A New Senator

I heard a most welcome bit of news at the Knock Youth Festival - Rónan Mullen, a pro-life journalist and barrister, has been elected to the Seanad, the upper house of the Irish parliament. He was standing as an independent, and a reader of this blog, and all-round nice guy, Kevin Leavy, managed his campaign.

Rónan has been intelligently articulating pro-life and pro-family arguments for years, and the Seanad will be better off for his eloquence and vision. And who knows what the future holds!

I encourage you all to visit his website. The section on 'The Dignity of the Person' sets out his 'ethic':

'Every society should be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable members.

In a just society there can be no second-class citizens. Public policy should be geared towards helping disadvantaged members of society to survive and thrive, to flourish and reach their potential.

This can only happen if in our schools, our public advertising campaigns, in the shaping of legislation and the delivery of public services, we emphasise the dignity of each person and the importance of solidarity across the community.

The notion of respect for life is meaningless unless it applies across the board. Whether born or unborn, old or young, able-bodied or coping with disability, Irish or foreign, each human person has a claim on our understanding and support.'

Well done to all his collaborators for all their hard work - it could be the start of something new in Irish politics...

Knock Youth Festival

After leaving the Spanish kids in Reading I popped up to Ampleforth for the FAITH Movement catechesis camp for 9-15 year olds (Bashing Secularism has a post with the low-down). I got to meet with the Head of Theology (my new boss!) to discuss plans for the coming academic year (I might be running an extra-curricular discussion group - if anybody can think of any films or texts that would be useful spurs for theological discussion, please let me know).

After a night in Hull, where some of the helpers watched Transformers (bit of a disappointment, but some class scenes), I got an early train to Manchester to fly to Knock to join 1000+ other young people for the Youth Festival there. It was an amazing weekend, with really inspiring talks by such people as fr John Harris OP (the national spiritual director for Youth 2000) and Ronan Johnston (famous in Ireland as the pianist from The Lyrics Board and You're a Star!). The festival was totally Christ-centred, with continuous eucharistic adoration (even during the night). There was a lot of praise and worship, and some fantastic workshops on things like vocational discernment, discipleship, evangelization, and chastity. On the Saturday night, the healing service took place, which involved confessions (52 priests in action!) and an individual blessing with the Host in the monstrance. This event in particular touched many hearts, and in the testimonies the following day, most people referred to this blessing as very significant. The testimonies themselves were very encouraging, most of them following a similar pattern: "I have been away from the Church recently, I didn't want to come to the retreat, I had an experience of God's love for me, and I plan to return to the sacraments and prayer". Genuine conversions occurred during the weekend, praise God! Say a prayer that these young people will continue to stay close to Christ.

Also, it was great to see so many young (and not-so-young!) Dominicans at the festival :)



[I'll get pics up when I get my hands on some.]

Trip to London

We went to London last Tuesday. Pretty standard touristy trip, brightened up by our students' complete lack of inhibitions (one of the little guys managed to travel the length of a carriage on the Tube hanging off the hand-rails!).

Here's myself and Sebastian (another teacher) with some of the lads.

This Catalan (wannabe) mod found an affinity with some of the street sculpture...

The trip ended, of course, with a visit to the great temple of Western Culture...

Gary Halpin

One of the housemasters at the school here is Gary Halpin, a former international rugby player (prop) for Ireland (he played his club rugby for London Irish, Harlequins, and Leinster). He gave a talk a few nights ago to our Catalan students about his life as a rugby player and life at the school. The guys loved him, despite his formidable appearance. Here's a pic of them trying on jerseys he gathered during his career:

The night ended with a surprise - a sing-song led by Gary himself (sorry the pic's blurry):

After a rendition of the 'Fields' dedicated to myself, he ended up with a song we didn't expect from a prop, Britney Spears' 'Hit Me Baby One More Time'!

Confessio

What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops (Mt 10:27).

'I am, then, first of all, rustic, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and He that is mighty came and in His mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for His great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure'

(St Patrick's Confession, 12)

Lay Cistercians

The Cistercians, a reformed branch of the Benedictine order (which was founded in the sixth century for 'prayer and work'), have a long and glorious history in Ireland. Their most famous representative is St Malachy, who founded Mellifont Abbey in the 11th century. Today, the Irish Cistercians are present at New Mellifont, Mount Melleray, Roscrea (where they run a school), Bolton Abbey, Bethlehem Abbey (in NI), and Glencairn (nuns). I came across a very interesting initiative on the Mt St Joseph (Roscrea) website: 'Vigils', a community of young lay Cistercians. They have lots of interesting info on their site about Cistercian spirituality, including a beautiful article by an American Cistercian nun on 'Guarding the Heart'. Check these sites out - the Church in Ireland benefits so much from these contemplatives...

The Importance of the Imagination

I'm reading an amazing book by Fr Vincent Twomey at the moment: 'The End of Irish Catholicism'. It's had a pretty profound impact on me so far, and I intend to review it on this blog soon. For the moment, I'll stick up a short extract that really chimed with me. I said before (in my post on Faith and Film) that it seems to me that the formation of the imagination is an essential part of catechesis, but one that is often ignored. Here's what Fr Twomey has to say on a similar topic, the place of the imagination in our response to secularisation:

'The Church must once again catch the imagination of people at large, appealing to the heart. What is needed is pre-evangelisation. Discourse comes later.

