Sir Dan of the blogosphere left me a message earlier asking for prayers for Irish farmers. He is currently on holiday in Cork and has spoken to farmers who are really down about the weather this summer which has threatened their livelihood. Here is a prayer you could say, taken from the Roman Missal:
To avert storms
A domo tua, quǽsumus Dómine, spiritáles nequítiæ repellántur: et aëriárum discédat malígnitas tempestátum.
Lord we pray thee that evil spirits may be driven away from thy house and that the fury of the tempest may cease.
or alternatively:
For fine weather
Ad te nos, Dómine, clamántes exáudi: et áëris serenitátem nobis tríbue supplicántibus; ut, qui juste pro peccátis nostris afflígimur, misericórdia tua præveniénte, cleméntiam sentiámus.
Lord hear and heed our cry and grant our petition for fine weather, so that through they compassion which forestalls our need, we who are justly punished for our sins may feel thy clemency.
Thinking of Irish matters, and especially County Cork, I saw a post by Pro Ecclesia, Pro Familia, Pro Civitate
In Memory of "The Big Fella", Michael Collins who died 90 years ago last Wednesday. Lots of good pictures and links there there but I was particularly pleased to find a
link to buy a DVD of the RTE/BBC film "The Treaty" which, in my view, is much better than the more recent film "Michael Collins." I have an old videotape of it but was glad to be able to order a fresh DVD copy.
Sir Dan of the blogosphere left me a message earlier asking for prayers for Irish farmers. He is currently on holiday in Cork and has spoken to farmers who are really down about the weather this summer which has threatened their livelihood. Here is a prayer you could say, taken from the Roman Missal:
8 comments:
Fr.,
More than happy to pray for the Irish ( including Northern Irish ) farmers, as well as others, Belgian, Russian and of course N American.
Your note on the Irish nationalist Michael Collins brings to mind a comment I heard recently to the effect that we might all have been better off througout the last century without the attention of nationalism, of any sort.
Jacobi, you castigate "nationalism, of any sort" --- presumably you favour a world government then?
Dear Fr,
Thank you for your excellent Post on Prayers for good weather and Prayers for bad weather. I shall use both.
One wonders whether the BBC weathermen might make use of both Prayers, in order to get their forecasts correct.
God bless the farmers.
Yes indeed: that damned nationalism. I mean, think of the joyous lives of all those in the Soviet Union, with its constituent Peoples' Republics and its satellites, entirely nationalism-free, who of course all rushed to shore it up at the first pushings of those horrible nationally-minded counter-revolutionaries in 1989.
Or again, the blissful existence of the Tibetan people, at last freed from that nasty ol' devil of nationalism thanks to the disinterested, friendly and entirely non-coercive influence of the freedom-loving Peoples' Republic of China.
And there's the... yeah, alright, 'nuff said.
I agree with you, Father. I personally thought the film "Michael Collins" was actually quite bad. And not just what's-her-name's attempt at an Irish accent, either. They made an over-the-top mendacious mess of what's basically a quite simple story but which, in Neil Jordan's hands at least, just didn't have the quality that would have made it interesting on the world stage. And it was a box-office flop internationally, only recouping about half its production costs.
Before we canonize Michael Collins it should be remembered that a) the IRA campaign he organized was directed primarily against fellow Catholics and Irishmen, particularly the officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 400 of whom were murdered; b)the result of the Treaty (Home Rule with a six-county opt-out for the northern Unionists)had been on the table since 1914; and c)the association of Irish nationalism with extreme and sometimes indiscriminate violence left a baleful legacy.
John, the result of the 1921 Treaty was not Home Rule but Dominion status. The 1914 Home Rule Bill did not include an opt-out provision for northern unionists.
The War of Independence was not a religious war and as for the members of the RIC, they were mostly Catholic in rank-and-file, but their hierarchy - those giving them orders - was overwhelmingly Protestant. Eoin O'Duffy is deservedly criticized for his activities in the 1930s, but on February 15th, 1920, he commanded the first military action of the War of Independence in Co Monaghan: the destruction of Ballytrain RIC barracks. He told the RIC police that “at the [1918] general election the people had voted for freedom. The police were acting against the will of the Irish people. He appealed to them to leave the force and join their brother Irishmen.” As far as I'm concerned, any British policeman who refused to heed him was indeed a legitimate target for Republican forces.
Thanks for the link, Father!
Shane: Home Rule, Dominion Status (and the Statute of Westminster 1931 changed that anyway), a republic - the fact remains that Irishmen were prepared to slaughter each other for an abstraction in the so-called civil war which followed the Treaty. The fact that Collins was a victim of that utterly pointless internecine conflict should not obscure the fact that he also signed up to the myth that political ends cannot be achieved without violence. His statesmanlike behaviour at the Downing Street talks notwithstanding.
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