Members of the parish at the Blessed Well on August 15 to celebrate the 1914 dedication

Athea Vintage Club & Road Run

We are back on the road again for 2023!

Athea Vintage Club are once again hoping to welcome crowds to our beautiful village on Sunday September 3^rd for our annual road run.

Every year we raise funds for charities that have local connections as we want to support local as much as we can. This year will be no different.

Registration will begin at 11am for Vintage Cars & Modern/Vintage Tractors. We will once again be having our Junior Run at 12pm – so get those Go Karts, Bikes & Trikes ready for action!!

Every year we try to add something new to the event and this year is no different…..

Athea Vintage Club will proudly welcome Limerick Hurling All Star – AARON GILLANE! Limericks Top Hurler will visit Athea in support of these amazing charities. AG Sports merchandise will be available on the day. We look forward to welcoming Aaron & AG Sports back to Athea.

We have two very worthy charities who have provided huge support to people close to our hearts. Our charities this year are Ronald McDonald House & Mid-West Parkinson Association.

Firstly, Athea is no stranger to raising much needed funds for Ronald McDonald House, it has been a charity that has given invaluable support to many families in our parish and over the last 12 months, it has once again provided an Athea family with unwavering support and a home away from home. The Ronald McDonald House philosophy is “Our House is built on the simple idea that nothing else should matter when a family is focused on healing their child – not where they can afford to stay, where they will get their next meal or where they will lay their head at night to rest.”

The 2^nd of August 2022, the townland of Dirreen, was overjoyed with the arrival of Sophie Mulligan, daughter to Melissa Dalton & Alan Mulligan. Sophie was born in Limerick Maternity and spent the first 2 weeks of her life in the ICU. Sophie was then transferred to Children’s Health Ireland in Crumlin Hospital on August 16^th, 2022. Sophie was born with Pierre Robin Sequence which caused Sophie to have breathing difficulties. As a result, Sophie required a Tracheotomy so that she could breathe. Over the past 12 months Sophie has had many ups & downs and has overcome so many obstacles during her recovery. It has been a long road for Sophie, her parents Melissa & Alan, her grandparents in Athea & West Cork and her aunts & uncles who are all so eager to welcome Sophie home to Dirreen for the very first time. Melissa & Alan have stayed by Sophie’s side relentlessly, moving to Dublin to be with their beautiful baby girl. This would not have been possible without the help of Ronald McDonald House; without this charity they would not have been able to stay close to Sophie over the last 12 months. They have described it as being a safe & comfortable home from home, meals prepared daily for them while most of all providing a caring and supportive environment. Ronald McDonald House has made the most difficult and challenging journey for Melissa & Alan, easier and less stressful and they will be forever grateful to them. They have made friends for life in the house they have lived in for 12 months, who they now call their Ronald McDonald Family.

Parkinson Association is a charity based in Dublin with 18 branches throughout Ireland. The aim of this charity is to assist people with Parkinson’s and their families while offering a listening ear and information on any aspect of living with Parkinson’s. They currently receive no funding from the state. They fundraise to help provide essential services throughout the country with their current primary focus being on funding for the provision of Parkinson Nurse Specialists. Some of the classes the local branch Mid-West Parkinson Association offer are Movement to Irish Music and Voice & Breathing exercises to music. The service they provide to people locally is one that cannot be taken for granted, as it provides not just information for families, but it helps people to interact, chat and spend time with others who are dealing with Parkinson’s.

Our Annual Road Run begins on September 3rd with Registration at 11am and our Junior Run will be at 12pm. We look forward to welcoming you to Athea for a day of fun supporting worthy charities.

Tickets available now from the committee & on the day for prizes galore including vouchers for The Longcourt House Hotel, AG Sports, Hampers, & many, many more.

Please follow all our social media forums Facebook: Athea Vintage Club & Road Run & Instagram Athea Vintage Club for updates. For any queries please don’t hesitate to contact Ciara 087 9348904 / Francie 087 6666850

See you all on September 3^rd.

