We’ve much to learn from Archbishop Ronald Hicks

This blog has already brought attention to the Mass of installation of the new archbishop of Ronald Hicks in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.
Great music, clapping, flowers, relatives, friends, dignitaries in the sanctuary, humour, joy. In other words, normal human behaviour. And yet, all done with great reverence and dignity and faith too.

https://youtu.be/NkigRQWAuSI?si=3eUvzcQYtYwUJR4m

Letting people know we appreciate them means so much

The week’s column in The Kerryman this week.

Michael Commane

It was Oscar Wilde who said sarcasm is the lowest form of wit; you could stretch it and add cynicism. 

No doubt people who tend to be cynical look at life with a jaundiced eye. We are all children of our environment. Every moment of those nine months in our mother’s womb we are developing and accustoming ourselves to our environment.

There are occasions when I can be cynical but I think I can argue there is justification for such an attitude.

Most times when I hear PR people talk about how open, caring and transparent their organisation is I’m inclined to smile, maybe just a little, but yes, I wonder how accurate or truthful are their words.

Watching Caroline Leavitt, President Trump’s press officer, speaking about the killing in Minneapolis I did wonder did the woman really believe what she was saying.

But no doubt it’s the job of PR people to protect their organisations and, indeed, their jobs.

Some weeks ago I wrote a column about the inspiring behaviour of a Luas tram ticket checker. In mid- January I sent the piece to Luas. So far no acknowledgment. I’ve met the checker many times since and he tells me the company has never mentioned it to him.

I’m always saying it’s the little things that say so much about us; they highlight our qualities but they also catch us out when our behaviour is mean or selfish.

Organisations and companies can easily spend large sums of cash on PR and indeed HR but far too often their main purpose is to protect the name of the organisation and its brand.

The same applies to the churches. All the talk that we hear today about safeguarding procedures; would all that be taking place had they not been caught out for their appalling behaviour? 

Only last week at an Irish Rail ticket office I got chatting to the person behind the desk. Within minutes it was clear that he was angry with the company; he felt alienated and forgotten. 

Why? Has anyone thought of sitting down and talking to him about his job; what he finds good about it and what annoys him? Within two minutes of talking to him I realised he was an unhappy punter. 

Of course there are people who are never going to be pleased, but far too often those on the front line, those who are not being paid big salaries can so easily be forgotten.

The late Fergal Quinn, who founded the Superquinn supermarket chain, was famous for his belief that the customer was king/queen. He also treated all his staff with dignity. Why can’t organisations, churches, corporations realise their staff, all their staff, are queens and kings.

You might say it’s the way of the world; it doesn’t have to be.

The Gospels regularly tell us to be inclusive in our attitude. It makes great sense to take heed of that sentiment.

There’s far too much ‘them and us’ in society, maybe that’s why right now there is such unease in the world.

Good management means taking care of staff, listening to them, praising them and taking them seriously. It’s good business too, and pays in the long run.

Sixty year-old man believes Sinn Féin can solve problems

Two strangers get chatting on the Luas. One man has a large shopping bag full of empty plastic bottles and drink cans. He gets chatting to the man beside him. The topic moves to politics. The man heading to the Re-turn facility says to the other he has never been interested in politics or ‘anything like that’. 

He goes on to explain how he has lost all trust in politicians and none of them is doing anything to help him. But he does explain that he has a Travel Pass, which he finds a great asset. He’s not at Travel Pass age but because of heart problems he managed to get the golden card.

He believes that Sinn Fein could improve his lot and hopes they’ll form the next government. He plans to vote for them in the next general election.

Former Dominican priest Tom Brodie 1940 - 2026 - an obit

Former Dominican priest Tom

Tom Brodie

Brodie died in a nursing home in Galway yesterday. He had been ailing for some time.

He was born in Crusheen, Co Clare in November 1940. He attended St Flannan’s College in Ennis and De La Salle College, Waterford before joining the Dominican Order in 1959 in Pope’s Quay, Cork, where he did his noviciate. On taking his first vows the following year, Tom moved to Tallaght, where he studied philosophy and theology. He was ordained a priest on July 10, 1966.

