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Alive!
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Share your Catholic joy - B16…Page 5
Catholic Monthly Newspaper
No. 208 February 2015
240,000 copies nationwide
www.alive.ie
Bishops raise
alarm over
Govt attack
on the family
and society
Message warns that anti-child
proposal is unjust and irrational
Inside
● See Page 3
Stardom doesn’t remove Nicki’s grief… page 16
Plus...
Obama & EU
are waging a
religious war
Page 10
● Banks’ money goes to
Page 5
make cluster bombs
Page 6
Farrell was
not great TV
presenter
Page 8
Radical imam
put finger on
key issues
Page 12
● Irish woman had key
role in royal romance
Page 2
● Children paying for
broken UK says head
● The content of the newspaper Alive! and the views expressed in it are those of the editor and contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Irish Dominican Province.
Alive! February 2015
2
Bristol principal reveals cost
to children of broken society
RECENTLY 13 men in Bristol were convicted of sexually exploiting vulnerable teenage girls who were “in
care”.
In light of the case a Bristol
secondary
headteacher
described in the Guardian
newspaper the grim situation
he (or she?) encounters in
protecting his own pupils.
As head of a school in a
white, working-class area, he
complained that staff have to
spend too many days “with
devastating individual cases”
that receive little public attention.
“Every week another child
protection case comes to light
at my school,” he wrote.
“Sadly, the children do not
always perceive themselves
to be victims and therefore
referrals to the police can
sometimes lead nowhere.”
In one extreme case a 13year-old girl returned from a
few weeks’ absence “and
regaled her PSHE class with
details about her work as a
prostitute.
“When we expressed concern, she simply told us not to
worry: no one slapped her
around; she could look after
herself.”
In another case a 15-yearold boy “in similar circumstances reassured us that men
couldn’t be prostitutes, he
was just helping his mum
with the rent and she knew all
about it.”
Sometimes the school needs
to exclude a student for a
period. “Parents do not
always keep them at home for
these days, so where are
they?,” asked the head.
“Every week,” he wrote, “I
become aware that another of
my students has made and
distributed an indecent image
of a child.
“Usually it’s a girl who has
taken a naked photo of herself
and sent it to someone she
trusted. The now exboyfriend has shown his
friends, or her friend has
found it and put it on
Facebook as a joke.
“Each time the fallout is
incredible for these children,
but the police are not really
interested.” Nor social services, “unless there was coercion involved.”
The head had sat in meetings with parents “who have
joked it off, and said that it is
‘just one of those things’. I’ve
even heard them say: ‘If
Facebook had been around
when I was 13, I’d have been
doing the same’.”
He was “very aware” that in
making a decision about a
child, such as sending him or
her to a pupil referral unit, “I
may risk making that child
even more vulnerable. But
there are simply not enough
alternatives on offer to me as
a headteacher.”
He warned that not all victims were “girls in care”. And
that the behaviour of these
girls “may have been learned
in abusive families.
“Sometimes they are being
prostituted by their own relatives and therefore have an
altered concept of what is
‘Aware’
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A broken society, confused
about morality, is damaging
generations of young people.
right and wrong.”
Racism is a big problem in
the area, and for many of the
children “anyone different
from them is a terrorist, an
illegal immigrant, a job-stealer or a sex attacker.”
“I don’t have enough staff; I
don’t have enough money, or
time, or options available to
make a difference,” complained the principal.
He wanted small units
where students could receive
“both education and emotional or lifestyle support”, oneto-one mentors for children,
more access “to different
types of therapies because
one size does not fit all.”
He painted a picture of a
lost, broken society, completely confused about morality
and seriously damaging generations of young people.
However, not everyone
would agree with his idea
that schools become therapy
centres for the child victims of
such a society. That is not
what schools are for.
This society is the result of
the hopeless, “pro-choice”
morality promoted by the
media and politicians.
In Ireland the relentless
drive to destroy marriage and
the family based on marriage
is rapidly bringing society in
the same direction, and again
it is children who suffer most.
US evangelist to train
Catholic activists
A PROMINENT US evangelist and radio presenter Tim Staples
(below) will be the principal speaker at a week-long Training
School for Irish Catholic activists during Easter week.
The school, to be held in Belcoo, Co. Fermanagh, is open to
everyone who wishes to become more active or focused in the
task of defending the Catholic faith and in handing it on to others.
It has been organised in response to a call from Pope Francis
to Catholics everywhere to be “protagonists of transformation”
and not simply “observers.”
Staples is the Director of Apologetics & Evangelisation at
Catholic Answers, a large, lay-run evangelisation apostolate
based in California.
Brought up as a Southern Baptist, he abandoned faith in Christ
at a young age, but returned to it in his late teens. He then
became a member of an Assembly of God community, serving in
its youth ministry.
He joined the US Marines and during his time there was challenged by a Catholic Marine to study Catholicism with an open
mind.
That encounter set him off on a two-year
drive to prove Catholicism wrong and to
search for the truth. In 1988 he was
received into the Catholic Church and is now
involved full-time in evangelisation.
The Belcoo course is being organised by
the Irish branch of Human Life International.
• Details of the conference on page 11.
Liberal BBC staff afraid
of being called ‘racist’
A FORMER leading TV presenter has claimed that the
BBC where he worked “was, and still is, relentlessly
middle-class”, and that the predominant voice is that
of “the liberal Oxbridge male.”
As a result, staff at the
station did not question
immigration to Britain as
they should have, because
they had “a deep liberal
bias” and, cut off from the
problems of ordinary people, were afraid of being
called ‘racist’.
When an organisation as
large as the BBC can be
dominated by conformist
groupthink, it is easy to
understand why the Irish
Times-reading staff of RTE
can all end up singing from
the same hymn sheet.
John Humphrys accused
the BBC of employing too
many “Oxbridge liberal”
types whose middle-class
view of the world affected its
coverage of immigration.
“We were too institutionally nervous of saying, isn’t
immigration getting a little
bit out of hand? And, can we
be critical of multi-culturalism?,” he told the Sunday
Times, adding that employees were “frightened of
appearing racist.”
lenge for Christians today,
he said that “God wrote his
plan of marriage into human
nature, and Christ raised it
to be a sacrament.”
But “society is replacing
this view with the notion
that people can bend intimate life to their own ideas
and desires.”
He pointed out that many
staff members at the BBC
lead “sheltered” lives in
which they did not encounter
the reality of areas affected
by mass immigration.”
As a result, they had
“failed to look at what our
job was” in relation to the
controversial issue.
An investigation by the
BBC Trust in 2013 found a
“deep liberal bias” within
the corporation, particularly
when it was covering immigration and the EU.
UK aid to poor
making corruption
worse says report
THE billions of pounds that Britain gives in foreign
aid are actually doing harm by making corruption
worse in many parts of the world, an official UK
report has claimed.
Justice projects funded by
UK cash are increasing
oppor tunities for briber y
and, in some areas, they are
even pushing poor people
“towards corrupt practices”,
says the report.
In Nigeria, for example, millions were spent on a
scheme to tackle police
bribery, but locals said that
by the end of the scheme
they were even more likely
to have to pay backhanders
to get what they were enti-
Christians need great courage once again
CATHOLICS must show
great courage in upholding
God’s plan for sexuality,
marriage and the family,
according to Canada’s
Terrence
Archbishop
Prendergast.
Pointing out that the crisis
of the family based on marriage is the particular chal-
John Humphrys
In a message to his people
he reminded them that “the
first Christians showed great
courage in overcoming and
transforming a vast, pagan
world that had beliefs about
marriage and sexual morality similar to those of our culture.”
tled to.
And in Ethiopia, where
security
forces
were
accused of burning, torturing and raping citizens, the
violence got worse during a
4-year period when the UK
gave the country more than
£1billion.
The investigation was carried out by the Independent
Commission for Aid Impact,
the watchdog set up to scrutinise foreign aid.
The Commission found the
UK government department
for aid was not “up to the
challenge” of tackling corruption and, in many cases,
help was not effectively targeted at the poor.
Thus, in Nepal, said the
report, the poor were being
“pushed towards corrupt
practices” by having to pay
bribes or forge documents
to receive funding through a
regional project backed by
British aid.
Alive! February 2015
3
JUST FOR P RIE STS
Bishops raise alarm
over Govt attack on Scandal of a silent Church
the family & society T
IRELAND’S
Catholic
bishops have issued a
vigorous defence of marriage as the union of a
man and woman open to
the procreation and rearing of children, pointing
out that only this view of
marriage is in keeping
with reason.
Raising the alarm about
government
effor ts
to
change the nature of marriage, they warned that such
an attempt would be a grave
act of injustice against children and against the good of
society.
The bishops also rejected
claims that redefining marriage would be only a minor
matter or that equality is a
central issue in the current
“same
sex
marriage”
debate.
At issue, rather, is “the
very nature of marriage itself
and the importance society
places on the role of mothers and fathers in bringing up
children.”
Changing the definition of
marriage would, they argued,
change the very foundations
of both the family and society.
It would also undermine
society’s regard for the complementary role of mothers
and fathers in rearing their
children.
In a pastoral statement, or
teaching document, they
pointed out that marriage
has always been recognised
as “the natural, primary and
fundamental unit group of
society.”
The statement reaffirmed
“the rational basis” for holding that the name ‘marriage’
be reserved for the relationship between a woman and a
man.
It’s a grave
injustice if the
State ignores
unique roles of
a mother and a
father.
This relationship, in which
a man and woman complement each other, is unique,
and from it “the generation
and upbringing of children is
uniquely possible,” said the
teaching document.
Society gives this relationship special recognition
“because it is the place
where children learn what it
means to be members of
their family and of society.”
‘All cultures’
This understanding of marriage is in keeping with
God’s plan, with the explicit
teaching of Jesus, and it is
“deeply rooted in all cultures,” said the bishops.
They pointed out what is
already obvious to most people, whatever their faith,
“that
the
differences
between a man and woman
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are not accidental to marriage.”
Rather, they are “fundamental to marriage, and children have a natural right to a
mother and a father; and
that is the best environment
for them where possible.”
For this very reason marriage deser ves “special
recognition and promotion by
the State.”
On the other hand “it is a
grave injustice if the State
[politicians or voters] ignores
the uniqueness of the role of
husbands and wives, the
importance of mothers and
fathers in our society.”
Children deserve from society a clear understanding of
the importance of marriage.
But by failing to protect and
support the unique place of
marriage in society, “the
State could, in effect,
deprive children of the right
to a mother and father.”
The bishops point towards
the far-reaching and destructive impact that proposals to
change the meaning of marriage would have.
They would, in effect, “say
to parents, children and society that the State should not,
and will not, promote any
normative or ideal family
environment for raising children.”
This would imply “that the
biological bond and natural
ties between a child and its
mother and father have no
intrinsic value for the child or
for society.”
● The Statement, The
Meaning of Marriage, is
available on the bishops’
website
● See also Comment,
page 9.
he biggest scandal in the Church in
Ireland over the past 60 years or so
was not the abuse scandal, appalling
though that was.
The biggest scandal was the Church’s virtual abandonment of her mission to teach.
And the scandal is still on-going: “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”
Indeed, the Church still seems, to a large
extent, to have forgotten that she has a
Christ-given mission to teach.
The Catholic faith is based on the revealed
Word of God. Revelation comes first. The
mission of the Church is to explore and
develop the richness of that revelation and
to faithfully hand it on to the whole world.
Christ knew that his teaching could be easily misunderstood or distorted, so he established a teaching authority, now called the
Magisterium, in the Church.
That teaching authority, the Pope and the
bishops in union with him, is severely limited in what it can do. It is not “free” to come
up with new teachings as it pleases.
Rather, it must remain faithful to the
Gospel, to the teaching of Christ, and to the
doctrinal and moral truths of the faith as
they have been set forth down the centuries.
Faith is our response to God’s revelation. It
involves a personal commitment to Christ,
the Word made flesh, and the joyful acceptance of Church teaching.
We do not accept that teaching simply
because we agree with it or find it attractive
or it fits in with our views, but because it is
the teaching of the Church.
Acceptance of Church teaching can be particularly difficult in a culture like ours today,
that stresses “freedom to think as I wish”
and that resents authority of any sort, be it
the authority of parents, teachers, politicians
or even God.
In such a culture the big temptation for all
those with a teaching responsibility is to
retreat, to play down their authority in order
to avoid conflict.
Commitment
So, parents and teachers become permissive, politicians “give the people what they
want,” and preachers offer a watered down
gospel, focus on “the positive” and avoid
“controversial” issues.
The faithful are told to follow their own
conscience without being taught what conscience is or how it should relate to Church
teaching.
The situation becomes even more difficult
when an authority is opposed in an aggressive manner, rebels are turned into heroes or
the authority loses respect or credibility
because of its own failures and sins.
All this can help us to understand why the
Church in Ireland has, to a great extent,
abandoned her teaching role at many levels.
But it is no excuse.
Parents, for example, have a grave responsibility to hand on the faith to their children,
as best they can.
Bishops and priests have a God-given
responsibility to proclaim and teach the
faith and morality, whatever the circumstances, “in season and out of season” as St
Paul says.
