Poetry readings in St Luke’s Hospital Rathgar

Poetry Day Ireland was on Thursday.

To mark the occasion at St Luke’s Hospital in Rathgar this video was made.

St Luke’s must have the finest hospital garden in the land and that also means having the best gardener in the country.

To listen to staff of St Luke’s reciting their poems, please follow this  private link on youtube:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqLo2d9yvss

 

A saint who speaks out against silence

Today is the feast of the Dominican saint, Catherine of Siena.

She was born on March 25, 1347 in Siena and died in Rome on April 29, 1380. Canonised by Pope Pius II in 1461, made a joint patron saint of Rome by Pope Pius XII in 1938.

An interesting and apt quote from Saint Catherine: “We've had enough exhortations to be silent. Cry out with a thousand tongues - I see the world is rotten because of silence.” 

More wise words from the woman: "Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”

What would she have to say to the hierarchical institutional church today?

Poetry Day Ireland

Today is Poetry Day Ireland.

To mark the occasion, Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘Memory of My Father'

Memory of My Father

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

That man I saw in Gardiner Street
Stumble on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son. 

And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London.
He too set me the riddle. 

Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me
"I was once your father."

-Patrick Kavanagh

Ukraine has suffered far too much in 80 years

This article appeared in The Irish Times yesterday. A powerful piece of writing. To think that in 1941 34,000 Jews were murdered in two days by the Germans at Babyn Yar near Kyiv. Of the 160,000 Jews living in Kyiv in 1941, approximately 100,000 fled as the Germans occupied the city. 

Today Ukraine is again experiencing unimaginable horror, this time inflicted by the Russians.

On Tuesday after much deliberation/procrastination the German government decided to send tanks to Ukraine. Again it will be German tanks fighting Russian tanks. But this time the aggressor is Russia, while Germany is defending the rule of law.

         

Oliver Sears

Today is Yom HaShoah, which translates from Hebrew as the Day of the Catastrophe, the day when Israel, the United States and Argentina commemorate the Holocaust, a day that coincides with the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. (Most countries commemorate January 27th, the day Auschwitz was liberated in 1945). For those of us connected to this history personally, these national days of remembrance are always solemn and sobering moments.

 

By elevating the commemoration to the status of a national day of commemoration there remains a lasting hope that, among the youngest generation, the history of the Holocaust will be acknowledged and marked. From earnest politicians we hear the need for lessons of history to be learned.

 

But can the mantra of “learning the lessons of history” ever be anything more than a glib platitude? Have we ever learned lessons from history and, if this hugely complicated question cannot be answered positively, then why do we bother memorialising the Holocaust at state level and should people in my position simply keep our grief private?

 

This year, the war in Ukraine gives Yom HaShoah a particularly contemporary significance. That a cruel, unjust war is being waged by a dictatorship on a democracy on land that claimed one and a half million victims of the Holocaust still seems unimaginable for most of us. The murders of two Holocaust survivors in their 90s is especially perverse, their lives bookended by the very worst of circumstances. The bombing by the Russians of Babyn Yar, a ravine outside Kiev where almost 34,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis over two days in 1941, has brought awareness to the wider world of that site of horror, with yet more horror.

 

While it’s often said that if you invoke the Holocaust in any debate you’ve immediately lost the argument, the appalling vista in Ukraine of mass murder, the indiscriminate and targeted bombing of civilians, the rape of women and the stream of frightened and bewildered refugees bears a resemblance to events 80 years ago. Replying to the question, “What have you learned from the Holocaust?”, Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor and Nobel prize winner, said: “That it’s possible to get away with anything.”

 

Failure of geopolitics

For those of us in northern Europe for whom events in Syria, Libya and Myanmar are too remote, both geographically and culturally, to affect our lives, the reality of undiluted misery visited on a Ukrainian population on our border has brought the failure of geopolitics into our homes. Memorialisation of the Holocaust is supposed to act, in part, as a reminder to individuals and governments of the responsibility of protecting the vulnerable and checking the powerful. One man has caused untold misery to millions and caused global instability. It cannot stand in a post-Holocaust world. Or can it?

 

When I remember my own family consumed by the Holocaust, I cannot now unhitch their fate from the suffering of those in Ukraine. I feel the same outrage for the victims of conflicts further afield but, because of the location, the horror in Ukraine resonates more intensely. I see a world bullied by a dictator and terrified to go to war. I see an alliance of countries traumatised by a war, still in living memory and of which the Holocaust was the worst act, refusing to accept that we are now at war again. Worse still, instead of fighting a rampaging warmonger with a fraction of the military power of Nato, we will allow Russia to flatten Ukraine and wreak misery on its population forever. So long as the conflict does not spill into another European country.

 

At this year’s Yom HaShoah, I will think about the United Nations and how it was created out of the ashes of the Holocaust, designed to prevent a repetition and, with the advent of international human rights legislation, to put on trial those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. But with Russia a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council what power does that body have against a Russian veto of sanctions against it? Any talk of bringing the Putin regime to trial for war crimes seems just that, talk. While Ireland’s seat on the Security Council is an important voice, an expectation that the soft power of diplomacy will bring peace to Ukraine is wishful thinking.