After priestly ordination he attended the University of St Thomas in Rome, where he did post graduate studies in theology. He also was a biblical student at the École biblique in Jerusalem and at Yale in the United States.

Tom spent a number of years in Trinidad, where he taught in the seminary. During that time he wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper. He later used those columns in writing his book ‘What Colour is God’s Skin'. It was a pertinent topic at the time as it was the early days of Black Power in Trinidad.

His first and primary passion in life was the study of the Bible.

He studied Greek in secondary school and it is said of him that while shaving every morning in Tallaght it was his custom to learn 10 Hebrew words. Tom was a serious student. His fellow students knew that he was not a man to waste time on frivolous pursuits. 

He taught biblical studies in the United States and South Africa.

Tom is the author of many scholarly works on the Bible. He attended biblical international conferences on a yearly basis and was recognised among his peers for his scholarship.

He was the first director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, which opened in 2001. Tom remained as director until 2012. The institute closed in 2016.

The Irish Catholic of January 21, 2013 wrote the following about Tom: “This[Tom’s retirement as director] coincided with his publication of Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, in which he claimed Jesus Christ did not exist as an historical person and led the Irish Dominican province to direct him to withdraw from ministry and cease teaching and writing."

Tom did not accept the findings of the Dominicans. He argued that he was entering into the ongoing debate about the historical person of Christ

On retiring from priesthood he married Peig Mc Grath, a friend over many years, who had worked with him in the Biblical Institute. She cared for him in his failing years and in his final illness.

May he rest in peace.

Tom's body will be lying in state at O'Flaherty Funeral Parlour, Munster Avenue (H91V1K8), Galway on Thursday, February 12, from 5pm. Removal to the Church of Christ the King, Salthill at 6.30pm.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated at 11.00am. 

Afterwards burial in Rahoon cemetery. 

Mass will be live streamed. Link: https://mcn.live/Camera/christ-the-king-church-salthill

Bruce Springsteen’s view of what’s happened in Minneapolis

From the National Catholic Reporter:

In his latest single, "Streets of Minneapolis," Bruce Springsteen offers Americans a soundtrack to the liturgy of protest.

Read more: https://www.ncronline.org/node/323296

https://youtu.be/GDaPdpwA4Iw?si=0Xy0DuCJjkJk_J6A

Archbishop Ronald Hicks clearly in the Pope Leo mould

Below is the link to the inaugural Mass of the new archbishop of New York, Ronal Hicks.

First impressions are impressive. Interesting how the new archbishop speaks both in Spanish and English. The sermon begins at  42.27 minutes.

 https://youtu.be/NkigRQWAuSI?si=3eUvzcQYtYwUJR4m

Silent, unseeing and uncaring, Melania a true Stepford Wife

Justine McCarthy’s column in The Irish Times yesterday. It’s great reading. What are her chances of entering the United States?

Yesterday Trump published on Truth Social a picture of Barack Obama and his wife with heads replaced with heads of monkeys. The US president is a vile man. It has since been removed.

Thank you Justine for you  Friday column.

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With impeccable choreography, the Melania movie was unleashed in cinemas on the same day as the release of the Epstein Files – the Final Avalanche. The former showcases the ultimate Stepford wife for the cast of leading men appearing in the latter.

According to universally-derisive reviews, Melania, a documentary for which the nominal US first lady was paid the obscene sum of $28 million (€23.7 million), demolishes any hope that under that big hat is a head swilling with profound thoughts. Looking stunning and saying nothing really is the sum of Missus Trump’s functions.

Though at 55 she would have been four decades past it for Epstein’s delectation, she is the photofit of discretion for the rich and powerful men he mustered in his orbit. There was former US president Bill Clinton who did, actually, have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky; Elon Musk, Grok owner and father of 14 children by four women; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who claims he is incapable of sweating; Peter Mandelson, aka the Prince of Darkness and Britain’s erstwhile ambassador to the US; film director Woody Allen, married to his former partner’s adopted daughter; Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates; former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak; and Brett Ratner, Melania’s vanity-movie director, who is captured hugging a woman he says was his then-fiancée on a sofa beside Epstein in one of the released photographs.

