Orla Cashel, now 21, was brought up a Catholic. She sang in a church choir, but her faith wasn't especially important to her until 2011 when her priest suggested she should go to World Youth Day in Madrid. That changed everything. "I made amazing friends there" she says. "It enhanced my life. Everything I have done since stemmed from there". Currently studying theology and psychology at All Hallows in Dublin, Orla's dream job is to work as an army chaplain. "When I finish my four year degree, I plan to take a Masters in Mater Dei," she says. "After that I may have to wait, because who wants a chaplain in their early 20's? I'll probably do parish work, and hopefully work with children. Whatever I do, I hope I'll do some good.” She is already doing that. Orla went to Lourdes for the first time when she was in sixth year at school. Since then, she has gone each year as part of a children's pilgrimage. She returned from her fourth visit a week or so before we spoke. "This year was probably my best," she says. "I was responsible for one child for the week. It's wonderful to see the children express themselves. The week is all about them. We went to Mass, played football and charades, and there's great rivalry. I've never laughed so much in my life."
While believing the church needs to change, Orla thinks the problems aren't nearly as great as most people believe. "I'm involved with Faith Fest. We organise workshops and music for children from first to sixth class. It's great to see how children do still have faith." And it's not just the children. "I put on an event at Christmas raising money for the Capuchin homeless centre," she says. "We got jumpers, hats, scarves, chocolates, which we distributed. We had lots left over, which we gave to the Pro Cathedral because the priest knew people would go in." Orla's faith is strong. "Nothing will stop me marrying and having a family," she says, “but I want to devote my life to God as well. My friends would know it's one of the most important things in my life. It's what I study, and it's important to me to put it into practice, too. "I get the odd slagging but my friends respect my views in the same way I respect theirs. We've probably debated the issues once or twice."
Where does Orla see herself in 10 years’ time? “I don't even know what I'll be doing next week," she says, laughing. "I'm going to Africa this summer with the Vincentian lay missionaries. I'm going for a month. Maybe I'll end up spending more time in Africa. I'll see how this year goes." (Taken from the article ‘The Young Church’ in the Summer 2014 edition of Reality Magazine. Four other young people already given in Dear Parishioner)
The Presbytery, Abbeydorney, (066 7135146)
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 31st August 2014.
Dear Parishioner,
This time last year, I wished parishioners a ‘Happy New Year’ but I went on to explain why that thought came into my head. ‘I have put in that greeting because, when September comes around every year, it seems like it is a ‘New Year.’ That is partly because the school year starts in September and, before many weeks of the first term have gone, there is talk about First Communion the following May. It is in September, also, that various parish programmes get going, after ‘closing shop’ a few months earlier.
Advice is given to people in all walks of life to take time to reflect, look back on what has happened during a year, during a working life, during time spent in school. Maybe I have the luxury of having the time to be looking back, to be reflecting on things that have happened, on what I hoped would happen but did not, for one reason or another, happen at all. I have the time to be reading what newspaper columnists and commentators are saying about religious matters and other matters that are important in day to day living.
The Irish Times newspaper has been running an occasional series of articles giving the thoughts of different people in a particular age category. The most recent feature (23rd August) was on those who are in their 60s. One of those who gave her thoughts was Mary G. Johnson (66), who lives in Tralee.
“There were four of us, which was considered to be a small enough family for that time. Mothers didn’t work outside the home, but they were the very women who shoved their daughters out to work. They wanted us to have our own money, because life was uncertain, and you had to have something to fall back on. Parents were at least as ambitious for girls as they were for boys. I do have faith. The crisis in the Church about sexual abuse didn’t impact on my faith at all, because faith is a great deal bigger than that. I saw the wickedness of what happened and the denial, but if you go back through the Church’s history, it has always been dealing with one crisis after another. The denial and cover-up of what happened in Ireland was the worst but it didn’t surprise me. An institution will always try and protect itself.”
Fr. Denis O’Mahony
Our Broken World ~ To Be[e] or not to Be[e]
A World Without Bees Would Be Devastating For Food Production.
Whales, dolphins, orang-utans, tigers, pandas, get most attention when it comes to protecting the environment and saving wildlife. But what of the bees? Bees, like all pollinating insects, are an essential part of the planet's delicate ecosystem. And the honeybees also give us the honey that many crave. But bees make more than honey - they are key to food production because they pollinate crops. Bumblebees, other wild bees, and insects like butterflies, wasps, and flies all provide valuable pollination services. A third of the food that we eat depends on pollinating insects: vegetables like zucchini, fruits like apricot, nuts like almonds, spices like coriander, edible oils like canola, and many more.
In Europe alone, the growth of over 4,000 vegetables depends on the essential work of pollinators. But currently, more and more bees are dying. A world without pollinators would be devastating for food production. Our lives depend on theirs.
Make no mistake about it: bees are declining. Over the past 20 years or so, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and report unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. If these small but important lives are lost, what would pollinate all the crops? Hand-pollination is extremely labour intensive, slow and expensive. The economic value of bees' pollination work has been estimated at around €265 billion annually, worldwide. So, from a purely economic point of view, it pays to protect the bees.
There are many reasons for the demise of bees but, as their names suggest, insecticides pose the most direct risk to pollinators. These are chemicals designed to kill insects and are widely applied in the environment, mostly around cropland areas. Although it is true to say that the relative role of insecticides in the global decline of pollinators remains poorly characterised, it is becoming increasingly evident that some insecticides, at concentrations applied routinely in the current chemical-intensive agriculture system, exert clear, negative effects on the health of pollinators - both individually and at the colony level. The observed, sub-lethal, low-dose effects of insecticides on bees are various and diverse.
The threats to both wild and managed pollinators are real, significant and complex. Addressing all the threats in an integrated way will be an immense, yet fundamental necessary task. What seems clear is that taking steps to address one of the major factors affecting pollinators, i.e. the impact of chemical-intensive agriculture, will be a crucial step in the right direction. Any progress in transforming the current destructive chemical-intensive agricultural system into an ecological farming system will have many associated benefits on other dimensions of the environment and of human food security, besides the clear benefit to global pollinator health. For a short, good fun video, on the plight of bees see http://sos-bees.org/greenbees/?GPI_os.
Decline of the commercial honeybee:
40% Loss of commercial honeybee in the U.S since 2006
25% Loss of commercial honeybee in Europe since 1985
45% Loss of commercial honeybee in the U.K since 2010
John Bowler (Reality Magazine Summer 2014)
Musings (Salvador Ryan, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth)
Ragheed Ganni was a young Chaldean Catholic priest from Mosul, Iraq, who was a student at the Irish College, Rome. Despite the obvious dangers, he returned to Iraq after his studies to minister to his people there. Despite numerous threats, he remained with them, claiming that ‘Without Sunday, without the Eucharist, the Christians in Iraq cannot survive’ and that ‘the Eucharist gives us back the life that the terrorists seek to take away.’ He would pay the ultimate price when he was targeted and killed by gunmen outside his church on 3rd June 2007. Many Christians today continue to re-trace Christ’s steps when they are faced with sacrificing their lives. (Intercom Magazine, July/Aug. 2014)
“We are faced with a tragedy that is genocide because when all the men are taken and killed, when women are robbed, taken away, their dignity violated in the worst human way and then sold, then you are destroying these people, knowing that in this way they will no longer have a future.” Cardinal Fernando Feloni, the special envoy of Pope Francis to Iraq, speaking about Christians and religious minorities in the country facing genocide and calling the international community to act quickly to come to their aid. (Irish Catholic, 28th August 2014)