Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) Michael Flaherty (Flood St.), (Anniv).
11.00 Frank Kelly (Bowling Green), (Anniv).
6.30: Deceased members of the Conneely family.

As I Was Saying...

Torrential downpours, flash floods, rising rivers and resulting landslides have all featured prominently in our Summer experience this year. Croke Park found it necessary to provide some (aptly named) floodlighting on two successive Saturday afternoons!

The elements provided us with some dramatic images: powerful torrents sweeping motorcars under bridges, restaurants reduced to mud banks, people ferried from their submerged homes in boats, and - my personal favourite - a midlands farmer herding his swimming cows through flooded fields with the assistance of a jet-ski!

It all served to remind us of the sheer power of nature. There's something biblical in the imagery of rain water, so essential for life, becoming devastating and destructive. Those who've lost homes and livelihood know its ravages. And many of the rest of us will be watching the skies and reading the forecasts this weekend with some trepidation.

In the New Testament Jesus tells people that they are good at reading signs in the sky to assist them in forecasting the weather, but not good at 'interpreting the signs of the times.' It's curiously relevant to us. The weather forecasters have been deadly accurate, unfortunately. Floods they promised and floods they sent! But what's their interpretation? One householder in Newcastle, Limerick, had her own ideas: 'You think you've got mother nature tamed, but you haven't.'

Even scientific pundits have differed. For some, it's global warming. For others, it's the destruction of the water table; still others say it's just freak weather: extreme conditions occur everywhere and these happen to be here. For still others it's topography and drainage. For example, low-lying Carlow is especially vulnerable from a swollen river Barrow. Heavy rainfall makes flooding inevitable. People can do little to protect themselves.

There's nothing incompatible with putting freak weather, and vulnerable topography along with global warming. The UN Panel on Climate Change forecasts rapid and freak changes in weather as part of the big picture of global warming; swings from droughts to heavy storms, heat-waves to flash floods. They've also long argued that certain areas are more at risk than others, like Bangladesh, China, Egypt and islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans. These places are already becoming uninhabitable, with millions of people displaced as environmental refugees.

We have a moral responsibility for the state of things to come. Christian environmental groups have multiplied in the last ten years. These people hold that responsible care for the earth means we must always give creation the benefit of the doubt. Cutting carbon dioxide emissions may not settle the flooding problems for Carlow or Newcastle, but if we do it in time, it may save humanity from extinction.

-Dick Lyng

Church Cover-Up

Sometimes I get the impression that Holy Mother Church inhabits a sort of 'parallel universe'. In the 1940s John Charles McQuaid led a doughty campaign against mixed cycling. Our local bishop here caused a few ripples in the 1930s when he advocated separate bathing places for men and women.

Well, they haven't gone away, you know! The Archdiocese of Mexico has issued guidance on the levels of modesty expected from Catholic women. The directives, published this week, includes advice on ways to avoid sexual assault. Women should not wear "provocative clothing" or enter into "conversations or spicy jokes" with people of the opposite sex.

"If you want to avoid a sexual assault... Do not use provocative clothing... Care for your eyes and your gestures... Do not stay alone with a man, albeit [one known to you]... Brook no talks or spicy jokes..." said the priest, Sergio del Roman, in a document to be used as preparatory material before the VI World Meeting of Families to be held in Mexico in January 2009.

The priest believes that "fashion" is a synonym for displaying the body and thinks that the "free use of fashion and comfortable clothing" allows women to be sex objects for men around them.

Congratulations!

Gemma Anne McFadden, 'Premoli', Williamsgate St., and Mark Kililea, Taylor's Hill, were married in St. Augustine's Church on Saturday. 250 guests packed into the Church here and a wonderful time was had by all. We wish you both health, happiness and a long life together.

"Quote ...Unquote..."

Theology for All

The Dominican Priory Institute in Tallaght is now offering a programme of theology. It can be done from home and at your own pace. Following the method of The Open University, the programme is made up of fifteen-week sessions, attractively printed in boxed format. And it can be done simply for the interest, or for academic attainment, either certificate, diploma or degree.

What kind of ground is covered? Basics in philosophy, spirituality, the Bible, and theology, leading on to sessions on history, moral issues, other religions and society - all treated in what we like to call 'the Dominican tradition', that is, with critical and rational reflection on all the areas of human life and faith.

If interested, please contact The Priory Institute Tallaght Village Dublin 24, or 01-4048124 or enquiries@prioryinstitute.com www.prioryinstitute.com

Mercy Secondary School

School begins for classes and year groups as follows:

Wednesday 27th @ 9.00am: First Years.

Thursday 28th @ 9.00am: Leaving Cert & Junior Cert.

Friday 29th @ 9.00am: All Students.

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