Austrian priest who said no to Hitler

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

Three weeks ago a patient in the hospital where I’m working handed me a book, thinking I might be interested in it. She did say that I was to return it to her. More out of politeness than anything else I took the book.

I went back to my office, left the book on the desk and forgot about it. We have been busy in the hospital these days, so that book was the last thing on my mind.

A few days ago I spotted the book on my desk and brought it home with me.

On the cover is a picture of Adolf Hitler with a smaller picture of Fr Franz Reinisch. The title of the book is ‘I Will Not Serve’ with the sub title ‘The priest who said NO to Hitler’. At the bottom of the cover is the name of the author, David Rice. Shock might be too strong a word but I was sort of flabbergasted. I know David. David was a Dominican priest for a number of years. He headed the Rathmines School of Journalism, later known as Dublin Institute of Technology and these days called Technological University Dublin.

Among the many books David has written is ‘Song of Tiananmen Square’, which is a gripping novel about the massacre in Beijing and the events surrounding it.

David has always had an interest in Germany. After his priestly ordination, along with another Dominican, he set off from Dublin on his motorbike to drive through Germany on his way to Rome.

‘I Will Not Serve’ makes for an interesting read. It tells the story of a young wayward Austrian man, who to the astonishment of his friends and parents, but above all, to the amazement of his girlfriend, decides to study for the priesthood. With a number of hiccups along the way Franz is ordained a priest of the Pallottine Congregation on June 29, 1928.

Rice paints a picture of a man who has a short fuse. He’s tall and can easily intimidate those who might be inclined to disagree with him. 

David readily agrees that the book is a mix of fiction and reality. But what is certain is that Fr Franz Reinisch took a stand against Adolf Hitler. 

It is also factual, that Reinisch spent his short 14 years as a priest, regularly in dispute with his religious superiors. On a personal note, that heartened me.

He realised long before Hitler came to power that he would prove disastrous for Germany and the world.

His fellow priests advised Reinisch to keep quiet and put up with the situation. In 1933  Germany and the Holy See signed a Concordat. Franz was reminded of that and told to obey his superiors.

In March 1941 Franz received his call-up papers to join the German Army.

He refused. His refusal was based on the fact that soldiers were asked to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. He made it clear that he would never do such a thing. 

And for that he was beheaded as a common criminal at Berlin Brandenburg-Görden prison on August 20, 1942, just three days before the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, the battle that heralded the end of Hitler.

In the course of his life Franz influenced many people, including fellow prisoners, and a close friend home on holiday from the front.

The book, published in 2018 by Mentor/Red Stag Press, is a great read.

There are plans afoot to make Franz Reinisch a saint. 

Senior German politician dies by suicide

Thomas Schäfer, the finance minister of the German state of Hessen, died yesterday by suicide. The body of the 54-year-old CDU politician was found on an ICE stretch of rail track near Hochheim in Main-Taunus. Frankfurt-am-Main is nearby.

The minister left a suicide note.

Hessen's premier Volker Bouffier in expressing his profound sadness on Schäfer's death said that the finance minister had been greatly troubled by the Covid - 19 pandemic. 

He went on to say that the minister had been working day and night on the crisis and the subsequent financial aspects. Bouffier said that Schäfer was pessimistic about how it would be possible to manage the financial situation in Germany post Covid - 19.

The number of infected people in Germany last evening stood at 61,164 with 499 deaths.

France is refitting a number of TGV trains to transport Covid -19 patients to hospitals in France and Germany.

Total world cases last evening stood at 710,918 with 33,597 dead. 

In the United States  last evening there were 133,924 Covid -19 patients with 2,352 people dead.

Honours, pass or fail grade for Taoiseach and CMO?

People have generally been in praise of the Taoiseach, Health Minister and Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan on their general performance during the current Covid - 19 crisis.

Their performance on television is clear, professional and seems transparent.

But was it a good idea that State authorities allowed the Italian rugby fans come to Ireland?

Also, should the Cheltenham racegoers not have been quarantined on their return to Ireland?

Then again, 'if all the ifs and ands made pots and pans there'd be no need for ....'

Covid -19 update in Germany and US

The German Covid - 19 count stands today at 
56,202 with 403 people dying from the virus.

The German Luftwaffe has flown Covid - 19 patients from Italy and France to German hospitals.

