Week ending February 17th 2014
Forty years ago this month, on my twenty-eight birthday, I stepped out of my comfort zone and placed a one man picket on the CIE train and bus station in Galway. The ferry to the Aran Islands, the Naomh Éanna was run by CIE at the time and they had not sailed for a couple of days before that, despite the fact that the weather was not very bad. There had been a few storms earlier in the year that resembled some of those we have had this year, so nerves were a bit frayed with regard to cargo and supplies to Inis Oirr, the island in which I lived at the time. The neighbouring islands of Inis Mór and Inis Meáin already had Aer Arann plane services so we felt particularly isolated. It was February before I had an opportunity to have a “Christmas” break, so I was none too happy to find myself stranded on the mainland coming up to the weekend. The first person I met outside the Station was Mayo-man and Irish Times western correspondent, Michael Finlan. He arranged a photographer who pictured me in my hoodie oilskin in the rain, which led to a Parish Priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam referring to me as “Robin Hood” from then on.
I was reminded of this recently when I met a man who had come to the island the following week as part of a delegation from Gaeltarra Éireann sent out to map a place for an airstrip on the island. Bingo – the protest had worked beyond my wildest dreams. The man in question was about nineteen at the time and was on one of his first projects for the Government agency that preceded Údarás na Gaeltachta, the Gaeltacht Authority. Another of those involved, Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, who plays Peadar in the TG4 soap opera “Ros na Rún” has since spoken and written about the oilskin coat I gave him as he was getting into a currach to cross to Inis Meáin and fly home on the plane. As a veteran of that journey on many Sunday mornings between Masses I told him he would be wet through in his working clothes before he got to the other side. Saints such as Francis and Martin have seven hundred year old reputations for giving away their coats, but in their cases it was their only coat. I have to admit that it was my second-hand one, as I now had my hoodie as well.
Leaving the comfort zone and stepping into the unknown is never easy but it is often rewarding and it can help build up confidence and courage. My most recent step in that regard was to invite an atheist to preach at Mass during the Novena in Kilkerrin. Seosamh Ó Cuaig is a local Co Counciller and was an elected member of Údarás na Gaeltachta until their electoral mandate was discontinued by our present Government. In recent months he had texted me a number of times about his admiration for Pope Francis, as well as attaching articles about the Pope from internationally renowned newspapers. I asked him to speak about that at the Novena to Our lady of Perpetual Succour. There was a full house on one of the worst nights of the year. Both he and I were a little nervous about how his audience would react, but he got a round of applause, which is more than I have ever got in forty-three years as a preacher. I sometimes feel that my own church can feel under siege and think everyone who is not one of us is against us. It is not so. Some are neutral, others favourable, or as Jesus put it in the gospel of Saint Mark (9:40) “Anyone who is not against us is for us.”
I was reminded of this recently when I met a man who had come to the island the following week as part of a delegation from Gaeltarra Éireann sent out to map a place for an airstrip on the island. Bingo – the protest had worked beyond my wildest dreams. The man in question was about nineteen at the time and was on one of his first projects for the Government agency that preceded Údarás na Gaeltachta, the Gaeltacht Authority. Another of those involved, Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, who plays Peadar in the TG4 soap opera “Ros na Rún” has since spoken and written about the oilskin coat I gave him as he was getting into a currach to cross to Inis Meáin and fly home on the plane. As a veteran of that journey on many Sunday mornings between Masses I told him he would be wet through in his working clothes before he got to the other side. Saints such as Francis and Martin have seven hundred year old reputations for giving away their coats, but in their cases it was their only coat. I have to admit that it was my second-hand one, as I now had my hoodie as well.
Leaving the comfort zone and stepping into the unknown is never easy but it is often rewarding and it can help build up confidence and courage. My most recent step in that regard was to invite an atheist to preach at Mass during the Novena in Kilkerrin. Seosamh Ó Cuaig is a local Co Counciller and was an elected member of Údarás na Gaeltachta until their electoral mandate was discontinued by our present Government. In recent months he had texted me a number of times about his admiration for Pope Francis, as well as attaching articles about the Pope from internationally renowned newspapers. I asked him to speak about that at the Novena to Our lady of Perpetual Succour. There was a full house on one of the worst nights of the year. Both he and I were a little nervous about how his audience would react, but he got a round of applause, which is more than I have ever got in forty-three years as a preacher. I sometimes feel that my own church can feel under siege and think everyone who is not one of us is against us. It is not so. Some are neutral, others favourable, or as Jesus put it in the gospel of Saint Mark (9:40) “Anyone who is not against us is for us.”
