Category: Blog Entry

Coming back from holiday is strange.  In the parish, I sometimes felt that I was sort of punished for having been away – as if all sorts of crises stored themselves up for the week after I came home.  It’s different now.  I don’t think it would make much difference if I stayed away for another while.  But I come home to a tidal wave of E Mail and post – probably take me about two weeks to get on top of it again.

Meanwhile there are interesting things going by – I read the response of Catholic bishops and others to the change of view on abortion by Amnesty International – but I missed the original debate which changed that view.  We’re going to have pictures of dead bodies on the cigarette packages – and there were wrecked cars on display outside Ikea yesterday.  It’s a bit like the hell-fire sermons of old and, I suspect, not much more effective.

Well we got home last night to find that David Kydd and his helpers from New Futures at CATH [Churches Action for the Homeless] had completed and installed the Pergola.  Well done to all of them – various trailers and climbers will soon be exercising themselves all over it.  It will make a fitting entrance to the Lime Tree Walk.

Our trip home was enlivened by the refusal of P and O to allow Poppy to relax in the lounge.  She had a choice of somewhere under the back stairs or the car – she chose the car.  She also shared our astonishment when – about a mile short of Blogstead – we found ourselves having to stop because an owl was standing in the middle of the road.

Time to go home.  The weather hasn’t been great – but nobody goes to Donegal for the weather.  The social pace has been frenetic and most of the books are unread.  We finished with a preaching trip to Riverstown on the far side of Sligo where Arthur, one of my former colleagues, is the Rector – small congregations but lots of children.  So there’s promise for the future.  The journey there interweaves all sorts of strands of Irish history – the Spanish Armada, Yeats, Lissadell, the Gore-Boothes and Countess Markiewicz.  Both Alison and I carry childhood memories of the lovely little village of Mullaghmore overlooked by Classiebawn Castle, home of Lord Mountbatten.  It’s impossible to go there now without remembering the IRA attack which killed him in 1979 – a day with one of the highest losses of life in the Troubles both there and in Warrenpoint.

And then its time to clear up.  It will be a while until we’re back for more than a fleeting visit.  We knew somebody who was reputed to comb the shag pile carpet towards the door as he left – wooden floors make that unnecessary at Blogstead Na Mara.  But a quick salvo of systemic weed killer on the paving and gravel may keep the growth at bay for a while.

I’ve been reminiscing about the confident days of the Catholic Church in Ireland – forgot to mention the great Father McDwyer of Glencombkille who developed a remarkable co-operative movement in a remote valley in Donegal..

The Irish Times reports the slightly less confident sermon by the good and gentle Archbishop Sean Brady at Knock Shrine.  He speaks of those who claim to have set Ireland ‘free from the shackles of religious faith’ and who are now silent ‘in the face of the real captivities of the new Ireland’.  I wonder who makes that claim? 

It seems to me he rather misses the point by getting caught up in talking about Tarot Cards, etc.  But there is an important discussion – as appropriate in Scotland as in Ireland – about the contribution of churches to a society which has shaken off the ethos of a dominant church and moved rapidly to being quasi-liberal/secular.  I’m not sure how useful it is to say that ‘many Irish people have not so much rejected their faith as become distracted from the faith.  People are seeking to control their future rather than entrust their future to God’s promise and plan.’

I suspect that the horse is well out of the stable on that one – indeed today’s Independent reports that levels of personal debt in Britain now exceed the total size of the economy – suggesting that people actually have a blithe disregard for the future. 

It seems to me that the point is much more to do with the danger that a secular and increasingly value-free society may actually become relaxed about freedom and justice issues – may become more individualistic and less community-minded.  It seems to me that the issue is really about values and where they come from – when the position of a church and churches is no longer central to the ethos of that society.

Hectic – holidays at Blogstead Na Mara set a cracking pace. It’s the social round, the gardening, the reading, the crossword, the piano.

Two strands of Irish life catch my interest. The Rose of Tralee competition finished last night with victory for the New York Rose. The Irish Times conducted a rather sniffy discussion about whether it was taking place in a dome or a ‘tint’ – tent to you and me. Whatever the venue, it remains one of the more distasteful fixtures in the Irish calendar – deeply patronising because it seems to invite highly intelligent young women to act as if they were stupid. May Ireland’s new maturity bring it to an end soon.

I should have mentioned the Fastnet Race as it went by – out from Cowes and round the Fastnet Rock off West Cork. Visitors to my Facebook profile will see the picture of my visit to it while sailing down the south coast of Ireland with friends. It is a splendid and wonderfully spooky place. We sailed out there on a calm day – what it must be like in rough weather I cannot imagine. We visited the memorial – on Cape Clear Island – which marks the tragedy of the 1979 Race in which 15 sailors died.

Tried to buy trellis in the garden centre today.

‘Do you keep trellis?’

‘Yes of course’

‘Could you show me where it is?’

‘We’ve run out’

‘Will you be getting more?’

No’

Only beaten by my conversation in the power cut with Andrew in his cottage:

‘Andrew, do you have electricity?’

‘Yes’

‘Is your electricity working?’