The Way I See It

By Domhnall de Barra

I have had a go at Joe Duffy on a couple of occasions and I had no intention of ever returning to that topic but, as I was driving the other day, his program was on the radio and as it unfolded my blood began to boil and I had to force myself to pay attention to my driving in case I might cause a crash. A woman who lives by the Gaelic Grounds came on the air complaining of the fact that the Wolfe Tones were going to be in concert there in the near future. I thought she was going to complain about the extra traffic and the noise but, no, she was objecting to their singing “oo aa up the ra” and that this was glorifying the IRA and having a bad influence on young people. Joe Duffy had Brian Warfield of the Wolfe Tones on and he put the point to him. Brian tried to answer but Joe just would not let him make his point; shouted over him, said the song was rubbish and tried as best he could to get Brian to say he was an IRA sympathiser. Now, we all know that the Wolf Tones have nationalist leanings, their very name suggests that, but there is far more to their music than that. They have been one of the most popular and successful groups in the country for decades and people who have gone to their concerts enjoy a great night’s entertainment. Joe should have a history lesson before opening his gob castigating the IRA and calling them murderers and criminals. The troubles in the North were terrible and any sane person would wish they had never happened and that nobody had been killed but the fact is the IRA did not start the war. It started because loyalist paramilitaries tried to “cleanse” their areas of nationalists and Catholics by burning their houses and physically attacking them. The British army were actually brought in to defend the Catholic population against these attacks. It was inevitable that the IRA would grow in strength and fight back. Up to that time people from a nationalist background, mostly Catholics, were treated as second class citizens and were way down the pecking order when it came to employment, especially the top jobs, housing and education. There are those who will say fighting wasn’t the answer but equality would never be attained by saying “pretty please” to the British government. Eventually it comes to negotiation and fair play to politicians like John Hume who brought people to the negotiating table  which resulted in the “Good Friday Agreement”.  It is because of the years of conflict that he was able to negotiate from a position of strength. Of course it was a terribly dirty campaign with many atrocities committed on both sides but guerrilla warfare has no fair play rules. There are no armies facing each other across trenched as in tradition combat so extreme measures are employed. The British army, in cahoots with the loyalists paramilitaries, used every dirty trick in the book to defeat the IRA and failed. That is why we have the relative peace that exists in the North today. Young men and women joined up to defend their homes and cultures, not to become criminals and murderers. It would be nice to think that it would not be necessary but what would the world be like if people like Hitler and Putin were given free rein? The war in the North is now part of our history but it is worth remembering that the IRA could not have operated without the support of the nationalist community. There are a couple of dissident groups today, such as the New IRA, but they are very small and command no support so it was wrong for Joe to try and get Brian to admit that he was supporting them. The Wolf Tones sing some nationalist songs but they are part of our history. Most of the songs I learned going to school were glorifying the men of the old IRA. Songs like, “Who Fears the Men of ‘98”, “Step Together”, “The Foggy Dew” were sung with great gusto and we saw nothing wrong in it. Even in more recent times songs like “The Men Behind the Wire”,  “Come Out You Black and Tans”  “The Patriot Game” and many more were regularly played on the very radio station that pays Joe Duffy’s exorbitant wages. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. They are merely songs that give us a moment in history and I see nothing wrong with them. I was delighted that a few contributors came on air to complain about Joe Duffy’s treatment of Brian Warfield. Like I said before, he acts as if the show was all about him instead of being a neutral middleman. The program is a really good one which was built up by the great Marian Finucane but it is in danger of being destroyed by the egoistic fame-seeking antics of a presenter who only wants to hear what he himself believes in. He should be ashamed of himself.

Athea Community Council is looking for new blood!. Over the years  we have been lucky to have some great members but most of those have retired or gone to their eternal reward. Becasue of this we are now down to a few directors and we need more urgently. The Council is the umbrella organisation in the parish and has many achievements to be proud of including the Giant’s Garden, the footbridge, stone walls, paths etc and, through the CE Scheme, keeps the village and graveyards tidy. The offices are due to be upgraded in the near future and this will be a great asset to the community.  If you have a little bit of  time to spare we would love to hear from you by contacting me on 087 6758762.

St. Bartholomew’s Church Notices

Ide Naofe Pastoral Area   (Athea, Abbeyfeale, Mountcollins, Templeglantine and Tournafulla).

Canon Tony Mullins 087 2600414, Fr. Willie Russell 087 2272825, Fr. Denis Mullane 087 2621911 and Fr Dan Lane 087 2533030 (retired).

Priest on call  27^th Aug: Rev. W Russell                 087-2272825

Mass on Friday evening at 7pm – Mary O’Keeffe (Monts Mind)

Eucharistic Adoration & The Devine Mercy Chaplet on Tuesday morning after 9.30am mass. House Calls: Each month Fr Tony, Fr Willie and Fr Lane visit the sick and the housebound in our parish … if you would like to add your name to the list or the name of a family member, please contact parish admin at the number below or any one of the priests directly.

A special mention to Kathleen Mullane, Patsy Hayes and Jim Ahern who painted and cleaned up  The Grotto and Blessed Well at Templeathea recently and to the person who donated some paint also. It is beautiful and worth a visit and we thank you for your time and efforts. We also thank the FAS workers for their continued maintenance and care of both graveyards.

Baptisms on the 4^th Saturday of the month at 2.30pm – next date Saturday August 26^th .

Next baptism course on Tues Sept 12^th at 8pm, contact Theresa for further details 087-1513565.

Parish Administration: Tues-Fri 11am-1pm. call Siobhan on 087-3331459, outside these hours text or email [email protected]