 

Neutrality

And now the question of Ireland’s neutrality has come into sharp focus. As we honour the victims of the Holocaust formally today and again make the pledge “never again”, what does neutrality offer the victims of Putin’s naked aggression? Elie Wiesel again: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”

 

Ireland is certainly not silent on the matter of Ukraine, but against an enemy hell bent on war, neutrality can sound like silence.

 

As for learning the lessons of history, events in Ukraine show that cruel dictatorships are not yet consigned to the past in Europe.

 

Whatever the reasons for remembering the Holocaust, today’s ceremonies will have little bearing on the besieged souls in Mariupol and Kharkiv. Their experience resembles too closely the blood-stained history of my inheritance. Perhaps this year’s Yom HaShoah should be a call for urgent action. Are we prepared to witness the gassing of civilians and the use of concentration camps again? What will next year’s ceremony mean, then?

 

Beyond sending aid to Ukraine, taking in refugees and urging our governments to take more direct military action, those of us lucky enough to live in liberal democracies must ring-fence our values and reinforce the institutions that uphold them, so that those who wish to dismantle them cannot come to power. What we learn from history is that we don’t easily change our behaviour; warmongering and cruelty are part of our make-up. We can, however, protect us from our worst excesses.

Oliver Sears is founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland

German u-turn means their tanks will roll in Ukraine

The German government made an historic decision yesterday to send German anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.

While the Germans have been sending heavy equipment to Ukraine since the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, only on Monday did German chancellor Olaf Scholz say there would be no tanks going to Ukraine. He argued that Germany, because of its history, has a special role to play in making sure that World War III does not happen.

At a Nato meeting at the US airbase in Ramstein yesterday, where Nato nations were joined by allies, US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin praised the German government for its decision to send tanks to Ukraine.

Russia has warned Nato not to interfere in the Russian ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.

It is a moment in history as German tanks roll through Ukraine. There is an irony to it and a great worry. The last time this happened, Germany was the aggressor as Hitler launched Operation Bararossa  on June 22, 1941, a ‘special military operation’ that ended in failure, firstly in Stalingrad and finally in Berlin.

At the beginning of this year it was inconceivable to think that German tanks would be facing down Russian tanks on Ukranian soil.

This time the German tanks are in Ukraine to protect the people agains the Russian aggressor.

Late yesterday Russia stopped gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.

It seems we had lost the run of ourselves

This week’s Mediauis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

The bogs are back in the news. Just before Easter Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that proposals about cutting turf could be paused, which  caused something of a hullabaloo. Some people were saying you could cut your own turf for use, maybe give some to a neighbour but it seems the commercial distribution of turf is now for the history books. 

I began to get interested when they started talking about turbary rights. I never heard of the word until I discovered I had turbary rights on an acre of bog in West Kerry. At the time I thought it would be easier to buy oil from the Arabs than to organise the cutting and transporting of turf from the side of the mountain. These days I have to admit I’m having second thoughts with how expensive oil has become.

In summer 1999 I went to the bog with friends and filled a trailer load of turf. My elderly father stacked it into the shed. 

Modern science has discovered that burning turf is not a good idea and similarly denuding our bogs is damaging our environment. I leave such matters to the experts and am guided by what they say.

But the current turf furore did set my mind wandering back into my childhood. I spent idyllic holidays on my maternal granduncle’s farm on the Tipperary-Kilkenny border. I can still remember going out in the evening and picking wild hazelnuts.

These days when I buy them in a supermarket they are perfectly manicured and I have no idea whatsoever of their provenance. They may have travelled on a gigantic oil-guzzling cargo ship half way round the world. I wonder is there anyone picking wild hazelnuts anywhere in Ireland today?

And it’s the same with so much of the food we eat. When we bought cheese the shop assistant would cut it from a large block, weigh it and then wrap it in greaseproof paper. The eggs we bought were marked with the hen’s individual stamp, and I’m not talking about the sell-by-date.

The milk was neither homogenised nor pasteurised.

I’m not for a moment saying that we should return to those ways. Life always involves change and again we have learned from science the importance of food hygiene. Modern technology, as with all aspects of our lives, has revolutionised agriculture.

And the proof of the pudding is in the eating as life expectancy is higher today than it was when we were drinking unpasteurised milk.  Hygiene, health and life expectancy go hand in hand.

But in our rush for efficiency, financial gain and development have we lost the run of ourselves?

Does it really make sense to import products from thousands of kilometres away when we could produce them here ourselves?

The looming advance of climate change and the war in Ukraine have shocked us into realising that quenching insatiable appetites comes at a price and sometimes the price is too high. 

I’m reminded of that seldom heard idiom today, ‘cutting your cloth to suit your measure’.  

New signs that are leaving cyclists mystified

New cycling signs are appearing

around the country and they have been spotted in Kerry over the weekend.

What exactly are they telling the cyclist? Obviously that there is a cycle possibility in the direction which the sign is pointing. But to where is the cyclist being directed. Are both signs pointing to the same place.

For what does the digit one (1) within the EU symbol stand?

Road signs of their nature are expected to tell the road user as quickly, clearly and as simply as possible what the sign is saying.

