Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) Jeremiah & Mary Bridget Morkan, (Anniv).
11.00: Seamus Breathnach, (Anniv).
6.30: Sean Fahy, (Anniv)

As I Was Saying...

British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once famously remarked, 'A week is a long time in politics.' A year can be an eternity, as we discovered recently. On St. Patrick's Day 2008, Ireland was such a different place. Bertie Ahern was still impersonating 'The Teflon man' as he continued to dream aloud of 'a soft landing' for the economy, and for himself! Economically, we were still basking in the 5.3 percent growth rate of the previous year, 2007. While there were some straws in the wind, the dole queues were not yet noticeable. And, most important of all, the peace had been well and truly secured in the North, with the 'chuckle brothers', Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness still playing a blinder.

This St. Patrick's Day is so different. Financial skeletons had been toppling out of cupboards for some time. But the real shock to the Irish political system was the killing last week of three security personnel by the Real IRA. The two young soldiers were the first to be murdered since 1997. Two days later, a Catholic policeman, Stephen Carroll, was gunned down by the same organisation.

But these evil acts of opportunism have exposed some surprising and comforting facts. Real peace is far more resilient than hatred. The peace process will last because peace has already taken root in the hearts and lives of the multitudes. The atrocities have had the amazing effect of bringing Peter Robinson, arch-enemy of Republicans, and Martin McGuinness, former IRA commander, more closely together. They rarely appeared in public together before Tuesday last, when they stood shoulder to shoulder and appealed to citizens to deliver up the Republican dissidents: "We were elected to lead and, through the democratic institutions, to deliver for everyone throughout the community. We will not allow a tiny mindless minority to set our political agenda, or divert us." As Gordon Browne remarked the following day, "There is now a degree of unity in Northern Ireland that we could not have dreamt of ten years ago."

As we embark upon the annual celebration of our national patron, we are more conscious than ever of the fragility of all things: our Church, our political and economic institutions, but above all, life itself. The national psyche suffered its most horrific shock for twelve years with those brutal murders. St. Patrick's condemnation of the soldiers of Coroticus will have a greater resonance this year, unfortunately:

I do not know for whom I am to grieve more bitterly. Whether for those who were killed, or those whom the Devil has deeply ensnared. Let every God-fearing person know that murderers are strangers from me and from Christ my God, whose ambassador I am. They are murderers indeed, fierce wolves devouring the people of the Lord as they would devour bread. He who does not love his brother remains in death.

The great man's words have lost none of their bite in the intervening 1600 years. That is why we still remember him, and them. Long may it remain so. Despite everything, have a very happy feast day.

-Dick Lyng

HAPPENINGS

OSA Lenten Programme

Tues 24th March: Jesus and the Kingdom Metaphor and Meaning

Tues 7th April: Jesus and the Disciples The Way of the Cross

Various Lenten Offerings

CROI NUA

Wednesdays 8p.m.-10.p.m. March 18th - Dr. Helen Greally

DIOCESAN PASTORAL CENTRE

Monday, March 23rd: Mrs. Mary Trench, Tuam Diocese "My Faith Journey"

THE ABBEY CHURCH

Taize Gathering every Thursday during Lent from 8.00-9.00

THE 'NEW' IRISH CHURCH

Some Catholics believe that the universities in Ireland have become bastions of relativism, indifference and agnosticism, but I do not feel that I should shield the younger members of my Catholic flock from the atmosphere of any university. Faith must be nurtured and protected, but within real life. In today's world, a strong faith can only develop within the public square, in a challenging debate and dialogue with the realities of life and progress, with the physical and the human sciences, and indeed with the concrete realities and experiences of the individuals and the interactions of individuals who make up society.

The danger to the faith of young people in Ireland is due as much to the inadequacies of the Church's efforts at evangelising, as to the dominant atmosphere of university culture or Irish culture in general. Faith and religion have played an enormous role in the development of the identity of Ireland and the Irish. Ireland has and has had its currents of belief and good living, of faith and good works and generosity, of clericalism and anti-clericalism, as well as of intolerance, and religious small-mindedness. I am struck by the insecurity in the lives of some people that their religious formation has engendered, something I find hard to reconcile with the freedom Christian belief should bring.

When a particular form of faith becomes a dominant ideology, then it can deceive itself into believing that outward conformity means assent and commitment. It is simply conformity which can at any moment easily explode into aggressive rejection.

I am at times tempted to think that my task would be easier if we lived in a more secularised country, where there was no need to put on a type of religious veneer as a form of external social trapping. Would it be better if people would bring their child for baptism only as a true act of faith rather than as a social gesture? Would that not make it clearer to all what baptism and church membership were about? Curiously, much of secular Ireland is not yet ready to separate itself so definitively from religion. In reality there are various layers of faith and sense of belonging to the Church. The Church in Ireland is in transition to a new form of presence in Irish society.

-Dr. Diarmuid Martin.

Ecclesiastical Time Warp

A still feudal Church struggles to meet the modern world as the modern world merges with post-modern currents of thought that threaten religious belief as we know it. We may not have reason to be afraid, but we have abundant reason to be anxious. And as history makes clear, where anxiety dwells, imagination shrivels, denial thrives, and control becomes obsessive. An anxious Church bureaucracy displays precisely these characteristics: denial, legalism, controlling power and fearfilled secrecy.

- Fr. Donald Cozzens, 'Sacred Silence', Page 6.

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