Forthcoming events

• 17 June: Todd Morrissey SJ’s book entitled Thomas F. Ryan SJ: From Cork to China and Windsor Castle will be launched by Ciaran Kane SJ in Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street, at 7.30pm. For details, contact 01 6768409.
• 20 June: Ken Rue (financial controller of the Sacred Heart Messenger) will be ordained to the diaconate by Church of Ireland Archbishop John Neill, in Christ Church Cathedral: at 3.30pm
• 22 June: Cherryfield Lodge open day for residents and their families, from 2.30-5.30pm
• 30 June: Kevin Laheen SJ’s book entitled The Jesuits in Tullabeg: The final curtain will be launched in Milltown Institute. For details, contact 01 6768409
• September 2010 – August 2011: Manresa programme has been published, and can be downloaded at the website: www.manresa.ie

Short notices

• As part of their Province planning day, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice staff went on a team outing in the afternoon – a Segway tour of Dublin Docklands.
• Cherryfield Lodge is hosting an open day for residents and their families on Tuesday 22nd June from 2.30pm to 5.30pm. Entrance to Cherryfield through main Milltown Gate from Sandford Road. For further details, contact Cherryfield Lodge Reception: Tel: (01) 4985800.
• The new contact details for the Irish Jesuit Curia are: Irish Jesuit Provincialate, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin 6; Phone – 01 4987333; Fax – 01 4987334
• The grounds of former Mungret College will see the building of 126 houses by Dineen and company, who bought the property from the Jesuits. Limerick County Council has given the go-ahead.
• Irish woman Bridget Redmond, the former caretaker of St Michael’s Catholic College in Leeds, has been made a Member of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Bridget Redmond – known as May – was just 16 when she began working for the Jesuits at the college in Hyde Park, having left her native Ireland to travel to Leeds to find work. Read the full story.
• Fr. Declan Deane, formerly of the Irish Jesuit Province, and now working in a parish near San Francisco, has a serious illness, and charts his journey and the support he has from friends, and the prayer organised on his behalf to Fr. John Sullivan S.J. Go to his website.
• A cartoon of Fr Joe Kelly SJ was unveiled at Sardi’s Restaurant, New York, at a celebratory evening in his memory.
• Pray as you follow the World Cup:  World Cup fever is well and truly upon us,  and  Pray-as-you-go, in partnership with the Jesuit Institute in South Africa, is providing five reflections on themes surrounding the World Cup and South Africa. Click here.

Frank feels the heat

Frank Doyle SJ (left in photo) recently exchanged the green and leafy delights of Gonzaga for the humid heats of Manila, where there has been no rain for a long time and it is extremely hot, exceeding 30C and going up to 36, with humidity to match. After years in Hong Kong, Frank served Chinese exiles in many parts of the world, including Dublin. His ease with groups of diverse languages and cultures will stand to him in his new job as spiritual director to Jesuit students from at least twelve different countries. On arrival he joined a team directing the spiritual exercises in an upcountry retreat house. He lives on the large (Belfield-size) campus of the Jesuit university, Ateneo de Manila, and is praying for some cool rain. See Frank’s photos here.

Ten years of song

Ten years ago Kevin Kelly, the young organist in Gardiner Street church, suggested to Fr Edmond Grace that they set up a Gospel Choir. It was a new notion, to have a choir at the altar, and with music that would set feet tapping. Edmond and Kevin persuaded the parish to have a special Gospel Choir Mass at 7.30 p.m. on Sundays. From the start everything seemed to fall into place, and there is now a two-year waiting list to join the 40 singers and eight-piece band that make up the Gospel Choir. On its tenth birthday the parish priest, Donal Neary, used his homily to thank the choir for the life it has brought to the church over the years.

Heart speaks to heart

Dermot Mansfield, invited by Veritas to write a study of Newman, started work last October. In March, when he found himself approaching Newman’s death, he was stuck for days, as though he could not bear parting with someone who had been so close to him through the winter. The theme of the book  is Newman’s motto: Heart speaks to heart. Threads running through it include Newman’s Jesuit connection; his warm relationships with women; his bond with his Anglican friends, happily resumed towards the end of his life; the myth, fostered by Manning, that he was difficult and hypersensitive; and his experience of Ireland and Cardinal Cullen (Newman once wrote to Hopkins: “If I were an Irishman, I should be at heart a rebel”). This is an original perspective by a scholar who loves his subject. Veritas accepted his draft without alteration and will publish this year.

