The Hazards of Belief

Peregrinus wrote: »

No, it's not untrue. If no priest were avaiable to be rostered to say the mass, then you could say that the fact that the lack of amass was attributable to the shortage of priests. But if a priest was rostered but "due to a misunderstanding" didn't show, that's not due to any shortage; that's due to the misunderstanding. There could have been a hundred idle priests, but the problem would have arisen anyway, because the hundred idle priests, not having been rostered to say the mass, wouldn't have been there to say it.

But we know there aren't a hundred idle priests. The reason a single misunderstanding means no priests is that there is no spare capacity in the system.

Imagine if the same situation existed for GPs, and each practice was down from 5 or 6 doctors 40 years ago to just 1, and they had to religiously follow a rostering system to make sure one GP showed up for much reduced clinic hours at each practice, and a single misunderstanding meant the practice saw no patients.

Would we believe the HSE when they said there was "no shortage" because if everything ran per the roster like clockwork, the clinics would all open?

No, because in the real world, we know you need better than the theoretical bare minimum cover, and when cracks appear, it is a sign that there is a practical shortage, even if your paper system is fully covered.

He's properly ballsed this one up tbh. The people who contacted him "upset" about what Madigan said are most likely not upset about Madigan, but no doubt concerned that regular masses in their church may be at risk.

So he's hastily released an "everything is fine, stop talking down the church" statement to try and keep a lid on it.

Of course, he's on the record indicating concern about priests numbers;
https://www.herald.ie/news/just-26-priests-ordained-in-last-four-years-30326596.html

“We need more priests. I could look at statistics of all kinds which indicate how great the need for priests is in this archdiocese today,” he said.

Now, either the archdiocese has seen a remarkable turnaround in ordinations in four years, or he's been caught on the hop.

Luckily, the examiner did a big report on exactly this, just a couple of months ago, giving figures for the last five years.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/special-report--diocese-by-diocese-the-state-of-the-catholic-church-on-the-island-of-ireland-today-469022.html

Archdiocese of Dublin
97 priests have retired

A spokesperson for the archdiocese said many parishes have reduced the number of masses.

The archdiocese referred to recent speeches made by Archbishop Martin, including last November when he remarked on how 15 priests had died in the past year in the area, while two new priests were ordained for the diocese of Dublin. In that speech, looking ahead to 2030, he said: “If religious orders were to relinquish the parishes they currently serve, due to the age profile of their own priests, the drop by 2030 would be 70 percent leaving just 111 priests carrying out parish ministry across Dublin’s 199 parishes. Fifty-seven percent of the current priests serving in Dublin are over 60 years of age and this is projected to increase to 75% by 2030 and the findings predict that just one new priest under the age of 40 will join the priesthood in Dublin every year up to 2030.”

So it's clear there is a shortage of priests to carry out the volume of work that the archdiocese would like to accomplish.

Of course, if you look at what Martin actually said;

"There is no shortage of priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin for the celebration of Sunday Mass."

It's clear that he was responding to a statement that was never made. There is a shortage of priests. But he's trying to make it clear that people will still get their bread on Sundays.

Peregrinus wrote: »

This isn't right. No matter how many priests are available, only one will actually be rostered for a mass and if, due to a "misunderstanding", he doesn't turn up, then you have a problem. And this problem is independent of the total number of priests who could have been rostered.

Sure, but to a certain extent if you think about the 1980s, I'd be surprised if anything like this had ever happened. Every parish had 3 or 4 active priests at any given time.
So even if the extraordinary circumstance occurred where the rostered priest forgot to turn up on a Saturday night, one of the parishioners in attendance would have had no difficulty making a run to go get him or rustle up a new one within ten or 15 minutes.

Here, not only did nobody know how to contact the rostered priest, but they also didn't know where to get another one at short notice. This speaks to the current state of the system.

This wasn't an isolated parish in a town of 200 people where the local priest came down with a sudden 'flu. This was in the middle of South Dublin.

expectationlost wrote: »

is one of the hazard of belief elderly priests driving?

No, it's that if you go to Mass on a Saturday, a shortage of priests means there's a hazard that you might have to listen to a politician on the pulpit instead of the priest.

recedite wrote: »

The man is caught between two stools himself. He wants to be a RC Archbishop and he also wants to be a liberal.

Whatever about his wants relating to the former, he is one, and he remains one unless and until the pope replaces him.

Liberal? As far as I can make out, he makes noises here and there but really he's a "clean up the very worst of the abuses and then it's minimum change until the next guy" guy.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

This event happened on a Saturday, so.. the event does not disprove the above sentence. Mental reservation at its best.

Hotblack, that's unfair. Martin has explained exactly how he defends his statement, and that explanation has already been posted in this thread. Whether you accept his explanation or not, it doesn't depend to any extent on any mental reservation, and you know this.

^^

maybe he had brain freeze?

Two CoI bishops attended a Gafcon conference the other week, generating some controversy.

