Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Philip Carberry, (Anniv).
11.00: Peg Tierney, (Anniv).
6.30: Thomas, Eileen & Valerie Healy, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

It is difficult to know the real person behind the political mask, or to discern what any politician stands for today. A whole web of Spin Doctors conspire to conceal the truth. Honesty about the 'public self' is essentially extinct. Political leaders present themselves as messiah-like celebrities.

Hence the stampede this week to hand back the 'political pensions'. Not because it was the right thing to do; but because failure to do so would have been political suicide. Perception is everything.

Politics is a cosmetic exercise in Britain too. While campaigning this week, Gordon Browne met a 65-year-old widow named Gillian Duffy who described herself as a Labour supporter. She complained about immigration from Eastern Europe, and spongers living on the dole. Mr Brown gave her a cheery greeting but subsequently, as he took refuge in his bulletproof car, he remarked wearily: "She is a bigoted woman. Who put me with that woman?" He didn't realise that his microphone was still alive and kicking!! Brown then rather sheepishly visited the Duffy home where he was permitted to grovel for an hour.

Perhaps this bears out the old definition of a gaffe as 'a politician telling the truth.' Or maybe it's just evidence that Gordon Brown can be grumpy or even human occasionally!

This is a major dilemma facing all politicians: saying what you want to say, or saying what they want to hear! But even in democracies where people are free to say what they want, some still seem afraid to do so.

If so, this is a spiritual as well as a political problem. We end up creating a system that favours people-pleasers who say things they don't really mean in order to gain power over those who really have something to say and mean it. Politics becomes a science of 'fatuous flattery'. Such a system ends up diluting substance and feeding us sound-bites. And by the time the words are filtered via the media, the gap between appearance and reality is often so distorted it's hard to discern what is true.

Woodie Guthrie once wrote a song with the lyric: 'Jesus Christ For President' but I doubt Jesus would do any better at the hustings. He tended to say provocative things to the wrong people at the wrong time; he hung out with people of little consequence, delivered a very off putting and baffling manifesto, and had a kind of anti-spin approach to public relations. And his campaign ended not in election to high office but in death.

And yet the man who turned down the offer of earthly power and who was despised and rejected by many, seems to have got his message through. He has more followers than any head of state. Millions of people can still quote his manifesto today and some even try and implement his policies. Jesus once said: 'Woe to you when all men think well of you.' Good advice perhaps for those politicians seeking popularity at the expense of character, power at the price of principle. Maybe: if you want your message to stick - say what you believe but don't expect people to love you for it.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Great Interest

CATHOLICISM: A GLOBAL VIEW

The Vatican published its Statistical Yearbook of the Church, with information on developments between 2000 to 2008. In that time, the world Catholic population has grown from 1.045 billion in 2000 to 1.166 billion in 2008, an increase of 11.54%. Numbers in Africa grew by 33%, in Europe they remained generally stable (an increase of 1.17%), while in Asia they increased by 15.61%, in Oceania by 11.39% and in America by 10.93%. As a percentage of the total population, European Catholics represented 26.8% in 2000 and 24.31% in 2008. In America and Oceania they have remained stable, and increased slightly in Asia.

The number of bishops in the world went up from 4,541 in 2000 to 5,002 in 2008, an increase of 10.15%.

The number of priests also increased slightly over this nine-year period, passing from 405,178 in 2000 to 409,166 in 2008, an overall rise of 0.98%. In Africa and Asia their numbers increased (respectively, by 33.1% and 23.8%); in the Americas they remained stable, while they fell by 7% in Europe and 4% in Oceania.

In global terms, those studying for the Priesthood increased from 110,583 in 2000 to more than 117,024 in 2008. In Africa and Asia their numbers went up, whereas Europe saw a reduction.

On May Morning

Now the bright morning Star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
Hail bounteous May that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

-John Milton.

Saints & Sinners

The church has known dark times: domination by emperors, co-optation by feudal militarism and modern colonialism, gangland struggles by Roman families for control of the papacy, coercion of heretics and wars of religion.

Still, we members of the church make pilgrimage together in hope that the church may be the visible expression in history of humanity's new life in Christ. To us Jesus is the embodiment of fullest humanity and the model of its most appealing morality.

Pope Benedict's planned visit on July 4 to the tomb of St. Celestine V, a hermit who was elected pope in 1294 and then resigned the papacy after 6 months, will hold up for view a penitent form of Christian life marked by meekness, prayer and self-sacrifice, close to the pattern of Jesus that Christians strive to imitate.

- National Catholic Weekly.

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