Week ending October 30th 2012
Thursday next is our day, my day, your day, everybodies’ day, All Saints Day, the first of November, Lá Samhna. Most people would be too shy, too humble, too honest to include themselves among the saints, but in the early church all followers of Jesus were referred to as ‘saints’ in the ‘Acts Of The Apostles.’ The fact is, as far as I can see it, that most people of any religion or none do very little wrong, very little that could be described as sinful, and they can be easily referred to as saints. Most would blush at the thought, but this is the kind of ordinary sainthood celebrated and commemorated on All Saint’s Day.
It is a day set aside for the people who will never make the bigtime, never be canonised or considered as official saints, but they are saints nonetheless, all the more saintly in many cases because they have gone unnoticed, earned their sainthood in the ordinary and everyday, the giving of themselves for others that so many people do for their families and those living with them or near them. We used to think that the statement thet there is no greater love than to lay down your life for others referrred to martyrdom or war, when it is in fact far more applicable to daily living.
I was thinking recently of a story I heard many years ago in the Aran Islands about a young priest who was sent there, like most of us at the time, with very little Irish. He was hearing confession at one side of a church in Inis Mór on his first Saturday there, while the Parish Priest was in the box opposite. When they were finished the young curate referred to the Irish word for cursing – eascaine, which he had heard used in the confession box for the first time: “I don’t know what this eascaine is,” he told the Parish Priest, “but there are an awful lot of them at it.”
They were innocent times when so many people felt the need to invent ‘sins’ to have something to tell in confession, because in fact most of them had no sin on them at all. More than thirty years ago when confession was being rebranded as ‘The Sacrament of Reconciliation’ I remember the day that Archbishop Joseph Cunnane brought Monsignor Gerard Mitchell, a former Professor and President of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth around to a Diocesan Priest’s Conference in Clifden, to speak on the subject. Monsignor Mitchell, then Parish Priest of Ballinrobe, was a theologian who was down to earth and told things as he saw them.
There was a sharp intake of breath from priests who were at the age I am now when the Monsignor mentioned that he saw no point in people running to confession when they had nothing to confess. One senior clergyman even went so far as to say: “You don’t really mean that, Monsignor.” He did. Catholics worldwide saw the sense in that too, and drifted away from frequent confession. There was nothing to tell. Most were and in fact are saints in the sense that All Saint’s Day is being celebrated this Thursday. Many countries have memorials to ‘The Unknown Soldier” The church has its own memorial day on November 1st: “To The Unknown Saints.” It is worth celebrating.
It is a day set aside for the people who will never make the bigtime, never be canonised or considered as official saints, but they are saints nonetheless, all the more saintly in many cases because they have gone unnoticed, earned their sainthood in the ordinary and everyday, the giving of themselves for others that so many people do for their families and those living with them or near them. We used to think that the statement thet there is no greater love than to lay down your life for others referrred to martyrdom or war, when it is in fact far more applicable to daily living.
I was thinking recently of a story I heard many years ago in the Aran Islands about a young priest who was sent there, like most of us at the time, with very little Irish. He was hearing confession at one side of a church in Inis Mór on his first Saturday there, while the Parish Priest was in the box opposite. When they were finished the young curate referred to the Irish word for cursing – eascaine, which he had heard used in the confession box for the first time: “I don’t know what this eascaine is,” he told the Parish Priest, “but there are an awful lot of them at it.”
They were innocent times when so many people felt the need to invent ‘sins’ to have something to tell in confession, because in fact most of them had no sin on them at all. More than thirty years ago when confession was being rebranded as ‘The Sacrament of Reconciliation’ I remember the day that Archbishop Joseph Cunnane brought Monsignor Gerard Mitchell, a former Professor and President of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth around to a Diocesan Priest’s Conference in Clifden, to speak on the subject. Monsignor Mitchell, then Parish Priest of Ballinrobe, was a theologian who was down to earth and told things as he saw them.
There was a sharp intake of breath from priests who were at the age I am now when the Monsignor mentioned that he saw no point in people running to confession when they had nothing to confess. One senior clergyman even went so far as to say: “You don’t really mean that, Monsignor.” He did. Catholics worldwide saw the sense in that too, and drifted away from frequent confession. There was nothing to tell. Most were and in fact are saints in the sense that All Saint’s Day is being celebrated this Thursday. Many countries have memorials to ‘The Unknown Soldier” The church has its own memorial day on November 1st: “To The Unknown Saints.” It is worth celebrating.
