Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30 (Vigil) Joan Kelly (nee O'Sullivan), (Anniv).
11.00 Agnes Margetts & Betty Creasa, (Anniv).
6.30: John Roache, (Anniv)

As I Was Saying...

The inauguration of President Barack Obama on Tuesday last was as much an historic watershed as the election of Karl Wojtyla as Pope, the end of apartheid, the fall of the Soviet Union, with its incarcerating symbol the Berlin Wall, or the signing of our own Good Friday Agreement. Not one of these events could have been foreseen five years prior to their happening. All five events were pleasant 'historic surprises', inspiring optimism and hope concerning the possibility of future human progress.

Obama's inauguration was greeted with euphoria. The intense excitement of the occasion was palpable, even in the armchair! However, there was the odd dissenting voice. An Irish journalist took President Obama to task for an over-use of 'the God stuff' in his speech! 'It could well have been George Bush there' he said. Now, I don't think it could, but I do understand what the journalist meant.

I've never heard an Irish politician conclude a speech with "God bless Ireland". Nor would I want to. Rightly or wrongly, my Catholic reticence recoils from such public 'evangelical' declarations. In our own culture, talking about God in public is as comfortable as discussing an embarrassing aunt as she eavesdrops on the conversation!

Yet "God bless America" comes as naturally from the lips of Barack Obama as it did from George Bush. And they really mean it! No one "does God" better than America. Received wisdom has it that religious indifference travels in the slip-stream of wealth. America is the "Great Exception." The story of their country, as they tell it to themselves, is everywhere explicit in its acknowledgement of God, including the Almighty's contribution to the defeat of the British in the War of Independence!

Up to last Tuesday, that American story (or dream) was the exclusive property of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS). Now a Black President, and indeed a Catholic Vice- President, have asserted ownership of the same story - complete with its implicit claim to a special relationship with God, somewhat akin to that of the ancient Israelites.

But what about the separation of church and state? It would be truer to say that rather than separating church and state they have been fused into one. Americanism is the official belief system, in effect the state ideology. In America you render under God by rendering unto Caesar.

America's wealth and creativity surely owe a great deal to its unifying sense of purpose as "One Nation Under God." In his inaugural speech, President Obama, like a modern Moses, chided his predecessor, as explicitly as decency permitted, for leading the flock astray; he told his fellow citizens that they were now paying a high price for poor leadership. They must reform and return to the true path at once! In a culture still soaked in Biblical imagery, that had enormous appeal. We may cringe at the theology. But we can still envy and admire the energy and optimism that the very idea imparts.

-Dick Lyng

Local Happenings

ON KICKING THE WALL IN SALTHILL

I wonder why they kick the wall in Salthill
are they trying to get the tap to talk
when they turn their walk
and parade back down the promenade?
I sometimes think its sad to see them
beating the bounds so boldly
with their boots -
I could be in cahoots
with a bold babe from Brighton
we could steal out to Rossaveal on Sunday
and sell sea shells for sport
we could go to Gort or cavort in Clifden
and be beating out to Bearna on the bus -
I curse the clock and take stock of the situation
I strike the shine off a number nine
and lump back down to Leisureland,
laughing loudly in my loneliness.

© -Patrick Carton.

"Presidential Quotes"

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