It’s the capitalists who are taking Christ out of Christmas

Joe Humphreys in The Irish Times yesterday. Interesitng, worrying too.

I’m here to report a case of mad “Xmas” disease. Elon Musk’s social media platform X, best known these days for promoting Russian disinformation and crypto scams, has been channelling rage in recent weeks about the “wokerati” who are apparently out to ban Christmas.

These include those Satan-worshippers in Dublin City Council who have been hosting a Winter Lights festival each December since 2018 – it includes a ticketed event at Merrion Square.

Among those triggered by the announcement of this year’s Winter Lights was Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who complained that it should be called Christmas lights. He suggests a “strain of aggressive secularism in Ireland that seeks to remove elements of faith and culture from the public square” is at play. (This is just weeks after President Catherine Connolly had to take a religious oath “in the presence of Almighty God” when being sworn into office.)

News stories claiming Christmas is being displaced by Yuletide, Winterval and Xmas are hardy annuals for the likes of The Daily Telegraph, but they have been given a new impetus on Musk’s X.

Several of the comments on X go much further than Tóibín and include claims that the State is erasing Christ from Christmas to placate Muslims.

Many more repeat the familiar theory that “they” are out to make ordinary, decent Irish folk strangers in their own country. Much of that commentary knits seamlessly into anti-immigration rhetoric that is amplified by Musk’s algorithm.

The fact that the naming decision was made seven years ago, but is only controversial now, says something about the political times we are in.

‘Overton Window’

Amid a blitz of posts condemning Europe over its perceived leniency on immigration, Musk recently declared in characteristically gnomic fashion: “The Overton Window opens wider each day.” The notion of the Overton window refers to the range of subjects or arguments that are acceptable to the public at any given time. In theory, the wider the window, the more that is open to debate.

In practice, widening the Overton window means creating an environment where a United States president can call Somali people “garbage” and a woman reporter “piggy” without fear of censure. It means Maga bros praising Hitler and calling rape “epic” can be written off as laddish banter. Telling “edgy, offensive jokes” is “what kids do”, said US vice-president JD Vance when downplaying the controversy over the Young Republicans’ leaked chats last October.

Widening the Overton window has also meant redefining the meaning of Christianity. Vance argues Jesus would back America First on the grounds that you should love those geographically closer to you first – a position Pope Leo XIVhas publicly contradicted.

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel – who has bankrolled Vance’s political career and cofounded Palantir, the data surveillance system used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport illegal migrants – is another self-proclaimed Christian eager to reimagine Jesus’s teachings.

Recently, Thiel took to the lecture circuit, delivering a series of talks about “the Antichrist” to audiences in San Francisco. He argues that humanity is in danger of being duped into trading liberty for a false security – suggesting agents of the left are leading us to hell with their nanny state calls for financial regulation and their stark warnings about environmental destruction.

Thiel credits John Henry Newman – founder of the Catholic University of Ireland, later University College Dublin – as the inspiration for the lecture series. There is a superficial parallel. The 19th century theologian delivered a series of sermons arguing that “apostasy” – or rejection of religious belief – was paving the way for the Antichrist.

Thiel sees enemies elsewhere, fearing a hellish fusion between a “woke American pope” in Leo and a “woke American president”. As for the Antichrist? He believes it’s Greta Thunberg. Or at least, the Swedish climate activist is “an Antichrist”, he says. “I don’t want to flatter her too much.”

Asked for a view of Thiel’s lectures, Dan Deasy, director of the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions, says “whether or not Thiel is sincere” in his proclaimed faith “it has become clear that Catholicism offers an appealing mythos to some people immersed in a certain kind of hyperbolic, good-versus-evil, meme-driven internet culture.

“For instance, I don’t believe Thiel literally thinks Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist. But the hyperbolic claim that she is – that familiar blend of performative sincerity and knowing absurdity – clearly serves a particular kind of techno-infused, end-times, good-versus-evil politics that benefits people like Thiel.”