What all this amounts to is the need for a new, more imaginative look at Catholic public culture, above all the liturgy and the shape of our Feast Days. Art and architecture, music and ritual, need to be developed that will enable us to raise up our hearts to God, truly celebrate our liberation in Christ, and forge communal bonds through public celebration. Dostoyevski perceived that, when truth is hidden by public lies, and goodness hidden from public view, then beauty - art, music, literature, and I would add liturgy, which is, or ought to be, art at its most sublime - will save the world'.

Hear hear!

Reading Oratory School

Things are going great here at the Reading Oratory School. The guys we're teaching are incredibly eager and well-behaved. There's loads of spiritual activities organised for them (Mass, meditations, Rosary), but there's no sense that this is a 'churchy' camp. They have endless energy despite spending hours playing sport. This 'life-to-the-full' Catholicism is very edifying for myself and the other teachers (both friends from Cambridge). Daily Mass is celebrated in the Old Chapel, a beautiful rustic converted-barn:

Here's a close-up of the beautiful altar-frontal:

This porcelain Madonna and Child is above one of the doors:

Finally, here's a pretty gruesome statue of a saint. Does anybody know who she is, or what's embedded in her forehead?! (UPDATE: I'm told it's probably St Rita...):

The rumour has spread among the students that the chapel is haunted: apparently an image of a young girl appeared in a photo taken of the chapel by a Basque student last year... They've requested a midnight "ghostbustering" visit to the Chapel - I'll report all the gory details here!

Fr Willie Doyle SJ

Here's a short piece from a collection of snippets from the writings of Fr William Doyle SJ, an Irish Jesuit, and military chaplain who died in the First World War:

'Keep smiling. It is a grand thing to cultivate a smile. Keep the corners of your mouth up, especially if you are in an attack of the dumps. There are three D's to be avoided - the Devil, the Doctor, and the Dumps. The Devil, we all know, is bad enough; the Doctor is very little better; and the Dumps are the Devil himself! So I repeat, keep smiling, it is the very best remedy for gloom. The devil loves nothing better than a gloomy soul; it is his plaything. Smile a while, and while you smile another smiles, and soon there's miles and miles of smiles, and life's worth while because you smile.'

If you think that sounds a bit cheesy, remember the author also wrote this, at the Somme:

'By cutting a piece out of the side of the trench, I was just able to stand in front of my tiny altar, a biscuit tin supported by two German bayonets. God's angels, no doubt, were hovering overhead, but so were the shells, hundreds of them, and I was a little afraid that when the earth shook with the crash of the guns, the chalice might be overturned. Round about me on every side was the biggest congregation I ever had: behind the altar, on either side, and in front, row after row, sometimes crowding one upon the other, but all quiet and silent, as if they were straining their ears to catch every syllable of that tremendous act of Sacrifice - but every man was dead! Some had lain there for a week and were foul and horrible to look at, with faces black and green. Others had only just fallen, and seemed rather sleeping than dead, but there they lay, for none had time to bury them, brave fellows, every one, friend and foe alike, while I held in my unworthy hands the God of Battles, their Creator and their Judge, and prayed to Him to give rest to their souls. Surely that Mass for the Dead, in the midst of, and surrounded by the dead, was an experience not easily to be forgotten.'

Pro-Family Poem

There's a lot of campaigning being done on the issue of the place of the traditional family in Western society (a welcome arrival on the scene of public debate on this issue is that of the Iona Institute). Arguments from statistics and natural law are indeed important, but equally important is the appeal to the almost universal experience of familial love. Below is a poem by Seamus Heaney that treats this issue beautifully. The last stanza includes an incredibly striking image for ordinary, unglamorous love.


Mossbawn 1: Sunlight

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

Visiting Hannah

I visited my friend Hannah in the Poor Clares on Friday. She's been there about two months, and is happy that she's found her home, but it was humbling to hear of the daily difficulties involved in living an enclosed life. She noted how quick she was to speak of 'dying to self' when 'on the outside', but that enclosure and community life have really taught her the meaning of that phrase. The intensity of suffering involved in such a life is unimaginable, but the sisters (whom I also met) radiate a joy of equal intensity. Whatever the contemplative life may be, it isn't boring!

New Dominicans!

Three Irish and one Trinidadian have been accepted to the novitiate of the Irish Province of Dominicans. I've met the three guys from Ireland, and I can vouch for their worthiness! One of them is working with homeless men at the Legion of Mary's hostel in Dublin, another has just qualified as a teacher, and the third is a Dutch man who wasn't even brought up a Christian (the story of his conversion is recounted in this month's Alive magazine, in the 'What God means to me' section).

Congratulations to all concerned! You're in our prayers lads.