The Curia moves

Three years after the fire in Eglinton Road, Fr Noel Barber reports on the Provincial Curia’s new migration this week – a move still incomplete, as this view of the reception area shows:  “Before the current economic woes descended on us, there were plans to build the Curia in the Gonzaga garden. It would have cost, I have been told, four times the cost of our actual offices; it could not possibly have been four times superior – whatever that means – and almost certainly it would not have been as good. A blessing of the recession which I am sure is being replicated throughout the country and contains a salutary lesson!” Read the rest of Fr Barber’s reflection below: Read more »

JESUITICA: Robotic virtues

Readers may be aware that able-bodied Irish Jesuits are fewer on the ground than they used be; but lawns still have to be mowed. One of the biggest lawns that we tend is beside our R and R house in Blainroe, Co. Wicklow, where the grass grows vigorously over some forty metres square. Richard O’Dwyer confronted the problem a couple of years ago by purchasing a robotic lawn-mower, a marvellous machine, pictured here. Electrically powered, it moves over the lawn following its own plan, does a lovely job quietly, and when tired crawls back into its little kennel where its batteries are automatically recharged. So far it is the only robot substituting for Jesuit manpower.

Fumbles of our funny God

On 10 June, before a crowd of over a hundred, Seósamh Ó Murchú, the principal editor of An Gúm, the state-funded Irish language publishing house, waxed enthusiastically when he launched Cá bhuil Walsingham? The fumbles of our funny God by Frainc Mac Brádaigh SJ. Frank has taken his subtitle from a Seán Ó Riordáin poem about the unexpected workings of Providence: “We yelled our love incontinent / For all things strange, fantastic, odd, / The crooked things of accident, / The fumbles of our funny God”. The book is an account of a pilgrimage Frank made in 1981 from Holyhead to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk. With design help from the Messenger Office, Foilseacháin Ábhair Spioradálta (FÁS) has produced a handsome softback. Purchase this book from Messenger Publications and enjoy the characteristic quirkiness and elegant Gaelic of our man (at the moment) in Ballymun.

All the cups

Clongowes Wood College S.J. was triumphant in all three of the Leinster schools senior rugby competitions this year. (Pictured left to right: Leinster schools Senior Seconds Cup, Leinster schools Senior cup, Leinster schools Senior Thirds cup). The senior cup was won on St Patrick’s day at the RDS when Clongowes defeated St Michael’s 38-20. The senior seconds lifted the seconds cup, defeating Blackrock College 24-14 in the final. The Clongowes Thirds won the thirds cup defeating Belvedere 10-9 to compete the treble. This is the fist time Clongowes has achieved this feat. Clongowes Senior rugby coach Noel Murray hopes and believes that this trend will be continued.

“Crumbling childcare system” – McVerry

“Daniel was still a child, he should not have died”.  So said Peter McVerry SJ, officiating at the funeral of  Daniel McAnaspie on Tuesday 9 June in the Church of the Annunciation, Finglas. The seventeen-year-old had been in the care of the HSE, and his body was found dumped in a field. Mourners listened as Fr McVerry told them that a contributing factor in Daniel’s death was the neglect of the State, which “bailed out bankers” while presiding over a “crumbling system of childcare”. He said that Daniel’s death, however, had created a momentum for changing that system, and “all of us, his family and friends, have a responsibility to ensure that the momentum is maintained until no child is at risk and every child’s needs are properly met”. To listen to Peter McVerry with Pat Kenny, click here; to read the Sunday Tribune’s profile of Peter, click here.

Summer ‘Studies’ on the shelves

‘Clergy, writers and intellectuals’ is the theme of the latest edition of the Jesuit periodical Studies, Summer 2010, just published this week. There are articles on the Reverend Ian Paisley, on Vatican Two, and on the influence of ‘the Mother’ on writer John McGahern. Also, Tom Quinn of DCU examines ‘The Female in Four Writers of the Great War’. In his article on Ian Paisley, Neil Southern, a facilitator involved in community peace building in the North, examines anti-Catholicism in the light of Protestant fears. He looks at Paisley the politician as well as Paisley the minister and concludes that whilst he does not fall into the classic model of a ‘peace builder’, his recent actions nevertheless allow him to qualify as a ‘peace–contributor’. Read the full press release below.

Read more »