‘No’

Well life at Blogstead na Mara continues in its usual calm way.  Donegal  is, so far as I know, the only place in which it is possible to change time zones without leaving the country.  The only thing which keeps the jet lag at bay is the introduction of a little Melatonin into the Guinness.

We did church at Dunfanaghy – not so very different from Ballintuim last Sunday.  They both have that intensity of life which is characteristic of minority communities.  Knowing and being known is much more important than it is in a large community where people can slip in and out around the edges.

And for some reason the evening degenerated into some fairly noisy hymn singing – particularly hymns of childhood with stupid words.  I’m pretty tolerant – ‘Shall we gather at the River’ and ‘Will yeranker hold in the storms of life’ raise hardly a flicker of concern.  I have yet to have the opportunity of singing one which one of my curates claimed to have met, ‘Jesus kicks the ball through the goalposts of life.’

Just don’t ask me to sing, ‘O perfect Love’.  I used to get very tetchy – asking bride and groom if ‘patient hope and quiet brave endurance .. and childlike trust which fears nor death nor pain’ was all right.  I wonder if they still think so.

Loss of confidence seeps almost unnoticed into churches.  And it’s hard to reverse – particularly when the tide is running against you in other ways.

My visit to the Aer Lingus/Knock issues yesterday reminds me of the days when the Irish Catholic Church had real confidence.

Monsignor James Horan was the administrator of the Marian Shrine at Knock – if you’ll forgive the pun – in a particularly God-forsaken part of Co Mayo.  He decided to make it his objective to achieve a visit from Pope John Paul – which duly came about in 1979.  At that point the Shrine became a Basilica.  Not content with that, he next decided to establish an International Airport at Knock.   By the exercise of all sorts of political wiles and a fair amount of bare-faced cheek, he achieved that in 1986 and Horan International Airport was duly opened.  The New Ireland has diminished it to Ireland West Airport – Knock.

Mention of the Pope’s visit also reminds one of the remarkable Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway, who gathered thousands of young people to meet the Pope at Galway Racecourse.  Casey had been one of the founders of Shelter during his time in London and he was a dynamic and charismatic individual by any standards.  Sadly, some of his dynamism was misplaced and he was brought down by the revelation that he had fathered a child – a case of ‘Dougal – whatever you do, don’t mention Bishop Brennan’s son’

And the point of balance for the loss of confidence in a strange way proved to be that very same visit of the Pope – an extraordinary demonstration of the strength of Catholic Ireland and rapid decline from that moment onwards.

The Irish Times reports today that Ireland has built 249000 homes between 2001 and 2006.  248000 of them seem to be on the road up to Blogstead Na Mara.  12% of all houses in Donegal are holiday homes.

Well – one gradually tunes in to the rhythms of the new Ireland.  Over at the Knock Marian Shrine, the crowds are unprecedented.  As the commentator on RTE said, the more the churches empty the more strength there seems to be in folk religion.  Interesting isn’t it?

And the threatened Aer Lingus strike is really interesting as well.  The West of Ireland political establishment is outraged at Aer Lingus’ plans to end its Shannon-Heathrow service.  Shannon is course established the world’s first duty-free shop and was also where Irish Coffee was invented.  But it also spawned a whole world of politics as successive Irish governments used Shannon to boost economic development in the West – and prevented airlines flying direct from the US to Dublin.  It was a bit like De Valera winning elections on promises to drain the Shannon.  But what is really driving the strike?  Well  Aer Lingus plans to make Belfast a major new hub and to employ pilots on different terms and conditions from those in Dublin.  Belfast instead of Shannon?  Amazing.

And finally, across the valley from Blogstead Na Mara, the three new houses at 650000 euro remain unsold – I think.  And the view which is supposed to sell them has been slightly impaired by the sudden clearance of a rather attractive wood which lay just below them .. cleared by a developer for the building of the next set of holiday cottages ..  and so it goes on.

I hate it.  And the two sets of golf clubs when I don’t even play golf.  And then I realised – having put one bicycle on the roof of the car – that it wouldn’t fit under the William Temple Arch here at the entrance to the close at Blogstead.  Poppy has a new carrying basket to show off in the lounge of the P & O Express from Troon – but she’s quite restless in anticipation although she loves Donegal.  We’ve discussed the reading list – Biggles, Arthur Ransome, William Trevor …  So it’s Donegal here we come.  May do a bit of Hiberno-blogging but maybe not.

In Portadown, there was no doubt what the Twelfth was about – the sashes, bowler hats and banners of the Orange Order. Up in Ballintuim this morning, it was slightly different. No sign of the Daughters of Laura who used to come to the Seagoe Orange Service – more a quiet preparation for the Glorious Twelfth happening on the Thirteenth. This is another congregation which takes responsibility for its own life and does so with considerable success. As a concentrated assembly of real characters, one could hardly do better – I reflected this morning in church that one could create a work of several volumes just by chronicling the life stories of some of the congregation. I took on faith in the sermon – but I have a feeling that faith won.

Sorry – you asked where Ballintuim is? Go to Blairgowrie and up the road to Bridge of Calley. Then fork left and go up the glen for about four miles and you’ll find it on the right. 10.30 am every Sunday in season but, apart from Christmas and the AGM, not at all hors saison.