This scandal contributes greatly to today’s
massive crisis in the Church. We have to face
it squarely and tackle it urgently and with
vigour.
Is your marriage
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unloving, cold?
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COMPLETELY CONFIDENTIAL
Alive! February 2015
4
An experiment in sport and society
by Gerard Murphy
YOU GO along to Croke Park for
what is billed as ‘a unique sporting
event’. The teams come on to the
pitch, each player wearing his or
her own choice of colours.
As a result you can’t tell who
belongs to what team, or even how
many teams there are.
Then some players start kicking a
golf ball around, others are heading a rugby ball, a female is dribbling a sliotar up the centre of the
pitch, a guy is swinging at a few
marbles with a cricket bat.
Another guy dodges a player
wearing boxing gloves, to make a
touchdown in the centre of the
field.
A few players are kicking a
snooker ball about in the stand,
having decided that the pitch really extends to the entrance gates.
Then a guy on a horse gallops
onto the pitch, swinging a polo
mallet at any ball he can see.
Meanwhile, two female players
are arguing with the referee that he
may not tell them how to play ball.
He is imposing his views, while it
is their right to choose where and
how they will play.
You turn to a spectator to ask
what is going on and he explains
that it’s a big experiment, a football match played according to
The Rules of Liberalism.
You’re still puzzled but he
explains that it’s very simple: virtually all rules have been abolished so
that each player can have full equality and maximum freedom.
“It’s all about choice,” he says,
“each individual is a loner.” He
adds that this new form of sport has
evolved over many decades.
Some golfers had objected that not
being allowed to use a tennis ball
limited their “right” to play golf as
they wished. After a long campaign,
the rule was changed to allow ten-
Puzzled
Without God all things are
permitted.
nis balls in golf, then soccer, then
rugby balls.
Eventually it was agreed that
players might use any kind of ball
they liked, and also a club, a hurley
or a tennis racquet as they chose.
Live and let live, was the slogan,
and the new rules were considered
a great step towards “a more equal,
tolerant” golf society.
Inspired by what had happened in
golf, GAA players who felt that
sidelines limited their freedom of
movement had demanded that they
be abolished.
After much resistance from bosses, who were labelled “conservatives”, “right-wingers”, “traditionalists” and “fundamentalists”, the
rules were changed: each player
could now decide for himself where
the pitch ended.
Monthly Musings
with guest columnist, By Fr Brian Doyle O.P.
Fr Brian is a lecturer in theology and a retreat-giver
Roots of our mistrust
MARY Lou McDonald speaks of the
prospect of Sinn Féin being the largest
party in the next government.
Lucinda Creighton is planning to
launch a new party shortly.
Who would have believed in 2007
that Ireland’s two biggest parties then
(Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) might in
2015 be unable to govern even together?
Or that the next government might
be without either of them? What has
caused such a drastic shift in popular
sentiment, the abandonment of old
loyalties?
It is, in fact, a sign of a deeper discontent than mere political failure,
bad decisions or unkept promises.
Today’s mistrust is the fruit of principles and values adopted by Western
society since the “Enlightenment”, in
particular its focus on the individual.
Until about 1600 Europe was
Christian and its social policies were
generally governed by Christian principles.
These included respect for property,
the sanctity of life, a consensus that
the family was the fundamental
building block of society.
Love of neighbour was important
and almost everyone recognised the
need to uphold the common or
shared good. They would even give
their lives for it, in the event of war.
The Enlightenment did bring a new
regard for people’s human rights.
And it helped to purify theology and
philosophy from certain superstitions.
People learnt to trust their own ability to make rational judgments, and
John Locke (1632–1704): a leading
figure of the Enlightenment.
to appreciate in a new way the individual’s dignity and rights.
However, as secularist ideas
advanced in society, the Christian
morality which helped to temper
false philosophical ideals was eroded.
Reason, which once helped to purify faith and was at the same time
raised above itself by faith to search
for God, has become the sole guide of
action.
Without faith, however, reason cannot discover truth, goodness and
beauty in the absolute, eternal sense.
And so today’s postmodern era is
marked by fragmentation, disillusion
and self-obsession. Conflicting ideologies replace an ideal or truth to
Disillusion
Great victory
This was hailed by RTE, the Irish
Times and liberals in general as a
great victory for freedom; and the
rules in other sports soon came
under attack, in the name of “equality”.
Gradually it became accepted in
the sporting world that every person should be allowed to play ball
simply as he or she chose.
Governing authorities were abolished, no longer having any role,
and the “right to choose” or “what I
demand” became the ruling principle in sport.
Absurd? Of course it is. Sport is
turned into a bunch of “individu-
which we all aspire.
The common good is ignored, only
personal desires seem to be important. Only an unjustified sense of entitlement, unbridled egoism and the
perversion of rights remain.
Without the natural law or regard
for the common good only a false liberalism remains. Might becomes right
and the most vulnerable in society,
those without a voice, are cast aside.
Laws in Europe on euthanasia,
abortion and “same-sex marriage”
reflect this shift towards individualism which denies dignity to the elderly, the unborn and to children deliberately deprived of their right to a
father or mother.
Without moral ideals based on justice, charity and respect for others,
society puts its hope in what is material.
This has become the new religion,
with the economy as the new God.
The economy, however, depends on
honest elected representatives to
make it work.
When politicians betray the common good, break promises to voters
and use their position for selfadvancement, liberal democracy
crashes down, leaving behind the bitter taste of disillusionment, mistrust
and frustration.
It is time for Irish people to abandon
secularist individualism and to ask
what responsibility we have for creating a more just and compassionate
society.
Respect for the wellbeing of each
person must be the cornerstone of all
that we try to achieve together.
als”, of loners, each doing his or her
own thing.
But what makes us think that
organising our whole society
according to The Rules of
Liberalism is any less absurd?
Yet that is exactly what is happening, cheered on by idiots in politics
and the media, especially the Irish
Times and RTE.
Rights (“what I demand”) and
“non-discrimination” are used to
tear down even the most basic laws
of a good society. Everyone must be
allowed to do as he or she chooses.
Marriages are wrecked, children
are harmed for life, respect for
human life is trampled on, even
human nature must be denied.
Bankers demand “light” regulation, journalists push their own daft
agendas as “news”, politicians
boast of being liars, and so on.
Without God all things are permitted, as we sink ever deeper into
social chaos. And this is progress?
The only way forward
THE murder of French journalists who published the
weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and two police
officers by Islamist terrorists made world news.
The heinous crime provoked outrage world-wide and was
condemned by many leaders as an attack on the core values of democracy, particularly freedom of speech.
In the wake of the killings, however, few have discussed the reasons for the terrorist attack.
While the murders were savage with no mercy being
shown to the victims (a wounded policeman was executed as he lay on the pavement), they were not completely unprovoked or unexpected.
The same publishing house had been taken to court for
its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed which were
deemed to be offensive and insulting to Muslims.
Its premises were fire-bombed in November 2011 for
publishing a special edition of the magazine entitled
Sharia Hebdo following the election of an Islamist party
in Tunisia and for joking that the editor of the edition was
the Prophet Muhammed.
Given this history, the possibility of an attack cannot
have been unforeseen. So why did the journalists continue to publish satirical material and to put their lives at
risk?
Clearly they did not want to be silenced by intimidation
or violence and believed in freedom of speech as a fundamental democratic right.
Insult
This may seem admirable. But we also have to ask if
freedom of speech should be used to insult and deride
the beliefs of others which are sacred to them.
Which of us would support a “right” to verbally abuse
another person’s family, race or sexual orientation?
Would it not be seen as intolerant hate speech?
Yet mocking a person’s religious beliefs is not classified as intolerant in today’s largely secular society which
no longer appreciates the gravity of an offence caused
to believers.
Unfortunately, the fanatics
who committed the unjustifiable and horrific crime in
Paris reacted to such ridicule
with murder.
But can we learn from this
that whatever our differences
of opinion or belief, the only
way forward to a peaceful
society is by respectful dialogue and mutual tolerance?
Alive! February 2015
“My Catholic faith has
always been important to
me,” said Boyle. “My parents were devout Catholics
with very strong moral values and that influences the
way I live my life.”
The singer became an
sensation
international
when she first appeared on
Britain’s Got Talent in April
2009, singing I Dreamed a
Dream from Les Misérables.
Before she had finished
the song’s opening words
the audience had erupted,
giving her a standing ovation.
Boyle said that going to
Mass and singing as part of
the congregation is her
favourite part of Sunday and
she is pleased that people
still treat her the same as
they always did.
“Without the church I really
don’t think I could focus
properly, because it helps
put everything in perspective
for me, especially as my life
has changed so drastically,”
she said.
Confession is for her a
good way to offload and talk
about any problems she
has.
“It’s better than seeing a
psychiatrist and it’s helped
me become a better person,” she said.
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Susan Boyle
“As I’ve got older I’ve started thinking about life hereafter. I want to end up in a
good place because I want
to see Mum again.”
Thanks to her own experience of family life “the sanctity of marriage,” she said,
“is probably the value I hold
dearest.”
Her parents were married
for 63 years, her father
dying in 1997 and her mother 10 years later.
She herself would like to
get married. “Up until now I
haven’t met the right person,” she said, “but I have
been thinking more and
more about meeting someone and settling down in the
future. But marriage is not
something to be taken
lightly.”
High death rate among
World Cup workers
WORKERS from Nepal who were building the
infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
died at the rate of one every two days last year.
When the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and
Bangladeshi workers were included the figure was
almost certainly more than one worker dying per day.
Justice campaigners have accused Qatar of doing too
little to introduce basic reforms and to investigate the
effect on employees of working for long periods in temperatures that often top 50C.
“We know that people who work long hours in high
temperatures are highly vulnerable to fatal heat strokes,
so obviously these figures continue to cause alarm,” said
one campaigner.
Officials in Nepal reported that 157 of its workers in
Qatar died between January and mid-November in
2014, 67 of sudden cardiac arrest, 8 of heart attacks and
34 in workplace accidents.
But it is believed that the total number of Nepalese
worker deaths for the period may have been as high as
188.
Qatar confirmed that 964 workers from Nepal, India
and Bangladesh had died while living and working in
the Gulf state in 2012 and 2013.
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Catholic faith is to her, pointing out that regular confession is “better than seeing a psychiatrist.”
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Church must get out and
share our joy - Benedict
Benedict’s address to the
Urbanian, delivered by his
secretary Archbishop George
Ganschwein,
was
in
response to the university’s
decision to rename its Aula
Magna (Main Hall) in his
honour.
“I see today in this lecture
hall, a community formed by
so many young people, a
community that makes us
see in a living way the stupendous reality of the
Catholic Church,” he said.
IN his first major writing since he resigned as pope,
Benedict XVI has re-emphasised the Church’s mission to bring salvation and joy to the whole world.
And he challenged those
voices which are “becoming
louder and louder”, seeking
“to convince us that religion
as such is obsolete.”
“Man becomes smaller, not
greater when there is no
longer any room for a gaze
turned towards God,” he
said.
And today’s secularist
attempt to exclude God from
life only “diminishes man,
taking from him dimensions
that are essential for his existence.”
With his mind as sharp as
ever, Benedict returned to
two of his favourite themes:
the joy of knowing Jesus
Christ and the need for the
Church to be missionary.
“The issue of mission raises
for us not only the fundamental questions of faith but
also the question of who the
human person is,” he said.
Mission arises from the
Church’s belief that all people are called to eternal happiness with God, and that
this hope alone gives meaning to their lives on earth.
“We proclaim Jesus Christ
not to get as many members
as possible for our community, and least of all for the sake
of power,” said Benedict.
“We speak of him because
we feel that we have to share
with others the joy that has
been given to us.”
The emeritus pope did not
refer directly to Islamist violence in many parts of the
world or to secularism’s
growing intolerance of religious freedom.
But he did insist that,
despite profound changes in
the world, “the task of communicating the Gospel to
others remains a reasonable
one.”
Addressing the students
and staff of Rome’s Urbanian
University he faced a question often asked today: Is the
mission of the Church really
possible in the modern
world?
“Today many people have
the idea, in effect, that religions should respect each
other, and, in dialogue with
each other, become a common force for peace,” he
said.
But for Benedict this kind
of dialogue, reducing religion to seeking strategies for
peace, was fundamentally
flawed.
Behind it lay the belief that
Mission
Pass it on
“the various religions are
variants of one and the same
reality; that ‘religion’ is a category common to all, which
assumes different forms in
different
cultures,
but
expresses one and the same
reality.”
But this view distorts the
question of truth. “It presupposes that the authentic truth
about God, in the last analysis, cannot be known, and
that at best we can make present what is ineffable only
with a variety of symbols.”
Such a renunciation of
truth, however, would be
“lethal to faith” and to all the
blessings it brings.
It was truth “which, at the
beginning of Christianity,
moved Christians more than
anything else,” he said.
And he reminded his audience that “love demands to
be communicated. Truth
demands to be communicated.” That “whoever has
experienced great joy cannot
keep it simply for himself.
He must pass it on to others.”
The tribal religions in particular, are “on hold”, he
said. “They are waiting for
the encounter with Jesus
Christ, the light that comes
from him, that alone is able
to lead them in a complete
way to their truth.
