Tony Flannery

Anger

Anger is one of the basic human emotions, but like all other human emotions, it has a positive and a negative aspect to it.

At present here in Ireland the media keep telling us that we are all ANGRY over a certain game of golf and dinner in Clifden. 

I know that there is some anger, maybe more disappointment and disillusionment over the event. Of course the dinner should not have happened, and it was foolish of the public figures, in particular, who took part in it.

Back in ‘old god’s time’ in the nineteen nineties, I wrote a book about Religious Life, predicting that convents and monasteries as we knew them then were coming towards the end of their particular era. In other words, that the form of religious life that we have seen prosper in Ireland in the past two centuries appeared to me to be in serious decline, and maybe even facing extinction. 

Events since then have confirmed my assessment, indeed to a degree and with a rapidity that I would not have thought possible back then.

Open Air Mass

I know that screened Masses have served a purpose during the pandemic, but I, and I think others, have had questions about the long-term efficacy of these type of non-participary Masses. A few weeks ago I tweeted a suggestion that maybe people should consider open air Masses, and, to get over the problem of safely receiving the Eucharist, that people could bring their own piece of bread for consecration.