In the US 1,892 people have died from Covid - 19 and there are 113,000+ people diagnosed with the deadly virus.

Worldwide 657.000+ total cases and 30,438 dead.

The famous Berlin Beck's brewery is now producing hand sanitiser. Bosh is tooling to make equipment and many  Us firms are also retooling, among them GM.

A story of hope and the mystery of life

The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Times today

Michael Commane

I’ve been contributing to this column for many years. I usually take the Gospel or one of the readings of the following day’s liturgy as some sort of launch pad and use it to say something that makes sense to me. The hope is that it may also in some small way be enlightening to the reader. If someone, who has read it, says to me that they had never thought of the reading in that light before, then they have made my day.

That’s what I have been doing for approximately 20 years. That’s no short length of time in anyone’s calendar. 

All writing begins with a blank page. There is always a certain anxiety about getting down to writing something for a deadline. Deadlines require discipline. And then once the piece is written and finished there is a sense of achievement, a great feeling of accomplishment. Before that moment there is always something hanging over your head. It makes for a certain uneasiness.

I usually try to situate the piece in the world of today, the environment in which I live and work, the environment in which I presume most of the readers live and work.

These days are  different. In all my cycling and walking I have over the years visualised and fantasised about many happenings, often about my own demise. I’m not sure I ever visualised anything like this happening. Of course I didn’t.

I am also a chaplain in St Luke’s Hospital in Dublin’s Rathgar and that adds to my own mix of concern and worry. But first I have to say how privileged I am to see the work that the hospital staff are doing. They are truly extraordinary people. I see their work ethic, their calm, their skill, their love and goodness right in front of my eyes every day. 

In tomorrow’s Gospel St John (11: 1 - 45) writes an account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. It’s about life and death. In tomorrow’s  second reading St Paul in his letter to the Romans (8: 8 - 11) talks of the importance of people being interested in the spiritual side of their lives. 

He assures his Roman readers that they are interested in spiritual matters. And he puts that spirituality down to the fact that God has made his home in them. 

Just that idea, that God makes his home in us, gives me hope, a security, maybe a realisation there is more to me than the physical body I inhabit. 

Not for a moment am I heading down the road of some sort of hocus-pocus superstition. Grace and nature are not separate realities, indeed, grace complements nature. A central tenet in Christianity is that there is more to us than the physical, tangible aspect to our lives. 

We say and we believe in resurrection and our lives from the day we are born are constantly straining towards life with the risen Lord.

These last weeks I have been reminded every day of the saying that familiarity breeds contempt. Reading the prayers at Mass these days the words jump out at me. How apt and real they are, all the time assuring us, that peace, unity, the ultimate fulfilment of our human person is to be found in God. 

The Jewish book of Psalms, which provides us with some of the finest religious poetry, makes for great reading in these days of turmoil.

Reading how Jesus raises Lazarus in tomorrow’s Gospel, whether we take it literally or metaphorically, paints a great story of hope. 

It encourages me to go away and think about my own mortality and then to think, maybe outside the box, as we are all bidden to do these days, of the mystery of life, its purpose and my ultimate goal to be with God, God whom I believe has already received my parents.

Last Saturday was the anniversary of the death of the German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He died in 1832. These strange days  I’m reminded  of something he said: “Few people have the imagination for reality”. 

It’s easy to restrict reality to a very narrow vision. In the midst of Covid-19 I’ve been forced to expand further my horizons into the mystery of God and God’s love for us.

God calls us to transcend ourselves by moving beyond our earthly boundaries and limitations.

This is  no ordinary day. Stay safe.

Covid - 19 In Germany

There are now 49,304 people diagnosed with Covid - 19 in Germany. So far 344 people have died from the disease.

Compared to other countries Germany is experiencing a proportionately lower number of deaths. It is believed this is due to the earlier testing carried out in the country.

'Let's get ethical'

This article by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks appears in The Tablet last week.

It would be easy to be pessimistic about the future of Western liberal democracies. The loss of the idea of society as a moral community began as the rarefied vision of intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century, followed from the 1930s onward by existentialists and emotivists who denied that there was a morality beyond the self. Then came the liberal revolution of the 1960s and the economic revolution of the 1980s. They were followed by the fragmentation of culture and communication brought about by computers, the internet, smartphones and social media.