In truth, the campaign by tech billionaires to widen the Overton window is not about free speech. It’s about flooding the public sphere with enough weird opinion and tribal hate bait so that citizens can’t focus on the issues that really matter: rising inequality, the weakening of democratic institutions, existential threats from technology and, yes, climate change.

For Christians, be they devout or “cultural”, there is a more immediate calculation. Anyone concerned about Jesus being disrespected this winter should not look to Dublin City Council. Look instead to billionaire preachers like Thiel. Because the wokerati isn’t taking Christ out of Christmas, capitalism is. Bad enough that Jesus’s birthday is an occasion for gross consumerism and monumental environmental waste, Christianity itself is becoming – in the hands of a wealthy priesthood – an ideology of cruelty and exploitation.

Has the world lost the hope the EU flag symbolises?

On this day, December 8, 1955

the flag of Europe was adopted by the Council of Europe.

Was there any significance that December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception? What’s the symbolism of the 12 stars?

Below is an interesting link to an article in yesterday’s Guardian. Fine if it were true. But it’s important to remember Russia’s history. When last was Russia defeated by an outside power?

It would break the hearts of the European leaders of the 1950s and 1960s to know what is unfolding in Europe today and Europe’s relationship with the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/07/putin-accept-trump-deal-russia-economy-ukraine-war?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Launch of book in honour of Leonard E Boyle OP

Benjamin Earl OP (Dominican Province of England and Procurator General of the Order), Paul Lawlor OP (prior of San Clemente), Vivian Boland OP (member of the San Clemente community, co-editor of the volume of essays), John Harris OP (provincial of the Dominican Province of Ireland), HE Frances Collins, Paul Murray OP (member of the San Clemente community), Luigina Orlandi (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, co-editor of the volume of essays), Bruno Kelleher OP and Benedict McGlinchey OP (members of the San Clemente community), Don Mauro Mantovani SDB (Prefect of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

On Thursday, December 4 the Irish Embassy to the Holy See hosted the launch of a book, Un Innovatore nella Tradizione (An Innovator in Tradition) published to honour a distinguished Irish Dominican scholar, Leonard Boyle, who died in 1999. 

A day conference on his life and work had been held on November 13, 2023 at two venues in Rome, the priory of San Clemente to which Boyle was assigned and the Vatican Library of which he was the prefect, or head, for thirteen years.

He was born in Donegal in 1923 but also had strong family connections with Tralee. He was one of the first Irish Dominicans to study at Oxford, just after World War II, where he excelled in the study of history, in particular of palaeography. 

He spent the main part of his teaching career in Toronto introducing students to that subject. It may seem like a dry, unpromising, field to till but he did it in a way which he termed ‘integral palaeography’. 

This meant receiving ancient texts not just as old writing to be deciphered but as communications from real people to be received as one would receive the people themselves, to be carefully understood and interpreted in the broadest possible social, cultural and intellectual contexts.

The conference in 2023 brought together fellow Dominicans, colleagues from Toronto and Rome, former students, and members of his family. 

The Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Frances Collins, also attended the conference. She was very taken by the personality and achievements of Leonard Boyle, saying that if the papers were published the embassy would be happy to host a launch of the book. This is what happened on Thursday. 

It was launched with contributions from the ambassador herself, from the present prefect of the library Don Mauro Mantovani, from Luigina Orlandi one of the co-editors of the book, and from Viliam Doci OP, president of the Dominican Historical Institute.

The book is available through the Vatican Library website and is in four parts, dealing with the man himself, his work at San Clemente, his work as teacher and scholar, and his years at the Vatican Library. A report on the launch of the book can be found on the Instagram account of the Irish Embassy to the Holy See.

Waterstones willing to sell AI publications

The CEO of bookshop chain Waterstones, James Daunt, said on BBC Radio 4 yesterday that their shops might well sell AI generated books but it would be clear to readers that the books were  produced by AI.