Anyone who has studied sacramental theology will be aware of the importance of symbols and signs and how they are signifiers.

A long frightening journey from Kyiv to Castletown

A lovely piece of writing by a young Ukrainian woman in The Irish Times yesterday. And it would have been easy to have skipped it.

What these people are suffering. Does it ever happen that the Russian soldiers, the young Siberian tank drivers, officers from St Petersburg, commanders from Moscow or Volgograd, controllers in Saratov, ever think of the human misery and suffering, the barbarism that they are unleashing fellow human beings?

Polina Shatylo

Polina

I’m from Kyiv. It’s been three weeks since I arrived in Ireland. And this is how it started.

It all happened when I was peacefully sleeping in my bed after a hard-working day, but in a moment everything changed. I fell asleep about 2am so the first explosion I didn’t hear. But what I surely heard was how my father ran into my room with the words, “Polina wake up and get ready, the war has begun!” At that moment I clearly understood what had happened and that it was never going to be like it was before. I think absolutely every Ukrainian felt it that night, because it affected everyone. At that time, our lives were turned upside down. And after the words of my father, I immediately got up and began to pack.

Luckily, I wasn’t confused and started to quickly collect all necessary things. But I saw fear in my parents’ eyes. I understood that as adults it was important for them to feel stability, especially for my father, who is responsible for our family. I saw that at that moment they were very scared, because they understood that everything they lived for and worked for so long for could disappear in one moment. Of course, they tried to hide their fear, but I saw it. I don’t remember exactly how much time passed, maybe half an hour or less, when the next explosions were heard, and at that time I heard them exactly. That feeling was incomparable to anything, when your whole body freezes and you feel only fear. I think those who once heard it will never forget it.

At first, no one knew what to do. Some went outside, others ran to the shops; there were huge queues near the ATMs and all the roads were in traffic jams. Panic reigned in the streets. On the first day it was absolutely impossible to leave Kyiv. In addition to traffic jams, there was a big problem with petrol, there were an incredible number of cars near the gas stations, and there was simply not enough petrol for everyone. On that day, we didn’t have much fuel, so it was unrealistic to go anywhere. The first hours we sat in front of the TV watching the news. Then we decided to go to the store to buy some food and other things, because we understood that maybe later we would not have such an opportunity. It was hard to look in people’s eyes, everyone was confused, alarmed as never before.

Safer place

All day we stayed at home, we were very scared, because explosions were heard very often. After spending some days at home, it was very hard to live in such a way. Every night was very hard, it was difficult to sleep and live normally. When rocket fragments hit residential buildings close to us, it forced us to leave Kyiv. We went to our relatives in a village in the countryside, where events of the war we could only hear and not see. But the situation was getting worse every day and especially at night.

After a week there, our men decided to take families to a safer place. I went with my mother, my dog and six other relatives by car. We got to Poland fast enough. In the first minutes of crossing the border, we felt care and peace. We crossed it in the middle of the night so we were very tired. We needed to find some place to stay that night because the road ahead was even harder. Luckily, in the nearest city we found some hotel, and a very kind receptionist found the last three one-bedroom rooms. We didn’t have a choice, so we took them.

The next day we also spent on the way to our relatives in Poland. When we finally got there, it wasn’t the end. The flat in which our relatives live was quite small so we couldn’t stay with them. We had to move on. Eventually, we turned to the volunteers and they settled us in a special centre. We stayed there for about three weeks.

About 17 years ago my aunt (who went to Poland with us) worked in Ireland for three years. And from the very beginning of the war a friend she had made in Ireland all those years before got in touch. When they heard about our situation, they immediately invited us to come to Ireland. Of course, we were scared a little bit and considered that request, because we had never been to this country and it was very far away from our home. But then we decided to do it. During that time the Irish friend found a house where we could live and organised her other friends to help. We bought tickets and got there. It was a very long and tiring road from our temporary housing in Poland to here. And from the first steps on this beautiful island, we felt peace and quiet.

Temporary home

We were met by a lot of volunteers, who helped us with everything. Everybody asked if everything was okay or maybe we needed some help. So, with the help of all those people, we registered very fast. Our temporary home is in the very lovely Castletown, Co Laois. When we finally arrived, we got into a house that was prepared with great love. Beautiful and cosy rooms with all necessary things waiting for us. Before our arrival a lot of locals knew about us, so everybody helped to prepare everything. We are so grateful to every person who took part in it. Every little thing and detail said a lot about the big hearts of all the people who took part in it. From the first day of being here in Castletown, so many people came to us with greetings and gifts. We didn’t even expect that everybody could be so friendly and helpful to strangers. On that day we finally felt peace and most importantly safety.

Some days later, the kids went to school. On the first day they were so excited. Every day on coming home they tell us how great and interesting the day was spent with new classmates and teachers. We began to gradually get used to a completely different life. Also, we were so astonished by the beauty of nature and how every person protects it. The best thing is that now we can sleep peacefully, but our hearts are still worried about our country and our people.

