Galway Advertiser 1992/1992_04_23/GA_23041992_E1_012.pdf 

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C O M M E N T A C O - O P E R A T I V E P A C K A G E

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O F F E N S I V E TO CATHOLICS?
The Mechanics Institute
I N T H I S W E E K in I 1840 a large meeting of the Galway Mechanics Institute was held. The President at that time was Father Thomas Agnew, O.P., and his address was directed to the assembled members to inform them of the advantages of their association which had been founded a couple of weeks at that time. Dear Editor. For many years it has been the policy of the Galway Advertiser and its editorial section in particular to go out of its way to be as offensive and disrespectful as is possible to the Pro-Life Movement, and to the Catholic Church in par ticular because of its teachings, it has been par ticularly noticeable in the last few editions of the paper since the unfathomable deci sion of our Supreme Court to strike down the protection afforded by the Irish Con stitution to the unborn child. used under normai cir cumstances would be just that, a photograph, but when embellished by some sug gestive and well placed cap tions a much different mean ing could be taken from the photograph and hence an at tempt to mislead an un suspecting public. A Catholic can no longer it would appear speak out on a moral or ethical situation without being branded with provocative labels such as, extreme fundamentalist, or right wing Catholic, making one feel that it was wrong to stand up for the innocent and oppressed. Even when it come to remarks by the editor to letters written to the paper by our clergy, dismissiveness is resorted to when he is unable to sustain his argument on a factual or intellectual level. I wonder do the editor and staff realise if such a campaign were waged in any other civilised country against any other denomina tion or ethnic grouping it

HE news this week that Avonmore and Dairygold, two of the big gest and most successful co-operatives in Ireland, have acquired the bulk of the U M P operations has been warmly welcomed by all those who worried that the threatened loss of 600 jobs would deal yet another body blow to our already skaken economy, especially in the West. The unexpectedly large number of prospective buyers came as an unexpected surprise to the receiver, Mr. John Donnelly, and the prompt sale, coming only five weeks after U M P went into receivership, also vin dicates Mr. Joe Walsh, the Minister of Agriculture, who was confident buyers would be found and that there was no need for Government intervention.

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The West must be heaving a sigh of relief today. The closure of UMP factories in Ballyhaunis, Ballaghadereen and Sligo would have had drastic consequences to the economy not only of those areas but throughout the West. Quite apart from the workers in these plants, an entire delicate infrastruc ture involving farmers, hauliers and others would also have been badly af fected by the closures. There is every reason, however, to believe that with the takeover by Avonmore of these Western factories the majority of the threatened jobs will now be saved. Roscommon T.D. John Connor spoke for many when he commented that Avonmore is a farmer-owned co-op and is just the sort of operator to understand the importance of keeping the fac tories functioning. There is still work to be done. Large sums of money are still owed to fanners and hauliers and these claims will have to promptly settled if a spirit of co-operation is to be restored in this vital area. What is important now is to get the plants operating again quickly so that confidence can be restored. But there is every reason to hope that tried and proven organisations such as Avonmore and Dairygold will recognise this. A cold wind has been blow ing through the West since the collapse of UMP. Now there are genuine grounds for optimism and this is something for which all of us in the West must be grateful.

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Mechanics Institutes were a product in Britain of the industrial revolution and were aimed to promote the education of tradesmen and craftworkers. One of the first activities organised by die Institute in Galway was a public lecture on the subject of "Mechanism!' Many people of different trades joined and support was received from N 1974, after an intense media campaign in the West protested at his all quarters including from treatment at the hands of the corrupt Brezhnev regime, a hand-cuffed the local members of parliament. Initially there Alexander Solzhenitsyn was deported from the Soviet Union, his citizen appears to have been some ship stripped from him. In the years before his deportation, Solzhenit rivalry between the institute syn became a symbol of principled resistance to the old Soviet Union's and members of other barbarous treatment of its writers and artists. His powerful novel "One Day groups especially those associated with the other In The Life of Ivan Denisovich", based largely on his own experiences as temperance associations in a prisoner in the internment camps that were once scattered across the Soviet the city. Union, provided a glimpse of the undefeated spirit of man labouring under Of course there were the cruel Soviet regime, while "Cancer Ward" was a novel that lifted its some who derided the idea author onto the same plane as his great Russian forebearers, men like that tradesmen should have an association. This was the Doestoevski and Gorky. But his greatest achievement will probably be seen usual snobbishness of a by future historians to have been his series of exposes of what he called "The ruling class but soon the Gulag Archipelago" - the "secret country" of the prison camps, where Mechanics Institute was brutality and terror attempted to pound the spirit of a free people into the firmly established in Galway and was co-operating with dust. other bodies such as the It now looks likely that Solzhenitsyn, who has spent the period since his Royal Galway Institution in activities for die benefit of exile living in isolation on a farm in Vermont, will at last return to his native the chy. land. Mr. Vladimir Lukin, Russian Ambassador to Washington, is expected The forerunner of to travel to Vermont to arrange for the return of the writer and his family Mechanics Institutes was the alter the Congress of People's Deputies close in Moscow. Solzhenitsyn must Birmingham Brotherly have watched the collapse of the Soviet Union with grim satisfaction, seeing Society founded in 1796. From it derived many in it not only the vindication of his life's work but as some satisfaction for similar bodies but Die first to the thousands of named and nameless prisoners who perished in miserable use the name Menchanics conditions in the camps of the Gulag. Before his resignation, Mr. Gorbachev Institute was dialfoundedin had made overtures to the exiled author, whom marry would regard as the | Glasgow in 1823. It became a model followed elsewhere greatest Russian prose writer of the 20th Century, and last Autumn, in the having a library, a museum wake of the abortive coup, charges of high treason which has been brought and lecture programme. against him were withdrawn. In his writings and the few public pro Between 1820 and I860 many towns and cities in nouncements issued since Ins exile. Solzhenitsyn has expressed an almost Britain and the United Stales mystical conception of his homeland and his wish to die in his native country of america had such bodies. was well known. For years a prophet officially dishonoured in his own land, The Galway body was with his return to Russia an important circle will d o s e . The man who came founded in dial era and continues to exist in its to symbolise the spirit of a a free man singing in his chains deserves no less. premises in the city centre.