Donald Trump’s name is all over the documents, though – as in the other cases too – in no incriminating sense, by legal definition. He is suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 million for reporting that he sent the sex trafficker a 50th birthday greeting by way of a drawing of a naked woman. The sketch was in an earlier dump of Epstein documents. The files are extensively redacted, hiding the identities of powerful men and women who rubbed shoulders with the odious child abuser Epstein. The department of justice denied similar consideration for his victims, dozens of whom have been identified with publication of their personal information, including their images and home addresses.

Not every woman in this horror story is a victim. Epstein’s consort Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker. Others, like Mette-Marit, Norway’s crown princess, and Sarah Ferguson, are royals or royalty-adjacent. This is a parable of gender-and-class prejudice.

Disposable people

The Epstein saga exposes the contempt that gilded global networkers reserve for the woman of the species, particularly the less privileged members they adjudge to be not-wife material. According to the New York Times, many of Epstein’s under-age victims came from broken homes and poor backgrounds. Some had previously suffered abuse. “They were viewed as disposable people,” the newspaper states.

If only those girls and women had a champion in the White House who could intercede on their behalf. Someone, say, with ready access to the president’s ear and a worldwide audience.

But for Melania to open her mouth would risk smudging her lipstick, so she keeps it shut. She has nothing to say about Project 2025, the blueprint for her husband’s second reign of terror in the White House, starting with his attack on gender equality policies.

She has nothing to say about America’s clampdown on women’s reproductive rights. Nothing to say about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) shooting an unarmed mother dead in her car. Nothing to say when her husband lectured pregnant women to “tough it out” because, he wrongly asserted, they could give their children autism by taking a Tylenol painkiller. Nothing to say after her husband trivialised domestic violence as “a man [having] a little fight with the wife”.

Nothing to say when a jury concluded her husband sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll. Nothing to say about the post- coital hush-money he paid to Stormy Daniels. Nothing to say after he was asked would he stay with his wife if she was disfigured in a car crash and answered: “How do the breasts look?”

Granted, being married to such a man is a terrible cross to bear. Watching the one- time model from Slovenia in the decade since Donald Trump first became US president, the hope endured that someday she would erupt in righteous fury at his objectification of womankind.

Her intervention would be significant in an age when war crimes against women and girls go unpunished, violent pornography is big business and the internet’s corner boys preach misogynistic vitriol, putting woman lives at risk. Melania’s nearly two-hour-long documentary was an opportunity to make that difference. Instead, she used it to parade her partiality to expensive fabrics and staggeringly high heels.

This woman once sparked a fashion frenzy by wearing a jacket emblazoned on the back with the message, “I really don’t care, do U?” It transpires she wasn’t lying. The emperor’s wife has only clothes.

Slow death

To borrow from Noel Coward’s advice to Mrs Worthington, mothers would be well advised not to let their daughters – or sons – near Melania’s stage. Unless one’s burning ambition is to become a shiny trad wife, there are more inspiring role models on the silver screen.

The Pelicot Rape Case: A Town on Trial stars French woman Gisèle Pelicot. She made a difference when she waived her right to anonymity to ensure that her husband’s trial for drugging and raping her and inviting more than 70 other men to rape her too would be reported around the world.

Or go and see The Voice of Hind Rajab, the true story of a five-year-old Gazan girl’s agonisingly slow death in a car full of her dead cousins, killed by Israeli soldiers who also killed the ambulance crew trying to rescue her. “Mummy, I need to go to the toilet,” the child told her mother on the phone as she lay dying among the corpses.

Unlike Melania, Ask E Jean, a documentary about Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump for sexually assaulting her, did not get a razzmatazz cinema release with branded popcorn. In fact, you won’t find it in any cinema, because everyone’s too scared of Donald’s revenge.

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice reignited the Epstein scandal when it was published after Virginia Giuffre’s death by suicide last year. “Passed around like a platter of fruit” by Epstein and his pals, she survived long enough to rock the world with her revelations. Because, for her, saying nothing was not an option. Because saying nothing is collaboration.

