Lent and the Bishops

JEAN'S JOURNAL WITH JEAN FARRELL

Do you remember when most local shops produced an annual calendar? We all had one hanging on our kitchen walls, long ago

I spotted this calendar whilst shopping in Connaught Street yesterday. It brought back lots of memories and I have it hanging up on my kitchen wall now.

Small sweet shops were the topic of a recent article. I met a reader in the Towncentre on Saturday. She told me how much she enjoying reading this. It warmed her heart and brought back wonderful memories of her aunt’s lovely little shop in Listowel. Her face glowed as she recalled all the local people who came in and out, greeting each other and sharing their news. “I read your article out loud for my two daughters,” she told me then, smiling. “They were amazed to hear that you could buy one cigarette in these little shops.” Her daughters are young adults.

How more amazed they’d be to know about a small shop, in Rathmines, in the early 1970s. In it, poor students could buy one egg and one firelighter, as well as one cigarette!

Wouldn’t all our adult children be equally amazed at how our lives were controlled by The Catholic Church, in the past? And we weren’t even aware of it.

The Most Rev. Thomas Morris, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, issued the following pastoral letter on dancing, in 1960. “As my office imposes on me a special solicitude for the moral welfare of my flock, no dances are to be held on Saturday nights or during Lent. “ And his ‘flock’ of sheep had to heed this. No dances were held, such was the power of their command. All the showbands headed to England, until Easter Sunday night.

The bishop of Cork, at that time, was Bishop Cornelius Lucey. I read the following report on-line, from The Echo, a Cork newspaper. This bishop reminded his ‘flock’ that servile work was forbidden on a Sunday.

A woman contacted him to know was it a sin to knit on a Sunday. He replied saying that it depended on the knitting.

According to the Bishop, if the knitting was purely for pleasure, as a pastime, it was alright to knit on a Sunday. However, if a woman was knitting because her child needed a jumper and she couldn’t afford to buy one, it would be wrong to knit it on a Sunday. This was servile work.

The woman persisted and replied the Bishop. (I’m quoting here from an article by Jo Kerrigan, in The Echo newspaper) “But suppose she was knitting a jumper and enjoying the knitting process, how would she know whether it was servile work or not?”

The report in The Echo continued, “Well, all those years in Maynooth were not wasted on Connie Lucey. He pondered deeply and came up with a wonderfully Jesuitical answer: if the woman was prepared to unravel the knitting after doing it, then clearly she was doing it just for the pleasure of doing it, and so that would not constitute servile work.”

Are you as puzzled by this reply as I am? Was she supposed to rip all her knitting on Sunday night or not?

This particular query reminds me of a similar one in The Messenger, many years ago. A woman wrote to ask would she get the same indulgences if she had her gloves on, whilst saying the rosary. (Her concern was that she’d be handling her rosary beads with her fingers covered.) And don’t start me on the whole concept of indulgences!

Where did love of God come into this?

I’m sure many of you can remember how aware of Lent we were, as children, how seriously we took it all. As well as no dancing, we went to Mass every morning, we ‘gave-up’ what simple pleasures we had, and we learnt about ‘Fast and Abstinence’ in school, from the nuns.

Back to our sweet shops. I’m wondering was business almost non-existent in these little shops during Lent, long ago! This is because children didn’t buy any sweets and our parents didn’t buy any cigarettes.

A different viewpoint on these small shops was expressed by another reader, who is a friend of mine. She remembers them being full of “aul wans gossiping.” She told me that she worked in one, as a teenager. Every night a group of local women came in and sat there for hours. They commented on everyone who came in, and on all belonging to them. My friend called them ‘a gaggle of gossipers’ and can still remember each one.

She told me about them.

There was Agnes, whose husband was in Peamount. “God is good,” Agnes always added, after telling terrible tales of gloom and doom.

Bridie was proud of the fact that she was never in a pub. And she always blessed herself as she said the word ‘pub.’

Rita’s favourite line was, “I dislike paint on women.”

And my friend particularly remembers a story told by one woman called Monica. (I wrote down what she told me.)

One Saturday evening Monica cycled into Confession. She was a young teenager at the time. The priest came to tea, in her house, later that night Monica’s mother mentioned to him that her daughter had been to Confession earlier. The priest looked at Monica and said, “Well, I won’t be writing any best sellers about her life. Your Monica’s appearance is not one to inspire impure thoughts.”

Poor Monica! She never got over his cruel remark.