That is where we are today: often lonely, confused, disillusioned and mistrustful, living in societies divided into non-communicating groups, each of which believes that it is exploited, abused or threatened by others. From this comes a politics of anger that can easily lead to populism and the search for the strong leader who will somehow make the problems go away, but often makes them worse. 

That is the dark mood that has settled in the minds of many of the liberal democracies of the West. But I believe pessimism about the loss of morality is premature. It is not that we require a special effort to be moral. It is, in many respects, our default mode. We are made to compete, but we are also and equally made to cooperate. We need one another. We care about one another. 

The beautiful thing about morality is that it begins with us. We do not need to wait for a great political leader, or an upturn in the economy, or a new mood in society, or an unexpected technological breakthrough, to begin to change the moral climate within which we live and move and have our being. 

When we behave towards others with care and concern, sensitivity and tact, honesty and integrity, generosity and grace, forbearance and forgiveness, we start to become a different person. And such is the nature of reciprocity – itself one of the deeply engraved instincts that is the basis of morality – that we begin to change the way others relate to us; not always, to be sure, but often. 

Slowly but surely, a new atmosphere begins to be felt, at least in the more intimate environments in which we function. Bad behaviour can easily become contagious, but so can good behaviour, and it usually wins out in the long run. We feel uplifted by people who care about other people. 

The contemporary world has given morality a rough ride. The word itself now evokes all we distrust most: the intrusion of impersonal standards into our private lives, the presence of judgement where judgement does not belong, the substitution of authority for choice. 

When a politician moralises, we suspect that he or she is searching for an excuse not to pay for something. When a religious leader moralises, we fear the imposition of certainties we no longer share, and we suspect that fundamentalism is not far behind. When a particularly newsworthy crime or social trend provokes ethical debate, it will not be long before voices are heard dismissing the conversation as “moral panic”. We have come to share George Bernard Shaw’s conviction that morality is one person’s way of disrupting someone else’s innocent enjoyment, or as H.G. Wells called it, “jealousy with a halo”.

But this cannot be the whole picture. We do still care, and care passionately, about concerns that are essentially moral. We are disturbed by legal injustice and extreme economic inequality. We are distressed by our destruction of the environment in pursuit of economic growth. We are not indifferent to the suffering of others or to the harm we may be laying in store for future generations.

We are as moral as any other generation. Perhaps more so, for television and the internet has exposed us in the most vivid and immediate ways to sufferings that in a previous age we would hardly have known about, let alone seen. And our greater affluence and technological prowess have given us the resources to address ills – physical and economic – that an earlier generation might have seen as something about which nothing could be done, part of the sad but natural order of things. We are certainly not amoral. We remain sharply aware of the difference between what is and what ought to be.

We have inherited, however indirectly, a set of ideas from Marx and Nietzsche, that what passes for morality may be the mask over a hierarchy of power, a way of keeping people in their place. From psychoanalysis we have developed a suspicion that morality is a way of suppressing natural instinct, and as such is an enemy of self-expression. Perhaps, after the horror of two world wars, we simply reached the conclusion that previous generations had led us into the wilderness instead of the Promised Land, and the time had come to try another way. 

Each of these analyses has some truth to it, and there may be many more. There is a political dimension too. The twentieth century witnessed a vast expansion of the power and presence of the state. Things that were once the province of families, communities, religious congregations, voluntary organisations and cooperative groups, were appropriated by governments. 

The growth of the state meant the atrophy of many local institutions, from the family outwards, where people learned the give-and-take of human relationships and the subtle codes of civility without which it is difficult for people to live closely together for very long. The displacement of the community by the state meant the replacement of morality by politics. That is why our moral agenda changed. 

Our concerns – with inequality and injustice, war and famine and ecology – go deep. But these are issues to be addressed by governments. We are willing to make sacrifices on behalf of such causes. We join protests, sign petitions, send donations. But these are large-scale and for the most part impersonal problems. They have relatively little to do with what morality has traditionally been about: the day-to-day conduct between neighbours and strangers, what Martin Buber called the “I-Thou” dimension of our lives. Instead in our personal relationships we believe in autonomy, the right to live our lives as we choose.

