i was just reading padraig o'morains man-issue blog and he had an entry yesterday on school retreats (they were talking about it on ryan tubridy apparently):
did anyone have any good retreats? for 1st, 2nd and 3rd year my class we spent a day in the school library where we could be put sitting too far apart to talk to each other and the curtains were closed so we couldnt look out the windows and the two priests then did things like ask us to write down our worst sins and sign the page and hand it up, to be careful not to catch a glimpse of ourselves naked in the mirror in case we might get turned on by ourselves, talked a lot about self abuse etc. in 5th year some hippies came and played tapes of waves crashing while we all lay about on the floor
a few posts on beard issues wouldnt go astray on that blog
I went on a school retreat in the late 1960s when the Christian Brothers in Naas took us up to Manresa House, a Jesuit-run retreat centre in Clontarf.
All I remember is that:
(a) We were not allowed to talk for three days.
(b) Each morning at breakfast we listened to someone reading the lives of the saints on tape.
(c) Every night a gaunt man in a soutane burst into our rooms trying to catch us using transistor radios.
(d) One classmate had a crisis of some sort and was sent home. This was never explained.
(e) A priest who came in to give us a talk declared when we stood up on his arrival that "When I enter the room, boys, you don't stand, you kneel." He then went on to roar and shout about a girl in a miniskirt whom he had seen on the bus. Something to do with her tempting boys to "destroy a temple of the Holy Ghost." She being the temple, of course.
That's it. God bless you all.
did anyone have any good retreats? for 1st, 2nd and 3rd year my class we spent a day in the school library where we could be put sitting too far apart to talk to each other and the curtains were closed so we couldnt look out the windows and the two priests then did things like ask us to write down our worst sins and sign the page and hand it up, to be careful not to catch a glimpse of ourselves naked in the mirror in case we might get turned on by ourselves, talked a lot about self abuse etc. in 5th year some hippies came and played tapes of waves crashing while we all lay about on the floor
a few posts on beard issues wouldnt go astray on that blog