Bishops’ presence at Gafcon an ‘absolute disgrace’

Bishop Harold Miller of Down and Dromore and Bishop Ferran Glenfield of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh attended the meeting with other senior clergy from the Church of Ireland and members of Gafcon Ireland set up last April.

Gafcon came into being after the election in the US Episcopal Church (Anglican) of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
...
In a statement at the end of its Jerusalem meeting, it urged Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury not to invite bishops to the next Lambeth Conference in 2020 who endorsed sexual practices deemed in contradiction of scripture.

'Wilfully schismatic' movement supports submission of women to men

Gafcon is seeking to undermine and divide the global Anglican family.

It supports a theology of “headship”, ie, the “biblically-mandated” submission of women to their husbands and other men in positions of church authority.

Pray teh ghey away. Uh-oh.

And today we are in the midst of a turbulent theological conversation regarding our LGBTQI sisters and brothers (who too often are excluded from these conversations) as we struggle to realise the indisputable fact that, like slaves in the past and ordained women in the present, they are fully made in the image of God, and thus are to be welcomed and enabled to rightfully flourish in our church structures.

This continues to be a work-in-progress, part of which is the vital challenging of (Gafcon-supported) “conversion therapy” for gay people with its toxic, destructive, and abusive results.

Canon Marie Rowley-Brooke is a retired Anglican priest, formerly rector in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and canon of St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. Currently she is a PhD researcher (part-time) at Birmingham University, focusing on the challenges of cyborg theology.

Cyborg theology?

Anybody know what is cyborg theology?

nuac wrote: »

Anybody know what is cyborg theology?

I gather it is theology which considers technology, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. There is a book by Scott A. Midson of that name, but the couple of reviews I looked at are heavy on jargon:


it is both an exploration into the ways in which the cyborg and the human merge into the same materialist figure, as well as an examination of what that figure might have to say about our theological renderings of what makes us human. Moreover, this sort of theologizing also contributes to a critical rethinking of our contemporary cultural technologies, and how we might reorient the human’s relationship to them.




So I gather it is theology which considers technology, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I gather it is theology which considers technology, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. There is a book by Scott A. Midson of that name, but the couple of reviews I looked at are heavy on jargon:


it is both an exploration into the ways in which the cyborg and the human merge into the same materialist figure, as well as an examination of what that figure might have to say about our theological renderings of what makes us human. Moreover, this sort of theologizing also contributes to a critical rethinking of our contemporary cultural technologies, and how we might reorient the human’s relationship to them.




So I gather it is theology which considers technology, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human.

Is that not philosophy?

Controversial Cardinal Kevin Farrell (who censored teh gheys from the WMoF leaflet) makes the news again:

Priests do not have experience to prepare people for marriage, says Vatican Cardinal

Priests have no credibility when it comes to training people for marriage, according to the most senior Irish cleric in the Vatican.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, from Drimnagh in Dublin and prefect (head) of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life said “priests are not the best people to train others for marriage.

“They have no credibility; they have never lived the experience; they may know moral theology, dogmatic theology in theory, but to go from there to putting it into practice every day....they don’t have the experience.”

Also, the usual stuff about how we really think women are great, they just can't be priests, but that's not anyone's fault, not even the Romans...

I should also point out that our Kev is alleged to have blackballed Mary McAleese from that Vatican shindig a while back.

In other news, we'll be stumping up for the overtime for 1200 - 1500 gardai working 12-18 hour shifts when Frankie rocks up to town:

Up to 1,500 Garda members set to police Papal visit

The more pressing issue is the movement of people in and out of Phoenix Park, with a capacity of 600,000 at the Mass on Sunday, August 26th.

“It will be a significant movement of people and the profile is expected to be challenging in terms of mobility,” he said of a congregation that will very likely include a large number of older people and children.

“It will be a slow burn entry over a number of hours through the day, but the exit strategy will be quite challenging.”

People will come from all over the country, many on buses. And a lot of those vehicles will be parked many kilometres from Phoenix Park.

Getting people from the Mass site to the gates of the park and then away from the park is a logistical operation complicated by the fact it will continue into the hours of darkness.

Mr Leahy estimated clearing the park of the crowds would take at least “four to five hours”.

So we have busloads of OAPs coming to the city from possibly hours away. They will then have to walk 3-5km to get to the park and possibly nearly as much again inside it, sit around for hours then do the same in reverse. Throw in any sort of hot weather and you will have THOUSANDS of exhausted dehydrated OAPs collapsing around the place. The health system cannot possibly cope.

Don't drive anywhere in Dublin that weekend, and don't get sick either! I live in west Dublin and it'll be chaos. Think we'll go away.

"Suspected vigilantes killed a Muslim man transporting two cows in India on Saturday, just over a year after a similar attack highlighted the growing influence of pro-Hindu fringe groups."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/21/india-suspected-vigilantes-kill-muslim-man-transporting-cows