Sunday Newsletter
Masses Today
6.30: Michael & Molly Forde, (Anniv).11.00 Tom Drinkwater, (Anniv).
6.30: Mary Concannon, (Anniv).
- Masses Sunday, January 27th: 6.30: Joan Lally (nee O'Sullivan); 11.00: Agnes Margetts; Betty Creasa; 6.30: Frank Duggan.
- MONTH'S MIND: The late Sid Geraghty's Month's Mind will be celebrated here on Saturday next, January 26th at 10.00am.
- COLLECTION: Last Sunday's collection: €1,199.00.
- CYSTIC FIBROSIS: The Galway branch will hold its annual Church Gate collection this weekend. This frightful disease afflicts 1,100 children and young adults in the country. You may be aware that it was the subject of much discussion on the radio during the week gone by.
- CHRISTMAS DUES: €15,800 came in so far in the Christmas Dues. (The Dribblers will dribble up to Easter, when both streams will converge and, consequently, be indistinguishable!) €15,800 is the largest sum ever contributed here in Dues. Thanks very much indeed!
- Steering Committee: We will hold our monthly meeting of the Steering Committee on Wednesday next, January 23rd at 7.30. Since this is our first meeting of the New Year, it is vital that a full panel be present! And just to remind you of that full panel once again: Peter Cunnane (Chair), Shauna O'Neill (Secretary), Cathal Cunninghan, Gerry Ferguson, Pádraig O Gormaile, Bernadette White, Micheál Hayes, Edward Jones, Pauline Staunton, Patricia Lally, Bridget Headon, Niall Coghlan, and Dick Lyng. Resident Friars are always welcome to attend, though as non-voting members.
- OFFICE REPAIRS: For those of you who weren't here last Sunday, the Priory Office is relocated in the Sacristy area for the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the regular location is being insulated.
As I Was Saying...
As I Was Saying... One hundred years ago this month, in January 1908, two American Protestants, Father Paul Wattson and Sister Lurana White, established 'Church Unity Octave' for the first time. So Church Unity Week has been marked to some degree every single year for the last hundred years. Obviously then, this year is an important milestone on the road.
1908 was a very unpromising time to send out such signals. Catholicism was then enduring a very severe winter under the authoritarian rule of Pius X. It really was not a time for close dancing, ecumenically speaking! 1907 had seen the publication of two notoriously reactionary Papal Encyclicals, 'Ne Temere' ("Not Rashly") and 'Pascendi' ("Feeding the Lord's Flock"). The former, for all practical purposes, made it impossible for Catholics and Protestants to marry; the latter condemned what it termed the 'Modernist Conspiracy' (including Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution') in very trenchant terms.
'Modernist' scholars had attempted to renew Catholic thinking by harnessing in the service of Catholic scholarship the insights of contemporary philosophers, biblical scholars and various natural scientists. The 'offending scholars' were working independently of each other. Consequently, a 'Modernists System' as such, or indeed a 'Modernist Conspiracy' was non-existent. If it existed at all, it was within the addled brain of the saintly Holy Father and his terrified coterie!
The temperature of the debate can be gleaned from the colour of the language used. Addressing the offenders he wrote:
Some among you, inflated like bladders with the spirit of vanity, strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the sense of the heavenly pages...to the philosophical teaching of the rationals, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science... these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines, make the head of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant.
It is not surprising then that Pius X would cast a cold eye on Church Unity. However, he had second thoughts a year later when the original pioneers, Fr. Paul and Sr. Lurana jumped ship to Rome! Reluctantly concluding that it couldn't be all bad, he promptly gave his blessing to the Church Unity Octave! By 1916, his successor had extended its observance to the universal church.
But the movement did not really take flight until the 1970s and the Vatican Council. John Paul II described the movement as 'irreversible'. A great deal was achieved in a short few decades. And the purpose of the above historical excursion is to demonstrate the Light Years we have actually travelled.
Yet we are still divided on matters of authority, and (though less so) doctrine. Women priests and gay bishops have ruffled some ecclesiastical feathers. But these are matters for the Generals rather than the foot-soldiers! These will not hinder a healthy relationship based on baptism, on charity, and on mutual respect. We must live that unity as fully as possible!
-Dick Lyng
November Questions
(i.m. my uncle, Pete O'Donohue, died 18th October, 1978)
Where did you go
when your eyes closed
and you were cloaked
in the ancient cold?
How did we seem,
huddled around
the hospital bed?
Did we loom as
figures do in dream?
As your skin drained,
became vellum,
a splinter of whitethorn
from your battle with a bush
in the Seangharraì
stood out in your thumb.
Did your new feet
take you beyond
to fields of Elysia
or did you come back
along Caherbeanna mountain
where every rock
knows your step?
Did you have to go
to a place unknown?
Were there friendly faces
to welcome you,
help you settle in?
Did you recognize anyone?
Did it take long
to lose
the web of scent,
the honey smell of old hay,
the whiff of wild mint
and the wet odour of the earth
you turned every spring?
Have you someone there
that you can talk to,
someone who is drawn
to the life you carry?
With your new eyes
can you see from within?
Is it we who seem
outside?
-John O'Donohue.
On being put in your proper place!
When I went as Parish Priest to Kilsheelan in County Tipperary, I renovated the sanctuary and did some general work on the Church building. People were pleased with the result and I had a pleasing sense of achievement.
One day I met a woman on the road. She praised me for the work; and I was happy in her affirmation. But the hard truth was yet to come: 'Father Hanrahan' (my predecessor), she said, 'wouldn't have been able for that work - he was too holy!'
The woman was right. Tom Hanrahan had been busy building up the spiritual sanctuary. It was indeed a higher form of achievement. And the woman knew it. It was a more difficult task than moving the ambo or the altar.
-Michael Olden, The Furrow, January 2008, Page 21.
The Past is Over
The past is over. That Church, as we know it in the past, is dying. The old ways are now ancient history and a new and different church has to be given life and energy in a new and different world. And all the pontificating bishops in the world, all the rabid refugees from the past egging them on, all the running around after relics and miracles and Marian visions, all the narrowness, insularism, triumphalism and smallness of vision, intellect and heart: all of that is simply helping to convince a new generation - educated, emancipated, tolerant, open and ultimately well-disposed to the authentic and the real - that religion is out of tune with the lives they live.
What an unspeakable tragedy. The great breadth of our Catholic tradition and the life-enhancing and life-enriching spirituality that goes with it is being shuffled to the margins of Irish life because we are caught in the binds of the past. And religion, which society badly needs to help carry morality into a new world, becomes no more than a faded black-and-white photograph from a distant past.
Something is dying and something is being born. What is dying is a mind-set that defines 'church' in one set of terms and can see no other. And that ensures that a new generation that refused to accept that mind-set will simply walk away from it. When will we ever learn?
Fr. Brendan Hoban, Pieces of my Mind.
Thank You Very Much...
Galway Diocesan Youth Services,
Tagaste House,
No. 4 St. Augustine St.,
Galway.
9th January, 2008
Dear Fr. Lyng,
On behalf of the Galway Youth Services, we would like to thank the Augustinian community and your congregations for the marvellous generosity shown to us through the Christmas 'Giving Tree' once again this year. Our people were most thankful and appreciative of the gifts received. Distribution of the gifts formed a central part of our Christmas Lunch at No. 4 on December 9th.
Thank you once again for remembering us, and we wish you and your congregations a very Happy New Year.
Yours sincerely,
Mary MacLynn
Mary Mernagh.