'God has changed the settings'

 A Dominican asked another Dominican what week it was in the Psalter. He told him it was the first week in Advent. When the enquiring Dominican said he had forgotten about Advent and thought it was the third week, wondered if all his praying was invalid, the wise Dominican said: “God had changed the settings”, and assured him all our prayer is right and fitting and always valid.

The BBC got it so wrong yesterday morning - embarrassing

They say it is never fair to kick someone when they are down, it makes sense, and it’s the correct

action to take.

The BBC has been in troubled waters of late, but no matter how and why it is suffering, it must be admitted that it is a great organisation and its journalists and staff are among the best of the world, producing top class programmes. Its daily news service is rightly acclaimed as top class.

Yesterday morning the BBC got off on the wrong foot from the moment go. On its 6am news it said that the German President Frank-Walter Steinheimer and his wife were making a State visit to the UK. The man’s name is Steinmeier. They got it right 30 minutes later on their 06.30 news bulletin.

The rail poster says be happy - a great idea

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Last week I had an appointment in Hansfield. I’d never heard of the place before. Indeed, according to the old Ordnance Survey map I have, which was published in 1978, there’s no sign of it. It’s a new suburb of Dublin  close to Clonsilla. It’s marked on the old OS map as Phibblestown.

Using Google maps, the Ordnance Survey map, a rail timetable and the Transport for Ireland (TFI) app I was planning the best way to get there using public transport. As a result of my planning I’ve been greatly unimpressed with the TFI app, and not for the first time, may I add. It told me it would take close to two hours. I found a way that takes one hour 20 minutes. 

I arrive too early at Broombridge for my train to Hansfield. Broombridge is the last station on the Luas Red Line, where it links in with the Irish Rail network. Little or no shelter from the rain and wind for either train or tram.

It's still dark. I see a man with a bicycle and ask him how long it would take to cycle from Broombridge to Hansfield. He advises I cycle along the Royal Canal, he thought most of it was cyclable. We chat for some time. He tells me he cycles from Broombridge to his job in Dún Laoghaire and does it in approximately 50 minutes. We both agree our chat was most enjoyable; a lovely early morning encounter between two strangers.

The time passes, 10 minutes later the train for Hansfield arrives. There’s no realtime notice board on the platform, so to be sure-to-be-sure I ask the driver if this is the train for Hansfield. He assures me it is.  We chat for a minute or two, I tell him about my rail exploits, all he can do is smile before he tells me to get on the train before her closes the doors.

Eighteen minutes later, as we approach Hansfield after the recorded destination announcement is made, the driver adds: ‘next stop Hansfield'.

I get off with my fold-up bicycle, go to the train cab and ask the driver if he made that announcement especially for me; he smiles and says yes. 

We chat for a minute, he tells me he previously had been a bus driver with Dublin Bus but much prefers this job. 

He’ll be on that train the next day so I ask him if he could get me a timetable.

And then just before we part he asks me my name and shouts his name. Off the train goes. I might see him tomorrow.

What a lovely start to a new day.

The next day while waiting in Broombridge I meet the cyclist to Dún Laoghaire. We get chatting again; it turns out he knows someone I know, indeed, he works with her, a small world.

Paddy is driving again today and guess what, he has the timetable for me. This time we couldn’t really chat as he had an inspector with him in the cab. He’s only driving two years and is about to sit an examination/refresher course for locomotive drivers in the next days.

Off goes the train.

At Broombridge I spot a poster saying: ‘Be Happy’.

Time we said net to Americanisms in our English language

Why is the word ‘like' appearing many times in every spoken sentence?

A group of young people, aged between 16 and 18, were asked what the word ‘kind'(sic) kid meant. Not one person in the group knew that it was a young goat.

Why is the word child/children disappearing from our vocabulary?

Is it more of the negative American influence on our language? It would seem so.

Not a word on RTÉs evening news on Leo in Lebanon

German television, BBC covered Pope Leo’s first day in Lebanon last evening. Not a word on RTÉ 1’s evening news.