“And Christ is waiting for
them. The encounter with
him is not a barging in of a
stranger that destroys their
own culture and their own
history. It is instead the
entrance
to
something
greater, towards which they
are journeying,” he said.
6
The
Alive! February 2015
there limits to what
Irish woman’s Are
anyone may say?
key role in a
W
FORUM royal romance
YOUTH
People do some
very odd things
with Anne Nolan
osh Paler Lin is
known for his
popular
video
pranks on YouTube.
Recently he gave a
Los Angeles beggar
$100 in cash, then
secretly followed him
with a video camera
to see what he did.
The man, known
Josh Paler (right) points to
only as Thomas,
the camera which followed
headed straight for
the homeless man (left).
the nearest Liquor
Mart, but he came out with a load of food.
He then made his way to a nearby park where many
other homeless people gather and began to distribute
his offerings.
“I wasn’t expecting to get this kind of footage,” wrote
Paler Lin on his YouTube page. “To be honest, I thought
this video would be more an 'exposing homeless people' video.
“But I’m so glad that I could witness and capture such
a beautiful moment. This has to be one of the most
amazing experiences so far on this channel.”
He followed Thomas for an hour as he distributed the
food. The man later told how he had ended up homeless after both his parents died.
A generous action like this can challenge our own way
of looking at things. We often talk about the consumer
society, but do we really think about it?
The Minister for Finance wants us to spend, spend,
spend. He calls it “consumer demand” and says it’s
good for jobs and the economy.
But is this kind of greed good for ourselves or society?
We are never satisfied, so we’re never happy for long –
there’s always something more we want.
Maybe the real path to happiness is by wanting less
rather than “needing” more.
This leaves more room in our lives for what is by far
the greatest treasure of all, generosity to others and
deep friendship with Jesus.
J
spent...
Time well
most
the
■ The four gospels are
written.
r
eve
ks
boo
t
tan
impor
we get
all,
ve
abo
m,
the
Through
to know Jesus.
read a
But have you ever
from cover
h
oug
thr
ht
rig
pel
gos
any idea
to cover? Or have you
to do so?
e
tak
uld
how long it wo
average
Experts say that the
250 to 300
ut
abo
ds
rea
son
per
words per minute.
accordThe shortest gospel is
a total of
16 short chapters and
ing to St Mark. It has
number of
e
Th
.
eek
Gr
al
gin
ori
11,304 words in the
ends on the translation.
pel in
words in English dep
ld read this whole gos
Which means you cou
h 21
about 50 minutes.
according to John, wit
Next comes the gospel You would need about an
words.
chapters and 15,635
to read it.
Greek.
hour and 10 minutes
rs and 18,345 words in
Matthew has 28 chapte
tes.
nu
mi
20
and
r
hou
an
longest,
Reading it takes about
ording to St Luke, the
Finally, the gospel acc
d it in 1
rea
ld
cou
You
482 words.
has 24 chapters and 19,
hour and 30 minutes.
Q
ueen Fabiola of Belgium
died a few weeks ago,
aged 86, but she might
never have been queen had it
not been for a remarkable Irish
woman.
Fabiola was born in Madrid
on 11 June 1928, the sixth of
seven children. Her father, a
devout Catholic, was one of
Spain’s largest land-owners
and the family lived in a palace
in Madrid.
They and their 17 servants
gathered every evening to
recite the rosary. Fabiola’s godmother was Queen Victoria
Eugenie of Spain (herself a
grand-daughter of England’s
Queen Victoria).
During the Spanish civil war
the family had to flee from
Spain, and Fabiola spent her
childhood moving between
Paris, the Basque country and
Switzerland.
They returned home in 1939.
The young lady received a
highly cultured education, and
spent much of her time in voluntary work. She then trained
as a nurse in military hospitals.
By her late 20s she had rejected an offer of marriage from a
Spanish aristocrat, deciding his
outlook on life was too superficial.
Working as a hospital nurse,
living in her own apartment
and dining each night with her
family, she had begun to think
she might never marry when
Veronica O’Brien entered her
life.
Born in Midleton, Co. Cork, in
1905, Veronica had spent 14
years as a nun but left the convent, wanting to engage in a
more direct apostolate.
She discovered the Legion of
Mary, which was then expanding through the world, and,
after the war, she travelled
through France, founding more
than 800 branches there.
In 1947 she met Cardinal Leo
Suenens, at that time the assistant bishop of Mechelen. They
would work together for many
years.
Meanwhile, in Belgium a
young King Baudouin was
eager to marry and have a family. Born in 1930, Baudouin lost
his mother, Queen Astrid, four
years later when she was killed
in a car accident.
At the age of 21, with an older
sister and a younger brother, he
came to the throne after his
father, King Leopold III, abdicated in 1951. A devout
Catholic, he could not find any-
Veronica
Queen Fabiola of Belgium
one suitable to be his wife.
Then Bishop Suenens, a close
friend of the King, decided to
take matters in hand, recruiting
Veronica to help him.
When Baudouin met the Irish
woman he told her that he
wished to marry a devout
Catholic, preferably from Spain
and with an aristocratic background. So Veronica headed
south.
In Madrid she consulted a
headmistress who thought that a
former pupil of hers, Fabiola de
Mora y Aragón, might be able to
help find a candidate among her
unmarried friends.
But when the legionary met
Fabiola she decided that she
need look no further. She reported to Suenens that Fabiola “came
in like a breath of fresh air, tall,
thin, well-built, good-looking
and striking, bubbling with life,
intelligence and energy.”
She invited the young woman
to stay with her in Brussels,
where she met the King. But
when Fabiola learnt that she was
being considered as a candidate
for marriage she flew into a rage.
Eventually she calmed down
and agreed to meet Baudouin in
secret. But it was on a visit to
Lourdes that the pair became
close, praying the rosary together
as they took shelter in the King’s
car from the rain. On 15
December 1960 they married.
They became a popular couple,
noted for their staunch Catholic
faith and for their quiet dedication to the Belgian people.
They longed to have a family
but it was not to be, as Fabiola
suffered a series of miscarriages.
In 2008 she spoke about her
losses. “You know,” she told an
interviewer, “I lost five children.
You learn from that experience. I
had problems with all my pregnancies but, you know, in the end
I think life is beautiful.”
After years of marriage King
Baudoin wrote in his diary:
“Thank you Lord for having
given me Fabiola as my wife and
Veronica as my guardian angel.”
Lourdes
hile in no way wishing to condone the
shooting dead of the
journalists and cartoonists
in Paris I must say my take
on it has caused heated
debate over the last few
weeks.
My question is, do the
media or indeed any of us
have a right to say anything
we like? I found myself being
accused of taking away people’s freedom of speech and
putting a strangle hold on
the press.
My point was this. Out of
common cour tesy and
respect for our fellow man,
we should not make fun of a
person’s deity or his or her
atheism.
People
became
ver y
incensed at this idea of not
being able to say exactly
what they liked when they
liked.
Offensive
I was merely suggesting
that they appreciate that for
some people what they are
proposing to do would be
very hurtful and offensive.
It’s one thing to have your
local politician pulled to bits
and ridiculed in the local rag,
but for me it is quite another
to see my King and my Lord
have awful things said about
him.
Couldn’t we just agree to
leave certain topics alone?
Apparently not. The media
must be allowed to print
whatever they have a mind
to, and to put their “professional and unbiased opinion” to paper so we can all
be “informed”.
As a parent I have taught
my children that there are
You’ve got
kids!
certain topics that are not
for public consumption.
Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with them
but that some people may
be offended or embarrassed, or just rather not
want to discuss particular
things.
Just because you felt a particular way about something,
and had the freedom to
speak your mind, didn’t
mean you should.
Of course the message I
was given was “well you can
leave the room, turn off the
TV, don’t buy the newspaper
or magazine etc.”
However when I do that,
I’m accused of being ignorant and narrow-minded, of
“not living in the real world.”
And yet in the football
world very heavy sanctions
are placed on those who
openly speak their minds
about what they think and
feel towards players of a different race.
Nobody has to put up with
it, or leave the stadium, or
stop going to matches.
There is a clear understanding that words are powerful
and can evoke strong reactions.
We’re allowed to defend
our race and culture, but
have to grin and bear it when
our faith and God is mocked
and maligned. Strange.
Alive! February 2015
Editor’s
Jottings
A closer look at
stories in the
round...
Questioning
media freedom
FOLLOWING the murder of 12 people in Paris, several of them journalists, there was a big outpouring
of support for free speech and for freedom of the
media.
But perhaps we need to question more closely
what media freedom has come to mean, and especially how journalists see it.
The topic receives little attention from journalists
themselves because, like members of any institution, they want to avoid being subjected to public
scrutiny.
While they call others to account, they are very
rarely called to account themselves – even our elected law-makers fear them.
Again, if the Broadcasting Authority tries to
enforce the law requiring fairness and balance in
debates, it is likely to come in for intimidating abuse
from a host of journalists, as we saw recently.
But the media wield extraordinary power in modern society. And, as we know from experience in
Ireland, they do not always use that power for good
– far from it.
Media freedom, in fact, has come to mean that the
media should be allowed to say what they want, to
promote one side of a debate, to manipulate news,
to express whatever opinions a journalist may wish,
good or evil.
Minimum restraint
This is in keeping with the notion of freedom
which prevails in today’s society – being allowed to
pursue one’s own desires and preferences with minimum restraint.
It is a notion that the media not only use but promote widely, in part to protect their own power and
how they choose to use it.
But why should a tiny group of people with no
public mandate be allowed to wield such power in
society as they please? This is not good for any community or its members.
Our society, however, can no longer protect itself.
It has become confused about the very morality that
should prevail in the media: concern for the common good and for
human dignity, love
for truth, responsibility, integrity, justice,
and so on.
But without a commitment to these, how
real is media freedom,
or what value has it?
Thus, the issue is far
more debatable than
first appears.
7
EU and Obama wage religious war
ERIC POSNER, Law Professor
at Chicago University, recently wrote about human rights
in the Guardian newspaper.
For many people, he pointed
out, making human rights a
part of international law was
“one of the great moral
achievements of human history.”
This is very debatable, especially since virtually any
demand can now be dressed
up as a human right, as
Posner admitted.
He approved, it seems, the
way “Western countries often
make foreign aid conditional
on human rights and have
even launched military interventions based on human
rights violations.”
Military action in Iraq and
Libya, for example, were jus-
tified on grounds of “human
rights” though many people
doubt that that was the real
reason.
On the other hand, donor
countries often attach conditions to development aid,
imposing “human rights” on
destitute nations.
The US, the EU and a host of
European countries (including Ireland) link the giving of
aid to poor countries with
demands that these countries
change their laws to uphold
various “rights”.
Rarely, however, are these
“rights” about matters like
clean water, basic education,
eradication of malaria or adequate maternal care.
Rather, they are linked with
“gender”, “gay” demands,
“reproductive rights”, abor-
tion, divorce, and such like.
In other words, wealthy
countries exploit their power
in order to impose their
morality on poor nations,
using desperate people as
pawns while wrapping themselves in the flag of “human
rights”.
This, in fact, is a war to
impose a corrupt secularist
religion and its twisted
morality on nations desperately in need of assistance. It
is a religious war.
When Obama or the EU
denies essential aid to an
Impose
African country that refuses
to bow to its corrupt
demands, how many people
starve to death, or die from
dirty water or malaria?
Are these Western countries, in fact, any better than
Isis and other Muslim radicals who want to impose
their religion wherever they
gain control?
We may not think of this as a
war because the aggressor
countries have no “battle
casualties”. But millions of
people are dying. It is war.
And it is being waged in the
name of secularist religion
and so-called “human rights”.
Baby girls pay the
We need a real price for ‘choice’
rebellion
THE protest against water
charges shows that there is
still a flicker of rebellion in
Irish people. But this rebellion is far too superficial.
What we need is a powerful revolt to cast off the secularist religion that is being
imposed on our society and
that is changing our outlook
on life.
The key to this revolt is a
clear affirmation of God’s
place in our lives and in society. We have to become a
community that, following
reason, “gives God his due”.
That means recognising
that attempts to deny or
exclude God from our dealings are irrational and
destructive. Good sense
demands that worship and
thanksgiving again become
central in our lives.
Public morality must be
based on natural law, the law
of reason, rooted ultimately
in God’s wisdom. Every
attempt to build a just society apart from God has failed
and must fail.
The way forward for society
is not through “economic
growth”
or
“consumer
demand”, that is, never-satisfied greed. These, to a large
extent, are futile, a distraction
from the real purpose of life
which is, ultimately, salvation.
We need genuinely open
debate about the fundamental
issues of life and society. That
means breaking the vile stranglehold of the media and the
politicians on free public discussion.
By adopting the irrational
Debate
ideology that now dominates
Irish politics the media have
betrayed their own vocation
and continue to fail the people.
Media freedom does not
mean that the media are free
to say what they like, but that
they have the humility and
integrity to facilitate truthful
debate in society.
We need to proclaim that
attempts to undermine marriage and the family cause
immense harm to untold
numbers of children.
