Sunday Newsletter
Masses Today
6.30: Oliver Deehan, (Anniv).
11.00: Billy O'Connell, (Anniv).
6.30: Patrick & Bridie Harlowe, (Anniv).
- Masses for next Sunday, May 16th: 6.30: John Tierney; 11.00: Patsy Simon; 6.30: Elizabeth Didsbury.
- COLLECTION: The collection last Sunday was €1,385.00. Thank you very much.
- RETREAT: The Parish Priest will be away in a monastic environment re-shaping his soul this week. Please do not touch!
As I Was Saying...
It has been a very strange week indeed. Or, at least I thought so! Back in 2004, one Patrick West, son of journalist Mary Kenny, wrote a brilliant little book called 'Conspicuous Compassion'. He was mindful in particular of the funeral of Princess Diana seven years previously. The book explores what he dubbed our 'mourning sickness', our culture of ostentatious grieving, and our compulsion to be seen to care. Since the death of Princess Diana in 1997, he claims, we have seen that today's "Three C's" have become 'Compassion, Caring and Crying in Public'.
Not only do we need to make a public show of mourning, but we need to express the overwhelming sorrow we feel at the death of people we never knew. West condemns the emotion as 'recreational grief'. It is indulged in as an enjoyable event, much like going to a football match or watching a play. It makes our blood race, our hearts pound and our pulse throb. Yet it is an emotion which passes in days. The death of any young, vibrant person is of course a legitimate reason for profound regret. But the obsession of the time is not the grief itself, but a determination to demonstrate publicly how intense that feeling is.
Conspicuous compassion is the product of our synthetic age. It is provoked in part by our preoccupation with celebrity and by our craving for uninhibited abandonment. It is no coincidence that much of the public sorrow is directed towards high-profile personalities from the world of entertainment.
When we think of medieval pilgrims flagellating themselves along the pilgrim way to Canterbury, we think of a practice which is beyond our modern comprehension. On the other hand, the 'grieving' day trippers who make their sorrowing way to the funerals of celebrities they never knew are not behaving much differently.
There are actually some people who need this emotional 'fix', those for whom a show of grief is like a tonic. It is these 'grief junkies' for whom we should feel most pity. Apparently they are prone to grieving in public precisely because they are lonely and unhappy in their private lives. They will use the deaths of celebrities to articulate their ongoing sadness, and to forge new social bonds with those similarly afflicted. They do not realise the true nature of authentic grief. They fail to understand that authentic sorrow is something felt rather than shown. Grief which is self-gratification is a denial of true feeling.
It is alarming to see displays of phony grieving that exploit dead strangers. A study conducted after the death of Diana reported on people who had previously been personally bereaved themselves, but who had received no sympathy from their friends. These same 'friends' were subsequently only too happy to cry in public over the death of the 'People's Princess'! The more remote the relationship, the greater the grief!
Grief is a private emotion about the loss of a close flesh-and-blood companion. It is not a display for public consumption, but something which is privately and intensely experienced. When that feeling stays inside us - rather than being exhibited for the world to see - we do most service to those whom we mourn. Phony grief, like counterfeit money, devalues the real thing, and indeed our common humanity.
-Dick Lyng
Items of Great Interest
- FIRST HOLY COMMUNION (1): For over two months now the Church here looked and sounded like a harmonious beehive every afternoon. The First Holy Communion class from St. Patrick's School were being put through their paces. Their 'Big Day' arrived yesterday. All 39 of them were like well-drilled angels during their wonderful Liturgy! It was so obvious that enormous work went into the preparations. Some evidence of that work still remains in the Church in the form of the exquisitely prepared art work. The teachers, Fiona Molloy, Riona O'Connor, Hildegarde Naughton, and Noel Cunningham, School Principal, have every reason to be very proud of the protégées. Well done to everyone involved.
- FIRST HOLY COMMUNION (2): We have our own three little angels from our Children's Liturgy Group at the 11.00 Mass making their First Holy Communion at different times this year. Jack Owens, who who had his celebration yesterday, was very well prepared indeed. (He had his very long speech prepared even last Sunday). Roisin McGrath, that red-haired little demon, celebrates on Saturday next and little Becky Byrne's Big Day the the following Saturday, May 22nd. (Incidentally the picture above is not Roisin McGrath, but a niece of the Parish Priest. She later developed a great love for photographers!) Have a lovely time!
Final Boarding Call for Lourdes
A final reminder that the Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes takes place this year from July 1-6. Full fare is €725. Special accommodation and support is available to people with special needs at the special price of €585. Early booking is advisable. Information from Fr. Martin Moran at 091-550106. Reservations to Fahy Travel, Bridge Street at 091-594744. We can take one person for free -two actually, but don't tell anyone! Is there any person who has not the means to travel, but you would like to see going? If so, come forward and discuss the matter with one of the priests here. But make a move on it soon.
"Wife Wanted"
Back in 1920, a 43 year old German man was getting desperate that he had not met the right woman, so he placed an advertisement in the newspapers. Although a policeman, he worded the advertisement as follows:
"Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, immaculate past, from the country, is looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well, tackle all household chores, with a talent for sewing and homemaking with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Fortune desirable, but not a precondition."
A woman named Maria Peintner answered the ad. She was 36 years old, a trained cook, and had been born "out of wedlock."
While carrying her, her mother whom it is suggested was also born out of wedlock, spent some time in a home for pregnant girls. She later married a baker named Rieger with whom she had five more daughters.
Maria did not have a fortune, but even so, they married four months later. In spite of their somewhat advanced years they had three children - two boys and a girl. The youngest child received the same name as his father: Joseph Ratzinger. He is better known today as Pope Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Speaks Out
The Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, launched an attack on Cardinal Angelo Sodano, top ranking Vatican figure and dean of the College of Cardinals, this week. He said Sodano "deeply wronged" the victims of sexual abuse when he dismissed media reports of the scandal as "mere gossip". He also said the Roman Curia was "urgently in need of reform", and that lasting gay relationships deserved respect. He reiterated his view that the Church needs to reconsider its position on re-married divorcees.
Cardinal Schönborn said that Pope Benedict was "gently" working on reforming the Curia but he had the whole world on his desk, and his way of working and his style of communication did not make it easy to advise him quickly from outside.
Questioned on the Church's attitude to homosexuals, the cardinal said: "We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships," adding: "A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous."
The cardinal also said the Church needed to reconsider its view of re-married divorcees "as many people don't even marry at all any longer".
The primary thing to consider should not be the sin, but people's striving to live according to the commandments, he said. Instead of a morality based on duty, we should work towards a morality based on happiness, he continued.
Cardinal Schönborn said clergy had often primarily protected perpetrators of abuse instead of the victims.
"It was said in the Church that we must be able to forgive, but that was a false understanding of compassion," the cardinal insisted. The Austrian Church has appointed an ever-increasing number of lay people, especially women, to investigate abuse cases. However this new openness on the part of the Church was not shared by everyone in the Vatican, he said.
Asked if he thought celibacy was one of the causes of clerical sex abuse, Cardinal Schönborn said he had no answer and psychotherapists were divided on the issue.
Asked how he would rate the Church's loss of credibility due to the abuse tsunami on a scale of 1 to 5, the cardinal said, "In Ireland the situation is catastrophic - almost a 5. In Austria it is dramatic - I'd say a 3."
The Vatican press spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, praised the Austrian Church for its openness in dealing with the clerical abuse crisis and told the Austrian daily Kurier on Monday that Cardinal Sodano's words at Easter were "certainly not the wisest".
-The Tablet, 8 May, 2010.