Roving new laptops

Back in June, Coláiste Iognáid (the ‘Jes’) won a Hewlett Packard Innovation in Education grant to provide a mobile classroom of tablet PCs. The school was selected for its commitment to making practical usage of technology in delivering the school curriculum.  Now the prize has arrived, and our picture shows Vice-principal Catherine Hickey supervising its unpacking.  The new laptops will be used in different classes, from maths to media studies, and a special trolley will allow them to be moved between different classrooms. The aim is to create a roaming computer suite which would enable the maximum number of students and teachers to achieve computer literacy, and equip them for participation in knowledge economy.  This platform will allow students to access digitally provided content in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Food4Soul Food4Body

Leon O Giollain SJ has a strong ecumenical dimension to his Chaplain’s ministry in UCD. On 30 September he and fellow-chaplain Gillian Kingston hosted an evening of prayer and fellowship for about thirty students from various denominations and from many different parts of the world, under the rubric: One Lord, One Faith. The focus was on Jesus’ prayer: ‘that all may be one’. A candle was lit,  a Bible opened, and a cross was placed  at the centre of the beautiful contemplation room, symbolising their unity around the Risen Lord. After prayer, they proceeded to the Function Room to enjoy a wonderful lasagne and some homemade sweet-cake.  Leon and Gillian hope to make it a regular event.

Richard in mud and boulders

Last week Richard O’Dwyer was coping with deafness and malaria, and feeling as sick as he had ever felt in his life. This latest bulletin makes no mention of sickness, and the travelling conditions he describes are not for the feeble-bodied or faint-hearted. It is a measure of the marvels of the internet that he is describing an episode that happened only two days ago. “We were ready to leave the JRS compound in Lobone at 8am on Sunday morning, 18th October, for Lerwa, a village which is about 30kms away and the most far- flung of all the chapels in which we minister. I was travelling with Bernhard Knorn SJ, a newly-arrived scholastic from Germany. Bernhard will be working with JRS Lobone until September 2010.  Read more below. Read more »

Western Pioneers gather and plan

On Saturday 10 October last the Connaught membership of the PTAA met in the Park Hotel, Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo for a day-long session of discussion and debate. It brought the West’s Pioneers together to reflect on the Association’s role to date and to start engaging in a process which will facilitate the exploration of new opportunities and ways forward for the PTAA. Fr. Joe Dargan, S.J., Chairman of the PTAA, Padraig Brady, PTAA CEO, P.J. Farrell, Provincial Delegate, Robert Shannon, PTAA President and Orlaith O’Callaghan, PTAA Advocacy & Communications Manager, travelled to Kiltimagh for the event.

Short notices

• On 13th October the Coláiste Iognáid Debating Society, joined by students from Scoil Ursa, debated whether Religion should be taken out of the school curriculum. The motion that Religion should be removed was passed!
• Tom Leyden SJ, who works quietly in Belfast for the last eleven years with an ever-widening circle of other Christians,  has found a large audience (300+)  for a series of extra-mural lectures he has given in QUB: on Blaise Pascal, on Saint Augustine, and this year on the history of Judaism, and on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
• Congratulations to Eugene Quinn, director of JRS, and his wife Val, who on 16 October became the parents of a baby boy.
• Fr Dermot Murray has moved temporarily to Clongowes to care for the People’s Church, while Ronan Geary is in Cherryfield recovering from sickness.

Fr Noel Barber is Acting Provincial until 31 October

Forthcoming events

• Former Taoiseach John Bruton, currently the EU’s representative in Washington, USA, will give the Fourth Public Lecture sponsored by Studies and The Iona Institute: on ‘The role of religion and Christianity in the European Union’. Monday, 16 November: 8 p.m. in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2 (behind the Davenport Hotel). Admission is free.
• Also in mid-November Fr Stephen Chow, Jesuit Supervisor of the two Wah Yan colleges in Hong Kong, will visit Dublin for four days (14-18 November) to see the Belvedere-Wah Yan exchange programme in action, and to visit old friends – Stephen made his noviciate in Manresa. Further details closer to the date.
• The Leinster PTAA will host their provincial conference on Saturday 7 November next at The Hazel Hotel, Co. Kildare. All Leinster Pioneers are welcome to attend.