Teaching English in Reading

I'm leaving for Reading tomorrow, where I'll be teaching English to Spanish teens at a camp run by Opus Dei. Last year was great craic with lots of this:

... piles of this:

... daily this:

... even a little bit of this!:

Summorum Pontificum

The impending publication of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum allowing for greater liberty in the celebration of the old rite of Mass (from now on to be called the 'extraordinary Roman Rite', it seems) is great news for the Church. It's all too easy for traditionalists to lose the run of themselves amid all the champagne glasses though... The Catholic blogosphere is favourable towards good liturgy in a way that many good Catholics in parishes simply aren't, thanks to a generation of malformation. For example, a recent survey in Ossory diocese showed that 'young people want more participation at Church ceremonies, by way of reading and being Eucharistic ministers and expressed a preference for... action liturgies'.

The Motu Proprio is indeed great news, but a great deal of catechesis and formation is needed before reverent liturgy becomes genuinely 'popular'. That's the task in hand - let's get to it!

Summer Plans

As usual, I'm having a pretty hectic summer... On Tuesday, I'm leaving Galway to go to the Reading Oratory school to work there at an English language camp for Spanish kids. Straight after that, I'm heading up to Ampleforth for the FAITH youth session for Scotland and the north of England (I'll hopefully be meeting with school teaching staff to prepare me (somewhat) for my job there next year...). Then it's straight to Knock for the youth festival there (I'm hoping to take a group from my parish there, please pray that there'll be takers!).

After all that, I have the small matter of learning to drive before I start work...

Youth 2000 New York

The Knock Youth Festival is coming! This short clip, by Grassroots Films, sums up a Youth 2000 retreat nicely. If any of this resonates with you, get yourself to youth2000.ie and book a place now!

Joy in Celibacy

Living life in celibacy, like most young lay Catholics (i.e. the unmarried ones!) should, is by no means easy. Even more difficult, I've found, but just as essential, is to live a joyfully celibate life. I found the following tips, selected from a list of 10 by Fr Raymond Carey in Vision magazine, about doing exactly that (no. 6 especially seems bang-on):

'... 3) Becoming a person of gratitude
Joyful celibates tend to be men and women who learn to become persons of gratitude. Gratitude pours from the heart of an authentic lover. One skill for deepening our sense of gratitude is to learn to pray a thankful litany on a daily basis. One day this litany may be prayers of blessing for persons who have helped us love Jesus; another, for places of grace in our lives, or for experiences of joy...

6) A generous heart
Generosity breathes life into celibate love. Being generous with our time, talent and treasure constantly shows the worls why we would choose celibacy as a way to love others. Celibates who are authentic lovers ought to be a kind of sacrament of generosity, for the rest of the faith community, a living sign of grace in a life well lived. Conversely, the greatest challenge to a celibate comes not from sexual desires but from the danger of becoming self-centred. Skills for generosity, like all the other celibacy skills, present challenges for lifelong learning...

9) Inclusive friendships
Marital love requires a husband and wife to love each other exclusively and to commit to each other exclusively and to commit to each other exclusively. Celibate love requires celibates to love inclusively. It requires that we be open to a variety of relationships in a variety of circumstances. Further, the friendships of a celibate lover ought to continually widen our circle of friends without ever causing us to enter an exclusive, 'in love' relationship with one person. Just as married couples have to 'work at' their exclusive relationships, so too celibates have to 'work at' their inclusivity so that all feel welcome. Close personal friends are a rich gift of a well-lived life. For celibate lovers, such friendships are open to others and lead to others as well.

10) Faithful commitment
Finally, joyful celibates need to develop the skills to be faithful to their commitments. The way to faithfulness, in turn, can be paved by competent decision-making. For example, we can learn to anticipate the results of our decisions and to choose alternatives that enhance fidelity. We need to monitor conditions which may put our faithful commitment at risk. These may include periods of loneliness, use of alcohol, and prolonged stress...

In the end, the most important factor in joyful celibate living is to recall the constancy of God's faithful love for all of us. In Jesus, God has spoken a personal 'I love you' to all of us.

In Jesus, too, we find the model of one who lives with a totally unselfish heart, one who has no desire to control others, and one whose only interest is opening up the richness of God's reign for all to celebrate. What better way to describe what a lover's heart is all about.'

Receive the Power

Receive the Power

The anthem for WYD SYD 08 has been released - here's the international version. It's nice and anthemic, and I like the 'alleluia' bit.

In the words of Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, 'The Risen Christ addresses the young people of the world in this song: "Alleluia, Alleluia! Receive the Power, from the Holy Spirit". They respond: "We will follow to the end s of the earth; "We will answer and do Your will; "We'll forever testify of Your mercy and unfailing love". This dialogue between Christ and the young disciples is at the heart of World Youth Day.'

The song can be downloaded on the official WYD site.

Here I Am Lord...

I just read on the Irish Dominican Vocations blog that three young men from Ireland, and one from Trinidad, are applying to become Dominican novices. Praise God!

I know quite a few young people who are being interviewed around now for religious life or diocesan priesthood. Let's pray for those offering their lives in this way - for the gift of courage to fight against false attractions and fear - and for the gift of discernment for those interviewing them.