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Canon Bernard O’Dea has always worshipped at the altar of sport.
Nowadays, “Fr Barney” enjoys a semi-retirement, generally only saying Saturday evening mass so that he can play golf on a Sunday morning and also serving as our club chaplain.
He enjoys the finer things in life and eschews the false modesty that so many of the rest of us insert into social situations.
Nearly every house in the parish stays stocked with confectionery in case he happens to call, as the enquiry, “Father, will you have a cup of tea?” is almost always followed by, “Be God, I will – and a slice of cake wouldn’t go astray, either.” He was called out on this habit once at a wedding and his reply was that, “I used to pray that cake might appear, but the Boss told me he had more important things to deal with and so I was on my own there.”
Optimistic realism
In situations where things were out of his control, Fr Barney’s outlook might best be described as “optimistic realism”.
I can recall one visit to the national school when I was in third or fourth class in the early 1980s as he tried to teach us the rosary. With one classmate struggling with the line, “O Lord, make haste to help us”, the Padre said to him, “You’re a farmer, aren’t you? Well, think of it as us asking God to ‘make hay, it’s to help us.’”
He tried his best to keep us on the straight and narrow, but sadly with mixed results, like the time he caught a few of us experimenting with a box of Silk Cut that we had come across. “Bad habits are like a soft bed, lads,” he boomed, “easy to get into but hard to get out of.” Unfortunately, a few of those involved ended up becoming a bit too fond of the soft beds as well as the cigarettes.
He wasn’t averse to the odd cutting comment, either, dressed up in a smile. When Shirley Spillane came home from three months in Ocean City (east coast of the United States) talking like a Californian (west coast of the United States), the priest gently enquired as to the change in her voice. “Oh, I was working with girls from LA,” she said, “and I pick up accents, like, sooo easily!” As he walked away, he quietly said, “It’s a wonder the good Lord never saw to it that you picked up an Irish accent.”
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A native of the area, he continued to play GAA while he was in the seminary and even after ordination, commuting from whichever nearby parish to which he was posted.
He was never the most stylish of players – the joke when he became a canon was that the promotion was based on the way he’d leather the ball at a team-mate – but he never lacked commitment, or mind-games, to varying degrees of success.
When, before a big championship game, he’d tell everyone in the dressing room that “the Boss has us sorted today,” guys would have a greater sense of belief; however, when he was at pains to prepare his team-mates for the fact that the big man wasn’t bothered by league results, that tended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, too.
His greatest on-field miracle was probably the divisional final in 1986. We were up by two points against – ironically – Fr Mitchell’s when they won a penalty. Most of our lads felt already beaten, not least the goalkeeper Damien Ambrose, but Fr Barney came into his own with a supreme act of kidology.
He ran in to Damien and started chanting pig Latin as he made the sign of the cross and then whispered something in his ear. As he walked back out, he apologised to the referee and the taker but insisted that, “The Boss had a fierce important message for Damien about an impending delivery.”
Sure, the poor lad taking the penalty had his head fried by that – if God knew where he was going to put the kick originally, he should change, but maybe God knew that he’d do that too? It mattered little as he slipped while he took it and the ball rolled into Damien’s arms as the whistle blew. Naturally, Fr Barney fell to his knees in thanks.
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