We have seen the most objectionable of cartoons depicting the Pro-Life posi tion as a thing of ridicule and comic relief. We have seen an attempt to under mine the standing of a most noble lady Dr. Mary Lucey, Chairperson of The Society For The Protection Of The Unborn Unborn Child, through a photograph of her taken at a recent Pro-Life meeting in Galway which if

would be categorised as in citement to hatred. I wonder do they realise that the vast majority of their readers and advertisers are Catholic and Pro-Life, that their sen sibilities are being continual ly offended and that it is time for this majority to call halt. Is it not time that all groupings "be they of a par ticular religious persuasion or none, native Irish or members of ethnic minorities deomiciled here, many of whom would be at one with the Pro-Life Move ment and Catholic Church on this most fundamental of human rights issues - the right to be born - call halt to this media campaign of vilification, bearing always in mind that today it is the Pro-Life Movement and the Catholic Church who are the targets, tomorrow it could be them. Yours, Frederick Haynes 10 O'Conaire Road, Shantalla, Galway City. THE QUESTION OF T H E APOSTROPHE

CLOSES

UNSCIENTIFIC T O D E N Y LIFE A T CONCEPTION
Dear Editor, It is unscientific and antiintellectual to deny that life begins at conception. At that time, the child receives its genetic endowment and from then onwards it is dif ferent from every other human being since the dawn of history, or in the future. All that it does fr the next nine months is to differen tiate into various organs and to grow. It is absurd to deny that this small, even microscopic, living organism within the reproductive tract of the mother is a genuine human being. It is not a "potential" human being. It is a perfect human being with an anatomy and physiology ap propriate to each particular stage of its life. Life is a continuum from conception through to death. More significant still, this living human organism has also a metaphysical character which is of infinite impor tance compared to its physical nature. Suggestions of doubt as to when the unborn receives his or her soul are essential for those who would try to justify the killing of an in nocent in limited and clear ly dubious circumstances What is evil hates what is good. The quintessence of good and innocence is the unborn child. However, one can remain obdurate and justify their opinions even when these views fly in the face of reason and truth. Yours etc., Noel D. Walsh (student) c/o P o r t e r ' s Desk, UCG.

T H E
Dear Editor, I refer to your comment on Scamus O'Callaghan's fine letter (16th April). A "right to choose''? A blank right to choose would be ab surd, sir. But, yes, one has a right to choose what is

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legally and morally permit ted. It is an "important distinction"; the "modifiers" are not irrele vant, here, sir. Yours sincerely, P. Moran
Dalysfort Road.

Dear Editor, I last week's Galway Advertiser there was a note at the bottm of the Letters' Page which read: "Reader's Letters on Abortion Next Page." Yes - incredible as it may seem in retrospect, the apostrophe was placed between the second letter " r " and the letter " s " in the word which should have read: Readers'. This error gave the im pression that all of these let ters were, despite ap pearances, written by the one person. This, obvious ly, was not the case. Such a slip is unworthy of the Galway Advertiser the newspaper which has gained huge respect for, time and again, supporting and promoting all of the Arts in Galway. Indeed, the Galway Advertiser's recent revela tions (on the self-same Let ters Page) concerning the sucreal yet sublime sub culture of Len Harrow and Foghan Marrow, has serv ed to deepen my heart-felt belief in the "Virtual Reali t y " which these two moonbeams so ardently per sonify. Their wondrous cor respondence has also heightened my admiration for this august journal to which they choose to write. Yours sincerely, S. William Galway

P.

O'Neill

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