We cannot allow ourselves
to be intimidated into silence
about the damage caused by
divorce, the appalling evil of
aborting a child, or the irrationality in the notion of
same-sex “marriage”.
Nor may we allow ourselves
to be fooled by the manipulative use of notions like, diversity, equality, tolerance, inclusivity and human rights.
Above all, each one of us
must stand up without fear
for truth and goodness wherever we find ourselves.
THE “pro-choice” lobby in Ireland
wants mothers to be allowed to abort
their unborn babies if the babies are so ill
they may die before or shortly after
birth.
The “pro-choice” lobby in Britain and
elsewhere wants mothers to be allowed
to abort their unborn babies if they are
girls.
The use of modern technology to detect baby girls and kill them,
gendercide as it is now called, is no small matter.
Already it has led to the loss of millions of girls in parts of Asia,
especially in India and China, and it is spreading into European
countries.
Governments are beginning to fear the social chaos this will lead
to in the near future, as men find it difficult to find wives.
Britain’s MPs recently voted overwhelmingly for a motion
declaring that sex-selection abortion (abortion of babies because
they are girls) is illegal.
But “pro-choice” feminists in the UK and elsewhere are up in
arms at any attempt to clamp down on gendercide.
Suchitra Dalvie, one of India’s most outspoken pro-choice campaigners argues that restricting such abortions “is damaging
women’s right to choice more broadly.”
Atheist Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked agrees. If Dalvie “can
take such a clear stand for choice, surely we in Britain can do likewise,” he wrote.
Ann Furedi, who heads BPAS, Britain’s biggest abortion operation, killing 60,000 babies a year, agrees with both.
“You can’t be pro-choice except when you don’t like the choice,
because that’s not pro-choice at all,” she wrote. In other words, if
you’re pro-choice you have to accept every choice a woman may
make.
Here we see the full brutal horror of the “pro-choice” ideology
that has become the basic plank of modern secularist morality.
The law of the jungle is “kill to survive”. The pro-choice morality
is “kill to get what you want.” This is socially approved terrorism.
It is the logical outcome of rejecting God and replacing his law
with our own wishes. Today’s loss of religious faith has far-reaching consequences.
Every choice
As stupid as it gets?
■ If you were opening a new shop would you advertise that you
were selling exactly the same goods as the other shops in the
street? And if that was all you had to offer, how long do you think
you’d last?
UTV Ireland has started up and Lucinda Creighton
(left) plans to launch a new party, and both offer
exactly what’s already well over-supplied.
Meanwhile the values of a large section of viewers and voters receive no media or political support. From a business angle, it hardly gets more
stupid than that!
FILM Review
Alive! February 2015
8
Boyhood
Universal Pictures - Directed by Richard Linklater
A mirror to life
ife transforms us. Only by looking back objectively can
we see how we’ve changed.
In his movies Richard Linklater explores the truth of people and relationships. They consist of long conversations
filmed without interruption.
He has brought his search for honesty even further in
Boyhood which charts 12 years in the life of a boy, Mason
(Ellar Coltrane).
Rather than casting different actors for the different
stages in Mason’s life, Linklater filmed the movie over a
12-year period using the same actors throughout.
These included Mason’s sister Samantha (Lorelai
Linklater), father Mason Snr (Ethan Hawke) and mother
Olivia (Patricia Arquette) whom we see age and develop for
real. A fascinating method, it’s more than a gimmick.
Starting as a 6-year-old in Texas, we see Mason and his
sister being uprooted from town to town and school to
school as their mother moves through jobs, college courses and failed marriages.
Their father, an intermittent visitor, is fun and a source
of advice. But as his children grow he remains the permanent child, unwilling to settle down and take responsibility.
Farrell not a great presenter
■ Brian Farrell was not a
great presenter despite
what columnist Andrew
O’Connell called the “richly deserved tributes” paid
to the former RTE employee following his death last
November (Irish Catholic
1/1/15).
O’Connell
praised
Farrell’s “masterful commentary” during John Paul
II’s visit to Ireland in 1979,
saying that it “contributed
to making the papal visit
one of RTE’s finest hours.”
Among those who paid
tribute to Farrell was
L
Change
But things never stay the same however little they seem
to change. Over the 12 years Mason’s family, friends and
relationships branch out, increase, reduce, wither and
blossom.
As the boy becomes an adolescent we see him grow from
a disconnected loner into a quiet, artistic young man.
Boyhood is a one-off. You will wonder what it is actually
about, the point of it. Where are the plot twists, the revelations and the exciting finale?
But then we should ask those questions about our own
world, because all those moments are there, buried in reality. That’s the point of this film.
It’s a remarkable and beautiful movie and a testament
not only to the power of cinema but the wonder of ordinary
life. Hugely recommended.
• Adult viewing due to graphic teenage language.
Cartoonist mocks supporters
■ A million plus people, including Enda Kenny, attended a solidarity demo in Paris, but a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist was not
impressed.
Rather, he mocked the worldwide support for the satirical
magazine, saying it was based on ignorance and made him sick.
Bernard Holtrop survived the attack because he was not at
work. But he derided the current support, telling a Dutch newspaper that it came from people who knew nothing about the
magazine or what was in it.
“We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our
friends,” said Holtrop, “it really makes me laugh.”
He added: “A few years ago, thousands of people took to the
streets in Pakistan to demonstrate against Charlie Hebdo. They
didn't know what it was. Now it’s the opposite,” with people
still not knowing what it’s about.
Dyane Connor
RTE news
or ‘gay’
propaganda?
■ On 2/1/15 the RTE
news factory produced a
2-minute report for its
main TV “news” bulletin
on
Lucinda
Creigton’s plans to
launch a new political
party.
Creighton said the
party would “offer a
new vision and choice to
voters” and Eddie
Hobbes, who accompanied her, said it was
“centrist in its principles”
and
had
“launched four principles today.”
RTE did not disclose
what that choice or
those principles were.
Instead Dyane Connor’s
report focused on samesex “marriage” and told
viewers that Creighton
“said she will probably
be voting in favour of
the referendum.”
Was it RTE that
brought up this issue?
Does anyone think RTE
would have mentioned
her views if she intended to vote against the referendum? News or ‘gay’
propaganda?
Dyane should also
know that Creighton did
not “quit” Fine Gael, she
was expelled for opposing an evil law.
Media
Watch
President Michael Higgins
who said he was “an outstanding broadcaster and
political commentator and
in so many ways he set the
standard for others to follow” in RTE.
RTE Director General
Noel Curran described
him as “one of the most
respected and talented current affairs presenters ever
to appear on RTÉ.”
Curran added that “his
incisive analysis was
paired with a unique presentation style and an
extraordinary depth of
knowledge about Irish politics.”
But all this is only part of
the story. Much more is
required from a great presenter, above all a commitment to fair and open
debate, rooted in a passion
Brian Farrell
for the truth.
And Farrell did not
always display that commitment or that passion for
truth in his current affairs
programmes, especially
when dealing with controversial social issues.
Slick
He kept a tight control
over each show, carefully
selecting what views
would and would not be
heard, what aspects of an
issue would be debated
and what ignored, and
how the whole issue was
framed.
He was a slick, manipulative operator who focused
on some truths while deliberately avoiding other key
facts, and often suppressing genuine, open debate
in order to advance the
RTE groupthink agenda.
How often did he chuckle
to himself afterwards at his
success in rigging a
“debate” to mislead RTE
viewers and influence their
thinking?
President Higgins was
absolutely right when he
said that “in so many ways
he set the standard for others to follow” in RTE. And
haven’t they followed it?
We have shown here on
many occasions how the
same kind of agenda-driven, group-think manipulation dressed up as objective reporting still prevails
in RTE.
Nor is any real alternative
being offered by Newstalk,
Today FM or TV3. Indeed,
the same contempt for
truth seems to hold sway
across the media.
The real issue with Kenny?
■ David Quinn has pointed out that “in his
Christmas message, Enda
Kenny once again couldn’t
bring himself next nor
near to directly mentioning
Christianity,
or
Bethlehem, or even religion, let alone Jesus
Christ” (Irish Independent
26/12/14).
But why was Quinn surprised at this?
Sure enough “major
politicians in other countries have no problem
mentioning Christianity
and Christ directly in their
Christmas messages.”
Thus, for Barack Obama,
serving others was “a
chance to celebrate the
birth of Christ and live out
what he taught us - to love
our neighbours as we
would ourselves.”
UK prime minister David
Cameron had gone even
deeper into religious territory in his Christmas messages for both 2012 and
2013.
“He told his fellow
Britons that Christmas
‘gives us the opportunity
to
remember
the
Christmas story - the story
about the birth of Jesus
Christ and the hope that he
Enda Kenny
brings to the countless millions who follow him’.”
Going further, Cameron
said: “The Gospel of John
tells us that in this man
was life, and that his life
was the light of all
mankind, and that he
came with grace, truth and
love.”
Even Germany’s Angela
Merkel, daughter of a
Protestant pastor and the
most powerful politician
in Europe, has no problem
mentioning Christianity in
her Christmas greetings.
Quinn thought Kenny’s
religion-free
message
might be a reaction against
what he called the
Church’s “excessive domi-
Merkel
nance” in the past or
because “the Guardians of
Secular
Purity
have
become so powerful and
intimidating.”
Perhaps, but the reason
may be more simple.
Kenny has made it crystal
clear that he is no longer a
Catholic or a Christian,
that he does not even
believe in a personal God.
So what religious meaning could Christmas have
for him? His 90-second
“message” was simply a
winter solstice opportunity for a quick self-promoting political broadcast.
What is far more important now is to grasp the
full implications of the secularist religion that the
state, under Kenny & Co in
Fine Gael and Labour, is
imposing on the country.
This is an intellectually
threadbare, morally corrupt, socially destructive
religion supported by our
brain-dead media and
meeting with little challenge from any of our
“elites”.
But only if we understand what is happening
can we oppose it and the
violent culture of despair
which it fosters.
Alive! February 2015
9
Male and female God created them
T
CO MME N T
Liam Bradley
Holidays
St. Patrick’s: 16 March,
3 days, 2 dinners, B/B,
€139, Gresham Hotel,
Dublin.
Easter: 6 April, 4 days,
3 dinners, B/B, €199
+daily tours,
Merrick Hotel, Galway.
Tel: 048 71269109
after 6pm
DVD Transfers
Cine films, photos and slides
transferred to DVD with music &
titles added.
Also Camcorder and video tapes
edited and transferred to DVD.
we say that the family, not
the individual, is the basic
unit or building block of
society and even of civilisation.
Until our own time, societies have recognised that the
most solid basis for the family is the commitment of a
man and woman to love each
other and to create a happy
environment where children
are procreated, welcomed,
cared for and educated.
This is clearly an utterly
unique relationship, to be
treasured and protected
because it brings love, joy
and hope for the future. So it
is given a unique name: marriage.
It is also given particular
protection by any society
concerned for its own wellbeing and future.
When a society is working
even moderately well, we
tend to take all these things,
even the family itself, for
granted.
But when a society begins
to disintegrate, to move
towards chaos, we soon
realise the importance of
solid family life based on
marriage. Good sense discloses that importance to us,
but now a rapidly growing
Unique
Alive!
St. Mary’s Priory, Tallaght, Dublin 24.
Tel: 01-4048187 ● E-mail: [email protected]
mountain of research confirms it.
Marriage and the family, of
course, have always been
under threat from many
causes: selfishness, cruelty,
violence, alcohol abuse,
adultery, cohabitation and so
on.
These threats, however,
endangered particular families. The threat from
“same sex marriage” is
different,
more
very
destructive. It attacks the
very nature of marriage.
It attempts to change
marriage into a totally different kind of relationship,
where procreation and
children are simply an
optional extra.
Even fundamental notions
like wife, husband, father
and mother are changed or
suppressed to fit in with this
new arrangement.
Marriage based on the profound ways men and women
complement each other is
essentially different to any
relationship based on samesex attraction.
So the issue here is in no
way a question of equality.
Indeed, to put any other relationship on the same level as
the man-woman union is not
equality, it is a perversion of
true equality.
Given the fundamental role
of marriage and of a father
and mother in rearing a
child, any attempt to undermine marriage is a grave
injustice against children and
against the whole society.
Politicians, media, and
lobby groups who take this
path act not only unjustly,
but also against reason,
putting our whole society at
Not about equality
risk for the sake of a false
ideology.
Since there can only be one
definition of marriage, any
attempt to redefine marriage
intends to destroy it.
At present the media and
well-funded lobby groups
are trying to prevent honest and open debate about
the tremendous issues at
stake in the campaign to
protect marriage.
But these issues are not
complex or difficult to
understand. Anyone who
truly cares for the well-being
of children and of society can
easily grasp them.
We would consider a child
foolishly destructive if he
smashed the pieces of his
Lego with a hammer. How,
then, could we smash the
basic unit of our society, the
family built on marriage?
Nor must we allow ourselves to be intimidated by
abuse or name-calling. As we
try to grasp the full richness
of marriage and the family
founded on marriage each of
us, even now, must do all we
can to protect and defend it.
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he family is where people, especially children,
learn how to love and
be loved, how to relate to
members of their own and
the opposite sex.