Today we live with the retreat of the state that began in the 1980s in Thatcherism in Britain, Reaganomics in the United States, and has continued since the crash of 2007-8 in the form of “austerity measures” made necessary by the huge cost of the rescue operation to avoid a total collapse of the banking system, and thus of the economics of the interlinked modern world. We need to recover the capacity for collective self-help that was, and should be again, the distinguishing feature of a strong civil society.
We are not there yet. The tree of state has been removed, leaving the ivy of individual lives unsupported. As the state reduces its protective shelter, many people find themselves suddenly exposed. Single-parent families, the unemployed, inhabitants of inner-city ghettoes and others become the casualties. It is, and will continue to be, a traumatic experience, the pain of which only the most heartless can ignore. 

The time has come for us to relearn many of the moral habits that came so naturally to our ancestors but have come to seem strange to us. We will have to rebuild families and communities and voluntary organisations. We will come to depend more on networks of kinship and friendship. And we will rapidly discover that their very existence depends on what we give as well as what we take, on our willingness to shoulder duties, responsibilities and commitments as well as claiming freedoms and rights.

The “I-It” relationship of taxation and benefit will increasingly be replaced by the “I-Thou” of fellowship and community. And we may well come to see that the eclipse of personal morality that dominated our consciousness of a generation was a strange and passing phase in human affairs, and not the permanent revolution many thought it to be.

If so, I welcome the future. For it promises to restore to human relationships the compassion and grace, the mutuality and faithfulness, that the Hebrew Bible saw as a lasting ideal – more than that, as the way we bring the divine presence into our lives. The individualism of the past half-century has been one of unparalleled personal freedoms. But it has also been one of growing incivility and aggression, exploitation and manipulation, of temporary alliances rather than enduring loyalties, of quick pleasures over lasting happiness. It has been, quite simply, immature. So long as someone was there – the omnipresent state – to pick us up when we fell, it was overwhelmingly seductive. But it has become dysfunctional and cannot be sustained. 

Morality matters. Not because we seek to be judgemental or self-righteous or pious. It matters because we cherish relationships and believe that love, friendship, work and even the casual encounters of strangers are less fragile and abrasive when conducted against a shared code of civility and mutuality. It matters because we care for liberty and have come to understand that human dignity is better served by the restraints we impose on ourselves than by those forced upon us by external laws and punishment and police. It matters because we fear the impoverishment of significant groups within society when the only sources of value are material: success and wealth and physical attractiveness. In most societies – certainly ours – these are too unevenly distributed to be an adequate basis of self-worth.

Morality matters because we believe that there are other and more human ways of living than instinctual gratification tempered by regret. It matters because we believe that some essentials – love, marriage, parenthood – are so central to our being that we seek to endow them with as much permanence as is given to us in this unpredictable and transitory life. It matters because we must not abdicate our responsibility for those we brought into being by failing to provide them with a stable, caring environment within which to grow to maturity. It matters because we believe there are other routes out of the Hobbesian state of nature – the war of all against all – than by creating a Leviathan of a state. It matters because as long as humanity has thought about such things, we have recognised that there are achievements we cannot reach without the collaborative bonds of civil society and the virtues that alone make such a society possible.

Morality matters, finally, because despite all fashionable opinion to the contrary, we remain moved by altruism. We are touched by other people’s pain. We feel enlarged by doing good, more so perhaps than by doing well, by material success. Decency, charity, compassion, integrity, faithfulness, courage, just being there for other people, matter to us. They matter to us despite the fact that we may now find it hard to say why they matter to us. They matter to us because we are human and because, in the words of Victorian philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, we are worth what we are willing to share with others.

These truths, undervalued for a generation, are the cultural climate change we now need. They are about to become vital again, and not a moment too soon.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. His latest book is Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times; Hodder & Stoughton, £20 (Tablet price, £16).

What the angels might think of us

Our behaviour would puzzle the angels, were they not so intelligent.

- Christopher Howse, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph

We are made to compete, but we are also and equally made to cooperate. We need one another. We care about one another.

- Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

An Italian priest, German fines and RTE's 'median'

Italian parishioners collected money for their parish priest to have a ventilator. As soon as the priest received it he insisted in giving it to a younger person infected with Covid-19

In Germany there is a despute among the various federal states as to what will happen this year's Abitur, Leaving Cert.

In the state of North Rhine Westfalia any group making up more than two people will be fined €200, those visiting nursing homes will have to cough up €200 and those picknicking in public will have to pay €250. Publicans and restauranteurs who break the law will be fined €5,000.

Yesterday the total number of people tested positive for Covid-19 in Germany was 31,991 and 41 have died from the virus.

