Forty five years since the Buttevant rail crash

On this day, Saturday, August 1, 1980 18 people and over 180 passengers were injured at Buttevant, Co Cork. They were travelling on the 10.00 train from Dublin Heuston to Kent Station Cork.

Due to engineering work taking pace at Buttevant station the points had been disconnected from the signal on the main down line.

The train, pulled by 075 GM locomotive, was made up of old timber-framed coaches.

The locomotive driver, Berti Walsh, did everything according to the rule book and at the subsequent State Inquiry gave a great account of himself.

At the time of the accident the railway was in a poor and dangerous state of repair; out-of-date signalling systems, old dilapidated rolling stock and successive governments with little or no interest in the railway.

Universal wise words from Cicero (106 – 43 BC/BCE)

"The Foundation of Justice is Trust in other words consistency and truthfulness in declarations and compacts." 

Cicero, DeOfficiis, book 1

‘There was no one left to speak out for me’

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

There are lasting images that leave an indelible mark on our souls. An example is the 1972 picture of the little girl running away from the bomb with her back on fire. That iconic picture helped end the war in Vietnam.

Last week on the RTE 1 evening news I saw a picture of a starving Palestinian child in its father’s arms. The following day on Morning Ireland the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese described the conditions in Gaza; she spoke eloquently and clearly about the hell the people are experiencing at the hands of the Israelis.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has strongly criticised the current behaviour of the Israeli government.

Every day doctors are pleading for help, explaining that the situation is hell on earth, people, tiny children dying in front of their eyes from starvation.

The doctors, the aid agency workers, António Guterres, Francesca Albanese are all respected people, who are genuinely interested in the plight of innocent suffering civilians.

Look at the total destruction that has been meted out on the Palestinian people and their properties.

Of course, it is a complicated history, the colonisers have much to answer. But this slaughter has to stop now.

What Hamas did on October 7, 2023 was a horrendous crime against innocent people and the Israelis have of course a right to self- defence.

T

he European Union has evolved with the aim of never again allowing the catastrophe of the Holocaust and WW II to happen.

I cannot understand if someone criticises the behaviour of the Israeli government they are automatically called an anti-Semite. I’ve lived in Germany. I have been to Büchenwald, Auschwitz-Birekneau, Sachenhausen. 

I have some knowledge of what the Germans did to the Jewish community. I never like to call them Nazis because by doing that we are turning the perpetrators into non-human monsters. It was the German government led by Hitler and supported by millions of German people, who committed monstrous crimes against the Jewish people, crimes that must not and cannot be forgotten. 

The criminals included teachers, train drivers, academics, tradespeople, doctors, they came from all walks of life. There were clergy, who supported the government, churches that turned a blind eye to the barbarity, Mercedes, Krupp, the pharmaceutical industry, industrialists and aristocrats knowingly supported the crimes of the German government.

I am lost for words to understand how someone who is opposed to the barbarity that is today being inflicted on the Palestinian people can be called an anti-Semite.

The German theologian and Lutheran priest Martin Niemöller’s poem is prescient today. He was an opponent of the then German government for which he spent time in a concentration camp.

First they came for the Communists/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a Communist/Then they came for the Socialists/ And I did not speak out/Because I was not a Socialist/Then they came for the trade unionists/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a trade unionist/Then they came for the Jews/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a Jew/Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.

How would Niemöller react to the image of the starving children in Palestine?

A waning religion hunting down heretics

A not to be missed read in The Irish Times today.

Lack of conviction and intolerance augur badly for social democracy

---

The laws of hydraulics are broken. US president Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dropped to second-term lows, yet the Democratic Party’s have fallen even further. They ought to be soaring. Just a third of Americans approve of them.

Much the same can be said of centrist and centre-left parties across the West. The odd one out is Canada. That is because Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s Liberal party is the staunchest defender of Canada’s sovereignty, the opposition having been too cosy with Trump. But Canada is the exception. Western liberalism is still on the retreat.

Populists

Where liberal democratic parties are in power, normal hydraulics still work. A year after taking office, British prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is lucky to poll at 25 per cent. Nigel Farage’s seven-year-old populist Reform party is, meanwhile, attracting almost a third of voters. Less than three months after taking office, Germany’s two big parties are neck and neck with far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This is despite (or maybe because) of the fact that German intelligence recently branded AfD as rightwing extremist.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National likewise polls streets ahead of the other parties despite Le Pen having been debarred from running in the next presidential election.

Of the big European nations, Italy’s hard-right Giorgia Meloni has the highest approval rating. Even Trump, who is sinking into a self-created doldrum, has his head above water. His recent 37 per cent Gallup rating is well above the Democratic Party. When the left is in office, populists make hay. When the right holds power, the left rarely does. For further evidence, see Netanyahu’s Israel and Modi’s India.

