Scottish Catholic Observer

There is nothing to compare to the power of first hand insight into rising to life’s challenges, that is what made Pope Benedict XVI’s heartfelt message this week this that old age is beautiful so poignant.

“The quality of a society, of a civilisation, may also be judged by how it treats its elderly and by the place reserved for them in communal life,” Pope Benedict said. “To give space to the elderly is to give space to life!”

Pope Benedict made the comments during a visit to a facility run by the Saint Egidio Community, where he told residents he that he was speaking ‘as Bishop of Rome, but also as an elderly person visiting his peers.’

Much has been made in the secular press of the fact that the Holy Father is 85. When Pope Benedict first made use in the Vatican of the moving platform created from Blessed Pope John Paul II to help his mobility, it grabbed front-page headlines.

Old age is beautiful but it is also hard, as the Holy Father acknowledged when he said: “I know well the difficulties, the problems and the limits of this age, and I know that these difficulties are aggravated for many people by the economic crisis.”

Now, as the push behind assisted suicide legislation in Scotland gathers pace by piggybacking of the tragic ‘right-to-die’ case of Tony Nicklinson, the Holy Father’s words are well times and appropriate for us. Life is not easy for the elderly, the sick and the frail. The spiraling cost of living in the recession often adds to an increasing sense of isolation, lonlieness—and even the feeling of being a burden. The pope said that sadness over lost youth must not be our prison and that a materialistic culture must stop looking on elderly as ‘unproductive and useless.’

Indeed the cost to our society of neglecting and marginalising our elderly—to the point of legalising assisted suicide—cannot be calculated. One thing is for certain, it is too high a price to pay.

The arrival of the replicia of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa icon arrives in Scotland on its pro-life pilgrimage, and the new student pro-life group, are timely reminders that the movement protecting life is alive and kicking.

If religion and politics are two things not to be discussed in polite company at a diner party, then add sport to the mix and the SCO is sure to offend this week.

However the sterling efforts by St Mary’s, Calton, Celtic Football Club, the Celtic Graves Society, football fans and the community of the East End of Glasgow to pay tribute to the team’s religious roots cannot got unacknowledged.

The Mass at St Mary’s celebrated 125 years to the day Brother Walfrid called for the foundation of a club to help the areas poor and hungry transcended religious lines. From the oldest fan there—Claire Dawson, 108—to the youngest participants, it was a day to remember and reflect.