One million German jobs have been lost.

Every evening RTE Television shows the CMO press conference. A word that is used on every occasion is 'median'. RTE should explain what the word means and what is the difference between median and average.

On this day in 1347 Dominican saint, philosopher, theologian and Doctor of the Church, Catherine of Siena was born.

And as to what the median means. But what does that tell the viewer?

The median is the middle value in a list of numbers eg if the numbers are 1, 5, 3,2,7 the median 3. Why? You put the numbers in ascending order and then the median is the middle one.

Irish Water's Mr Gallen tells a tall yarn about water

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

I’d planned to write a rip-roaring column about Irish Water. What’s that famous Harold Macmillan comment; ‘Events, my dear boy, events’. Whether he said it or not, it certainly is one of the most apt throw-away quips I’ve ever heard. And it certainly applies these days.

On the scale of things in this ever-evolving crisis, my Irish Water story fades into insignificance. But it’s a good yarn and worth a story. Funny side to it too.

On Wednesday March 4, I was at an excruciating meeting, badly organised, inefficient and most annoying. I was fit to explode. I arrived home, exhausted and angry, sometime before 8pm. Awaiting me was mail from Irish Water.

The letter, dated February 26, 2020, informed me that a ‘recent’ meter reading indicated that I was using an average of 1,700 litres of water per day. My usual consumption is under 100 litres per day

What an end to a terrible day. 1,700 litres is 374 gallons. It’s enough water for 13 people per day.

Irish Water did explain that I may be able to avail of their First Fix for Free Scheme. I logged on to their website, reported the leak. I phoned early next day and again acknowledged their letter and reported the leak.

I was told that contractors would contact me within 10 days. On a subsequent call I was informed the contractors would contact me within 14 days. That misunderstanding has now been resolved. The 10 days meant 10 working days.

I’m writing this on March 18 and still no word from the contractors. I wait in hope, but also in trepidation as Covid -19 hovers over all of us.

Water is a limited resource that needs to be protected. I’ve experienced a side to Irish Water that makes me nervous and even somewhat cynical about the management of the utility.

I phoned them on four occasions looking for information.

In the letter they told me that I was using on average 1,700 litres per day. That means they must have taken two readings.

On the first occasion, when I asked them when they had read the meter, they were unable to tell me. In a subsequent call I was told that they only read it once. That intrigues me as how can you work out an average on one reading?

Eventually, after two or three calls I managed to find out when they took the reading. The meter reading that discovered the disproportionate use of water was taken on August 9, 2019.

It took them six months and 17 days to inform me of the problem. What sort of a management team could allow something like this to happen? In their letter they referred to it as a recent reading.

I had been scared that the leak might be under my house but I’m inclined to think it’s not. The day before writing this I discovered it’s in the garden. I hope the water stays away from my house.

There have been funny aspects to it too. To conserve water, I’ve been turning off the main valve but that in turn creates an airlock.

I’ve discovered how to fix an airlock in the pipes. I’ve always fancied myself as a potential plumber. At last I might have discovered my true calling.

On another occasion I found myself in the attic, having difficulties getting down. I didn’t have my mobile phone to call for help.

I note my letter was signed by Irish Water MD, Eamon Gallen. 

Trump clearly exposed by his own experts

At a White House press conference this evening Dr Deborah Birx, White House Response Coordinator for the Coronavirus Task Force, gave an exceptionally clear expose of the current Covid-19 crisis in the US.

She especially praised the EU for their sharing of data on the subject.
Earlier President Trump was for most of the time rambling and talking nonsense. While Dr Birx spoke, the president was hopping from foot to foot, trying to look serious while scowling, moving from side-to-side. The man can't stand still for 10 seconds. He was looking at Dr Birx in a most quizzical way. He later complimented Dr Birx 'for a great definition'

He rambled on about the number of motorcar deaths and the 50,000 people who are dying in a heavy flu season this year.

On of his quotes: 'We're trying to make much less bad.' Another quote: 'If up to docs, they'd close the whole world down.'

A journalist asked him a question, he rambled on, didn't answer the question. She looked on in total amazement and confusion.

Dr Birx was nominated by President Barack Obama as United States Global AIDS Coordinator. She served as a physician in the United States Army, rising to the rank of colonel before she retired from military service.

A small sign of hope in Germany?

