Athea Drama Group
Athea Drama group are back on Stage with The Anniversary this weekend Thursday 16th, Friday 17th, Saturday 18th, Sunday 19th. We are having our annual Charity night on Friday 17th & all proceeds this year go to Con Colbert Memorial Hall.
Bookings can be made by Text or Whats App on 087 6926746
Joe Aherne, Glenagore, Athea is taking up the challenge of walking 100 miles in February in aid of Cardiac Care in the Mater Public Hospital.
The vital funds raised by this walk will help equip the hospital with life-saving equipment, which will allow the staff to diagnose and treat patients with serious heart conditions.
If you would like to sponsor Joe, please contact him on 086 8155614
The Way I See It
By Domhnall de Barra
One day last week, I looked at the front page of the Irish Mail and the message there, in very large print, stopped me in my tracks. I first of all pinched myself to see if I was dreaming and then I checked the date on the paper to make sure it wasn’t the 1st of April. The headline stated that the term “Father” may not be allowed in the Lord’s Prayer anymore due to gender neutrality, a term that means that “policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguishing roles according to people’s sex or gender”. This agenda has been foisted on us by a minority of liberalists who carry far more weight than their percentage of the population. It started a few years ago with people objecting to the term “man” being used in words like chairman, manhole, postman etc. The word “chairman” describes a position that may be filled by either sex and anyway its definition in the dictionary says: “a human being of either sex, a person”. It wouldn’t be so bad if it stopped there but all references to different sexes are frowned upon even down to having unisex toilets in schools. A teacher who objected to not being able to refer to pupils as “him” and “her” ended up in the high court and lost his job just a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine, who teaches in a secondary school said they might as well put condom machines in the toilets where boys and girls can mingle. A meeting could easily be arranged through the phones they are all now attached to and if you think some leaving cert teenagers are not sexually active, it is time to come out of the fog, wake up and smell the roses. Males are males and females are females but it is not that simple. Some males feel they are female and born into the wrong body and vice versa. My thinking is they should be male or female until such time as they have a sex change and then be referred to as they have become. I have great sympathy for those who are in the situation and everything should be done to help them but, they are such a small minority that it should not change everything we have been used to since time began. The animal world, with a few exceptions, is divided into male and female for the purposes of procreation. This hasn’t changed so I see no sense in trying to appease certain agendas by changing the terms we are all used to. Should “Holy Mary, Mother of God” now be changed as well? What we know about God comes from the Bible and it states that He is a man. Jesus Christ was born a man and, to my knowledge, He never wanted to have a sex change and become a woman. Call me old-fashioned but this is a step too far for me and I fear we are going down a road that will lead us to chaos. Do we really want to see words like “him”, “her” etc disappear from our vocabulary to be replaced by some neutral terms that mean nothing? Men are men and women are women; vive la difference.
I have always been fascinated by the term “happy in my own skin”, because I think the most of us are actually unhappy in our own skin. Let us look at the evidence. Because of our geographic location we are mostly white-skinned but are we happy with that? We spend every chance we get, exposing ourselves to the sun, to try and be as brown as we can. Because we don’t get enough sun here in the summertime we jet off to all the sunspots to bake on the beach for hours each day so that we can come home with a really good tan. At least that used to be the case but now, due to advances in cosmetics, we don’t have to rush abroad at all – we can get that tan from a sun bed or a bottle. It is almost obligatory if we are going to a wedding or some other celebration to be properly “browned off” before we go. Are we happy with our faces? We continually cover them with foundations, rouge, blushers, lipstick, eyeliner and all kinds of lotions to make us look different. When the wrinkles appear, those who can afford it turn to botox and it is now common for lips to be injected to make them stand out. Again, those who can afford it may get the nose changed or have some other cosmetic surgery to improve the image. The hair is long, short, straight or curly and shaped in every which way according to the fashion at the time. Our hands cannot be neglected either so nails have to be cut in a certain way and maybe painted. I could keep on about other body parts but I am sure you have got the point by now. But, why are we so unhappy with ourselves? Some of the most beautiful women in the world come from Scandinavia and they are whiter than white and see no need to be different. The late Michael Jackson spent a fortune trying to make himself white and nearly succeeded so it isn’t just confined to ourselves. We have become victims of pressure from adverts that show us what the perfect look is like and how we can attain it. Beauty is big business and every town and village in the country has hairdressers and beauty technicians who make a good living of our vanity and our desire to fit in. There is no such thing as the perfect man or woman – we are what we are and beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. True beauty comes from within and has nothing to do with make-up or fake tans. Maybe it is time we grew up and became “happy in our own skin” at last.
Our worries are very small when we think of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the tens of thousands who have lost their lives. It puts everything else into perspective and we should do everything in our power to try and help the survivors who are now trying to live in appalling conditions. Arrest warrants have been issued for those involved in the building of those apartments that weren’t up to the required standards. They should be made pay for what they have done by cutting corners to make more profit.
St. Bartholomew’s Church Athea
Athea Church Notices
Mass Intentions next weekend Sun Feb 19th at 11am James O’Mahony.
John Danaher and his parents Jack & Peggy. Hanora (Nan) Hurley.
Ministers of the Word: Paul Curry & Jade McMahon.
Ministers of the Eucharist: Mary Dalton & Mary Sheahan
Weekday Mass this week: Tuesday 9.30 am – Lay liturgy followed by Eucharistic Adoration and the Devine Mercy Chaplet. Thursday evening 7pm – Mass intention – Ella Ahern.
All masses are streamed live on https://www,churchservices.tv/athea
Baptisms on the 4th Sunday of the month at 12noon. Next baptism course on Tues Feb 14th.
Parish Office: Mon-Fri 11am-1pm. Call 087-3331459 or email [email protected]
A new Candle Shrine area has been installed just inside the main front door of the church.
A selection of Mass Bouquet Cards is available through the Sacristy/Parish Office – the list
Includes mass cards for the dead and the living, Get well, Special Occasion, Exams, Communion. Confirmation.