Polina Shatylo (18) is a university student in Ukraine, studying entrepreneurship online from Co Laois

We’re not the masters of the universe - by a long shot

The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

In this column two years ago, I wrote: “I’m not sure I ever visualised anything like this happening.” It was at the beginning of the outbreak of Covid and the front page that day quoted then taoiseach Leo Varadkar, with the two words ‘Stay home’ blazoned in red. In this column last month I wrote: “The war that I am seeing on television every evening and reading about in the newspapers is actually beyond my sense of understanding.”

According to the  World Health Organisation, 15 million people have died from Covid. Thousands have been killed in the war in Ukraine. I saw a woman interviewed on television saying that she had cut her hair short hoping to make herself less attractive so that she might avoid being raped by a Russian soldier. 

That’s where we are in this indescribable barbarism in Ukraine. An economics expert has said it will cost €400 billion to reconstruct Ukraine. Multiples of such incomprehensible sums of money cannot bring back to life the thousands who have been killed.

On Easter Sunday Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby addressed this terrible war. Pope Francis calls this Easter the ‘Easter of War’ and of course he is referring to other war hotspots around the world. 

Justin Welby pleads with the world never to return to the madness of  Bismarck, who spoke about ‘blood and iron’. In 2006 when the then Pope Benedict walked through the gates of Auschwitz he said: “Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate this?”

Covid and war has sent us reeling, as has the devastation of climate change We had become somewhat complacent in our own little bubbles. We were living in a semi-security that kept prompting us to believe that we were the masters of the universe.

Benedict, with all the failings of being human, asked the question of God in a rhetorical sense, as do many of the Psalmists. Maybe today with the horror of Ukraine, there are those who will point to the war as proof that there is no God. They will argue that no God could allow this to happen. But what if I say, here we are, with all our mastery, our control, our intelligence, our sophistication and we do this to one another. Maybe after all we are anything but the masters of the universe.

I recall my late father saying to me that once weapons are produced, they will be used. And here we are doing just that. All those sparkling and perfectly greased weapons of war, which cost billions, being used to kill, destroy and annihilate.

Tomorrow’s Gospel (John 20: 19-31) has two powerful images that help me in these dark days. At least they point to the never-ending inadequacy of the human condition.

In the days immediately after the Resurrection what do the disciples do? They close the doors because they were afraid of the Jews. Closing doors never works. Jesus comes among them and offers them peace. “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” He goes on to tell them to “receive the Holy Spirit.”

And in the concluding lines of the Gospel, St John tells the reader that some of the events of the death and resurrection of Jesus are recorded: “So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.”

Some lines in Shakespeare’s Hamlet come to mind in the midst of total turmoil: “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Don’t we need to remember that after all we are not the masters of the universe?  To  spend time and thought concentrating on God, the possibility of a God, would do us all some good. May we pray to God that those who are unleashing such violence on the world will stop. Help us, God. The peace that Jesus brings to his disciples is a much-cherished peace that is also available to you and me, to the people of Ukraine, to those who suffer violence and hatred around the world.

On Easter Sunday Pope Francis said: “We proclaim the resurrection of Christ when his light illuminates the dark moments of our existence.” And this is a dark moment. But the light of Christ overcomes the darkness. 

A Siberian journalist who refuses to toe the party line

From yesterday’s Guardian.

How important it is all societies that there are people who when they see wrongdoing are willing to speak out, no matter what the consequences may be for them.

And it’s not easy to stand up against any authority.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/21/im-waiting-to-be-arrested-russian-fake-news-law-targets-journalists?CMP=share_btn_link

A priest who stands up to his boss

From the Irish Times yesterday

Russian Orthodox Church lends legitimacy to war

The Svyato-prokrovs’kyy church in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church has given the war an air of legitimacy among Putin’s supporters, which has caused outrage in Ukraine. PHOTOGRAPH: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/ GETTY IMAGES

Many in Ukraine outraged over Moscow church’s stance on the war

Polina Ivanova

Fr Ioann Burdin, the priest of a small village in central Russia, began his first sermon since the outbreak of war with a promise to pray for the people of Ukraine, and for an end to their suffering.

One parishioner spoke up, objecting angrily to the priest’s words, delivered on a Sunday in March. Another, he noticed, did not repeat prayers after him during the mass. Then someone denounced him to the police. In early April, Fr Burdin celebrated his final mass.

The clergyman’s stance, condemning the bloodshed in Ukraine, was at odds with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has thrown its ideological weight behind the Kremlin’s war. In doing so, the Moscow-led church has risked alienating not only independently-minded clergy at home, but also many Ukrainians.

Fr Burdin was accused of “publicly discrediting the armed forces”, under a new military censorship law that can carry a prison sentence for repeated offences. The courts handed him a fine, and though he will remain in the priesthood, he last week left his village church for good. He did so of his own accord, he added.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Moscow-led branch of global Orthodoxy, this month called on Russians to rally around their government so the state could “repel its enemies, both external and internal”, a resounding message of support for the war. The church, one of the pillars of Vladimir Putin’s rule, has given the war an air of legitimacy among the president’s supporters, bolstering his depiction of Russia’s invasion as a reunion of ancient Slavic-Orthodox lands.