Ukraine peace plan written by Vladimir Putin

On this day in 1991 the people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

The people who voted that day would never have expected an American president would turn his back on them.

Below is Lara Marlowe’s column in the weekend edition of The Irish Times, where she argues Trump is committing treason.

There were positive noises coming out of the meeting in Florida yesterday between the US and Ukraine, but Donald Trump easily scupper those talks.

Putin is playing with Trump.

_______________________

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund – Vladimir Putin’s “slush fund” according to the US treasury – is believed to have the person who leaked a disgraceful 28-point “peace plan” to the Axios news site on November 19th. The leak provoked fears that the Trump administration was about to force Ukraine to capitulate to Russia and initiated 10 days of diplomatic turmoil.

The plan was portrayed as a US proposal and was ardently supported by vice-president JD Vance. But it bore telltale signs of Russian authorship, such as a ban on “all Nazi ideology or activity”. Vance’s rival for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, secretary of state Marco Rubio, initially told US senators it was drawn up by Russia but then backtracked.

US president Donald Trump gave Volodymyr Zelenskiy an ultimatum: sign off on the “peace plan” by Thanksgiving Day, November 27th, or lose all US support. Indications that the White House had adopted a Russian plan as its own shocked Ukrainians, Europeans and much of Trump’s Republican Party.

The plan gave Russia a say over the size of the Ukrainian army, Ukraine’s relations with third countries and even the country’s education system. For Kyiv, the most unacceptable provision was the demand that Ukraine give Russia the remaining 25 per cent of the eastern province of Donetsk, which Russia has failed to conquer in 11 years, and for which many thousands of Ukrainians have died. The draft agreement specified that the entire eastern province would be “internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation”.

Pursued attacks

Publication of the plan enabled Putin to drive a wedge between Europeans and Ukrainians on the one hand, and the Trump administration on the other – even as Russia pursued its attacks on Ukrainian civilians, killing 26 people in the western city of Ternopil on the day it was leaked. The Russian army continued assaulting Pokrovsk, the city in Donetsk which Russia has been trying to seize for more than a year.

Whatever American input there was made sure that Russia and the US profited together from “peace”, with the US slated to receive 50 per cent of all profits while Europe and the World Bank paid to rebuild Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. As an editorial in the Financial Times stated, the proposal laid bare, “the true cynical, money-grabbing and self-interested nature of [Trump’s] world view”.

The plan did not elaborate on the “robust security guarantees” promised to Ukraine. The Politico news site reported that Rubio told European allies the US would only discuss long-term security guarantees after a peace deal was signed.

Rather than offend Trump, Europeans and Ukrainians pretended to welcome the plan as a basis for negotiations. They met in Geneva with Rubio, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to produce a shorter, 19-point plan shorn of the most egregious Russian demands. The Kremlin labelled the revised plan “counterproductive”.

On the afternoon of November 25th, the Bloomberg wire service published transcripts of sensitive telephone conversations. The source of the transcripts was not stated, but no one contested their authenticity. The first conversation, between Witkoff and Putin’s diplomatic adviser, Yuri Ushakov, took place on October 14th, just after Trump imposed an extremely flawed ceasefire on Israel and Gaza. Witkoff coached Ushakov to ask Putin to telephone Trump to congratulate him, saying that if the Russian dictator flattered Trump sufficiently, “it’s going to be a really good call”.

Zelenskiy was due to visit the White House three days later, by which time Putin’s phone call had ensured the US president would abandon all possibility of transferring long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

In conversation with Ushakov, Witkoff accepted Russia’s demand for all of Donetsk. As Prof Timothy Snyder commented later, “Witkoff is not buying the Russian narrative; he’s selling it.”

Trump and Witkoff showed stunning amateurism in their intention to replicate the formula they had used in Gaza, as if ending wars in the Middle East and eastern Europe were as simple as developing beach resorts.