The German government today decided to pump €600 billion into the economy during the Covid-19 crisis.

The Roert Koch Institut reported today that there has been a slowdown in the reported number of people infected with Covid-19 in Germany. 

While they expressed a certain optimism, they added it would be Wednesday before they could say anything positive about the trend.

Angela Merkel's first test has been negative.

Saying the Our Father when hand-washing

Some weeks ago the British recommended its citizens to sing God save the Queen when washing their hands.

The Irish authorities suggested we count up to 20 or sing Happy Birthday.

A wise woman has come up with another idea. Why not say the Our Father. Great idea and also, it takes longer than 20 seconds. Better on all counts.

GDPR is getting in the way of the common good

Since the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 it is clear that the day-to-day management of the regulation has not been properly managed and supervised.

It is being used by unscrupulous and inefficient bureaucrats to allow them hide behind and cover their mismanagement.

It is also being used right now to hide important information that the public has a right to know and needs to know.

The mismanagement of GDPR is getting in the way of the common good. It is being used to hide information that we the people have a right to know.

The General Data Protection Regulation 2016 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. 

It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas. 

Remembering Goethe

Germany's literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died on this day in 1832. He was born in 1749.

Maybe a fitting quote from Goethe for these days: Few people have the imagination for reality.

Jürgen Moltmann - the man who never gives up hoping

This appears in the current issue of 'The Tablet'. It's a great read. Anyone who studied theology in the 60s and 70s read or tried to read Moltmann's book on Hope.

A giant of post-war Protestant theology says that in spite of the climate crisis and the growing threat to democracy, in the end people will act together to avert catastrophe

Across the table in the bar of his central London hotel, Jürgen Moltmann is holding the cardboard drinks menu pressed up against his face. It is, I should explain, nothing to do with failing eyesight. The professor emeritus of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, one of the most widely read Christian theologians of the second half of the twentieth century, is at 93 in remarkably good physical and mental health, as he had demonstrated the previous evening when delivering the prestigious Charles Gore Lecture in Westminster Abbey. 

No, this towering figure in the Protestant Evangelische Kirche in Germany is improvising in order to find a way to explain, with an ingenuity that – to put it kindly – is not always the hallmark of academic theologians, his belief that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, with the result that we cannot see Him. Sensing that it sounds a bit vague, he reaches out for the menu that sits unused on the table between us to demonstrate, holding it so near to his face that he cannot possibly focus on it. 

“So close that He also influences and inspires us,” the professor says from behind his improvised mask. And then he peeps round it, with a broad smile, and quotes St Augustine: “He said, God is interior in my soul, so self-understanding is understanding of God, because in my soul is the mirror of the image of God, and in the mirror I recognise myself and God.”

That same beguiling description of God had also come up in his lecture, which took as its theme “A Theology of Hope for the Twenty-first Century”. Serried ranks of Anglican bishops, deans and deacons added splashes of colour to a large audience, which was held spellbound while the professor, sitting down rather than standing to deliver his text, in a rare concession to advancing years, took us through the threats to our world – terrorism, new nationalism, nuclear Armageddon, and the emerging catastrophe of climate change.

His uplifting analysis, though, had borrowed from a resonant line by the eighteenth-century German Romantic poet, Friedrich Hölderlin: “Where there is danger, salvation also grows.” With a slow-paced, heavily accented, sometimes quiet delivery that was nonetheless captivating, and had his audience quite literally on the edge of our seats, determined to catch every word, the professor had managed to offer – as his title promised – a message of hope. That we don’t know if humanity will survive the current threats is a good thing, he had said, framing the question as, “Is humankind to be or not to be?”

“If we know that we will not survive, we will do nothing. If we know we will, we won’t do anything either. Only if the future is open to both possibilities, we can do what is necessary.” And God was front and centre of the professor’s hopeful message. “His eternal Yes to creation will,” he had told us, “reaffirm our existence in spite of ourselves.”

It was quite a coup for the Westminster Abbey Institute to lure Professor Moltmann over to England to speak as part of its spring programme. His scholarly credentials within and without Protestantism are second to none, his awards many, and his books – notably 1964’s Theology of Hope and 1972’s The Crucified God – still have an influence that stretches far beyond academia. His long ecumenical commitment in particular is demonstrated by his close friendships with Jon Sobrino and Hans Küng, not to mention the period in the mid 1960s when he was also a contemporary and co-editor of the journal Concilium, with one Joseph Ratzinger, then a fellow academic at Tübingen.