Kirill has presented the conflict not as an invasion of Ukraine but as a global, historic battle over values, with Russia the last bastion against an immoral west that gives licence, for example, to “gay parades”. He said “God’s truth” was on Russia’s side.

Special prayer

Since the outbreak of war, the patriarch has prayed for peace in Ukraine but also shared a pulpit with the head of Russia’s National Guard, a domestic military police force that has divisions fighting in Ukraine, gifting him an icon to support “young warriors”. This month, in a new military cathedral outside Moscow, Kirill read a special prayer for soldiers fighting for Russia’s “true independence”.

It was an “ecstatic symphony” of church and state, said Fr Burdin, speaking by phone from his tiny parish in Karabanovo, soon after his final sermon in the golden-domed church.

In Ukraine, it has caused outrage among many. Before the outbreak of war, thousands of parishes in Ukraine remained under Moscow’s control, with Kirill their spiritual leader, despite a historic split in 2018 that set up an independent, Kyiv-led church with its own religious leadership for the first time.

And yet the Moscow church has stayed silent about the fate of its parishioners in Ukraine, even as dozens of church buildings have come under fire and been destroyed, and priests have been forced to live in bomb shelters and organise emergency support for desperate communities.

“For Ukrainian priests and Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill has betrayed them,” said Sergei Chapnin, senior fellow in Orthodox Christian studies at Fordham University in the US.

“He has not said a word of support or of empathy to them. From their perspective, they simply do not exist for Patriarch Kirill,” Chapnin said.

A full 12,000 parishes in Ukraine were subject to Moscow and to Kirill before the war, according to Chapnin, representing about a third of all the parishes under Moscow’s control across both countries.

Fourteen per cent of Ukrainians identified with the Moscow-led church, out of a population of about 44 million, according to a poll by Ukraine’s Razumkov Centre.

Now, many are keen to see a break. Just two weeks into the war, a pollster found that more than half of Ukrainian Orthodox believers who attended Moscow-led churches wanted their church to break from Moscow and Kirill.

Many priests in the church have stopped mentioning Kirill’s name during prayers, meaning that thousands of Ukrainian parishes have now “de facto” left Moscow’s orbit, Chapnin said, though their formal allegiance to the spiritual leader will remain until Kyiv’s top bishop does the same.

Hundreds of Ukrainian priests, formally still members of the Moscow church, have called for Kirill to be tried in a rare church tribunal for “blessing the war against Ukraine”, signing their names to a petition launched by Andriy Pinchuk, a priest from a small town near Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.

“Over many years Patriarch Kirill in his public statements . . . asserted that he believes that the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine are his flock, for which he is responsible,” Pinchuk wrote. “And yet today he directly blesses the physical destruction of this community by the Russian forces.

“We declare that it is impossible for us to continue to be in any form of canonical allegiance to the Moscow Patriarch. This is the command of our Christian conscience,” he said.

Police summons

Meanwhile in Russia, many priests are choosing to stay silent, “burying their heads in the sand”, said Fr Georgi Sukhoboky, a priest who fled Russia in February, before the outbreak of war, after receiving a police summons over his criticism of a local archbishop’s spending habits.

Speaking from Poland, he said he balked at a recent synod, or meeting of Moscow bishops, where not a word was mentioned about the war, “as if they don’t see what is going on”.

Fr Burdin said he was treated fairly by his superior, Metropolitan Ferapont, though the two disagreed about whom an Orthodox priest should serve.

“A priest cannot share and preach his personal views, because people expect from him the words of the church,” the archbishop said.

When it comes to speaking out against war, Fr Burdin disagreed. “I serve God, after all,” he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

 

Putin has smeared the Russian people

In the Life&Arts section of the Financial Times Weekend there is a riveting story of Russian journalist Natalia Sindeyeva.

The 50 year-old journalist was in her late teens, early 20s during the period of Perestroika. She set up her own television station, which concentrated on western pop music. The station, TV Rain (or Dozhd) gradually moved to news and politics and reported on some of the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Chechnya when most other sations had nothing to say.

Rain has been closed down and Natalie is now living in Turkey, where she hopes to reestablish TV Rain.

She describes how Putin during all his years in leadership closed down all opposition to him.

Sindeyeva explains how it is very difficult to demand heroism  from people under totalitarianism.

She talks about it not just being collective guilt but collective complicity.

“What Putin has done is smear everyone, so you become part of it even without doing anything.

The article is written by Max Sheldon, who is the FT Moscow  bureau chief.

Our names say something about our identity

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

It’s something of a hobbyhorse of mine to point out that last Saturday was Holy Saturday and not Easter Saturday. Easter Saturday is this coming Saturday. Does Holy Saturday sound too holy these days?

When I started teaching German there was  a map of the country on the back of the textbook we were using. The map included both West and East Germany I told the students to cross out Chemnitz in East Germany and write over it Karl Marx Stadt. In 1990 I told the students to cross out Karl Marx Stadt on their map of Germany and replace it with the word Chemnitz.

After World War II the Communist Russian aligned East Germany changed the name of the city and then after the unification of Germany the Germans renamed it to its pre-1953 name.

 

We changed Sackville Street to O’Connell Street and yet we left Grafton Street with its old English name, as we did many of the more affluent shopping streets. Does that tell a story?

