A former president of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, has said the onset of a recession may be good for the Irish people in some respects. Monsignor Michael Olden said last week that “simpler times” might steady a country that “was living too high” in the Celtic Tiger years.
Msgr Olden, who is now parish priest in Tramore, Co Waterford, described the recent economic turmoil as days of ‘fear and fog’.
But, in a parish newsletter, he reminded parishioners that even if times are getting bad there are people worse off than we in Ireland are.
“We are being left in no doubt that, for the present at least, the good and prosperous days are over,” the monsignor remarked.
“Banks and other financial institutions are hurting, industry is shaky, unemployment is growing and property is losing its value,” Dr Olden continued.
He likened the budget to a “Caribbean hurricane” and conceded that “it’s not too easy to feel cheerful at the present time.”
But, he went on, while no-one liked seeing the good days disappear, we should remain “hopeful and optimistic despite the gloomy forecasts.”
“It would be very sad if the good times through which we have lived have made us so soft and weak-willed that we could not have the courage to face up to threatened hardship and look to the future with a steady eye,” Msgr Olden wrote.
While we may have to lower expectations and be content with more simple living, when the recession ends in due course, we “may have matured and learned how to really appreciate what was of lasting value in a strange and unpredictable world,” he suggested.
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(Source: CIN)