Played for a fool

“I’m even thinking that maybe we set out like a 20-point peace proposal, just like we did in Gaza,” Trump’s envoy told Ushakov. “We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace, and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you.” A few minutes later he added, “You know I have the deepest respect for President Putin.”

The other telephone conversation, between Ushakov and Dmitriev on October 29th, confirmed that that the “peace plan” concocted between Witkoff and Dmitriev in Florida originated in Moscow.

“Well, we need the maximum, don’t you think?” Ushakov asked.

“I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal,” Dmitriev replied. “And let them do like their own. But, I don’t think they’ll take exactly our version, but at least it’ll be as close to it as possible.”

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said Putin has played Trump for a fool and warned that “a deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on”. Western commentators called Witkoff “witless” and “dummkopf”.

“It is clear that Witkoff fully favours the Russians,” Republican Congressman Don Bacon wrote on X. “He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired.”

In a normal country, Trump and Witkoff would be tried for treason. Trump dropped his Thanksgiving Day ultimatum and made optimistic statements about an imminent peace agreement. The week ended with Zelenskiy planning yet another trip to the White House, and Witkoff scheduled to call on Putin for the sixth time this year. Witkoff has never visited Ukraine.

Much as Trump disdains Europe, its leaders apparently still hold some influence over him. After the August 15th Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, eight European leaders accompanied Zelenskiy to Washington to stave off similar Russian demands.

This week, the Europeans did what they do best. They bureaucratised and diluted the crisis through endless meetings and declarations, preventing Trump from giving Ukraine to Putin, at least for the time being.

Leo calls for ridding ourselves of prejudice and mistrust

 Below is an NCR report on Pope Leo in Türkiye

https://www.ncronline.org/node/318466

Pope Leo XIV called on the world's religious communities to break down "the walls of prejudice and mistrust" that divide them at his first Mass abroad, rounding off a day of interreligious outreach and renewed appeals for Christian unity that included a pointed hint at a possible trip to Jerusalem in 2033.

Link below is an address given by Pope Leo in Türkiye.

https://youtu.be/9w2jDzpi064?si=B5wF38Bf5TwNQBkt

Black Friday is a day of insatiable consumption

Justine McCarthy’s piece in The Irish Times yesterday. It’s a great read. Life sure is one big mystery dotted all the time with contradictions.

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Click open those apps, stack those digital baskets to overflowing and wait for the Amazon man to stagger to your front door with your purchases all the way from China. Today let us eat, drink and shop till we drop because tomorrow we die along with our planet.

Today is Insatiable Consumption Day, a marketing wheeze dreamt up in some Madison Avenue brainstorm to kick-start the Christmas rush after Thanksgiving. Instant gratification is guaranteed, along with mountain ranges of polluting rubbish. Forbes magazine reported after last year’s Black Friday that trucks transporting packages around Europe raised CO2 emissions by 94 per cent above the level of an average week. That’s not counting the cargo planes and ships, the on-second-thoughts returned items, the blizzard of hard-sell emails and texts, the acres of packaging, the booty that falls apart after a single outing or the multitudes of plastic toxins absorbed into the atmosphere

November has been a darkly comedic month. Black Friday comes hot on the heels of Cop30, the save-the-planet summit destined to go down in history – if the history books survive – as Flop30. Lobbyists for fossil fuel corporations accounted for one in 25 participants. The absence of Donald Trump dominated Cop news to the virtual exclusion of commentary on women’s scant visibility in the photo-ops and the pathetic failure to agree a gender action plan.

Trump’s no-show was expected. Anyone who grabs a gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner and concretes over the White House rose garden would rather be anywhere else than discussing climate- mitigation measures. The apposite question was not where the US president was, but what he was plotting while other state leaders were, ostensibly, trying to save the planet. Poring over a world map of rare earth resources, I bet.

