Patie O’Sullivan, celebrating the graduation of his grand nephew and godson Padraig O’Sullivan in Bachelor of Technology in Education.
ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH, ATHEA
Mass Intentions next weekend- Sat April 30th 7.30pm
Dick Woulfe – 1st Anniversary. Nora Barrett (Rooskagh). Patrick Dalton – 1st Anniversary.
All mass services can be viewed online via the following link https://www.churchservices.tvathea
Readers of the Word: Patsy Hayes & Caroline Pierse
Eucharistic Ministers: Mary O’Donoghue & Mary Dalton
Weekday Mass Times: Tuesday & Thursday morning 9.30am.
Eucharistic Adoration and the Devine Mercy Chaplet after mass on Thursday morning.
Parish Office Hours – Monday – Friday 11am-1pm
Contact Siobhán on 087-3331459. or email the parish office at
if you wish to book an anniversary mass, make an enquiry about a christening or a wedding,
arrange a signed mass card and all other administration queries.
Thank You. Sincere thank you to all who continue to contribute to the Weekly Offertory Collection and to the Easter Dues Collection. Your ongoing support and generosity is very much appreciated.
New Arrangements for the celebration of Baptisms.
From the first weekend in June the following will be the arrangements for baptisms in Athea Parish. Baptisms will be celebrated on the third Saturday of the month during the summertime at 2.30pm and on the third Sunday of the month in wintertime at 12noon. Baptisms booked in prior to these new arrangements will be celebrated on the date they are booked for. Any parent wishing to baptise their child must complete a short baptismal course. To book in a baptism or make enquiries contact the parish office on 087-3331459.
Funerals.
After consultation with the Pastoral Area Council, and the parish councils in each of the five parishes, it was agreed, that due to the number of Sunday Masses celebrated in the five churches in the area, it will no longer be possible to have funeral Masses on a Sunday. This has been the case in the diocese of Kerry for some years. We are also asking families who are bereaved, where possible, to continue with the practice of bringing the remains of the deceased to the church on the morning of the funeral Mass, rather than the night before. Over the coming weeks we will see a greater involvement of lay people in the leading of the prayers at funerals, such as the prayers for the deceased in funeral homes, in the family home of the deceased and at the burial ceremony.
We thank parishioners for their understanding and support in these new arrangements.
The Way I See It
By Domhnall de Barra
In the last century there was an elocution teacher employed in most secondary school’s, especially those that catered for girls. In those days there was no such thing as co-ed schools, there were ones for the boys and ones for the girls. They probably thought the presence of the opposite sex in the same classroom would divert our attention from our education !. The reason for the elocution lessons was to prepare for life after school where many jobs depended on having good diction. If you wanted to join a dramatic society you would have to be able to speak “properly”. It was about pronunciation, alliteration, diction and delivery. In the early British films, all the actors, men and women, spoke in a similar manner. They seemed very artificial and, in comparison to today, were badly acted. The actors were robotic, standing stiffly waiting to deliver their lines and they all smoked. A cigarette was deemed to be a great prop as it gave the actor something to do with the hands. It might appear strange now but, in those days, smoking was not considered to be harmful, on the contrary, it was supposed to give great pleasure and relaxation and was advertised as such. Papers, pubs and retail outlets were full of ads for Players, Gold Flake, Craven A, Woodbine, Carroll’s No 1 etc and we all wanted to be like the film stars and have one in our hands. Radio announcers also had to have a similar accent. When RTE started it modelled itself on the BBC and employed announcers who could imitate what went on across the water. Those of you who are old enough to remember Charles Mitchell will know what I am talking about. Another job that required good diction was working as a telephonist. Younger generations may well ask what a telephonist did because the job no longer exists. In the early days of the telephone, it was not possible to dial a number yourself because there was no method of dialling on the actual phone. To place a call, the receiver had to be lifted and a handle turned to alert the telephonist in the local post office. When it was answered, you gave the number you needed and the telephone operator plugged a wire into a socket connecting your phone to the next centre. They, in turn connected to the next until, eventually, your call was connected and you could have your conversation. It was cumbersome and not really straight forward. For instance, if I wanted to ring somebody in Ardagh, just down the road, I would have to call the post office in Athea, be connected to Listowel who would then connect me to Newcastle West. They in turn would connect me to Ardagh post office and at last my call would be connected to the person I needed to contact. Thank God for technology and the smart phone but, in those days, telephone exchanges employed large numbers of workers to make all the connections. As time went by those jobs disappeared and the requirement to talk like a BBC announcer was no longer the norm on radio and television or in the film industry. People came to realise that communication was the important, not the necessity to “speak properly”. Regional accents, once frowned upon, were to be heard on the airwaves and the elocution teacher got less employment. There is still a bit of snobbery about how we speak but getting your message across to whom it is intended is all that really matters. Irish people, particularly in rural areas, don’t always get it right but that is due to the fact that English is not our real language. It took a long time to make the transition from Irish to English and we were bound to make the odd mistake. English is not an easy language and has many oddities that we find difficult to grasp. For instance let’s look at “has” and “have”. At school we learned “I have, you have, he has, she has, they have” In parts of the country we get it wrong and will say something like “he have a lovely smile”. I was talking to a man once and commented on how trim he was looking. He told me “the secret is the greyhounds. I walks them every day. They keeps me fit and I keeps them fit”. At school, our headmaster, Jim Kelly, used to call some of us the “do bes and the does bes”. I still use “do be” today as I might say “I do be always looking for news for the newsletter”. Of course it is grammatically incorrect but, who cares? Even those you would expect to do so are not always correct. The English aristocracy should be the standard bearers when it comes to their own language but they have a habit of changing the ends of words, especially those ending in er. They pronounce proper as “propah”, Peter as “Petah” so, if they can’t get it right why should we find fault with ourselves? Diversity is a great thing and we are lucky that we have so many lovely regional accents and ways of communication all over the country. It may be difficult at times to understand somebody from the other side of the country but it can be made easier if we all spoke a little slower. I am afraid that the future is going to see big changes. Younger people are starting to talk with an accent that is dictated by television and language that is influenced by social media. A lot of it, the worst bits, come from America and is very hard to listen to but eventually a different way of speaking will emerge and it will be difficult to distinguish between a person from Donegal and another from Kerry. We are going to lose a lot but, in the meantime, let us continue with our ungrammatical brogues. After all it does not matter as long as we get our message across.