Week ending February 11th 2014
I’m all for a pluralist society in which there would be room and welcome for the traditional “Catholic Protestant and Dissenter” as well as Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Secularist, Atheist, Agnostic and any other faith or lack of it we could mention. I would have no problem with having a holiday to mark the end of Ramadan, Yom Kippur or the anniversary of some great secular icon. What I would suggest we don’t need is a watering down of deeply held beliefs and traditions in case they would offend people of other faiths or none. I don’t think that people of other faiths would want that either. Let each take its own stand in the marketplace.
Faith festivals of all kinds bring much needed life and colour to people’s lives. One of the great failures of the communist revolutions of the last centuries was their inability to replicate that colour and excitement by army march-pasts and the display of gung-ho weaponry. What a dry and arid place the world would be without religious feasts and fiestas, Mardi Gras, Christmas, Easter, patterns in honour of local saints and the many Hindu and Muslim festivals held throughout the world. All the “Arthur’s Days” that could be invented would never replace such traditional revelry. I write this as someone that deserves a “Stout Medal” for celebrating Arthur’s Days long before they were invented.
The Christmas Message delivered recently by President Michael D Higgins drew a certain amount of criticism because it came across as an attempt to appease everyone and in fact offended quite a few who felt that Christ was being taken out of Christmas. I heard someone ask will we be celebrating “Happy Secular-mas” next year. While the President emphasised values common to all faiths and to humanism, his failure to make any mention of the origins of the feast was seen as part of a wishy-washy politically correct secular agenda of a kind increasingly associated in people’s minds with the Labour Party to which he belonged before his election. It is unfortunate for that Party that it is perceived as anti-Catholic when in fact many of its supporters are motivated by their faith.
The increasingly bullish attitude of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn towards religion teaching in National schools is likely to cost his Party dearly in local and European elections this year. It seems to have surprised and hurt the Minister that many more parents have not rushed to have Catholic schools divested. While even the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin conceded a few years ago that as many as fifty percent of schools could come under new patronage, the uptake from on-line surveys has seen little enough appetite for such changes. This may not have as much to do with religion as with leaving well enough alone. I suspect that it also has to do with the fact that not as many parents are online as civil servants think, or that many would be much more likely to fill a paper form than to go online. Either way the Minister seems to be looking for action before he is removed or reshuffled. There is nothing wrong with secularism as such, but nobody wants to have either religion or secularism shoved down their throats.
Faith festivals of all kinds bring much needed life and colour to people’s lives. One of the great failures of the communist revolutions of the last centuries was their inability to replicate that colour and excitement by army march-pasts and the display of gung-ho weaponry. What a dry and arid place the world would be without religious feasts and fiestas, Mardi Gras, Christmas, Easter, patterns in honour of local saints and the many Hindu and Muslim festivals held throughout the world. All the “Arthur’s Days” that could be invented would never replace such traditional revelry. I write this as someone that deserves a “Stout Medal” for celebrating Arthur’s Days long before they were invented.
The Christmas Message delivered recently by President Michael D Higgins drew a certain amount of criticism because it came across as an attempt to appease everyone and in fact offended quite a few who felt that Christ was being taken out of Christmas. I heard someone ask will we be celebrating “Happy Secular-mas” next year. While the President emphasised values common to all faiths and to humanism, his failure to make any mention of the origins of the feast was seen as part of a wishy-washy politically correct secular agenda of a kind increasingly associated in people’s minds with the Labour Party to which he belonged before his election. It is unfortunate for that Party that it is perceived as anti-Catholic when in fact many of its supporters are motivated by their faith.
The increasingly bullish attitude of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn towards religion teaching in National schools is likely to cost his Party dearly in local and European elections this year. It seems to have surprised and hurt the Minister that many more parents have not rushed to have Catholic schools divested. While even the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin conceded a few years ago that as many as fifty percent of schools could come under new patronage, the uptake from on-line surveys has seen little enough appetite for such changes. This may not have as much to do with religion as with leaving well enough alone. I suspect that it also has to do with the fact that not as many parents are online as civil servants think, or that many would be much more likely to fill a paper form than to go online. Either way the Minister seems to be looking for action before he is removed or reshuffled. There is nothing wrong with secularism as such, but nobody wants to have either religion or secularism shoved down their throats.