They learn how to be
responsible for others, how
to care for the common or
shared good, how to acquire
virtues like patience, generosity, truthfulness and justice, how to found their own
families.
Learning all these things,
and many more, in the family, they are able to bring
them to the wider society,
making it too, a place of love,
peace, justice and culture.
This is what we mean when
Alive! February 2015
10
Banks put their money into cluster bomb-making
IN the three years to last
September more than 150 banks
and other big money institutions around the world invested
€14bn in companies manufacturing cluster bombs, says a
Dutch report.
Most of the investors were from the
US (76), South Korea (22) and China
(21), but three were from Germany
and seven from the UK. One of the
biggest investors was a Singaporebased company.
When fired or dropped from an airplane, a cluster bomb bursts apart in
mid-air to release tens or even hundreds of smaller bombs over an area
the size of a football field.
• A cluster bomb packed with
bomblets
Any people within the strike area, be
they military or civilian, are very likely
to be killed or seriously injured.
Like landmines, these bomblets can
remain a fatal threat to anyone, and
especially to children, in an area long
after a conflict has ended.
Cluster bombs were banned in a
2008 Oslo convention that came into
force in 2010 and has been signed by
115 countries.
However, the US, China and Russia
are among the countries which still
refuse to sign.
A loophole in the agreement means
that while production of cluster bombs
is banned, it is not illegal to invest in
companies that manufacture them.
“Cluster munitions are banned by
international law,” said Suzanne
Oosterwijk, co-author of the report for
the Dutch peace group, PAX.
“A majority of the countries in the
world have recognised that this
Useful books for children
e are the primary
educators of our
children, and our
homes are the domestic
church. One of our most
important jobs as parents is passing the Faith
on to our children.
Doing this might sound
daunting, but if you have
good material to hand,
it’s easier than you think.
Even if your children are
in a school that does a
fabulous job of preparing
them for the sacraments
of First Holy Communion
and Confirmation, it never
hurts to top them up with
good stuff.
If you’re concerned
about your child’s sacramental preparation, then
it’s your responsibility to
step in and fill the gaps.
Two books that have
been around for a while
but have had a facelift
are My First Holy
Communion Book and My
Confirmation Book.
Both are written by a
retired school teacher
and have approval from
Bishop Phillip Boyce of
Raphoe. I’ve used both
books with my children
and love them. You could
use them at home or in
the classroom.
When children are
preparing for the sacraments, there is so much
to learn, but it also
should be a bit fun.
These books get the balance.
There are chapters to
read and worksheets to
complete. The books are
easy to use and bright
and cheerful. Even more
impor tant, they are
sound.
The prayers the children
need to learn are in both
books. They have lovely
stories from the Bible and
about the saints.
Children are encouraged to look up even
more stories, particularly
of child saints like
W
Handing On The Faith
with Jaclyn Ascough
Tarcisius,
Stanislaus
Kosta, Rose, Imelda, and
Maria Goretti.
Both books have appropriate preparation for the
sacrament
of
Reconciliation. Even as
an adult, I find the examination of conscience useful.
Blessed Sacrament
Spending time with
Jesus in the Blessed
Sacrament is explained
well. In My First Holy
Communion the children
learn that the white host
is really the Body of
Christ.
It tells how, when the
Host is put into the monstrance, the love of Jesus
shines out on all those
present just as the rays
of the sun shine on the
earth.
A list is given of how to
behave in Church: 1.
Enter the Church quietly.
2. Walk up the aisle reverently. Do not run. 3.
Genuflect before you
enter the seat. 4. Say our
prayers quietly.
5. Never drop litter in
God’s house. 6. If you
see litter, pick it up. 7.
Leave the Church quietly.
8. Genuflect again on the
way out. I know some
adults who could do with
this list.
My Confirmation Book
explains Catholic devotions, the Stations of the
Cross and the Rosary. It
deals with topical issues
like bullying, new age,
and respect for the
human body.
There is a beautiful
prayer which says: Lord
Jesus, I give you my
hands to do your work. I
give you my feet to go
your way. I give you my
eyes to see as you see. I
give you my tongue to
speak your words.
I give you my mind that
you may think in me. I
give you my spirit that you
may pray in me. I give you
my whole heart that you
may love in me so that it
is you, Lord Jesus, who
lives and prays, and
works in me. Amen.
You can order these
books from 074 913
1955 or 087 23 61 721
or email: tottu13@gmail.
com.
■ Growing numbers of young people in the west
African country of Niger are joining the ranks of the
radical Islamist Boko Haram movement, a local
bishop has warned.
Archbishop Michel Cartatéguy of Niamey, capital
of Niger, criticised the international media for their
indifference to what is happening, especially in the
region of Diffa.
Relying on an MP in the locality, he said that
young people, male and female, “are recruited
every day. They know Diffa better than members of
Boko Haram and can show them where to carry out
attacks.”
The French-born bishop added that it was the general view that most of the young Nigeriens join
Boko Haram for economic, not religious reasons.
New members for Boko Haram
weapon is unacceptable. And yet producers are still able to fund their activities.”
She called on financial institutions to
introduce robust policies to ensure
they are not supporting companies
involved in the production of the
banned weapon.
Another campaigner urged the banks
to “put lives before profit”. She added:
“We’re talking about a weapon that is
currently killing civilians in Syria and
eastern Ukraine.”
Several countries, including Ireland,
Italy and New Zealand, have prohibited public or private financial institutions from investing in cluster munitions.
WHAT
GOD
ME!
MEANS TO
M
y relationship with God has been a love
story with many ups and downs. I am
from Austria and was an only child. My
mother had rheumatism, so she was weak and was
often in hospital. My father was strong and caring.
My mother died when I was seven years old.
This faced me with many questions about life,
death and suffering. It made me realise that there
must be more in life than superficial issues.
I prayed every day and built up the pure relationship of a child with God.
My father married again, this time a widow with
3 children. As a teenager my relationship to my
stepmother became more and more difficult. Yet in
all tough situations I was aware of God’s caring
love for me.
A most formative moment in my great love story
was four years ago, when I struggled with myself,
my family, God, with my past and how it shaped
my present.
I had “fallen in love with Jesus” years before and
loved being a Catholic. But now I started to feel dictated to by what the Church told me is right, by the
values my parents had instilled in me.
All this seemed like ideologies which were overwhelming me, defeating me, capturing me.
The Church especially wasn’t like a home anymore, but rather became a corset where I could
never fit in, however hard I tried.
It was a club for holy people and it was tying the
corset so tight I could not breathe anymore. So I
decided to wreck everything I had learnt so far.
I wanted to be free, to be independent, to be
myself! I wanted to follow my own rules and ideas
of right and wrong.
There I stood, pumped up with the dream of creating my own ethics. But I soon discovered that the
dream was an illusion.
It was moving my life like an independent body
in the direction I wanted it to go. But wrecking all I
had learnt about morality meant actually wrecking
the skeleton of the body.
I discovered that this body, my life, needed a
skeleton, it could not even stand without one.
I noticed that rightness is not always obvious.
Stealing is wrong, but what if someone has more
JOIN the Christian Solidarity Party
to defend Christian values in
Ireland. Support marriage between
a man and a woman. Vote ‘No’ to
upcoming referendum. Send
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to P.O. Box 9646, Dublin or Paul
O’Loughlin, president of CSP 087
9130869.
● MISCELLANEOUS
THANKS to God Our Heavenly
Father, the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Our Lady, Sts. Jude, Anthony, &
Matt Talbot for favours received.
RG.
MANY thanks to the Sacred Heart
for favours received and about to
be received. TB.
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money than I? That’s unfair, so it would actually be
wrong not to steal for fairness sake.
Hitting someone is wrong, but if I’m angry it’s my
feelings and my nature which tell me to hit the person, and nature can’t be wrong, can it?
The world population is growing dangerously
fast, so it may actually be necessary to kill some
people…
Suddenly I was lying on the floor of my life, surrounded by confusion, desperation and feeling lost.
Without the skeleton of morality I could not make
the smallest decision, because there were always
the ifs and buts. I saw no way out of this prison of
disorientation.
Then one evening a religious sister found me in
tears. I told her my story and that I didn’t know
which direction to go, because there was no reasonable sign to follow.
She just asked me: “Who or what is it that you at
least think is most trustworthy?”
To my surprise I had to admit that the most trustworthy person I knew was … Jesus.
It came into my mind and didn’t let me go. That
was painful, because it wasn’t what I wanted to
discover.
I had deliberately turned away from this and now
I found that it was actually the ground where I
wished to take root.
I
discovered that following nothing and nobody
didn’t mean that I was free. Rather, I was
enslaved by disorientation, zeitgeist and society.
I understood that it is impossible to follow nothing, because we always have to put our faith in
something: either in God our maker, or in a seductive ideology.
We put our trust in Jesus, who loved us to the
point of the cross, or in an illusion of freedom;
either in the Holy Spirit, who fills us with vitality,
or in the spirit of the age.
Longing for freedom, I discovered that following
Jesus and his commands is not an enslaving corset,
but a direction to happiness and true freedom.
I began once again to pray and to read the Bible to
find out more about Jesus’ ideas of how to live.
I understood Paul in a new way, that we are either
“slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Romans 6:16).
Again, Jesus says: “If the Son sets you free, you
will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
I entered a one-year-programme to grow in faith
(Emmanuel School of Mission), which helped me to
rebuild my life on the trustworthy and strong rock
named Jesus.
He is the ground in which
I have put down my roots, a
fertile soil which strengthens me to grow into a strong
woman who aims to testify
to God’s freeing love.
• Katharina Sperrer, 23, is
an Erasmus student studying Religious Education in
Mater Dei College.
Alive! February 2015
11
Novel is becoming ever more relevant today
TELEGRAPH blogger Charles Moore has recommended
The Children of Men, a novel by PD James, to readers who
want to understand where Britain and, indeed, all Europe is
heading.
Published in 1993, and
made into a film, the story is
set in 2021 Britain. The entire
human race suffers from infertility: the last person born
arrived on 19 October 1995.
With birth rates falling drastically in all European countries, James brilliantly imagines the effects.
Childless women dress up
dolls like babies and push
them about in prams. There
are christening ceremonies
for kittens. The sexual act, as
sterile as gay sex, becomes
unappealing, (already a major
problem in Japan).
The youngest people, called
Omegas and with nothing to
live for, are utterly selfish.
With few young people to do
the necessar y jobs, immigrants from poor countries are
needed. But these “sojourners” are expelled from Britain
when they reach the age of
60.
• From the movie The
Children of Men
The elderly, being more
numerous, dominate society.
But since there is no one to
care for them when they
become sick they are encouraged to commit suicide with
“dignity” – the cant word used
by the regime.
Dressed in white robes for
what is known as the Quietus,
they are herded on to boats
and pushed out to sea.
But a tiny group of rebels
forms what looks like a hopeless plot against the authorities. Then one of them
becomes pregnant…
PD James, in the light of her
Christian faith, “understood
that a society which lives for
the present alone will despise
THE THINGS THEY SAY...
Men are essential in the
passing along of faith to the
children. Various studies
have been published that
underline the essential nature
of the father in the transmission of the faith.
The active involvement in
the faith of an evangelised
and catechised father is the
single biggest influence on
whether or not the children
will remain in the faith when
they become adults.
The reason the Church is
losing so many young people
is that the fathers have not
been evangelised and catechised. This is the essence of
the Catholic ‘man-crisis’.
— Matthew Christoff, internet
evangeliser
The double standards in politics and much of the media
on the abortion issue is now
very much an issue in itself.
— Dr. Ruth Cullen of the Pro
Life Campaign
● Catholic ‘man-crisis’
I am challenging us to look
at the masked English Jihadi
executioner
who
has
appeared on video as though
we are looking in the mirror.
We must ask ourselves:
what moral vacuum have we
created in the West?; What
alienation are we creating
from each other, from community, from human life?
How are we teaching our
children to forget the preciousness of life? And how
has our brutal, even barbaric,
economic system brought us
into such relationships to our
fellow human beings?
— Joshua Oppenheimer,
director of The Act Of Killing
● Moral vacuum
If the politicians now pushing for more abortion had a
track record in also highlighting the dark side of abortion
they would have some credibility in talking about the
issue.
The reality is they always
keep their heads down and
run for cover when stories
showing the negative effects
● Double standards
Competing and irreconcilable ideas of the human person are at the root of today’s
culture-wars.
Are we people of intelligence and free will, capable of
knowing the good, freely
choosing it, and finding happiness in that goodness?
Or are we twitching bundles
of desires for whom instant
gratification is the supreme
good?
Those determined to impose
the latter idea on the rest of us
are the aggressors in the present culture wars, not the
Church. A culture war has
been declared on us, and not
fighting is not an option.
For to surrender, supinely,
before the aggressors is a
betrayal of the Gospel and of
the Church’s evangelical mission.
— George Weigel in First
Things magazine
● Not an option
ISIS fighter poses with
his two sons.
The West dramatically
underestimates the threat
emanating from ISIS, and
ISIS’ fighters are much
more intelligent and dangerous than our politicians
realise.