Have they remained friends? “No,” he shakes his head a little sadly. “With Hans Küng [another colleague at Tübingen at the same time], yes, but with Joseph Ratzinger, no.” Did he enjoy working with him? “He wasn’t always easy,” he says. “There was an anxiety in his heart.” In the wake of the student demonstrations at the university in 1968 – part of Europe-wide unrest of the campuses – Fr Ratzinger decamped to less volatile Regensburg, in his native Bavaria, and switched allegiances to the more conservative journal Communio. It is clearly not a subject Professor Moltmann feels entirely easy discussing.

Born in Hamburg in April 1926, he grew up in a godless household. “My father was a secular teacher of Latin, German literature and history. My grandfather was a Grand Master of the Freemasons,” he recalls. In February 1943, along with other 17-year-olds, he was drafted into the German army and posted to the anti-aircraft batteries in his home city as it suffered wave after wave of RAF attacks. 

“Forty thousand people died,” he reports simply and unemotionally. “And I cried for the first time to God, ‘Where are You?’ That was my question. Not, ‘Why have You allowed this destruction?’ I was not asking theological questions. I was crying for rescue.”

The following year, posted to the Klever Reichswald forest on the front line, he became separated from his platoon during an Allied offensive. “I hid myself in a bush and the next morning, when I saw an English soldier, I stood up and said, ‘I surrender.’ I expected him to shoot me, but he took me to his HQ, where a compassionate lieutenant gave me his plate of baked beans. I have loved baked beans ever since. They taste of life.”

He was despatched to Britain as a prisoner of war. “I remember the ship passing under Tower Bridge in London. It was the door to my three years in Scotland and England.” The experience proved life-changing. It gave him an abiding love of the British. “In Scotland, we were building streets in [the coal-mining town of] New Cumnoch and we were treated by people there with such a profound hospitality and solidarity it made us into human beings again,” he says. Later he moved to Norton Camp, near Mansfield, run by the YMCA with the aim of training and sending home a new generation of German teachers and Protestant pastors. It was here, he recalls, that he began to read theology.

“I felt forsaken by God, and all good spirits, but there I was given a Bible and read first the Gospel of Mark, where I came to Jesus crying out, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ I felt the brotherly love of Jesus. He took up my suffering for God.

At the centre of it has always been the subject of hope, and it remains both his passion and his hallmark. But, at the end of his lecture in the abbey, when he was asked whether there could ever be “good nationalism”, he referred to 

Germany today, and warned that “the spirits of the past are coming up again”. 

Has that dented his hope? The far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party, which polled one in eight votes at the 2017 federal elections, is, he tells me, nothing more or less than “the political arm of the Nazis. It hates migrants, it hates Jews, it hates politicians.” Yet he remains confident that the democratic institutions of modern-day Germany will stand firm against the AfD threat. 

And, likewise, he refuses to be too down-hearted by his beloved Britain’s exit from the European Union. 

“It is deplorable and has changed Europe already, but people of Britain, of Europe, of the world, will learn that humanity means brotherhood and sisterhood in solidarity. When the level of the seas rise, when the level of the Hudson River in New York rises to flood Trump Tower, people will learn that we have to act together in the face of catastrophe.” As evidence of what he sees as a fundamental part of our God-given nature, he points to how the world has reacted to the threat posed by the coronavirus. “We are working globally in solidarity against this.”

His seemingly indefatigable hope does, however, stumble a little when it comes to ecumenism. He starts off with a note of optimism. “There has been so much progress since I attended a Student Christian Movement conference in Swanwick in 1947 while I was still a prisoner of war. My Church has made a treaty with the Anglican Church on Baptism and the Eucharist, and the Churches in Germany are on the long road from being state Churches to being free Churches.”

It is when I ask about Catholic participation in this process that he retreats a little. “Theologically,” he judges, “we were better off 30 years ago, when at Tübingen we had a common working group of the two [Protestant and Catholic] faculties of theology. That no longer exists.”

He suddenly looks sad. In an effort to get us back to hope, I mention Pope Francis, but Professor Moltmann is not persuaded. “His declaration following the Amazon synod is a disappointment. He wants not to ordain viri probati or female deacons. He will lose the women, and without the women you cannot keep the Church alive.” It is a sobering insight into how sympathetic leading figures in other denominations are reacting to the recent turn of events in Catholicism. 