“Ancient pop” at CCC

When Limerick composer Bill Whelan heard that the Crescent College Comprehensive past pupils orchestra wanted to play MacArthur Park at their celebratory concert last weekend, he rang Jimmy Webb, who actually composed the song. Jimmy Webb (composer of other classics such as Wichita Lineman, Galveston, and By the Time I Get to Phoenix) subsequently sent Bill Whelan an email which contains an amusing story about the song and Richard’s Harris’ bagging of it as his very own. Bill Whelan and Richard Harris (pictured here in a still from This Sporting Life) are both past pupils of the Crescent. Bill is meeting Jimmy Webb in New York this week where he will get him to sign the email so the school can have it for their archives. You can read the email below. Read more »

Making a difference at Knock

In summer 1989 Des Fahey, a priest from Knock,  came to Manresa to seek help. ‘Something’ he said ‘is missing at Knock, and unless we identify it, the Shrine will lose its popularity.’ Von Hugel held that a religion needs three dimensions to thrive: institutional, intellectual and mystical. Des and Brian Grogan (then director of the Manresa Centre) agreed that the mystical dimension needed development at Knock. As it happened, Manresa had developed a training course for Prayer Guides, and needed outlets for its graduates. So Des and Brian decided to set up a Prayer Guidance Ministry in Knock: guides would provide pilgrims with 30-minute sessions in imaginative contemplation. ‘If we can introduce people to the Jesus of the Gospels, they can do the rest themselves.’ What followed? In the last 20 years, over 250,000 people have been helped by the sessions offered. Recently the authorities at Lourdes initiated a similar ministry, based on the Knock model.

Big moves for Michael

Michael O’Sullivan has been appointed Head of Theological Studies at All Hallows College, and Head of the Systematic Theology Department. He will also assume responsibility for the Moral Theology Department for the time being. He will continue for this academic year in his post as Director of the Higher Diploma and MA programmes in Applied Christian Spirituality at Milltown Institute, but will begin a process of phasing out of Milltown. He will disengage further from Milltown the following year, when all taught programmes will enter their final year as the Institute moves to closure. Michael commemorated the Ruby Jubilee of the day he joined the Society on September 29th. He featured in the recent issue of the UCD alumni magazine as a graduate from the 1970s. He graduated with a BSocSc in 1974 with a first class honours degree and equal first place.

Europe as a missionary hub

John Guiney and Murt Curry from the Irish Mission Office are just back from two meetings in the Jesuit Retreat House, Rainhill, Liverpool, aimed at enhancing the sharing and cooperation between European Jesuit Mission Offices (MOs) and NGOs. They spent 1 October with other Western European MOs reflecting on their work over the last year – listed below are the six issues that emerged from the discernment. Then for two more days the MO people worked with Mark Rotsaert, President of the European Provincials, Chuck Duffy of the Roman Development Office, Michael Czerny of the African Jesuit Aids network and Peter Balleis, Director of JRS, focussing mainly on the development of Advocacy as a tool of the MOs. The main outcomes of the three days work are reported below: Read more »

Pioneer matters

The Pioneers have launched “Pioneer Matters”, the Association’s first CEO newsletter. The primary purpose of this publication is for Padraig Brady, the PTAA Chief Executive, to ommunicate with all PTAA members on the work the Association is undertaking. However,  we thought employees from other Jesuit works might also be interested in receiving our newsletter. “Pioneer Matters” focuses on the more corporate aspects of the Association. The publication aims to fill a communications gap on the ongoing strategic work of the Association. The PTAA welcome any feedback, suggestions, recommendations  which you might have to offer us on this newsletter. Further details below: Read more »

Straight paths for Belvederian boys

Gardiner Street’s parish priest Donal Neary works with Belvedere Religion teacher Helen Barden in lending variety to her 5th Year class. Donal introduced the boys to Ignatian Spirituality in the church. He showed paintings of the early years of the Jesuits, and explained Ignatian slogans and principles like ‘For the greater glory of God’, ‘Finding God in all things’. The boys studied the missionary outreach of St Francis Xavier to Japan and  the East, as well as the mission of two of the first Jesuits to Ireland. The excellent singing of ‘Straight Paths’ (a new hymn in honour of St Francis Xavier composed by Mr David O’Hanlon of the Belvedere Music staff). ‘Jesus Lamb of God’ and the Belvedere favourite, ‘Only in God’ gave a great lift and life to the 11 a.m. weekday Mass.

Richard is felled

Richard O’Dwyer SJ set out for Africa this time last year, to work with the JRS, first in Ethiopia, and then in Southern Sudan after Christmas in Kenya. He has combined the know-how of a trained quantity surveyor with the eye and pen of a reporter in email after email of vivid experiences. His first experience was in Addis Ababa, then in Northern Uganda, ravaged by the Lord’s Resistance Army, then in remote and neglected Lobone in Southern Sudan. He celebrated Easter in Sudan and Pentecost in Uganda’s Gulu. He registered the shocking kidnapping of Sharon Cummins of GOAL. In August he was back in Lomerati, Sudan. These months of incessant travel and inculturation have taken their toll on Richard. Read his latest. Read more »