The Islamic State is
drenched in almost infectious enthusiasm and confident of victory, something I have never before
experienced in a war zone.
More importantly, the
ISIS fighters are convinced
that their totalitarian faith
and demonstrative brutality will help them move
mountains.
In Mosul, less than 400
ISIS fighters routed as
many as 25,000 Iraqi soldiers and militias despite
their ultra-modern equipment.
— Jurgen Todenhofer,
German peace activist who
visited Islamic State
● Routed by ISIS
of abortion emerge.
A glaringly obvious example
of this was when reports
emerged in 2013 that a
woman from Ireland had died
immediately after an abortion
at a Marie Stopes clinic in
London.
When the story broke, no
word of concern was
expressed by any member of
government including the
Tánaiste or Minister for
Health Leo Varadkar.
During a speech at the US
Board of Review gala in New
York, Meryl Streep praised
Oscar-winner
Emma
Thompson as “a rabid, maneating feminist, like I am”.
“Rabid”? Really? That’s
what we want, the rabid consumption of the other sex?
Has “equality” been redefined so as to mean “place
subject under our feet”? If so,
ugh; women have succeeded
in becoming the men they
hated.
— Elizabeth Scalia, US
blogger
● Man-eaters
The most important thing to
know about ‘same-sex mar-
● Objective fact
riage’ is that the very idea is a
metaphysical absurdity and a
moral abomination, and
demonstrably so.
It is no more up to the courts
or ‘the people’ to ‘define’
marriage or to decide
whether religion is a good
thing than it is up to them to
‘define’ whether water has
the chemical structure H2O.
In each case what is at issue
is a matter of objective fact
that it is the business of reason to discover rather than
democratic procedure to stipulate.
— Edward Feser in Atheism:
The Last Superstition
Not only is the US a pacesetter in film production values, we are also a pace-setter
in murderous, amoral, profoundly disturbing content
the world over.
— Eugene Jarecki, US
documentary maker
● Pace-setting US
Lucinda Creighton is one of
the bravest politicians in
Ireland. But even she seems to
quail at being labelled “conservative” or “right-wing” by
the likes of RTE and the Irish
Times.
She shouldn’t worry about
their good opinion. She doesn’t need it and she could easily turn their opposition into a
virtue with many voters.
Therefore, she needs to be
bold, not cautious.
She should simply set before
the public what she really
believes on all issues, without
fear or favour.
She will be attacked, but
many voters will flock to her
standard precisely as a result
of those attacks and in sufficient numbers for her party to
become a significant force in
Irish politics.
— David Quinn, Irish
Independent
● Lucinda’s party
the past and ignore the
future,” said Moore.
Her novel is becoming ever
more relevant. In the world in
1980, there were 10.2 old
people for every 100 workers.
Today, there are 12.1. In
2050, the UN projects, there
will be 24.7.
Germany has a fertility rate
of only 1.43 children; more
than 1 in 5 people in Japan is
over 65.
“We have been obsessed for
so long with the fear of population explosion that we don’t
think much about what a low
bir th rate means,” said
Moore.
But more people working
means more activity, more
wealth; fewer people working
means less activity and eventually more poverty.
12
Made to belong
today
nbelievers
attempt to explain
human existence as
being solely due to evolution. Reason alone tells us
that this is an irrational
account of how we come to
be.
However, that has not
stopped the theor y from
becoming widespread in the
Western world, with its very
eccentric rejection of God.
We are asked to believe
that human beings are just
the result of blind chance,
or of billions of billions of
blind chances that worked
out well for us.
We emerged as microorganisms from some kind
of cosmological stew, yet
despite developing in miraculous ways, we have never
come to be more than a
heap of matter.
Against this the Church
teaches that each one of us
has been personally called
into existence by God and
then called into a personal
relationship with him in
Christ.
It is extremely difficult to
grasp that the infinite, allholy God knows me right
down to the very roots of my
being, and cares deeply
about me.
This is our fundamental
calling or vocation in life – to
live every moment of our
existence in a personal relationship with Christ.
But we each have a secondary vocation – the particular way of life to which
God calls us, be it single
life, marriage, religious life,
U
KNOW YOUR
FAITH
priesthood.
And how we live that vocation varies from person to
person – plumber, doctor,
driver,
architect,
bus
teacher, and so on.
Each of these has a further characteristic – it is a
call to serve the community.
We are not created by God
to live in isolation, to be
pure individuals.
Community
Rather we are called to
belong to a community, and
it is through our relationships with others, and not
simply by exploring our own
minds, that we discover who
we truly are.
To the question “Who are
you?” we answer that we
are a father or mother, a
son or daughter, an uncle,
grandparent, and so on.
And having established our
place in a family we go on to
tell of our role in the wider
community – a farmer, shopkeeper, factory worker, dentist, and so on.
All of these signal our particular way of contributing to
the community. They also
remind us that it is only in
the well-being of the community, in the common
good, that we find our own
security and happiness.
We are made in God’s
image, and our human community reflects the community of the Blessed Trinity.
Monthly Meditation
T
Life is in his will
he first step in contemplation is to consider
steadily what God wants, what is pleasing to
him, what is acceptable in his sight.
And since we all make many mistakes and the boldness of our will revolts against the rightness of his, and
since the two cannot be brought into agreement and
made to fit together, let us humble ourselves under the
mighty hand of the most high God.
In the sight of his mercy let us take pains to show how
in all things we stand in need of his mercy, saying:
‘Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me and I
shall be saved’, and ‘O Lord, be gracious to me, heal
me, for I have sinned against you’.
Once the eye of our heart has been cleansed by
dwelling on thoughts of this kind we are no longer left
in bitterness in our own spirit but we have great joy in
the Spirit of God.
We do not now consider what is God’s will for us, but
what God’s will is, in itself: ‘Life is in his will’. Hence
we may be sure that what is in harmony with his will is
both useful and beneficial for us.
From the contemplation of ourselves we gain fear and
humility; but from the contemplation of God we gain
hope and love.
— St Bernard (1090-1153)
T
Alive! February 2015
Choudary raised key issues
he recent terrorist
attack in Paris has
raised many major
issues that go far beyond the
immediate concern with
freedom of the media.
Some of these issues were
raised briefly in a short but
remarkable Prime Time interview with the UK-based
radical Muslim preacher,
Anjem Choudary.
RTE, for possibly the first
time, could not prevent a
vigorous challenge to secularist religion. And interMiriam
viewer
O’Callaghan, trapped in a
narrow secularist view, was
left floundering.
She ended up trying to stir
up viewers’ emotions, desperately accusing Choudary
of saying things which he
had to repeatedly point out
he did not say.
“You fundamentally disapprove of [western values]
and justify going out and
slaughtering people,” said
O’Callaghan. To which
Choudary rightly replied:
“You are adding words to
what I am saying.”
This, however, was not a
clash between secularism
and Islam. As Choudary
could see and O’Callaghan
failed to see, it was about
deep contradictions in secularism itself, issues we
would still need to face,
even if Islam did not exist.
O’Callaghan
told
Choudary, “What you’re
basically saying is that our
value system -and you live
in London, in a Western
society that is very much
live-and-let-live, cherishes
freedom of expression - you
believe that the society you
live in, the values they cherish, this society here in
Ireland and the values we
cherish, that they are
wrong.”
But who did she mean by
“we” and “our” here? She
assumed that most people
in Ireland shared her “value
system”. But they don’t.
And exactly what values
was she talking about?
What kind of morality, for
example, is enshrined in the
“live and let live” value system? Does justice or care for
the poor fit into it? Does “let
live” include the unborn?
Western ‘values’
Miriam could not see that
it’s not necessary to be a
Muslim to have big problems with many Western
“values” today.
She was at a complete loss
when Choudary, challenging secularism, stated: “The
religion of freedom and
democracy justifies the
killing of Muslims in
Afghanistan and Iraq, torturing
people
in
Guantanamo. This is your
Anjem Choudary
religion.”
And again, “There is a
value system which you
adopt, for example freedom
and democracy, you are
willing to fight people and
even kill people in the
Middle East because of
that.”
She had no response when
Choudary accused the West
of supporting state terrorism.
“How many people died
in Paris and how many people die from the drones that
the Americans are dropping
on people’s heads in Iraq
and Syria?,” he asked. “Let’s
talk about the wider picture.
State terrorism is killing
hundreds of thousands.”
Indeed, US drones alone
have probably killed at least
10,000 innocent Muslims,
many of them children.
Where are the big large
protests about that?
Even on the issue of
Western regard for “unlimited
media
freedom”,
Choudary pointed out, “in
France, you can’t deny the
Holocaust, so where is the
freedom of expression
there?”
But O’Callaghan was not
prepared to even listen to
any of the points raised by
the imam.
Instead, she wildly told
him: “Your value system is
like a medieval, chaotic,
islamo-fundamentalist…
because if you ran society
the way you do people
would be killed, slaughtered, for whatever people
feel offence about.”
Perhaps, but she provided
no evidence. And why
describe a system as
“medieval”? Modern secularist ideology has led to as
much evil as any system in
history.
Indeed, it is so morally
incoherent that we would
eventually have had to face
the major errors in its foundations and the evil it justifies.
The Paris attack brought
forward that day of reckoning. RTE staff urgently need
training in how to challenge
this ideology.
I s a i a h h e a r s G o d ’ s c a ll
The Prophets, Part 4,
Isaiah
fter the Psalms, Isaiah
is the Old Testament
book most quoted in
the New Testament and in
the Liturgy.
The prophet urged people
to return to the authentic
worship of God or face judgment and punishment. Yet,
he also had a strong message of mercy and hope.
Isaiah began his work
more than 700 years before
Christ’s birth, around the
time of the prophets Amos,
Hosea and Micah.
Amos and Hosea preached
to the northern kingdom,
Israel, whereas Micah and
Isaiah preached to Judah,
the southern kingdom. Few
wanted to hear his message.
Isaiah received his call
from the Lord in the year
King Uzziah died, 742 B.C.
(Is 6:1). He was to
announce the fall of Israel
and Judah as a result of the
nation’s infidelity. His main
A
Fr Joseph
Briody
concern was Judah.
An “insider”, he was close
to the inner circles of the
palace and temple in
Jerusalem. Receiving his
call in the temple (Is. 6), he
had easy access to the king,
first Ahaz, then Hezekiah
(7:3-17).
He showed great interest
in the Jerusalem monarchy.
With firm trust in the Lord he
encouraged rejection of all
foreign military alliances.
In Isaiah’s time Judah was
attacked by Syria and Israel.
It seemed clear that only the
powerful Assyria could help
Judah.
However, Isaiah argued
against any reliance on
Assyria, saying that the Lord
himself would save Judah.
Later, when Assyria attacked
Judah and its capital
Jerusalem, Isaiah argued
against accepting militar y
help from Egypt or Babylon.
This must have been
incomprehensible to his contemporaries. Yet Isaiah was
correct. Assyria’s attack on
Jerusalem failed, as he predicted. This was seen as a
miraculous deliverance.
Isaiah was renowned. His
prophecy added weight to
his teaching that Jerusalem
and its temple would
endure. His teaching gave
hope to his followers.
Even when Jerusalem did
fall in 587 B.C. and the people were taken into exile in
Babylon, they realised that
Isaiah
their trial would be temporary. They would return and
rebuild the city and the temple.
His followers developed
Isaiah’s thought and wrote
with hope of a “New
Jerusalem” in the future,
one full of joy and gladness
with no more weeping (Is.
65:17ff). The city that saw
so much suffering would
become the image of the
heavenly city.
The book bearing Isaiah’s
name has three different
parts. Part 1, chapters 139, sometimes called “First
Isaiah,” is made up of his
oracles and sayings.
Scholars tell us that
“Second Isaiah”, chs 40-55,
come from a later time,
toward the end of the
Babylonian exile. They
announce liberation for the
exiles under Persia’s King
Cyrus.
“Third Isaiah”, chs 56-66,
deals with Jerusalem after
the exile. Jerusalem will be
restored and will be the city
where God reigns.
Celebrating the Wonder of Marriage
Alive! February 2015
‘Don’t tell even bLeogveindoes not
with self
your husband’ H
’m not sure what I expected when I got married. I had been brought up in a happy home
and my parents enjoyed a solid relationship
grounded in the Catholic faith.
When it came to my turn to get married, I knew
I was with the man I would love for the rest of my
life.
We met through my older sister when I started
university. Less than subtle in her attempts to
match-make, she, to her credit, succeeded.
After going out together for three years, we got
engaged, and married eight months later, surrounded by family and friends. It’s a precious
memory.
In getting married to someone you love you
become a joint venture. You look at life as a unit
– out at everyone else.
Decisions are made jointly and everything is
shared, both positive and negative. That intimacy and sharing is key to the success of our, and
I imagine any, marriage.
If someone wants to tell me something but
says “don’t tell even your husband”, I ask them
to not bother telling me at all.
What’s the point? Marriage is about trust and
partnership – well that’s what I’ve found. And
it’s about loyalty.
itler declared Dietrich von Hildebra
nd to be Public
Enemy No. 1; John Paul II called him
the 20th century’s greatest philosopher. Alice, his
wife, has been
honoured by Pope Francis. Betw
een them they wrote a
dozen books on marriage.