Week ending October 23rd 2012
Recent crisp, cool, dry weather reminded me of a time of year I will forever associate with digging and picking potatoes. Footing turf and gathering potatoes were two of the activities at which a youngster of nine or ten could be as useful as an adult. We played our part at haymaking too, but not quite to the same extent as we were not tall enough to finish off a cock of hay. Making sheafs of oats or barley was another common task, but tying a sheaf was certainly a bit beyond me at that stage, as they inevitebly opened while being put together in a stook. It is hard to believe that words like stook and sheaf were as much part of our vocabulary then as technical terms associated with computers are to the youth of today. Nothing wrong with that. Each to their own time.
Potato picking was an activity I do not just associate with growing up in Mayo, as it was part of both secondary school and college life in St. Jarlath’s College in Tuam and St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. It was an activity that gave us a break from the humdrum of daily life, a break from the studies, with a good meal as reward. When I see a film of prisoners from an American jail working in the fields I am reminded of those days out. It is not that I am comparing the colleges I mentioned with the Shawkshank Redemption, or older films with chained inmates. It is just the sense of freedom, of being out in the fresh air and getting a break from the routine of every day. The site on which most of Maynooth University is now built, across the road from the original college will always be for me a vast potato field.
This is the time of year I associate too with the first sputnik, as I have a vague memory of watching out to see could we catch its light in the evening sky as the day’s potatoes were being pitted for the winter. It was the first sattelite (we know of) in a sky now littered with sattelites, many of which have gone beyond use from our point of view, but are still circling out there. I have often recounted the title of the essay given to us by Clogher National School Principal, Mr Joe Mitchell, at the time: “I am a flea on the back of Loika, the Soviet dog sent into space” in what I think was the second sputnik. For me it was one of those eureka moments, the discovery that the world can be looked at even from the point of view of a flea. I have not spopped writing since. The flea, for that matter, might still be spinning out there, and thinking of haunting us for Halloween.
Potato picking time is a time I associate too with the death of a Pope, the Pope (Pius XII) who had been there since I was born and whom I expected to last for my lifetime – I just hadn’t given it any thought. His replacement was a big fat jovial grandfather of a man for whom the word used by Dáil Éireann’s youngest TD Simon Harris, recently, might have been invented – “chillax,” an amalgam of “chill out” and “relax.” The laidback attitude did not mean Pope John XXIII was some kind of pushover. He saw the church needed reform and he proclaimed the Second Vatican Council in an effort to bring that about Fifty years and more later there is a debate as to whether that reform worked. As in any human activity, I suppose some of it did, and some of it did not, but at least he tried, and that effort inspired many who were young and idealistic at the time...
Potato picking was an activity I do not just associate with growing up in Mayo, as it was part of both secondary school and college life in St. Jarlath’s College in Tuam and St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. It was an activity that gave us a break from the humdrum of daily life, a break from the studies, with a good meal as reward. When I see a film of prisoners from an American jail working in the fields I am reminded of those days out. It is not that I am comparing the colleges I mentioned with the Shawkshank Redemption, or older films with chained inmates. It is just the sense of freedom, of being out in the fresh air and getting a break from the routine of every day. The site on which most of Maynooth University is now built, across the road from the original college will always be for me a vast potato field.
This is the time of year I associate too with the first sputnik, as I have a vague memory of watching out to see could we catch its light in the evening sky as the day’s potatoes were being pitted for the winter. It was the first sattelite (we know of) in a sky now littered with sattelites, many of which have gone beyond use from our point of view, but are still circling out there. I have often recounted the title of the essay given to us by Clogher National School Principal, Mr Joe Mitchell, at the time: “I am a flea on the back of Loika, the Soviet dog sent into space” in what I think was the second sputnik. For me it was one of those eureka moments, the discovery that the world can be looked at even from the point of view of a flea. I have not spopped writing since. The flea, for that matter, might still be spinning out there, and thinking of haunting us for Halloween.
Potato picking time is a time I associate too with the death of a Pope, the Pope (Pius XII) who had been there since I was born and whom I expected to last for my lifetime – I just hadn’t given it any thought. His replacement was a big fat jovial grandfather of a man for whom the word used by Dáil Éireann’s youngest TD Simon Harris, recently, might have been invented – “chillax,” an amalgam of “chill out” and “relax.” The laidback attitude did not mean Pope John XXIII was some kind of pushover. He saw the church needed reform and he proclaimed the Second Vatican Council in an effort to bring that about Fifty years and more later there is a debate as to whether that reform worked. As in any human activity, I suppose some of it did, and some of it did not, but at least he tried, and that effort inspired many who were young and idealistic at the time...
