Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Peter & Bridie Berry; Tierneys & Lydons, (Anniv).
11.00 Thomas Lenihan, Bowling Green, (Anniv).
6.30: Nora & Michael Finneran, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

For a number of reasons, the Irish Church is weak on leadership at the moment. Perhaps never before was the institution so centralised. Never was Rome so obsessed with control. This cripples the local bishops, reducing them to mere acolytes.

Dr. Enda McDonagh, overlooked not once, but twice for the Tuam mitre, speaks about his 'being snubbed' with a mixture of fatigue and relief. When pressed on the matter he responds that he is relatively untroubled by it. "I had no sense of disappointment because (a) I knew I wouldn't be appointed, (b) I had a lot of interesting things to do, and (c) I didn't think I'd be any good at it." What he says next goes to the heart of the problem facing leaders in the Irish Church today: "It's an awful tough business [being a bishop] and you're trapped in a way that I'm not. Apart from being able to travel a lot, I can say things that may or not may not be helpful but that I think are true, that would be much more difficult for a bishop to say, I think. Of course, that's a stricture they impose on themselves."

This paralysis is, according to McDonagh, self-inflicted. Bishops see themselves as being encased in a strait-jacket. But, as we saw this week, problems of leadership are not confined to the Church. Our politicians are similarly paralysed, and the Pope is not sitting on their shoulders! The images of 'headless chickens' and 'dazzled rabbits' alternated in my mind this week. There is a marked absence of leadership.

The word 'lead' comes from the Old English 'leadan', meaning 'to show the way'. Henry Kissinger suggested that a good leader 'takes people to a place they had not been to before.'

There has been a tendency in recent years to manage rather than to lead, to treat politics as business. Citizens are reduced as 'units of consumption' as leaders give way to economists. No matter how one defines leadership, it typically involves an element of vision. A vision provides direction to the influence process. A leader can have one or more visions of the future to aid them to move a group successfully towards this goal. But there is no point in having 'the vision thing' if the leader is unable to bring the group with him. Leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.

The sociologist Warren Bennis drew 12 interesting distinctions between Leaders and Managers. The distinctions are equally applicable to Church and to State:

Our politicians have abdicated, and ceded their authority to managers. We saw the results on our streets this week.

-Dick Lyng

Sacred Spaces

The Augustinian is quiet. A man sits on a chair. A woman prays, seeming agitated. This church is neither Old Testament, nor enslaved to the functional. White statues, white altar, white faces of the little corner angel shaped like a capricious heart. This is sacred space, the trick of stone and geometry made light, drawing the eye upwards, through the arches poised elegantly along both sides, echoed in the high windows where the late evening is lined up, like so many packets of blue.

I go to the small side chapel. Our Lady of Good Counsel, drawn by a glint of gold, needing the luster of those remnants from an older church. I miss the candles, but I make my offering and make do with their poor electric shadows.

This alchemy is not, of course, purely architectural, but this is what Philip Larkin calls 'a serious house on serious earth' in his poem about an unbeliever's compulsion to seek out churches. Reading it brings a shock of recognition. The need for churches has not left us with the departure of both faith and. superstition. They were where people congregated, where communities worshipped and wept, where some still do.

They are what all good civic space should be - for everyone, of any creed and none. At a time when auctioneers call houses 'homes', when price replaced even the concept of value, we learned to accept houses that were devoid of charm, like some casual products of the union of bankers and developers, a marriage now on the rocks.

This church stands the test of time. Here, the tabernacle, the nave and the apse allow the idea of values beyond concrete. They legislate for the sacramantal. They provide little chapels of adoration, nooks and crannies of comfort in an age of nihilism and brutalist design:

Paul Walsh's stained glass windows fill with the cold intense light of approaching night. They have a wintery beauty, on this stark day. Glass is my favourite medium, the only art I saw as a child. I wait as the light drains from the glass, keeping as best I can, a silent vigil with my sister in Chicago. I am grateful for its vast spaces, towards the end of this hard bright day.

(From Mary O'Malley in The Galway Advertiser).

All Souls Night

The Great Escape

It would be churlish of us not to salute the Duggan brothers, Jimmy and Sean, on their recent brace of honorary Degrees, conferred this week in recognition of their contribution to hurling down the years.

This writer was invited to a certain hostelry in the city to mark the occasion. To dignify the night, I donned a Kilkenny cap, minted modestly to mark the recent record three-in-a-row. This earned me a reception from the Liam Mellows crowd that would be more accurately described as heated rather than warm! I sank two pints (of black and amber) rather hastily and was escorted from the premises by two bodyguards.

Congratulations to you both. It was an honour richly deserved. It was a great day, and a great night too!

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