Dietrich is deceased, but Alice, 91,
still writes. One of
her books is a collection of her lette
rs to a young friend,
Julie, during Julie’s first year of mar
riage.
By Love Refined: Letters to a Young
Bride offers practical
advice on the everyday problems in
all marriages: annoying habits, household duties, exte
rnal pressures, in-laws,
pressures that require conflict-resol
ution, etc.
Alice wrote: “You and Michael now
have in your hands the
power to create an earthly heaven
or hell. It’s no secret that marriag
e can
quickly become a hell for spouses.
“But remember that humanly spea
king, a great love between husban
d
and wife can also be the deepest sour
ce of happiness this side of heaven.”
I
Best advice
I’ve heard lots of advice over the years: not to
let the sun go down on anger, not to sweat the
small things - all useful advice.
But the best advice I ever got was to take time
to nurture our marriage. To recognise how precious the relationship is and to preserve it.
As time goes on, if and when children come
along there is less time for this, but anything
worthwhile requires effort – and marriage is
worth it.
We are blessed with healthy and happy children who give a whole new meaning to our lives
and to our marriage.
Our family focus shifted from each other to
these little people who bring huge gifts and
graces into our home.
When I wake up some mornings with a child or
even two in my bed, I often think about the
‘Love alone’
warmth and security I enjoyed as a small child
snuggled in beside my late mother and father.
A family brings responsibility, one that we bear
jointly. Raising children is exhausting, and combining that with full time work is particularly challenging today.
In his Letter to Families Pope John Paul II noted
two fundamental truths about what is involved in
raising children.
Firstly, that we are called to live in truth and
love; and secondly, that we find fulfilment
through the ‘sincere gift of self’.
Without question, once our children came
along, we became less selfish by necessity. Our
outlook in life changed.
And our priorities changed, to become focused
on our children – care for them, their protection,
and our responsibility to pass on the faith to
them.
Marriage is a place of challenge. It requires
work from both of us daily.
It takes energy and commitment but it also provides a place of comfort against the background
of the daily challenges life throws at us. I wouldn’t change it.
• Eilís and Martin Mulroy (above) are married
for 14 years and live in Galway.
Pointer to children’s happiness
Children are likely to be
happier the more they
know about family events
which they could not possibly have recalled, say US
researchers.
Such events include how
their parents met, what happened on their wedding day,
what happened on the day of
their birth, where their
grand-parents married, and
so on.
The more the children knew
the more confidence they
had, the happier they were in
For Dietrich, “a sterile approach to
sexuality dominates our time”, our
culture has not properly embraced sexu
ality.
“Love alone is the key to understand
ing the true nature of sex, its valu
e,
and the mystery which it embodie
s,” he wrote.
But love is not like attachment to
things, nor just a means to somethi
ng
else. It does not begin with self, but
responds to the value of the beloved
.
Thus, for a person to feel pain in his
leg after he broke it would not be
a
sign of extraordinary love for him
self.
But when a wife’s pain is shared from
the inside by her husband, when he
truly says to her: “your sufferings
are my sufferings; your happiness
is my
happiness”, there is great love.
★
their families, and the more
resilient they were in the face
of challenges.
Drs. Marshall Duke and
Robyn Fivush of Emory
University devised a ‘Do You
Know’ scale, asking children
20 questions about their fam-
ily history.
The children’s answers were
the greatest single indicator
of their emotional health and
happiness.
Knowing the answers to the
20 questions, said the
researchers, is not only about
having a collection of facts
about events that shaped
their family history.
It’s also important because
it creates a strong “inter-generational self”: being part of a
family that has strong roots
and endures through time.
Couples who shape the future
A
saint who is a rogue, but God loves him. God has promised him
the sun, moon and stars, but asks just one thing that he won’t give.
The saint delays. Sometimes he’s good, sometimes he’s a disgrace.
Then he becomes the man he should be.
This is the story of Abraham, ancestor of all the Jews (Book of Genesis).
We Catholics call him “our father in faith”.
For centuries the Jews ascribed all the blessings they received to God’s
love for Abraham. But the story winds on and on before God’s promises
come true.
And what was God waiting for Abraham to do? To honour his wife,
Sarah. Among the many stories of Abraham in Genesis are three where he
mistreats his wife.
She’s always there with him, but it’s only when he finally calls her, “my
wife” (Gen 20:11f) that the promises become reality.
So God establishes his covenant with the nation of Israel on the basis of
Abraham’s love and respect for his wife. The true living out of this couple’s marriage is the basis for everything.
Yet that can’t be too strange, since all life flows out of marriage. Even
today a nation which treasures marriage is a good
nation for children to be born into and a good
place to live.
Marriage opens men and women to the amazing power of the God of life, since the birth of
children is one of the most startling examples
of this power.
Marriage is all about fidelity and growing
in trust, which is what God asked of Israel
over the centuries.
Tracing “roots” is big business today:
tourists who come here seeking their roots
show that a couple who live their marriage as
best they can change the world for the generations to come, as did Abraham and Sarah.
— Fr Terence Crotty O.P.
13
14
Catholic Activist Training School
Easter Week 6th-10th April 2015!
Alive! February 2015
VOICE OF THE FAMILY
invites you to a
One-Day Conference
REBUILDING THE
PROTECTION OF LIFE,
FAMILY AND MARRIAGE
IN IRELAND
With world-leading Catholic apologist and evangelist
Tim Staples, daily talk show host with Catholic
Answers radio, former Assemblies of God minister.
Empowering you to be salt and light in today’s secular world!
Discover the glorious vocation of Christian witness.
Training, media skills, apologetics, fellowship, formation, equipping for the
spiritual battle, prayer, outdoor pursuits/activities,
preparation for real activism, lives of the saints. Residential.
Being Catholic is not a spectator sport!!
Pope Francis said, be “protagonists of transformation. Don’t be observers, but immerse
yourself in the reality of life, as Jesus did.”
Don’t be a
spectator - get
involved,
answer the
CALL!!!
Come on Catholic Boot Camp – Corralea Outdoor Education
Centre, Belcoo, Co. Fermanagh – Places are limited. To book write
or call Colette in our office. 09493 75993 (Some sponsorships available.)
Human Life International (Ireland), Guadalupe Centre, Main St,
Knock Co. Mayo Tel 09493 75993
email: [email protected] www.humanlife.ie Charity CHY 11138
ALGARVE, Albuferia, Portugal.
Luxury 1 or 2 bed aparts for rent.
Sky TV, shared pool, long/short
term. Special Winter rates. Tel:
087 2371716, 087 2856636.
MEDJUGORJE. 1 & 2 bed
aparts to rent, 5 mins from
church, with balconies, lifts & air
con. Views of Apparition Hill &
Cross Mountain. 087 1496338 or
068 32788. Website: www.
apartmentsinmedjugorje.com
MEDJUGORJE apart. Bright,
spacious, all mod cons. Air con, 5
mins from church. Taxi can be
arranged to & from airport. Tel:
087 2870508.
PRIME 5 bed, 2-storey residence
at Knock, Co. Mayo. Walking distance to Knock Shrine. Excellent
condition throughout. Contact
James Kilcoyne, Auctioneer, Ballaghaderreen, Co. Roscommon.
094 9860039, 087 2365294 or
087 8120339.
● ACCOMMODATION
WATERFORD Volunteers wanted to help distribute Alive!
papers, please. Tel: Julie 086
0596051.
ALOE vera. Forever living products. Distributor: Phil Colgan 016281436; 086 2437653.
COMPETITIONS.
Bargains.
Offers. www.holyjoey.com
ALOE Vera forever living products. Killarney. Distribution
Margaret Walsh. Looking for
extra staff, expanding the business due to high demand. Full
and part time staff required.
Couple would suit. Tel: 087
6789990 as soon as possible.
TAHITIAN Noni Juice . To order
Noni call 087 6730717.
I HAVE Christmas cards to
● MISCELLANEOUS
SATURDAY 28th FEBRUARY 2015
EMMAUS CONFERENCE CENTRE
Ennis Lane, Lissenhall, Swords,
Co. Dublin
Speakers include:
John Smeaton (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children):
Teaching the pro-life message.
Anthony Murphy (Catholic Voice):
Why we must defend marriage.
Dr Thomas Ward (National Association of Catholic Families):
Diagnosis and treatment of our crisis.
Peter and Fiona Perrem (Nazareth Family Institute):
Making marriage work.
Patrick McCrystal (Human Life International):
Contraception – the spiritual battle against the family.
Maria Madise (Voice of the Family):
Between the two Synods on the Family.
Patrick Buckley (European Life network):
The new attack on unborn life in Ireland.
9.00 am: Registration • 9.15 am: Holy Mass
To book, please contact Maria: [email protected]; 0044 20 7820 3148
Fee for day, including lunch: €20 per person; €30 per couple.
CLASSIFIED ADS
☎ Breda 01-404 8187
donate if anybody is interested.
Please ring me on 086 8664040.
CAMINO Drug rehabilitation, run
by Fr. Denis Laverty since 1997,
is in urgent need of funds. Please
send what you can. Camino
Project,
Meadowbrook,
Cloncurry Cross, Enfield, Co.
Meath. Tel: 046 9549241. Email:
[email protected].
Charity no: CHY 12826.
WONDERFUL novenas have
answered my calls many many
times. MB
DEAR Sacred Heart of Jesus in
the past I have asked for many
favours. This time I ask you this
very special one (mention
favour). Take it, dear Heart of
Jesus, and place this request in
your broken Heart where your
father can see it. Then in his merciful eyes, it will become your
favour not mine. Amen. Say this
prayer for three days. Pub
promised and favour will be
granted. Never known to fail. An.
● NOVENAS
CORK lady 63, single, looking for
respectable gent, single or widower. Hobbies are dancing, animals, history & gardening. Box
7501.
GENT 42, self-employed, honest,
trustworthy, caring, single, wltm
lady late 30s, no ties. Friendship,
possible relationship. Box 7502.
● PERSONAL
Classifieds: €1 per word; Box No. €3.00 extra
WALK tall. Tipperary business
man, sincere, gentle, considerate, 5’10”, wltm lady mid-50s, for
friendship. Box 7503.
CONNACHT single man, 45,
Catholic, handsome. Interests
include reading, music, cinema,
travel, wltm female, foreign
national, for friendship. Box
7504.
GENT 40, Connacht, wltm lady,
late 30s, possible relationship.
No ties. Box 7505.
HONEST caring male, early 40s,
seeks lady, 30-40 for longterm
relationship maybe marriage. Tel:
087 1025695.
LONELY male 74, single, honest,
NSND, good appearance, seeks
sincere, attractive lady, for
friend/relationship. Discretion
assured. Tel: 089 9563856.
RETIRED gent 60s, active, ND,
smoker, RC, spiritual, open minded, likes reading, walking, music,
wltm female Leinster area, view
longterm relationship. Text or
phone 086 8462276.
CORK. Single male 59, NS,
retired, simple lifestyle, enjoys
meals out, scenic drives, concerts, GAA, walks, music. Quiet
disposition. Friendly, educated,
attractive, seeking similar smart
widowed, single lady, 55-70, with
no ties, for loving relationship.
Tel: 087 1713617.
End of Year 2014 Returns
Alive! is a registered charity.
● If you are an individual
donor (PAYE or SelfAssessed) and your total
donation to Alive! was €250
or more in 2014 we can
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Please ask us for a form
or Tel 01-4048187 for more
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● PILGRIMAGES
GARABANDAL only €395. All
incl. 4-day packages. Fly (midday) ex Dublin to Spain with Sp.
Dir. & guide to full board hotel
accom. in Garabandal. Departs
18 Apr, 9 May, & 23 May. Early
booking with €195 deposit is
essential to secure places at
€395pps price. Contact group
leader Benny Woods tel 086
8976569. Email: benny.woods@
hotmail.com
SAINT Thérèse Pilgrimages.
Malta, In the Footsteps of St
Paul, 24th February, 8 days,
Divine
Mercy,
£549/€619.
Krakow, 9th April, 6 days, from
£499/€599. Other dates available.
Discounts
available.
Contact
Danny
NI
028
90245547; RoI 048 90245547.
All profits to Third World.
MEDJUGORJE 2015, 11 to 20
May (9 days). Sp. Director Fr.
Tom Gilroy. From €580 pps. Call
Pat or Phil. Mob: 086 067 7392;
086 243 7653. Facebook:
medjugorje mass lucan. Email:
[email protected]
GARABANDAL & NE CAMINO
€395 pps includes return flights
& full board hotel accom 4 days
in Spain. Departs twice monthly.
For free info package, contact
group leader email benny.woods
@hotmail.com Tel: 086 8976569.
FATIMA pilgrimage with Sp. Dir.
21-28 May. Full programme.
Ceremonies at Chapel of
Apparitions & Rosary Basilica.
Contact Jo Morris 087 6163648.
MEDJUGORJE. Departing 20
May, 2015. Contact group leader
Michael Buffini 086 1564105 or
01 4936700.
FATIMA 21 May, 7 nights. Full
board. €714. Contact Joan
Bourke. 061 600951.
