The bishop of Elphin has said we should focus less on the faults of our public services and be pleases with the great improvements in living standards that have been made in a short period.Speaking at a Mass in Sligo, Dr Christopher Jones warned that while we must always strive for progress in living standards, the Irish were at risk of becoming “a nation of whingers” if they do not acknowledge the great progress that has been made in recent decades.
He said that while people constantly complain about the education system it was worth recalling that sixty years ago, he went to a “small dark two-roomed school with no water, electricity or heating and with dry toilets out the back. There was always a cane on the desk, corporal punishment was the norm them, our schools were often places of fear,” he remarked.
By contrast, said the bishop, children had “state of the art education facilities that can compare to the best in the world.”
Teachers are now “highly qualified and competent and love the children entrusted to their care,” he remarked.
Similar strides have been made, Dr Jones continued, in the health sphere, and whereas in the 1960s, Sligo had an old hospital with one surgeon and a psychiatric hospital into which between eight and nine hundred patients were crowded “in extremely confined spaces, there has been a revolutionary development in our community health services, especially for the aged and children with special needs.”
Dr Jones asked the congregation to join him in offering thanks to God for the gift of life. Telling them that we live because God loves us and “because from all eternity God had a special plan in His heart for you and me,” he said every breath of every moment of the day was a gift of life.
“If we close our eyes, breathe in the pure air and be conscious of each breath going down into our lungs and conscious also that without this breath we would die, then we realise that God is present with every breath we breathe," he said.
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