermine-lined cloaks and similarly adorned hats, following the time-honoured policy of 'keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer still!'

Persistence of Religion

Don't expect real reform in the Catholic Church until the Roman curia is brought under control of local bishops. Vatican II was the most successful reform council in Catholic history-until the world's bishops left Rome and the curia took control again. Now we hear that the council didn't change a thing but was merely an exercise in continuity.

Unfortunately, the leadership that should have guided the energies released by the council elected to suppress them, and the Spirit has been forced to rely on the lower clergy and the laity to restructure the church. None of us will live to see an authentic post-Vatican II church emerge. But emerge it will in God's good time.

Easter and Christmas attendance has replaced Sunday Mass as an identifying norm of Catholic behaviour. Half our regular parish attendees show up in church a couple of times a month. The other half are enthusiastically present at the two major feast days. They don't believe that they will go to hell for all eternity for missing a Sunday Mass. If asked why they don't go more often, the answer is obvious: They don't get anything out of it. The sermons are terrible, the music is horrible, and it takes too long. Yet the Eucharist remains central to their lives.

This surely is a source of great hope for all who care deeply about the Catholic Church.

-Fr. Andrew Greally.

"Quote ...Unquote..."

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