CFJ: advocate for women offenders

Tony O’Riordan SJ was quoted by the Irish Examiner for his advocacy of non-custodial alternatives to prison for women offenders. Using the JCFJ’s research into female prisoners, he pointed out that more than three quarters of them are being punished for ‘non-serious offences’, and are imprisoned for six months or less. “If, as is planned, the number of prison spaces in Thornton Hall is doubled so as to accommodate female offenders, it will discourage the search for alternatives to prison for women.” JCFJ has also brought out the November issue of Working Notes. Read below for a write-up of it. Read more »

Ex-pat Irish Jesuit recalls election night

There was no escaping the US Presidential election over the last two weeks, so AMDG Express sought a personal viewpoint from Donal Godfrey, the Cork-born Irish Jesuit who is head chaplain in the University of San Francisco. Donal responded at once with an engaging account of his experience on campus, where he was pictured with a life-size cut-out of his favoured candidate. Read Donal’s story below Read more »

Nobber meets Ballymun

As part of their ‘Faith in action’ religious education programme, a group of 18 Transition Year students from O’Carolan College, Nobber, Co. Meath, spent last Friday morning digging in with the Ballymun Global Action Project (GAP), on an environmental project at St. Joseph’s Primary School. Slí Eile, the Jesuit Centre for Young Adults invited this group of students to roll up their sleeves and link in with GAP as part of the Transition Year programme of active faith formation and social concern. Afterwards Slí Eile JVC volunteers living and working in Ballymun welcomed the students to lunch and a discussion of their respective experiences. What had they learned? The message for students was clear – Faith is not only about personal wellbeing and prayer. It is about action for and with others for the greater good.

Mission think-in

These busy Jesuits, Murt Curry, Willie Reynolds, Kevin O’Rourke, Colm Brophy and Liam O’Connell were photographed in Thornhill by a sixth busy Jesuit, John Guiney, during a think-in to explore the purpose and role of the mission office, the different faces of mission in Ireland and abroad, and how the Irish Province can reach out to the different frontiers of mission over the next 5-10 years. How did they plan? Read more. Read more »

Radio has better pictures

Two students from Belvedere College, their teacher, and Oliver Murphy, historian and college museum curator were on ‘Today with Pat Kenny’ on Tuesday 11 November, the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day. Oliver Murphy was in studio while students Cillian Hanratty and Richard McDonagh and teacher Tom Doyle were on the phone from Messins, Belgium. They were part of a group of 15 students from Belvedere, from Banbridge Academy in the North, and from Belgium who had spent four days there reliving the experiences of soldiers in the First World War. They even spent a night in the trenches. Oliver Murphy recounted the stories of Belvedere pupils and staff killed in the war, and moving excerpts from letters of Chaplain Fr Willie Doyle SJ were recounted. To hear the broadcast, click here; then click on ‘Today with Pat Kenny’. It begins at 1hr 08mins.

Thirst for Scripture

A four-evening course on the Gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke was the most widely attended of any adult faith evenings in Gardiner Street. In co-operation with Iona Rd parish, the series, given by Fr Brendan Comerford SJ, was planned through both Parish Priests and Parish Councils. The evenings focussed on the context of the culture of the time and the readership of each gospel. A follow-up is planned for Advent (a talk on the Infancy Gospels) on Tuesday Dec 16th at 11.30 a.m. as part of a mid-morning min-retreat for Advent. A further session on St John’s gospel is planned for Lent.

Spirituality in Chicago

Michael O’Sullivan SJ, who teaches spirituality in the Milltown Institute, gave a paper in Chicago, USA, on ’Teaching Spirituality Well’ to the International Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and accepted the job of organizing and running the opening day of next year’s meeting of the Society in Montreal. While in Chicago Michael met Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of liberation theology, who at the age of 80 gave an inspiring and energetic address on ’40 Years after Medellín’. See full report below. Read more »

Prayer and money worries

The feedback from Sacred Space can be astonishing, a measure of where people’s concerns lie. In the last three months the Chapel of Intentions has shown many more Sacred Spacers asking for prayers because of lost jobs, evictions and bankruptcies. There was even bigger feedback to a reflection last month on how the financial turmoil had affected prayer. See “Something to pray about” below.

Read more »

Short Notices

• 160 people attended the pastoral conference in Milltown on 8-9 November, the tenth event celebrating the Ruby Jubilee of the Milltown Institute. Timothy Radcliffe OP (pictured) gave a memorable address.
• All who have lived in Emo, especially Jesuits, are invited to visit the house on Wednesday, 19 November. There will be concelebrated Mass (in the Round Room) at 4 p.m., and a guided tour of the house.
• Derek Cassidy celebrated the RTE radio Mass on 9th November from Belvedere College Chapel, and commemorated all the dead of two wars, but especially the 47 boys and two teachers (Frs John Glynn and Willie Doyle) from Belvedere who died in the first World War.
• The annual memorial Mass for deceased Jesuit missionaries will be offered in the Community Chapel, Milltown Park, at 3.30 on Sunday, 16 November. Jesuits and their families are all welcome.
• John McDade SJ, Principal of Heythrop College, will speak in Haddington Road Church on “Catholics and Jews: the new relationship since Vatican II”: at 8 p.m. on Thursday, 13 November, in a series of lectures organised by lay people in the parish, several of them former Jesuit students.

In the news

The media this week have covered at least three Jesuit items besides Tony O’Riordan’s advocacy of female offenders, detailed above. The Irish Catholic featured John Dardis’s tribute to the two Jesuits murdered in Moscow. The Enniscorthy Echo listened to Elizabeth Foley alerting congregations to the continuing vitality of the Sacred Heart Messenger – Elizabeth is on its marketing staff. Finally Belvedere’s commemoration of the 1918 Armistice was noticed not just by RTE’s coverage of the Mass on 9 November, but by radio host Pat Kenny, who welcomed Oliver Murphy and two of his Transition Year students to his radio programme on Armistice Day.