Over the years the railway has named and renamed stations. It was Ráth Luirc, changed to An Ráth and now it’s back to Charleville. On the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rising they renamed most of the stations on the network after people linked to the 1916 Rising. These days we are not passengers, we are all customers. I’d much prefer to be called a passenger than a customer.

I can still remember my granduncle calling the nearby town Maryborough in the early 1960s when in fact it had been changed to Portlaoighise, later Portlaoise in 1929.

Which do you call it: Derry or Londonderry, and why?

After the Marian year in 1954 many housing estates were called Marian after Mary the Mother of God. I can’t imagine too many newly built estates would be given such a name today. 

Many children born in in the Marian year were called Marian. A woman told me that there were so many Marian Ryans in her class in Tipperary that the students called their fellow students with the surname Ryan by the first letter of their confirmation name and their surname. It meant Marian Anne Ryan was called A Ryan etc. But it so happened one girl, whose name was Marian Una Ryan, was known as U Ryan. That would have been embarrassing for the poor girl.

Only last week BBC 2 Television aired a documentary on the brilliant Muhammad Ali.   He felt his birth name, Cassius Marcellus Clay, was a ‘slave name’ so he changed it to Muhammad Ali. At that time he converted to the Muslim faith.

The man was not just the world’s greatest boxer but he also had the keenest of eyes for justice and he was so funny, and a poet too. He refused to be drafted into the military as he objected to the US war in Vietnam.

 

Our names are important as are the names we give to towns and buildings. But is it the ruling elite of the day who ultimately decide what names we give people, towns and buildings? Sometimes the ruling elite is right in our faces, other times it is far more subtle.

Words of hope from Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby

Pope Francis denounces ‘cruel and senseless’ conflict in Ukraine on ‘Easter of war’ - https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2022/04/pope-denounces-cruel-and-senseless-conflict-in-ukraine-on-easter-of-war/

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in his Easter Sunday sermon said that Jesus addresses all our concerns and we are "caught in his hands".

In his powerful words yesterday the archbishop spoke of the evil of the war in Ukraine and spoke of the importance of peace. He said we did not want to go down the road of Bismarck, who spoke about ‘blood and iron’.

Archbishop Welby was also critical of the UK government’s decision to send illegal emigrants to Rwanda. He also made reference to the financial hardship that people were currently experiencing across the United Kingdom.

Pope Francis and Oscar Wilde

A quote from Pope Francis that seems apposite this Easter as barbarity reigns in Ukraine. And then lines penned by Oscar Wilde. Why not?

"We proclaim the resurrection of Christ when his light illuminates the dark moments of our existence.”

Easter Day

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome: 

The people knelt upon the ground with awe: 
And borne upon the necks of men I saw, 
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. 
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, 
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, 
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: 
In splendor and in light the Pope passed home. 
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years 
To One who wandered by a lonely sea, 
And sought in vain for any place of rest: 
"Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, 
I, only I, must wander wearily, 
And bruise My feet, and drink wine salt with tears.”

Happy Easter to all our readers.

Russian politician’s prophecy and dire warning to US

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died on April 6, was a Russian ultranationalist politician and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He was a member of the Duma from 1993 to 2000 and again from 2011 until this year. He was an ally of Vladimir Putin.

Last December he said the following in the Duma:

“At 4am on February 22 you’ll feel [our new policy]. I’d like 2022 to be peaceful .... It won’t be peaceful. It will be a year when Russia finally becomes great once again, and everyone has to shut up and respect our country."

It was at the same hour and just two days later that Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine.

Zhirinovsky’s words are quite extraordinary. The 75-year old politician had been in hospital for three weeks from Covid complications by the time Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine.

His mother was Russian and his father was a Jewish Ukrainian, who had been deported from western Ukraine.

When reporters tried to square his Jewish heritage with his anti-Semitic outbursts, he would joke: "My mother is Russian and my father is a lawyer.”

CNN reported yesterday that Russia has warned the US to stop arming Ukraine. The State Department has replied that nothing will stop the US sending weapons.

A bit of fun with linguistics, grammar, words and bad spelling Добро пожаловать к нашим русским читателям

On RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime yesterday there was a discussion on language and accents.

Dr Mairead Moriarty, a senior lecturer at UL, said on the programme: “Children are particularly unique when it comes to language.”

The word ‘unique' seems to be a stumbling block, in this case, even for a linguistic expert.

And then the above picture from a parish newsletter. Parishioners may have trouble finding the 'altar of response'. Then again, if they ‘followid’ the right person they might get lucky.

Yesterday this blog had its highest number of readers in Russia in its 22 years of publication. 

Вчера у этого блога было самое большое количество читателей в России за 22 года его существования.

Ukraine decline visit of German president

A strain in the relationship between Ukraine and Germany has arisen.

Ukraine declined a visit of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. They said they would prefer German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to visit Kyiv.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a stark reminder of the butchery and savergy of World War II.

German general Erich von Manstein oversaw the murder of 14,000 civilians as the German army occupied Crimea. They included Jews, Gypsies and Tartars.

