Launch of Saving Sport by Kevin O'Gorman

Archbishop Dermot Clifford
launches
Saving Sport
by Kevin O'Gorman SMA

Monsignor Hugh Connolly, President, Rev Kevin O'Gorman, lecturer in the Pontifical University and Archbishop Dermot Clifford at the launch of Saving Sport at Maynooth College

Monday 8th March 2010, 8.00 p.m.
Renehan Hall at St Patrick's College, Maynooth

Sport has a huge following in modern society, events on and off the field generating intense emotional excitement all round. Corporate sponsorship of individuals and teams pours vast amounts of money into advertising on the pitch, in print and through television. Borrowing the language of religion, the media hyping of sport holds up its stadia as cathedrals, its stars as saviours and icons, and heralds its successes as redemption. It is not surprising that some see this part of popular culture as a new religion.

Fr Kevin O'Gorman is a lecturer in Moral Theology in the Pontifical University of Saint Patrick's College, Maynooth. There is long tradition of theology adopting and analysing sport. Saint Paul used it as a metaphor for the Christian journey, while Pope John Paul II understood sport as contributing to human excellence and solidarity.

The general loss of a sense of the sacred leads to the question of whether sport is now becoming a substitute for spirituality. Saving Sport explores key questions about the experience of sport, and its expression by the media, in the conversa­tion between church and society on faith and culture.