It seems words lose their meanings in times of crisis

The life and times of  Jeffry Epstein were the subject of yesterday’s post on this blog. Mention was made of his suicide, might he have been murdered.

The writer of this blog was in conversation yesterday with a number of people and the Epstein saga came up for mention. Someone in the group assured us all that Epstein was alive; that he had been taken out of his prison in a wheelchair. She was convinced of what she said and said it with great authority She told us it was her son who knew all about it. Another person said they knew he had been murdered.

Both people were adamant and convinced they knew the truth.

But of course they don’t know; how could they?

Last evening associate professor at the Loyola Institute in Trinity College, Fáinche Ryan gave a lecture titled Truth Matters: Living Truthfully in Challenging Times.

She spoke about Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of truth and how speaking the truth we both enhance ourselves and the person to whom we speak. And that God is truth. The importance of speaking truth in order to create trust in community.

Ms Ryan referred to the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the German authorities some short few days before the end of the war. 

Bonhoeffer asks is it ok to tell a lie to protect someone from being harmed by evil. It sounds simple, of course it is. But she want on to point out that the philosopher Immanuel Kant would not agree with Bonhoeffer.

She concluded her lecture talking about the importance of words.

It’s interesting how right now Peter Mandelson is being called a liar in the public square. It must be close to 30 years since he was christened the first spin doctor; he was also known as the Prince of Darkness.

A spin doctor is someone who is economical with the truth. Is a spine doctor a liar. These days we are slow to call someone a liar, easier to say they are challenged by the truth or economical with it.

Cardinal Desmond Connell use the expression ‘a mental reservation’. Is that another term for spinning the truth? Who knows.

In these days of such unrest and confusion it seems speaking the truth, attempting to discover the truth is a must for all of us.

Social media can throw material at us that has no truth whatsoever, it can rubbish years of real scholarship and so many of us can fall for it.

What can we do?

The Epstein story adds to the feeling of fear and worry

It's difficult to get one’s head around the Jeffrey Epstein story.

How many world leaders have been caught up with Epstein? What did he have? 

From day one of his working life there was mystery about him. He was employed to teach maths without having the necessary qualifications; on being fired from there he went into banking, a short time later started his own company.

How can one man attract such a group of people?

He procured over 1,000 underage girls, who were trafficked, used and raped by his friends.

And his friends are no hoi polloi; they are the rich and famous.

The documents that have recently been released tell an incredible story. But we are not getting the full story; large sections have been redacted

It’s manna from heaven for the far right agenda whistlers; it’s also ammunition for the growing anti-Semitism that is gaining momentum by the day.

Might there be truth to those stories about the alleged carry-on of Trump in his Moscow hotel? What really is the relationship between Trump and Putin?

And to think of the soldiers on the front and what they are experiencing every day and night, the people across Ukraine. As per always, cannon fodder for the great and powerful. How many Russian lives are being lost every day?

The story of Peter Mandelson is probably the tip of the iceberg.

After all of what we now know how can anyone believe that Epstein took his life by suicide.

The soldiers on the front, the women who were raped, abused, trafficked, who really cares about them.

Are we all pawns in the hands of a few powerful crooks?

And the oxygen that gives life to all this is secrecy, a contortion of what honest confidentiality means.

The late Dominican priest, Paul Hynes believed that the banks had power over us, not because they have our money but they know what we do with our money; they have knowledge about us.

And in the world of control and power that knowledge seems to go one way and always in the favour of the rich and powerful.  

Leaders are expected to lead, set a standard.

The world is becoming a more dangerous place every day; people feel alienated and angry. Leaders like Trump, Farage and company are using that anger for their own ends, while also adding to the flames.

Yesterday in Germany a train host died as a result of being assaulted by a passenger who did not have a valid ticket.

The everyday violence, the palpable anger is seething, it seems as if something has to give.

Rachel O’Shea - a beacon to the people of West Kerry

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

In the heyday of the newspaper trade death notices and obituaries appeared on the front page.

In most newspapers the deaths are now recorded on the back pages and even there they are getting sparser and sparser. It’s not that people have stopped dying but like everything else in our lives even the dead have gone digital.