He may be a lying, hyperbolic, incoherent peddler of empty threats and promises but – give the man credit – Trump never misses an opportunity to make a buck. He harangues India and Europe for not buying enough American oil and gas when what he really wants is everyone else’s rare earth metals and minerals because he recognises that therein lies the new Klondike. He has signed a whirlwind of deals for them with Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, negotiated a supply flow with China and extracted mining rights in Ukraine as a quid pro quo for military assistance. His covetousness of metals-rich Greenland is unlikely to be driven by an ambition to construct a Mar-a-Lago-on-the-tundra permafrost.

Friendly-fire casualty

Rare earths are the 21 century’s gold. They are in our smartphones, televisions, laptops, laptop bags, desktops, wind turbines, electric vehicles, fighter jets, lasers and drones. Lithium and europium are the matrix of our individualised age when there is no need to go to the shop because the shop will come to you. In Ireland, two-thirds of Black Friday purchases are transacted online, their convenience increasing road traffic and further reducing any need for human contact. Mining their ingredients can turn prospectors into overnight oligarchs in our technological age. And Mother Nature is the friendly-fire casualty.

“Capitalism depends on making our environment pay,” writes former dot.com entrepreneur Gerry McGovern in 99th Day: A Warning About Technology, his new book unearthing the dirty facts of clean energy. An early smartphone might have contained 10 of these materials, he says. The latest device could have many more. No wonder Trump scoffs at climate change activists when there are spondulicks to be made from mining rare earths. Mining being the operative word; a process that erodes great chunks of the planet and fills it with the sludge of waste. Once mined, the products comprising them need a marketplace. Ergo, we have Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year sales . . .

Are “green” industries healing Earth or are they killing it? The question is moot when obsolete wind turbines have to be dumped after their use-by date, homes are getting e-car chargers quicker than water pipes and AI is adding to the cloud’s demand for energy-gobbling data centres. According to the gospel of capitalism, gaps in the market are to be milked like cows.

Trump is not the only opportunist. Most governments face the conundrum of cheerleading climate mitigation policies while protecting jobs that accelerate the environmental damage. The dilemma is visible in poorer countries where foreign-owned mines are busy depleting ore stores and a jumper that was recycled in Termonfeckin ends up in Karachi, but Ireland has its own paradoxes. The Government is charged with protecting employment created by IT behemoths while, at the same time, providing for their massive electricity needs.

The Aughinish Alumina refinery in Askeaton graphically illustrates the political quandary. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the EU imposed economic sanctions on Russian businesses and oligarchs, the Irish Government lobbied Brussels for special exemption for Limerick’s Russian-owned plant that turns bauxite, shipped from other countries, into alumina and employs about 450 people. That is an awful lot of families and an awful lot of spending money flowing around the region.

No protest

State bodies are exacerbating society’s vulnerability to the digital culture, which is increasingly beset by scams, hacks and breakdowns. Their communication with citizens is mainly by electronic means. They send texts and emails telling us to check their websites for their correspondence. They offer discounts to those who do their transactions online. Anyone without the means or nous for digital engagement is regarded as a Luddite. When Ryanair announced that henceforth it will only accept e-boarding passes, there was no protest from Merrion Street.

As individuals, we do not have to face Hobson’s choice. We can walk, take a bus or cycle without inviting an economic crash. We can post a letter or a card, keep cash in our wallets, go to the takeaway instead of the takeaway coming to us, buy local, maybe even visit a shop, talk to the stranger at the till, carry our own purchases home, resist the capitalist pressure to surrender to the robots and Amazon Man.

That may sound crazily radical, but we might find life is better for it. Our planet certainly would be.

Why don’t journalists challenge Trump’s insults?

US President Donald Trump asked a journalist today if she were stupid and then shouted at her that she was stupid.

When this happens why is there not a journalist anywhere in the world who will challenge him and  tell him not to speak in such a manner.

Why do so many people bow to authority, especially when the authority is inept, inefficient and downright rude.

Then again, those who do, know the price that has to be paid. But it’s worth it.