Week ending October 16th 2012
It was straight in at the deep end when I got back from holidays, but it usually the best way. Two funerals in the space of a couple of days, sick-calls, a couple of school Board of management meetings, Mass in the local secondary school, Scoil Pobail Mhic Dara, Carna, as well as the usual day to day Masses. There was the backlog of post, the bills to be paid, the American requests for ‘roots,’ Everything happens together when a person is busy. Publishers want proofs read asap, which would be fine for someone who is a fulltime writer, but far from a priority for a person who is not. Why couldn’t they ring while I was at leisure, and give me the opportunity to casually drop the line: “Just one of my publishers.” The icing on the busy-cake came when the Carna/Cashel football team beat Athenry in the Galway Intermediate football final in Pearse Stadium. It was good to splash the Atlantic seawater on my face again. It never fails to waken me up or freshen me up, though it nearly led me to really go in at the deep end a couple of days ago. When the tide is in at the back of the local church I often take the opportunity to splash my face before Mass to help me achieve full concentration. As I went down a slope towards the water my foot slipped on some seaweed and I went sliding towards the edge. A rock helped me to stop but also reminded me how easily acidents can happen. There was nobody in sight or within calling distance, though someone would probably have looked if I was late for Mass. I was glad to feel the mobile phone in my jacket pocket that day in case an emergency call was needed. I usually leave it at home at Masstime as the last thing I want is for it to ring while I am on the altar. I will have it with me on silent anymore. Safety first.
Despite being busy or because of it I learned to play with my new toy, the SKY box with the facility to record programmes and play them back at your leisure. I had it in the house for some time but like many adults I was reluctant to use it in case I made a mess of it. It has become my best (technical) friend in a matter of weeks. My favourite soaps await me and help me to relax when I come back from school or other meetings Fairly late at night serious programmes that used to come between me and my badly needed beauty sleep can now be perused during the following morning’s porridge. I had weighed up the proposition: “Botox or SKY recorder” as beauty aids for some time, but come to the conclusion that the box was cheaper.
One programme which impressed me was Mick Peelo’s “Beyond Belief” on RTÉ 1 which looked at the changing face of primary school education. It was billed in some quarters a a potential gunfight at the OK corral between Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn and the Roman Catholic spokesman Fr. Michael Drumm. As it turned out it was somewhat of a love-in, in which the issues were dealt with seriously and respectfully, with good contributions from Siobhán Mullaly of the UCC Law Department, Deirdre O’Donaghoe of Educate Together, and Treasa Lowe, Principal of one of the six Community Primary schools in the country. Fr. Drumm made it clear that he did not think the Minister had a secular agenda, or that he was trying to remove religion from schools as some have acuused him. The Minister, for his part, said that an education that did not take account of religion would be faulty. It is a subject that will be discussed for years to come, but if all protagonists come to the table with the respect and knowledge shown bu those participants, it will be a very useful exercise.
Despite being busy or because of it I learned to play with my new toy, the SKY box with the facility to record programmes and play them back at your leisure. I had it in the house for some time but like many adults I was reluctant to use it in case I made a mess of it. It has become my best (technical) friend in a matter of weeks. My favourite soaps await me and help me to relax when I come back from school or other meetings Fairly late at night serious programmes that used to come between me and my badly needed beauty sleep can now be perused during the following morning’s porridge. I had weighed up the proposition: “Botox or SKY recorder” as beauty aids for some time, but come to the conclusion that the box was cheaper.
One programme which impressed me was Mick Peelo’s “Beyond Belief” on RTÉ 1 which looked at the changing face of primary school education. It was billed in some quarters a a potential gunfight at the OK corral between Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn and the Roman Catholic spokesman Fr. Michael Drumm. As it turned out it was somewhat of a love-in, in which the issues were dealt with seriously and respectfully, with good contributions from Siobhán Mullaly of the UCC Law Department, Deirdre O’Donaghoe of Educate Together, and Treasa Lowe, Principal of one of the six Community Primary schools in the country. Fr. Drumm made it clear that he did not think the Minister had a secular agenda, or that he was trying to remove religion from schools as some have acuused him. The Minister, for his part, said that an education that did not take account of religion would be faulty. It is a subject that will be discussed for years to come, but if all protagonists come to the table with the respect and knowledge shown bu those participants, it will be a very useful exercise.
Week ending October 9th 2012
As I prepared to go on holiday on the 9th of September I promised my congregation that I would return when Mayo and Galway were All Ireland champions. It was not to be, so I was allowed to slink back to the parish when the teams from the west had tasted defeat, but taken it on the chin with dignity. Both teams had given of their best and provided much excitement for their followers all through the summer and well into September. The management, team, and supporters deserve our gratitude. There will be another and a better day.