The professor is incapable, though, of remaining sombre for too long. He has five grandchildren and two great grandchildren to accentuate his predisposition to hope – though his wife, the distinguished German feminist theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, died three years ago. Plus, he tells me, he has a trip coming up to his “beloved” Nicaragua, where he established the first Protestant university in the capital Managua. 

Does he ever contemplate retirement? I suspect the answer already. “Instead of sitting in my chair and looking out of the window, I prefer to travel and visit the places that I love.” And the secret to being so active and engaged and curious in your nineties? He shrugs, as if to say it is none of his own doing. “God,” he replies.

Professor Moltmann delivered the Charles Gore Lecture on A Theology of Hope as part of the Westminster Abbey Institute’s spring programme. For further information, visit www.westminster-abbey.org/institute

Comparing prayers in old and new missals

The Collect for Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent in the Missal published in 2011:

Grant, we pray, O Lord,/that, schooled through Lenten observance/and nourished by your word,/through holy restraint/we may be devoted to you with all our heart/ and be ever united in prayer./Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,/one God, for ever and ever.

The Opening Prayer for Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent in the Missal published in 1982:

Lord,/during this Lenten season/nourish us with your word of life/ and make us one in love and prayer.

The Prayer over the Offering for Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent in the Missal published in 2011:

Accept, O Lord, we pray, the prayers of your people/along with these sacrificial offerings,/and defend those who celebrate your mysteries from every kind of danger./ Through Christ Our Lord.

The Prayer over the Offering for Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent in the Missal published in 1982:

Lord receive our prayers and offerings./ In time of danger./Protect all who celebrate this sacrament.

No need for any explanation. It's as clear as day which one of the two prayers is better, more succinct, easier to read, easier to pray.

And then the money the Missal of 2011 cost.

Someone needs to be held to account. But that's not how it works in the Catholic Church.

Preposterous.

I carried out a small survey among a number of work colleagues. Without exception they all felt the prayers in the Missal of 1982 were more succinct, easier to understand. Simply better and finer prayers

Angela Merkel addresses the German people

Germany recorded over 12,000 people infected with Covid - 19 yesterday.

After the main news yesterday evening German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an unprecedented address to the nation.

She covered most of the points that the Taoiseach did in his St Patrick's Day address.

The Chancellor said that it was the greatest crisis in Germany since World War II. She stressed the importance of slowing the rate of spread of the disease.

Mrs Merkel observed that Germany most likely has one of the best  health systems in the world, nevertheless, it would not have the capacity to deal with the large numbers of infected people that they are expecting.

At the weekend there was a 60 kilometre traffic jam on the German Polish border.

Yesterday in the small town of Mitterteich in Bavaria people were ordered to stay in their homes after a large number of the population was tested positive.

Volkswagen, BMW are to cease production.

Not quite rubbing shoulders with the Taoiseach, nearly

The Taoiseach's address to the nation last evening was both calming and inspiring.

But he did remind us it is now the calm before the storm.

This is a picture of Independent Newspapers photographer Mark Condren.

Mark began his photo journalism with 'The Kerryman/Corkman' newspaper in the mid-1990s.

A great man and an inspiring photographer. Mark also has a great sense of humour.

Mark won photographer of the year this year. He has won the award on many occasions.

At Friedrichstraße 35 years ago

Thirty-five years ago yesterday, March 17, 1985, I wished happy St Patrick’s Day to a GDR border control official at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße Railway Station.

I was scared he’d go through my bag more thoroughly than he did. I was carrying West German newspapers to an Anglican priest in Görlitz. 

I successfully distracted him, talking about St Patrick and Marxism-Leninism in Ireland. Heavens, was I nervous. I also had some West German currency for the priest. Had I been caught it would have been jail and an issue for the West and East German Catholic Church. The East German authorities would have made a great story out of it – the dishonesty of a priest and interfering in the internal affairs of the German Democratic Republic.

I’ve been thinking of the fear and terror I experienced that day on this strange St Patrick’s Day. And then the freedom, exhilaration, victory too, standing later on the eastern side of Friedrichstraße Railway Station.

That place is a different world now. I’m wondering where that former GDR official is today. I trust/hope happy and well.