Sunday Newsletter
Masses Today
6.30: Eileen Kelly (Bowling Green), (Anniv).
11.00: Michael & Mgt. Mitchell, (Anniv).
6.30: Mgt. Lyons, (Month's Mind).
- Masses for next Sunday, July 18th: 6.30: Catherine & Joseph Kelly, (Bowling Green); 11.00: Cyril Duncan; 6.30: Martin Ryan.
- RECENT DEATH (1): Remember in your prayers the late Carmel Herterich, of Aughnacarra, Dangan Newcastle, who died this week. Reposing at Connelly's from 5.00 to 7.00 this Sunday evening. Leaving from there at 7.00 for the Augustinian. Her funeral Mass will be celebrated here at 11.00 on Monday. Burial afterwards to Rahoon cemetery. Carmel's husband George died in December 2008, while their only son George passed away four years previous, in December 2004. Carmel's life since then has not been easy. May she now rest in peace.
- RECENT DEATH (2): Pray also for Sean Beatty, whose funeral Mass was celebrated in Castlegar Church on Friday. Sean, who died suddenly, is survived by his six children, a brother and three sisters. His wife Phil died tragically in a traffic accident three years ago.
- COLLECTION: €1,211.00 was collected here last Sunday and forwarded to diocese as our annual contribution to Peter's Pence collection.
As I Was Saying...
Like the Summer swallow, the northern accent made its return here this weekend. The Derry 'lilt' was everywhere on Friday night as I walked the streets. Then the penny dropped! Monday is of course 'King Billy's Day', 'the Twelfth'. Ever since the 'Troubles' began, Northern Catholics have migrated south for 'the Twelfth,' wisely fleeing the nauseous bigotry so central to this Orange celebration. Now that 'the Troubles' have ended, should our tourist people worry? As the bigotry abates, will this lucrative exodus dry up? Will the Northern 'lilt' disappear from Galway as surely as the corncrake departed our cornfields?
You 'Bed & Breakfast' people must not despair. Just when we thought bigotry was dead in the water, the Reverend Ian Paisley stepped up to the plate and retrieved the situation. He condemned the papal invitation as a "mistake":
A person, like some of the priests we've had, destroying the lives of young people and then going out and saying I can forgive sins, it's only right that be called what it is. That is anti-Christ, in teaching and in doctrine.
For some peculiar reason, leopards and spots come to mind. In 1988, when Pope John Paul II visited the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, then an MEP, staged a protest, shouting, "I denounce you, Anti-Christ! I refuse you as Christ's enemy and Antichrist with all your false doctrine."
But this atavistic bigotry is by no means confined to a few Northern Irish troglodytes. (The first papal stop will be in Glasgow, Belfast's keen rival in the sectarian stakes!) There have been serious outbreaks of the virus on 'the mainland' as the papal visit looms. In fact, in some quarters, this anti-Catholic reflex is taken as a badge of sophisticated liberalism.
For example Channel 4 has to invite an implacable critic of the Catholic Church to present a 60- minute documentary about Pope Benedict on the eve of the papal visit. Peter Tatchell has been an outspoken campaigner on issues such as gay rights, racism and religion, having repeatedly described the Pope and the Catholic Church as "anti-gay" and "gay-hating". According to station spokesperson, Tatchell "will assess the effect of the current Pope's teachings throughout the world and the conflict between some of his values and those held by modern Britain." Can't you imagine what that will be!
English Catholics still shiver at the collective memory of stigma and exclusion. Did not Tony Blair wait until he left 10 Downing Street to become a Catholic?
The present Pope-bashing is just the old-fashioned anti- Catholicism recycled. When the children's author Philip Pullman said recently in 'The Guardian' that he hopes "the wretched Catholic Church will vanish entirely", even 'Guardian' readers regarded it as 'over the top'. The question was asked: would Pullman have uttered the same sentiment about Islam? Unlikely.
Before this papal visit transpires, we may yet hear Glaswegian accents on our streets!