Manstein was tried in Hamburg, sentenced to 18 years in jail but only served four. He served as a military adviser to the German government. He died in Munich in 1973.

He was associated with battles and unspeakable atrocities in places that are now so familiar, Kharkiv, on the river Dnieper, Sevastopol, Crimea.

And now it’s the Russians who are carrying out the barbarity.

Br Mark Thomas McGreevy OP (1942 - 2022) - an obituary

Dominican brother Mark McGreevy, who died on Sunday, was born in the parish of

Croghan in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Roscommon on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1942. He was baptised Thomas and given the name Mark on joining the Order.

Mark joined the Dominicans in St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght in 1959, receiving the habit that year. 

He made his first profession in 1960 and took solemn vows in 1966.

During his almost 30 years in Tallaght he worked on the farm, the garden, the sacristy and the refectory.

It was a time when there were many daily and Sunday Masses, which meant Mark was busy working in the church, where he gave great dedication. He took excellent care of the church and sacristy during all his years as sacristan. Like so many of the co-operator brothers Mark was the person who was the first contact between the people, who attended our churches and the Dominicans. In modern parlance he was the front-of-house person, an extremely important position. First impressions are lasting.

When he came to the refectory to have his breakfast after the 8am Mass, the last of the three early morning daily Masses, he would speak like a railway man and comment: “Yep, the 08.00 has gone out”. Mark had a great talent for a splendid turn of phrase. 

He was a man of simple taste and style but had a wisdom and cunning, which one would underestimate at their peril.

The famous Maelruains tree caused Mark a problem. A branch from the tree made it difficult for him to cut the surrounding grass while driving the lawnmower so he decided one morning in the early hours to cut the branch. The then prior, Paul Hynes happened to be awakened by the sound of the saw, observed what was going on and suggested to Mark that he refrain. Mark quipped: “Was it the ‘sawin' or the ‘shnappin' that woke ye?” 

Mark was a soft and gentle person but had great strength. 

In the 1970s and '80s there were seven Sunday Masses in the priory church in Tallaght, including an evening Mass. Occasionally, when Mark deserved a free Sunday afternoon and evening he would quietly leave the keys at the door of an unsuspecting student, who would graciously substitute for Mark at the evening Mass and lock up the church afterwards.

“Mark was larger than life. He was always at the service of the brethren, whether he was working in the garden, the farm, the sacristy or the refectory,” recalls Fr Donal Sweeney.

During his years in Tallaght he was a keen cyclist. He developed a close friendship with the late Bill Smith, who was a member of the local branch of the Legion of Mary. 

The two men went on many cycling expeditions, including on one occasion the 185 kilometre-long cycle from Tallaght to Mark’s home parish in Carrick-on-Shannon.

Before the Second Vatican Council non-ordained brothers/lay brothers/co-operator brothers were considered second-class citizens.

In the mid-1960s the late Paul Murphy was student master in Tallaght and was determined to bring about a more egalitarian environment in the priory.

It meant there was better interaction between non-ordained brothers and student brothers. Relations between both groups were put on a more normal, natural and human level.

Mark was involved in breaking the mould and as a result, on one occasion he and Fr Patrick O’Brien(Patrick  is now officially no longer Jordan but Patrick) hitched a lift to Donard from where they climbed Lugnaquilla, the highest mountain in Leinster and the fourth highest mountain in Ireland, standing at 925 metres. Patrick still remembers how fit and athletic Mark was that summer's day in 1966.

“When we got back to Tallaght we were both delighted with ourselves, if tired. It had been a good day, mission accomplished”, Patrick remembers.

Through his work in the church Mark made many life-long friends and was a regular visitor to their homes, where he was received with open arms.

He often set off in the small hours on his bicycle to visit people.

He had a great interest in traditional Irish music and an extensive collection of tapes from many céilí bands.

At the top of his list was the Kilfenora Céilí Band. Mark attended many of their concerts and had a large collection of their music.

He moved from Tallaght to Sligo in 1988 and the following year was assigned to St Mary’s Priory, The Calddagh in Galway.

In 1999 he moved to St Catherine’s Priory in Newry, where he died on Sunday.

Former Dominican priest, Jerry O’Keeffe, on learning of Mark’s death said: “I remember Mark as a gentleman and a very kind man.”

Mark was related to Vincent Hanly, who was bishop of Elphin between 1950 and 1970.

The late Hyacinth Bernard Moore OP was born in the same parish as Mark.

It so happens that US bishop, theologian and television personality Fulton Sheen’s maternal grandparents came from Mark’s home parish of Croghan.

In 1952 on a visit to Croghan Fulton Sheen dedicated the parish church. Most likely the 10-year-old Thomas McGreevy was in the church that day with his parents.

Mark suffered ill health in recent years, which included being a victim of Covid and had been bedridden for the last year.

May he rest in peace.

Mark’s funeral Mass takes place today in the Dominican church, St Catherine’s Newry at 12.30pm, followed by interment in priory graveyard.

I’ll never now traverse the roads of Putin’s tanks

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

On Friday my motorbike fell as I was taking it out of the shed. It’s a big bike, a Honda Deauville 680cc. 

