Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Jackie and Annie Nee, (Anniv).
11.00: Sheila Morgan, (Anniv).
6.30: Jack Melvin, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Osama Bin Laden. Remember him? He's the one who master-minded the September 11th atrocities in the States. Since that date in 2001, he has teased his tormentors in the west with over 60 video and audiotape messages.

In the process he has managed to present himself to his own downtrodden people as a latter-day Robin Hood, 'feared by the bad, loved by the good.' The U.S. government hadn't had a solid lead on him since the winter of 2001. Although there are informed hypotheses that today he is in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province on the Afghan border, this is essentially an educated guess, not "actionable" intelligence.

Unless he's dead, he must be sitting in his hide-out watching his television screen with a huge smile on his face.

Consider what he has already achieved. He shattered the unity of the United Nations, caused a split in the European Union, contrived to have the most powerful military machine in the world unleashed against his old enemy Saddam Hussein, and brought an already overheated Middle East to boiling point. He sent the stock markets spiralling and caused endless terrorist scares throughout the world. And the mayhem continues. For example, the attempted bombing of the U.S. bound plane last Christmas Day by Al-Qaeda was warmly praised by Bin Laden.

How did what started as a campaign to extirpate a terrorist organisation end up in a full-scale war? We should look for clues, not in textbooks on war, but in the biblical insights into the nature of evil. I don't for one moment subscribe to a fundamentalism that would promote a righteous crusade against 'an evil empire'. As Jesus makes plain, there is no 'them' and 'us' where evil is concerned. He used the term for something more subtle than plain wickedness - a warping factor which distorts even our best intentions.

Consequently, our idealism is corrupted by pride and our errors are magnified by arrogance. Thus, leaving aside the psychopathic element in terrorism, Bin Laden has been able to exploit the justified anger of a constituency of 'have nots'. He incited them to believe they are entitled to take by violence what they will never be given as their right. In this whole process, another biblical truth has been borne out: overwhelming power will always over-reach itself and the innocent will suffer.

Under President Obama, the discussion has turned to what will happen when this war is over. Jesus told a story on this very theme illustrating the way evil works, and even though the imagery is quaint and perhaps outmoded, it's highly topical. He said that a devil was driven out of a house, which was then left clean-swept but empty, whereupon seven other devils took up residence there, so that it ended in a worse state than it began.

If the power vacuum created by driving one devil out of Iraq is filled by seven others, ranging from colonialism to extreme fundamentalism, then Bin Laden will have something else to smile about. Contrary to George Bush's contention, it's a complex world indeed!

-Dick Lyng

Items of Great Interest

"Quotable Quotes...."

A PASSIVE LAITY

The single outstanding feature of American Catholicism is that people expect to have a say in the shape of their own Church. The Church is not something simply given from above, to be put on like a suit of clothes. The Church is created and re-created among us, as if we were constantly refashioning the clothes handed down to us, altering them so that they fit a changing body, and even adapting here and there to new fashions. But this cannot happen effectively if the process of orchestrating change is not conducted intentionally and in the open, with voice for all. The initiative for democratization of the Church begins in the local parish, and the single biggest obstacle to its success is not the intransigence of the clergy but the passivity of the laity. Here is where people and their pastors will have to negotiate their way around the obstructions to full voice, but it cannot happen if it is only the vocal few who show any interest. Nothing will change if the minimalism that has so affected lay life for centuries does not come to an end.

PAUL LAKELAND,
Church, (Minnesota, Liturgical Press) page 165.

SUMMER FESTIVAL

We will celebrate our Mid Summer Festival on the last weekend of June (25-27). The Mid-Summer Liturgy, with contributions from St. Pat's First Communion class, will be held on Saturday evening at the 6.30 Mass. The Church of Ireland community will be invited to join us for all phases of the celebrations.

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