I was pleased to see many cars in the west with a Mayo flag on one side and a Galway one on the other. As someone whose life has been spread over both counties there was no question but that my main loyalty lay with my native county of Mayo, but it was easy too to support Galway hurlers, as I have spent twentysix years of my life as a priest in Conamara and the Aran Islands. Connaught counties have tended to support the champions of their own province, and even though Galway are Leinster champions this year, they still belong to the west.
On the wet and windy day on which the All Ireland football final was player between Roscommon and Kerry in 1980 I was on a cycling tour of the south with a friend, Father Tom O’Gara, then based in Moville, Co Donegal. We stayed with various clessmates from Maynooth as we made our saddlesore journey around the country. Saturday evening had taken us to Donaghmore in North Cork, a placename familiar to Carnacon Ladies football team. We stayed in the local curate, Fr. Billy O’Donovan’s house and joined him for Sunday morning Mass.
We repaired to a local hostelry in the afternoon to watch the match. I expected to find the locals supporting their nextdoor neighbours, Kerry, but no. It was as if Roscommon had colonised North Cork. Unlike the Connaught counties supporting their own, the support was for “anybody but Kerry.” I suppose this was understandable at a time of Kerry dominance that nearly led to a five-in-a-row All Ireland titles. Sadly I was to watch the Seamus Darby goal that put an end to the famous five in a restaurant in Moville after Tom O’Gara’s month’s mind Mass a year later. The man who had cycled so powerfully the previous year had died after a short illness.
The death of another classmate, Fr. Denis O’Leary, Parish Priest of Bandon, Co Cork has brought back some of those memories. I was unable to attend his funeral as I had no back-up here at the time, but I remember him fondly as we sat side by side for a number of years in Maynooth. Better known among his comrades as “Dinny J” I still remember the slagging he used to get when our history Professor, Tomás (later Cardinal) Ó Fiach used to refer to a famous Fenian, Pagan Pat O’Leary. Dinny J was far from being a pagan. He was a kind and gentle Pastor who is missed in Bandon and the many other places in which he served in his native Cork. Ar dheis Dé go raibh sé.
I was pleased to see many cars in the west with a Mayo flag on one side and a Galway one on the other. As someone whose life has been spread over both counties there was no question but that my main loyalty lay with my native county of Mayo, but it was easy too to support Galway hurlers, as I have spent twentysix years of my life as a priest in Conamara and the Aran Islands. Connaught counties have tended to support the champions of their own province, and even though Galway are Leinster champions this year, they still belong to the west.
On the wet and windy day on which the All Ireland football final was player between Roscommon and Kerry in 1980 I was on a cycling tour of the south with a friend, Father Tom O’Gara, then based in Moville, Co Donegal. We stayed with various clessmates from Maynooth as we made our saddlesore journey around the country. Saturday evening had taken us to Donaghmore in North Cork, a placename familiar to Carnacon Ladies football team. We stayed in the local curate, Fr. Billy O’Donovan’s house and joined him for Sunday morning Mass.
We repaired to a local hostelry in the afternoon to watch the match. I expected to find the locals supporting their nextdoor neighbours, Kerry, but no. It was as if Roscommon had colonised North Cork. Unlike the Connaught counties supporting their own, the support was for “anybody but Kerry.” I suppose this was understandable at a time of Kerry dominance that nearly led to a five-in-a-row All Ireland titles. Sadly I was to watch the Seamus Darby goal that put an end to the famous five in a restaurant in Moville after Tom O’Gara’s month’s mind Mass a year later. The man who had cycled so powerfully the previous year had died after a short illness.
The death of another classmate, Fr. Denis O’Leary, Parish Priest of Bandon, Co Cork has brought back some of those memories. I was unable to attend his funeral as I had no back-up here at the time, but I remember him fondly as we sat side by side for a number of years in Maynooth. Better known among his comrades as “Dinny J” I still remember the slagging he used to get when our history Professor, Tomás (later Cardinal) Ó Fiach used to refer to a famous Fenian, Pagan Pat O’Leary. Dinny J was far from being a pagan. He was a kind and gentle Pastor who is missed in Bandon and the many other places in which he served in his native Cork. Ar dheis Dé go raibh sé.