Scrolling down through RIP.ie last week it dawned on me that my name too will appear there someday. 

The finality of death is mind-boggling. In recent days a young man, whom I knew, took his life by suicide; it has shocked me. I feel powerless and remorseful. 

What if I had I chatted with him? He was far too young to die. Let’s remember him in our prayers/thoughts. 

And that brings me to another side of death. Rachel O’Shea died last week in a nursing home in Kilcummin, she was 94 years of age.

Rachel lived and worked in the Castlegregory Post Office all my life and longer. She worked there with her late sister Mary Egan, who was the post mistress. 

Mary was married to Sean Egan. The Egan family and Rachel lived their lives over the post office. As in so many towns and villages across the country the post office was an institution.

Castlegregory was synonymous with the post office and inside that post office Mary Egan and Rachel O’Shea plied their trade.

The post office was a homely welcoming place, where people felt secure and at home. Rachel listened to people while never betraying anyone. A villager recalled how he loved going into the PO, where he got the scent of mail and mailbags and at the same time was made aware that food was being prepared in the kitchen.

The post office is now situated in the Spar shop across the road, where it offers a professional service.

Over the years and especially in these last years I grew extremely fond of Rachel. I never once went in the door without she giving me a smile and saying an uplifting word. 

Rachel thought everyone was great. She was a wise woman, who respected every customer, who came into that post office. Every child who called to the post office left with sweets. A mother told me her daughter never came home from the post office without telling her Rachel had given her sweets.

Rachel was a woman of deep faith, which expressed itself in her genuine concern and interest in those who stepped inside that door. She went well beyond the call of duty, and everyone appreciated that. She was gentle and generous.

We keep talking about how advanced we have become, the marvels of technology. Yes, it has its advantages but I much prefer chatting with people than conducting all my business by pressing buttons.

We’ve become slaves to our phones and tablets and aliens to our neighbour.

I’m reminded of TS Eliot’s lines: ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?/Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ 

No technology, no AI, not the fastest hard drive on the planet could possibly replace Rachel’s smile and kindness.

I know Rachel would want us to remember her in our prayer.

Tesco worker awarded €12k over missing €20 note

This is an incredible story. How

Tesco have allowed this case to go so far. Putting this decent employee through the wringer for a €20 note? What are Tesco’s profits.  MoRe proof of the great work the WRC does.

This report is from the weekend edition of The Irish Times.

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STEPHEN BOURKE

Tesco bosses made a “fatal” error by failing to search bins for a missing €20 note in an investigation that led to the sacking of a veteran 61-year-old worker, a tribunal has found.

A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator found there was no dishonesty on the part of the worker, Declan Kavanagh, whom she said had misplaced the money.

She awarded him €12,000 on foot of a complaint challenging his January 2024 sacking.

Mr Kavanagh was suspended on October 31st, 2023 pending a formal investigation after he said at a meeting that he was “unsure” what happened to the banknote, a sitting of the tribunal at Castlebar Courthouse was told last year.

Aisling McDevitt, for Tesco, argued it was “clear that the complainant had placed the €20 note in his pocket”. Mr Kavanagh said this allegation was contradicted by CCTV footage that he only saw played for the first time when his case was heard.

Primary finding

Mr Kavanagh told the tribunal he had accepted that he “misplaced” the banknote and had offered to pay it back “on that first day and ever since”.

He said things were busy, he had receipts in his hand at the time along with the banknote, and had been engaged talking to a customer.

A store manager who acted as disciplinary officer said in his evidence that video footage “showed the complainant taking the €20 out, holding on to it, and putting it in his pocket and removing his hand”.

However, under cross-examination, the manager accepted that five minutes passed on the CCTV footage between the money being in the machine and Mr Kavanagh’s hand going into his pocket.

In her decision, adjudication officer Gráinne Quinn wrote that the company had made a reasonable “primary finding” that Mr Kavanagh “did not place the money where he should have” – based on the worker’s own “voluntary” admission.

“During the investigation, the bins where the money may have gone [were] never searched,” Ms Quinn wrote, awarding Mr Kavanagh €12,000 for unfair dismissal.