-Dick Lyng
Items of Interest
- KNOCK SATURDAY: Saturday next, July 17th is the annual Augustinian pilgrimage to Knock. Traditionally, we hired a bus for this pilgrimage. But, in recent years, numbers availing of it have been very small, sometimes as few as four people! It's hard to justify hiring a bus for that number. So, if you wish to travel this year, make your own way! Knock is now very accessible. The programme is as follows: 2.30 -Anointing of the Sick. 3.00 -Concelebrated Mass followed by the Solemn Blessing of the Sick, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary Procession to the Shrine and the blessing of pious objects. Confessions continuously from 11.00 to 6.00 in the Chapel of Reconciliation
A Bishop Thinks Aloud...
I worked with the [South African] bishops' conference Justice and Peace Department for 17 years. After our political liberation in 1994, we discerned that political liberation in itself would have little relevance to the reality of the poor and marginalized unless it resulted in their economic emancipation. We therefore decided that a fundamental issue for post-1994 South Africa was economic justice.
After a great deal of discussion at all levels we issued a Pastoral Statement in 1999, which we entitled "Economic Justice in South Africa". Its primary focus was necessarily on the economy. Among other things, it dealt with each of the Catholic Social Teaching principles, and I give a quotation now from part of its treatment of subsidiarity:
The principle of subsidiarity protects the rights of individuals and groups in the face of the powerful, especially the state. It holds that those things which can be done or decided at a lower level of society should not be taken over by a higher level. As such, it reaffirms our right and our capacity to decide for ourselves how to organise our relationships and how to enter into agreements with others. ... We can and should take steps to encourage decision-making at lower levels of the economy, and to empower the greatest number of people to participate as fully as possible in economic life.
(Economic Justice in South Africa, page 14).
Applied to the church, the principle of subsidiarity requires of its leadership to actively promote and encourage participation, personal responsibility and effective engagement by everyone in terms of their particular calling and ministry in the church and world according to their opportunities and gifts.
However, I think that today we have a leadership in the church which actually undermines the very notion of subsidiarity; where the minutiae of church life and praxis "at the lower level" are subject to examination and authentication being given by the "higher level," in fact the highest level, e.g., the approval of liturgical language and texts. Here one of the key Vatican II principles, collegiality in decision-making, is virtually non-existent. The former Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König, wrote the following in 1999 -- almost 35 years after Vatican II: "In fact, however, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the curial authorities working in conjunction with the pope have appropriated the tasks of the episcopal college. It is they who now carry out almost all of them."
A mystique has surrounded the pope in the last 30 years. Any hint of questioning of his policies, his exercise of authority, is equated with disloyalty. Unquestioning obedience by the faithful to the pope is required and is taken as a sign of the ethos and fidelity of a true Catholic. The pope's authority is then intentionally extended to the Vatican curia. As a result, there is a real danger that unquestioning obedience to very human decisions by the curial departments and cardinals also becomes a mark of one's fidelity as a Catholic. Again, anything less is interpreted as being disloyal to the pope who is charged with steering the bark of Peter.
-Kevin Dowling, C.Ss.R (Redemptorist), is Catholic bishop of Rustenburg, South Africa.
Galway Art Club
Many of you will be familiar with the now annual Galway Art Club exhibition of paintings and sculpture at St Patrick's NS, Lombard Street. This usually consists of a most impressive number of paintings and exhibits ("Installations?"). This years event will be officially opened by Cllr. Terry O'Flaherty on Wednesday next, July 14th at 7.30. It will be open for visiting from 10.00 to 6.00 daily until Sunday 1st of August inclusive. Drop along and view the work of many local artists. All these paintings are very reasonably priced, and could be a good place to start your collection.
Holiday Quotes
- "A holiday should be just long enough that your boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you." -Anon.
- "Those that say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip." -Anon.
- "If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home." -James Michener
- "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." - Nelson Mandela
- "There is no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them." -Mark Twain.
- "I can't think of anything that excites a great sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything."-Bill Bryson.
- "Babies don't need a holiday but I still see them at the beach. I'll go over to them and say, 'What are you doing here, you've never worked a day in your life!'" - Stephen Wright.
- "A trip is what you take when you can't take anymore of what you've been taking. A holiday is different." - Adeline Ainsworth.
- "Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year." - David Allen