Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) Michael & Anne Joyce, (Anniv).
11.00 Larry Carter & John Margetts, (Anniv).
6.30: Mick Folan, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

The American media is right now obsessed with the search for "Sarah Palin's God." This obsession is understandable. She was chosen as running mate by John McCain because of the predominance of what we call 'the religious right' in Republican party politics. If McCain is to be elected, he must attach himself to God's coat-tails and bring this sector onside. Sarah Palin is the means through which he hopes to achieve this.

With her, he has killed two birds with the one stone: achieved the all-important gender-balance, and solved his complicated religious problem with Pentecostals and Charismatics. Because, according to a recent survey, born-again Christians make up an astonishing 42% of the general American public. We are talking here about huge numbers, over 90 million adults, perhaps. (Compare that with 24% of the American public who are Catholic, 13% who are African American). You may not like these 'born againers', but you can't ignore them!

Sarah Palin's spiritual journey began in Idaho, where she was baptized as an infant in the Roman Catholic church. The family moved to Alaska when she was 2 months old, and several years later the family linked up with the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination. She opposes abortion and homosexuality, favours creationism and does not believe global warming is caused by carbon emissions. She now tends to shun the denominational label, choosing to attend independent churches in Alaska and calling herself 'a generic Christian'. But she remains connected to the Assemblies of God, addressing pastors' conferences and ministry students.

Shortly before being plucked from obscurity, she addressed the graduating class of students at her one-time church, Wasilla Assembly of God. In her speech she painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord. She exhorted them: "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

In interviews, Palin has already expressed a readiness to go to war with Russia, and a refusal, as she put it, to "second guess" Israel. What lies behind these positions? Does she see the United States as possessing transcendent virtue, other nations as more prone to evil? This is where the rest of the world needs to be wary. There is a strong strand in fundamentalist American Protestantism that believes God has given America a special and manifest destiny in world affairs - indeed that Americans are in a sense God's Chosen People. Hence there is no real distinction to be made between America's interests and God's interests. The merging of religion with nationalism is always dangerous. As vice president, she would be the proverbial heartbeat away from the top job. And McCain is now in his mid-seventies. A frightening thought indeed!

-Dick Lyng

Youth Pilgrimage Reminder

The Augustinian pilgrimage of young people (18-25 years) will leave Dublin for Italy on Sunday, October 26th, coinciding with the Halloween mid-term break. As you know, the young people have been involved in fundraising. A concert for these purposes will be held in the Augustinian at 8.30 this Saturday. Tickets for this (€10) will be available after the Vigil Mass on Saturday. The group had included six young people from Galway. Now however one person has found it necessary to withdraw from this pilgrimage. So there is (even at this late stage) a place available. If you would like to travel, please contact Fr. Niall Coghlan immediately.

The Second Hand God

"The second-hand God is the God that somebody else - school, Church, parents -has passed on to you. If it is never assimilated, if that God is never really met in your own heart, it will never be your God, but somebody else's God. Your prayer to such a God would tend to be routine and have very little heart in it. It is a performance, rather than an encounter."

-FRANK WALLACE, SJ

Cloistered Love

A broken hearted Italian man has mounted a vigil outside a convent at Montecassino Abbey after his ex-girlfriend joined the Franciscan nuns.

The UK Telegraph reports that Daniel Briatore, 21, has erected a banner on the Franciscan convent walls at Italy's Montecassino Abbey, south of Rome, in the hope his childhood sweetheart, Patrizia Lorena Masoero, will return to him. "I didn't want to take you away, just talk to you, because I love you," it read.

The lifeguard travelled almost 400km from Alassio to set up camp outside the convent after Ms Masoero, 21, dumped him a month ago. Mr Briatore, who had been in a relationship with Ms Masoero since they were teenagers, said he would do "whatever it takes", according to locals and reporters who have joined him in his mission.

But a nun from the convent was not so supportive. "Our sister has chosen the path she wants, there is no point in him staying here," she was quoted as saying. The nuns took Briatore's banner down but he said he will do "whatever it takes" to get her back, boosted by local villagers who are all said to be backing him.

"God and Politics in Quotes..."

Absence

On my own I swore I'd settle calmly down:
Hours later, plans threadbare, my mind hovers
Uneasily; again I wander the evening town,
My aloneness grazed by each pair of passing lovers.

Halved, my life is now unreal, as though,
Rootless, the everyday events are tossed
Around in uncompleted reverie; in midflow
You left a sentence, the conversation's theme is lost.

We too have myths, symbols, a world of our own,
A universe of tangled memories, hopes and schemes;
Counterpoised within that dovetailed zone,
We share our chosen take-for-granted dreams.

Without you, my love, too many thoughts unspoken,
Words are babble, a sacred thread is broken.

-Micheal O'Saidhail.

Top

Valid HTML 4.01 Strict