Bambie Thug Concerned that schools fail to acknowledge insights
An Irish theologian has said that “paradoxically, the desolation and desires expressed in the Eurovision performances (of acts such as Nemo Mettler from Switzerland and Ireland’s Bambi Thug) validate the Christian insight that only God can satisfy human desires.”
Writing in this issue of The Irish Catholic, Fr Eamonn Conway says that so many Eurovision performances expressed the desire for love, freedom, compassion, happiness, authenticity and self-acceptance, but that “we might want to gently bring them to recognise true two key Christian insights”; “…we humans are incapable of attaining what we desire by our own efforts” and “the attainment of what we desire will always be incomplete in this life.”
Professor Conway added that he is concerned that many well-being programmes in schools fail to acknowledge these insights and confirm the belief that somehow a life without suffering or limitation is possible and happiness right now is a right. “Rather than alleviating the wellbeing crisis, this presupposition only tends to make it worse,” he writes.
Prof. Conway writes that we forget the cautions of St Augustine at our peril that we cannot fill the infinite capacity we have for love with finite love. “If on the other hand, we permit God to fill what is an infinite capacity for infinite love, then everything else falls into place.”
“One Eurovision performer, Marko Purisic, from Croatia, who came second in the competition, recently described that he was filled with darkness and brokenness and sadness but when his father brought him to meet a priest, the darkness began to lift. He returned to the Church saying: “With God I got myself back.”
Read Fr Eamonn Conway’s full opinion piece here – Eurovision exemplifies that only God can satisfy human desires