Week ending October 2nd 2012
There is a certain type of Autumn day that people of my age and ilk would think of as potato picking weather. Clear skies, a touch of frost in the morning and at nightfall, crisp air, a low sun, a red-gold harvest moon carrying the day slightly into the night, the satisfaction of a good day’s work done, of potatoes pitted to carry us through the winter and provide seed in spring. Such thoughts and memories tend to belong more to the middle of the last century than to twelve years into this one, though I have noted far more potato stalks in fields and gardens this year than for many years previously.
This is a welcome development, a combination perhaps of recessionary times and ecological awareness, not to speak of the satisfaction that is derived from eating what you have grown yourself. In this time of age and grandparent awareness, the idea of passing on the skills of the past to children of the present is a very useful one. People who may have considered that they had few skills in fact have many of the skills of living that may well be needed much more in the future than they have been for the past fifty years. It is no weight on any child to learn to plant a seed and reap a harvest. In fact it is probably one of the most basic of life-skills.
It is good to see schools getting in on this concept too, of planting a small garden in or near the school grounds and watching things grow, whether flower or food, or both. The old socialist idea of ‘bread and roses’ is a good one. People might manage to live on bread alone, but the idea of having both bread and beauty adds much more to life. I see roses still grow around doors of the ruins of old cottages, a reminder that those who came before us, who literally did not have two pennies to rub together, still had time for beauty by their thresholds.
Some of these harvest thoughts were sparked by the taste of a good turnip. As often happens when preparing a meal, I had half of it chewed before the rest of it made its way into the saucepan. The difference in taste of a turnip smashed open from one that is sliced has amazed me since schoolday smashing of a turnip or two on the road on the way home from school. No turnip ever tasted better than the forbidden fruit (or veg) taken from Bodkin’s field in Fortlawn on the way home from Clogher school. I wouldn’t have considered it stealing, as there were so many turnips in the field anyway.
I certainly have no memory of telling in confession that I was involved in stealing turnips, as then Belcarra curate, Fr. Tommy Gibbons would probably have delivered himself of a memorable reply. It would not surprise me if he asked for a nice fresh turnip for his own dinner as my penance. He was a man I greatly admired, so different from the picture of the fifties’ priest portrayed in media and much of literature. I quoted him recently when Carna church was full of the voices of little children, some crying, some laughing, some shouting.
I was trying to make the point that this did not affect me at all, that the children and their parents were most welcome in the house of God. Anyway I was the one with the microphone, so I could shout the loudest. I told of the comment made by the priest in the church in which I first went to Mass (Belcarra) He said that the cry or the shout or the laugh of a child was the best prayer said there that day. How right he was.
This is a welcome development, a combination perhaps of recessionary times and ecological awareness, not to speak of the satisfaction that is derived from eating what you have grown yourself. In this time of age and grandparent awareness, the idea of passing on the skills of the past to children of the present is a very useful one. People who may have considered that they had few skills in fact have many of the skills of living that may well be needed much more in the future than they have been for the past fifty years. It is no weight on any child to learn to plant a seed and reap a harvest. In fact it is probably one of the most basic of life-skills.
It is good to see schools getting in on this concept too, of planting a small garden in or near the school grounds and watching things grow, whether flower or food, or both. The old socialist idea of ‘bread and roses’ is a good one. People might manage to live on bread alone, but the idea of having both bread and beauty adds much more to life. I see roses still grow around doors of the ruins of old cottages, a reminder that those who came before us, who literally did not have two pennies to rub together, still had time for beauty by their thresholds.
Some of these harvest thoughts were sparked by the taste of a good turnip. As often happens when preparing a meal, I had half of it chewed before the rest of it made its way into the saucepan. The difference in taste of a turnip smashed open from one that is sliced has amazed me since schoolday smashing of a turnip or two on the road on the way home from school. No turnip ever tasted better than the forbidden fruit (or veg) taken from Bodkin’s field in Fortlawn on the way home from Clogher school. I wouldn’t have considered it stealing, as there were so many turnips in the field anyway.
I certainly have no memory of telling in confession that I was involved in stealing turnips, as then Belcarra curate, Fr. Tommy Gibbons would probably have delivered himself of a memorable reply. It would not surprise me if he asked for a nice fresh turnip for his own dinner as my penance. He was a man I greatly admired, so different from the picture of the fifties’ priest portrayed in media and much of literature. I quoted him recently when Carna church was full of the voices of little children, some crying, some laughing, some shouting.
I was trying to make the point that this did not affect me at all, that the children and their parents were most welcome in the house of God. Anyway I was the one with the microphone, so I could shout the loudest. I told of the comment made by the priest in the church in which I first went to Mass (Belcarra) He said that the cry or the shout or the laugh of a child was the best prayer said there that day. How right he was.