Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil): Gibbons family members, (RIP).
11.00: Kathleen, Nellie & Sylvester O'Sullivan; Margaret Higgins; (Anniv).
6.30: James Cogavin, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

I spent the last week closeted with eighty-five fellow Augustinians. We are called together every four years for a 'reality check'. The average age of the membership of the Irish Province is 65. Galway, by the way, has the youngest community in the country. And we are no 'Spring Chickens'!

A number of invited speakers addressed us, among them the journalist David Quinn. Quinn is regularly dismissed as an enthusiastic flag-bearer for 'right wing forces' in the Catholic Church, whatever that means. But the talk he gave to us was a very reasoned presentation, supported throughout by documented evidence. He had no problem accepting that Church membership was aging, and that vocations had all but disappeared. No research on that matter was required. The evidence was there in the room for all to see! This, he said, constitutes a serious crisis.

However, the crisis in the Church is is replicated in the general society. Quinn spoke of the crisis as a 'disconnection' or a 'crisis of commitment'. Political parties have the same problems as the Church. For example, over a 25-year period, the turnout in Irish general elections has dropped from 76 per cent in 1977 to about 63 per cent in 2002. In the recent general election, Northern Ireland was the only region within the UK to experience a drop in turnout. This 'withdrawal from participation' is seen exclusively among the younger cohort of the electorate.

If the voters are comparatively older than those of 25 years ago, the same is even more true of the candidates seeking election. The average candidate standing for the Labour Party in the 2009 General Election here was 20 years older than their 1977 predecessors! Priests are not the only ones getting older!

This 'disconnection' extends to all institutions, including marriage. There is a reluctance today to 'commit' to marriage. In 1989, the average marriage age for females was 24, and for males 27. Today the figures stand at 31 for females, and 33 for males. In the meantime, there has been a 400% increase in cohabitation. During that 25 years, there has been a 500% increase in marriage breakdown, from 40,000 1986 to 200,000 in the census of 2006.

For example, marriage, once regarded universally as a contract extending 'til death do us part' is now regarded as a vehicle for 'personal fulfillment'. If it fails to deliver on this score, it will be promptly abandoned, regardless of the enormous collateral damage involved. Perhaps we should now change the marriage vows to a more challenging format: "From this day forward, I vow to put your welfare before my own."

Previously, the collective will of the group dominated, producing a compliant, relatively passive society. Today we have moved to a society where individualism is accepted as both the the norm and the goal. The positive side of this development is the priority it gives to personal freedom. The negative side is the low value it sets on the ethic of commitment. Putting the self at the service of others is hardly understood today. Hence celibacy is seen as anti-sexual and repressive. However, according to most psychologists, whether secular or religious, the principal source of human happiness is found in "commitments well chosen and well lived". That surely is good news!

-Dick Lyng

Bishop sets Senator Straight

Senator Joe O'Toole recently praised Mary O'Rourke's unwavering support for the implementation of the "Stay Safe" programme in schools when she was Minister for Education. He told the Seanad that she held her ground in the face of strong opposition from right-wing Catholic interests.

We were so taken by Joe's passionate words about Mary we reported them in this column three weeks ago.

He told the Seanad: "Around that time I attended the funeral of one of her parents - I believe it was her mother - and I remember noticing afterwards that there was no bishop at the funeral of the mother of a minister. I found that interesting, but the Lenihans were never afraid of taking on the crozier. And they deserve credit for that."

But O'Toole's recollection of that event - which is now on the official Seanad record - came as news to Bishop John Kirby, who nearly choked on his kipper when he read his Irish Times. Bemused by Joe's "somewhat deficient" powers of observation, he writes to put the record straight, rather than administer a belt of the crozier.

"I attended that funeral as a bishop and presided at the Mass in full episcopal gear!" he tells us. "I was there, not because of Mary O'Rourke or Brian Lenihan or their ministerial offices, but because Mrs Lenihan played bridge with my own late mother, occasionally as partners."

Should have gone to Specsavers, Senator.

-Miriam Lord,The Irish Times, June 20, 2009.

SUMMER FESTIVAL, 2009

ODE TO AUTUMN

[An Extract]

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

-John Keats.

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