Christianity taught but not practised - Ireland in the 1950s

Below is the final paragraph in Dermot Ferriter’s opinion piece in The Irish Times today:

The Burkes are usually described as “fundamentalist Christians”, prompting another reminder from history: in 1957, Irish trade unionist John Conroy, president of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, lamented how “nowhere in the world was there a country where so much Christianity was taught but so little practised ... the practical application of Christian teaching is put aside when selfish personal interests are involved.

It is always interesting to hear how people talk about the value of Catholic schools in Ireland, the ethos of Catholic schools.

What happened, what went so wrong?

When people talk about Ireland surrendering to secularisation, John Conroy back in 1957 saw how unchristian we were as a nation.

Just as civil war is an oxymoron so too is a poor church

This was a headline on a story in the property section of The Irish Times some weeks ago, it ran:

"Little Sisters of the Poor seeking €20m from nursing home sale”

No one expects any charitable organisation to sell property below the market value.

Still, the headline must set the reader thinking. There is a real sense of oxymoron about it. There’s a funny side to it but there is also a deadly serious aspect to it.

Money is always a delicate subject and it is an extremely delicate topic for the church, all churches.

On the one hand the church is on the side of the poor, it says so and it is. On the other hand its portfolio is gigantic; it employs the top bankers, top legal teams, top architects, top fund managers. But it never seems to engage decent PR companies, which is a real mystery.

The Catholic Church, all the churches, have done extraordinary work for the poor, the sick, the old, the homeless. It has played a positive role in the education of generations of Irish people.

So often the churches simply mirror what’s going on in society.

All part of the mystery of life? 

President Connolly got it wrong on German rearmament

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Watching the horror that Russia is inflicting on the people of Ukraine, I keep thinking of what President Catherine Connolly said during her electioneering for the top job. She said that Germany’s current military spending had ‘some parallels with the 1930s’. People say daft things during election time.

I criticised both my parents for being gullible people; they would believe what the last person said to them, at least that’s what I thought at the time. But these days I’m finding myself not just as gullible as they were but even more so. Honestly, when it comes to differing views and opinions I am so easily swayed.

I believe all forms of violence simply don’t work; the carrot is more effective than the stick. Young people who grow up in a caring and loving environment have a much better chance of being good people than those who see and experience bad behaviour on a daily basis. But it’s not always as straightforward as that.

It was the military might of the Soviet Union, US and UK that stopped Hitler’s Germany. Peace talks would never have worked with Hitler. 

After World War I Germany was humiliated, it became a land of hyperinflation and poverty, a breeding ground for Adolf Hitler. Had Germany received aid from the west Hitler could never have happened.

Ukraine is a sovereign independent State and has been since August 24, 1991. It has a long and difficult relationship with its neighbouring Russian Empire. 

Today it is an internationally recognised independent State and has all the rights to which a State is entitled. In breaking away from Russia it agreed to surrender its nuclear capability to its former masters.

In February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. It is estimated that well over one million people have been killed. Russian is spoken in parts of eastern Ukraine; many people in these areas feel Russian.  Putin used that as one of his excuses for this war, but that’s the trick Hitler played annexing Danzig and the German speaking districts of Czechoslovakia.

It is upsetting to admit that the only language Putin understands is the clenched fist. The world has to stop the Russian aggressor. But how?

And that’s the only reason why Germany and other European countries are now in the process of rearming.

It’s a cruel world when an American president seems to favour tyrants and dictators rather than democratically elected leaders in open and fair elections.

It would be great if Russia would listen to diplomacy and peaceful words. But there is no chance of that happening. How would President Connolly stop the Russian Bear?

Putin has a history of being a bully and tyrant; he certainly does not know how to tell the truth, just look at the lies he told about the invasion of Ukraine, how he occupied Crimea in 2014. 

Have we forgotten the name Alexei Navalny and how Putin tortured him before he died in a gulag? The murders he has committed across Europe?

These days I hesitatingly believe that Putin has to be stopped, and if that means using force, so be it. 

Then again, have I been swayed by the opinions of western thinking? I don’t think so. Why have close to a million people left Russia since Russia invaded Ukraine?