WALSINGHAM:
England’s
National Shrine of Our Lady of
Walsingham 24-28 April (4
nights). All-in cost (apart from
flights) €417. Day-trip included.
Pilgrims make own travel
arrangements on designated
Ryanair flights. Private coach
from airport. Accomm in Pilgrim
Hostel. Tel 087 9708927/01-
2808072 or email mgolden30@
gmail.com.
HOLYFACE. Reparation books,
medals, & various scapulars.
Write to: Michael Gormley, 68
Melvin Rd, Terenure, Dublin 6W.
DAVID Parkes: An evening of
prayer through song, St.
Joseph’s Church, East Wall,
Dublin, Wed 25 Feb, 8pm, 2015.
Tel: Carmel 01 8555041 or 087
2533718.
THE TEN Commandments, ‘Law
of Love’. Free 30-minute CD.
Write, phone or email: Des
Monahan, Middletown, Co.
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Continued on 10 & 16
Alive! February 2015
15
Prize Crossword...No.187
144
COLOURING PICTURE - WIN €10
€25
1
2
3
4
10
16
18
19
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Address.............................................
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Last Month’s Colouring Picture Winner was:
Marion & Leo Sulej, Cnoc-na-Sí,
Ballina Rd, Tubbercurry,
Co. Sligo. 11 and 12 years.
Lives of the Saints
St. Oliver Plunkett
o explore the poisonous and
destructive power of the pursuit of celebrity we need only
look at the frightening stor y of
Titus Oates.
Few stories in British history are
more bizarre than that of the vile
Titus, with this whole episode
destroying at least 15 innocent
victims, St. Oliver Plunkett among
them.
Oates was the son of an
Anglican clergyman, one who
changed his religious allegiance
T
as the political weather changed
in his countr y – and in 17th centur y England, that was frequently.
He was even more volatile than
his father. With the most brazen
cynicism, perjur y and treacher y,
he climbed the greasy pole which
characterised public life in his
countr y at that time.
Oates’ life to the age of thir ty
should have revealed enough
about his character to reduce him
to the outcast status which was
his eventual fate.
But he was surrounded by fools,
and not a few villains who used
Elizabeth Berkery,
Cois Farraige, Strand Road,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.
Jan. X-word Winner:
Solution to Jan. Crossword:
Across: 1. Billion 5. Salon 8.
Comic 9. Abridge 10. Natural
11. Kneel 12. Middle 14. Fracas
17. Roast 19. Tallboy 22. Idolise
23. Ruler 24. Gaffe 25. Deserts.
Down: 1. Bacon 2. Limited 3.
Incur 4. Nearly 5. Striker 6.
Lodge 7. Needles 12. Morning
13. Latrine 15. Cobbler 16.
Attend 18. Aloof 20. Lures 21.
Yards.
him for their own purposes, as he
pursued his treacherous path in
search of fame and for tune.
He was regarded as a dunce at
school. Yet he managed to get a
place in two Cambridge colleges
until he was expelled.
He got himself ordained as an
Anglican clergyman and was
appointed to a vicarage.
This did not last long because
he falsely accused a schoolmaster of sodomy, perjured himself
and was sent to prison. Escaping,
he made his way to London where
he disappeared into the crowds.
He then reinvented himself and
became a ship’s chaplain. This,
however, also came to an end
when he himself was convicted of
sodomy and was lucky to escape
a death sentence.
But, snake that he was, he
20
21
22
24
23
Name................................................
7
14
13
15
17
6
11
12
Aisling
● Part 11: Titus Oates
5
9
8
✄
Hiya, Kids,
We are now heading into the
Spring, with longer, brighter days.
That means it’s time to do some
spring-cleaning in our lives. In other
words, Lent is on the way.
This is a time for throwing out all the
things that keep us back from loving
Jesus, things like, anger, greed, selfishness, bullying, laziness, disrespect to
Mam or Dad, fighting with brothers and
sisters.
It is also a time for going to Holy Mass
every Sunday, and even on some days
during the week, if that is possible.
Lent is like climbing a mountain – it can
be difficult on the way up, but there’s a
fantastic view when you get to the top.
Slán go fóill,
Cryptic Clues: €25 for the first correct
entry out of the bag. Entries before 16th
February. One entry per family. Winner
and answers next month.
ACROSS:
1. Mostly written around this
season (6)
4. Valuables, like collections (6)
8. Vision needed for this place, we
hear (5)
9. Inconsiderate Les returns to
skate (7)
10. Chaotic opera in the outdoors (4-3)
11. Gather for a Eucharistic
celebration (5)
12. Our country’s leader is a cheat
perhaps with an emptiness inside (9)
17. Short tangled fibre (5)
19. Strengthen if you’re part of a
number (7)
21. Punctuation mark on the Spanish
army officer (7)
22. Note an army of angels can be
Holy? (5)
23. City that’s right for the steamship
worker (6)
24. Planes at this time of day leave
material washed ashore (6)
DOWN:
1. West is only partly dominated
by common sense (6)
2. Abandon 100 when surrounded
by gentle disturbance (7)
3. Added a newspaper? (5)
5. Seedless raisin to partly insult
a nation (7)
6. I race around the shrub (5)
7. Split in the disc his manager
made (6)
9. Fluster around the ship is
mentally tiring (9)
13. The crime of partition? (7)
14. Deplorable when in the untidy
house (7)
15. A taxi returns to get us a
counting frame (6)
16. The leader involved in messy
method (6)
18. Oil to go with dome-shaped
dwelling (5)
20. Scoundrel smudged rouge (5)
Name............................................................................
Address.........................................................................
......................................................................................
......................................................................................
Telephone.....................................................................
✄
K
KIID
DS
S’’ C
CO
OR
RN
NE
ER
R
Solution to Alive!, St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght, Dublin 24.
again slipped out of his old skin
and into a new role in the household of the Catholic Duke of
Nor folk.
Here he began to plot the downfall of prominent Catholics, and
to fur ther his aim he feigned conversion to the Catholic Faith.
St. Omer
He next fooled the Jesuits into
believing that he had a vocation to
the priesthood. He was accepted
as a novice in St. Omer in France,
a foundation which eventually
moved to Stonyhurst in England
when the Penal Laws were
relaxed.
His stay in St. Omer ended in his
expulsion after about six months
when his deceit became evident.
Back in London he resumed his
plotting. He boasted to the estab-
lishment which he was trying to
impress that his time in St. Omer
revealed to him a secret Jesuit
plot to murder the king and put his
Catholic brother on the throne.
With his co-conspirator, Israel
Tonge, he produced a lengthy
dossier detailing all the schemes
he had “uncovered”, and the
names of conspirators straddling
both Ireland and Britain.
Oliver Plunkett and Peter Talbot,
the Archbishop of Dublin, were
among them. The dossier was
shown to King Charles II, who,
although somewhat sceptical,
asked a government minister,
Thomas Osborne, to attend to it.
Osborne took it seriously, met
Oates and Tonge and summoned
the Council of the King to investigate the allegations. The tragic
farce was unfolding in earnest.
Alive! February 2015
16
Nicki’s success won’t
remove her grief
A HOT shot rapper, admired by
millions of fans around the world
and hitting the big time only a few
years ago, Nicki Minaj (right)
became the first female solo artist
to have 7 singles in the U.S. pop
charts simultaneously.
The New York Times reported that she
is considered “the most influential female
rapper of all time,” and in 2013 she was
a main judge on the the TV talent show,
American Idol.
But the 32-year-old singer was in the
news recently for a very different reason.
Appearing on the cover of the first issue
of Rolling Stone for 2015, she had given
an interview to the magazine, opening up
about her personal life.
There she revealed that in one song on
her latest album, Pinkprint, she had been
singing about a baby she had aborted
when she was a teenager.
“It was the hardest thing I’d ever gone
through,” she told RS. Adding that the
decision has “haunted me all my life.”
In recent times she has frequently
referred to her own use of pills as a coping mechanism for her depression, even
admitting that she considered intentionally overdosing.
Yet despite, or because of, her on-going
grief and guilt, Minaj, 32, still tries to
defend the terrible decision, saying that it
was the “right choice” at the time and
pleading that she “didn’t have anything to
offer a child.”
In the track she says, “my child would of
have been sixteen any minute” and that
she now feels he is her younger brother’s
“angel looking over him.”
Poignant
In Autobiography, a song she wrote
before she became famous, the lyrics
about her baby were more telling and also
particularly poignant. There she wrote:
“Please baby forgive me, Mommy was
young; Mommy was too busy, tryn’a have
fun. Now I don’t pat myself on the back,
for sending you back; cause God knows, I
was better than that. To conceive you then
leave you, the concept alone seems evil.
“I’m trapped in my conscience; I
adhered to the nonsense, listened to people who told me, I wasn’t ready for you.
But how the f… would they know, what I
was ready to do?
“And of course, it wasn’t your fault. It’s
like I feel it in the air, I hear you sayin’:
‘Mommy don’t cry, can’t you see I’m right
here?’
“I gotta let you know, what you mean to
me. When I’m sleeping, I see you in my
dreams with me, wish I could touch your
little face, or just hold your little hand. If
it’s part of God’s plan, maybe we can
meet again.”
Commenting on the pop star’s story,
David Quinn of the Iona Institute wrote:
“If the prolife movement could find a
way to show women like Nicki Minaj that
it is much more on their side than the prochoice movement is, we would then make
real progress towards creating a culture
that is truly prolife and pro-woman.”
• For help after an abortion contact:
RachelsVineyard.ie
UK to start
removing pylons
THE UK’s National Grid is to
spend £500 million removing a
tiny fraction of Britain’s electricity pylons and to put power
lines underground.
In areas of natural beauty
alone there are some 1,500 of
the massive structures.
Removal is so expensive,
however, costing £7m per
pylon, and the fund available is
so limited, that only 65 “eyesores” can be taken down in
the near future.
A shortlist was published
recently identifying 12 sections
of overhead lines where the
pylons are deemed to have the
worst impact on the environment.
They are in four national
parks, including the Brecon
Beacons, and four areas of outstanding natural beauty, including the Tamar Valley, where two
two giant pylons blight a large
section of the area between
Devon and Cornwall.
Tests
Feasibility tests will be undertaken early this year to decide
exactly which pylons should be
removed, and the first dismantling work is set to begin in
2019.
Negotiations with landowners
and the digging of wide trenches required to bury the cables
will contribute greatly to the
costs.
“Sixty years ago, when these
lines were put through, attitudes and values were different. This is a chance to go back
and remedy the situation,” said
Chris Baines, an environmentalist who chairs the advisory
group for the project.
Heading to Mass
when duty calls
Dear Nettles,
Dumbag
writes..!
t’s music to my ears
when I hear a
Catholic say, “I
don’t go to Mass
because I get nothing
out of it.”
And I’m amused
when the reply is, “You’ll only get out of it what you put
into it.” If that’s all they’ll get out of it, why put it in in
the first place?
But more importantly, this pair are singing from the
same song sheet, both are talking about what they can
“get out” of Mass. That’s their bottom line.
Mass is for their entertainment or delight or their
spiritual nourishment or their peace of conscience or
whatever it is they want out of it. The focus is on themselves.
Back to that in a moment. First, have a look at the
beginning of the Preface of each Mass in the old translation.
The priest addresses Him above: “Father, all-powerful
and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere
to give you thanks.”
They also “do well” to brush their teeth each day, to
get daily exercise, to drive within the speed limit and so
on. Mass is just one among a million good things.
Now look at what the present translation says: “It is
truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always
and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father.”
You’ll admit there is quite a difference between these
two versions. And the change is not for the better. In
fact, it’s a downright disaster. I knew we would regret
this new translation.
I
Letters from a Master
to a Trainee Tempter
Double focus
he new version has a double focus. The first concern is with what is due to Him above, due to him
in justice. “It is right and just.”
Here is a fundamental aspect of justice that receives
virtually no attention nowadays. Yet, giving Him above
what is his due is the basis for all justice. Without that,
there can be no true justice on earth.
Not of course that they could ever give Him all that is
his due as their Creator and their Saviour. The nearest
they could ever come to that is by a life of total love and
obedience.
Such justice is not just for individuals, it is also the
fundamental principle for each group and for every society. Justice to Him above would create some revolution
in a society! Indeed, the only true revolution. Yuk.
Then attention shifts to themselves: “our duty and our
salvation”. The reason they go to Mass is (a) because it
is their duty.
Whether they get anything out of it or not, it’s still
their duty. Soldiers going into battle may get nothing out
of it, but it’s their duty. Duty, of course, is another
notion that’s out of fashion today.
And (b) it’s their salvation. In fact, in some way we
can’t figure out, Mass is the beginning of heaven. They
are already united with the angels and saints in one big
hymn of praise and thanksgiving.
If Catholics grasped this little sentence surely the
churches would be packed on Sundays. Their ignorance
is truly our bliss.
Yours in relief,
T
Dumbag
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Published by Alive Group, St. Mary’s Priory, Tallaght, Dublin 24. Tel: 01-4048187 • E-mail: [email protected] • Editor: Fr Brian McKevitt OP • Design/Sub-editing: Tom English • Printed by Datascope, Enniscorthy