I was lucky that I did not break my leg but am annoyed that I broke the brake lever, the right mirror and did some damage to the wind shield. 

Had it fallen on me, which could easily have happened, and I had broken my leg I wouldn’t be worried about the damage done to the bike.

My dream when I bought the bike was to drive it from Volgograd to Berlin, to travel the route the Red Army took from the city on the river Volga, that was then called Stalingrad, to the German capital.

Having spent many years teaching German I had become fascinated with what happened at Stalingrad and how the Red Army under Georgy Zhukov had outgunned and outmanoeuvred the all-conquering German Army. 

Up to then many believed the German Army was invincible. Stalingrad proved that not to be so and changed the course of the war. After victory on the river Volga the Red Army made its way to Berlin and victory in May 1945.

I wanted to traverse the roads of Marshal General Georgy Zhukov’s army from Stalingrad to Berlin. The war in Chechnya frightened me, indeed, it was becoming noticeable that Vladimir Putin was beginning to undo all the democratisation that had begun to blow through Russia under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. It was Gorbachev who had introduced Perestroika, which means opening up and democratising the dying Soviet system. 

It was a time of extraordinary hope. But within a few years that hope died. Under Boris Yeltsin’s leadership Russia lost its standing in the world and the old hardline Communists felt that Mother Russia was being humiliated and that the West was not helping them in their moment of despair.

A young former KGB operative, who later became head of the FSB, Russian Federal Security Service, rose to the top job, just as Hitler did after the humiliation of Germany after World War I.

Putin promised to make Russia great again.

Right in front of our eyes he is murdering thousands of people and destroying stone-by-stone the infrastructure of a country.

And as his troops fire their missiles from far away, indeed, sometimes within Russia, the marauding infantry kill, maim and rape Ukrainians.

Putin says he wants to denazify Ukraine and he is concerned about Nato getting ever closer to Russia.

Yes, maybe the West could have done things differently but nothing could ever have justified what Putin and his army is now doing in Ukraine.

I presume he knows President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Jew.

It is beyond annoying to see how Kirill the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is sidling up to Putin. He believes this is a holy war fighting the decadence of the West. What outrageous gibberish.

There have been rumours that Pope Francis might visit Ukraine. Wouldn’t that be spectacular.

My dream cycle will not happen. I would never want to traverse the roads Putin's tanks have travelled on their way to Ukraine.

Mark Thomas McGreevy OP, RIP

Dominican Mark McGreevy died yesterday evening in St Catherine’s Dominican Priory, Newry.

May he rest in peace.

Obituary to follow. 

New commander in charge of Russian army in Ukraine

Below is an interesting article from the Guardian. It is about the new Russian commander in Ukraine. He is Alexander Dvornikov, who oversaw Russian troops commit war crimes in Syria. He is 60 and learned his trade in the days of the Soviet Union.

It’s interesting that once Germany began to suffer defeats in World War II no matter how often Hitler changed battlefield commanders it became impossible  for Germany to resist the ever-growing world opposition to him.

History has a way of repeating itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/10/alexander-dvornikov-russian-general-who-helped-turn-tide-of-syrian-war?CMP=share_btn_link 

On this day, April 11, 1963 Pope Pius XXXIII issued Pacem in ferris. It was the first encyclical addressed to all Christians. It described the conditions for world peace.

The all-powerful Callinan brothers

In the next days pay talks will begin to take place for the 350,000 employees who work in the public service.

Civil servants from the Department of Public Expenditure will sit across the table with a team from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu).

The union team is headed by Ictu president and chairman of its public service committee Kevin Callinan.

It so happens that Kevin Callinan is the brother of the newly appointed secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach and the most powerful civil servant John Callinan.

The brothers will not be meeting at the negotiations. But it will be interesting to know what they’ll have to say to each other privately on the negotiations.

Ukraine’s Winter on Fire - Netflix excellent documentary

‘Winter on Fire’ is a Netflix documentary on Ukraine’s fight for freedom.

The 90-minute film gives an excellent insight into the genesis of the brutal war that Russia is fighting in the country.

On this day, April 9, 1945 theologian and anti-Hitler protestor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was murdered on a meat hook in Tegel Prison, Berlin. Within a month Hitler was dead.

Bonhoeffer can be an inspiration to the people of Kyiv, indeed, to all of us in these terrible days of Russian butchery.

It has to be light over darkness, life over death.

In 'Winter on Fire’ it’s inspiring to see the enthusiasm and goodness of youth. They are an example and inspiration for all of us.

One hundred metres on one week later

One hundred metres on from last

week’s sighting.

At present there are two swans at Charlemont Bridge on the Grand Canal in South Dublin.

Whether this is the same swan as last week, who knows.

What do we ever know about anything?

On this day, April 8, 1943 Otto and Elise Hampel were murdered by guillotine in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin.

After the German victory in France they began distributing postcards opposed to Hitler. It took the SS a long time to find them.

Their heroism inspired Hans Fallada to write ‘Alone in Berlin’.

In the book the catalyst for their project was the news that their only son had fallen in the French campaign.

Aren’t words like fallen and campaign similar to Putin’s Special Military Operation?

The lies, brutality and evil of war. The rape that happens in war.