That there are multiple causes of western liberalism’s malaise makes it harder to fix. Complexity encourages infighting. Long after Taylor Swift hits retirement age, Democrats will still be arguing over whether former US president Joe Biden was too old to run, or too selfish to step down sooner. They might also still be debating whether the left is too woke or not woke enough. Can the left in office do more to improve the economy for blue-collar classes? Does immigration enrich society or squeeze the working class? Should there be a wealth tax? Is Israel commiting war crimes? Such questions reliably divide.

Beyond the internal divisions, contemporary liberalism has two character defects that augur badly for its resurgence. The first is lack of conviction. It is all very well pointing out the dangers of Trump, Farage, Le Pen and others. It would be negligent not to. But making the negative case is not enough. “I might not be beautiful but have you seen that ugly person next to me?” said no winner of a beauty contest ever. As former US president Bill Clinton once said, strong and wrong always beats weak and right. Focus groups cannot solve this.

Western liberalism’s second defect is intolerance.

American liberals were at their worst during the pandemic. That anti-vaxxer conservatives were even crazier should be no comfort. One day, it seemed, Dr Anthony Fauci was telling the United States that masks were not essential. The next, Rochelle Walensky, then head of the Centers for Disease Control was insisting that two-year-olds should be masked all day. Anyone entertaining the theory that the virus might have come from a Wuhan lab was dismissed as Sinophobic or worse. In December 2020, when vaccines became available, the Chicago Teachers Union tweeted: “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny.”

Everyone could agree back then that otherwise liberal Sweden was foolish to take the herd immunity route. That Sweden ended up with one of the lowest mortality rates in Europe has not been similarly highlighted. Covid is not ancient history. Any survey probing why so many young voters are turning right that excludes their pandemic experience is wasting time.

Road to recovery

The road to recovery starts with looking in the mirror. The seminal book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, by two Princeton scholars, should be compulsory reading across the spectrum. That it has not been reviewed by most big newspapers is troubling.

As social distancing rules go, so goes free speech.

Liberals said, “Follow the science”, which confused science with faith. Science is a trial-and-error process that only works with openness to dissent. The same applies to political debate on campus, within newspapers, at think tanks and society at large. To many younger voters, particularly men, today’s liberal establishment looks more like a conservative one.

Educated elites confect orthodoxy on what we should say and do. The resemblance to high Victorianism is more than passing. Victorians regulated manners and etiquette. They also dreaded the mob.

Expanding religions look for converts. Waning ones hunt down heretics. In form and content, western liberalism is dangerously close to the latter.

The good news is that liberalism has rebounded before. The bad news is it took a genocidal second World War to rediscover its necessity. Hoping that humanity is on a learning curve is not a strategy. The positive case for liberal democracy in today’s world is still waiting to be heard. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025

Have you been a victim of the ‘gen Z stare’?

This is a great read. From the Guardian.  Clever writing by Emma Beddington.

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/27/gen-z-stare-its-got-nothing-on-the-gen-x-look-of-dread?CMP=share_btn_url

Joseph Stalin’s Order 227 'Not a step back’ worked

On this day, July 28, 1942 Soviet

leader Joseph Stalin issued Order 227.

At the time the Germans were making steady advances across the Soviet Union. Order 227  proclaimed that all those who retreated or left their posts without explicit orders were to be tried by a military court. Punishment ranged from service in a penal battalion, imprisonment in a Gulag or most frequently execution.

The postage stamp shows a Soviet commissar throwing a grenade with  ‘not a step back’ written on it.

HSE wastes tens of millions of the people’s money

What a shambles.  Who are the people who manage the HSE?

Will the 2024 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General see the sacking of the managers, who wasted tens of millions of taxpayers’ money.

This surely is a national scandal. Managers must be held accountable for these gigantic misdeeds

Two separate entities of the HSE each paid out more than €700,000 to the one supplier for the same invoice.

Four million euro lost to the health insurance industry.

One HSE employee received just under €700,000 in total payments and 10 HSE staff were paid in excess of €500,000.

Personal protective equipment worth about €22 million and vaccine to the value of approximately €11 million were written off because they were out of date. The HSE also paid out €2.1 million to store obsolete supplies.

Who is accountable for this shambles. Is it any wonder voters are turning to the extremes when it comes to polling days.

Twenty one men each earning €83,846,15 a week

Irish CEOs made a lot of money last year. The average pay packet rose by 31 per cent to €4.36 million for the top 21 earners.

Kerry Group CEO Edmond Scanlon earned €6.04 million, Tony Smurfit brought home €12.71 million, Flutter’s Peter Jackson pocketed €18.92 million, more nags must have lost than won; Albert Manifold, who is leaving CRH, came home with €11.62 million; Bank of Ireland’s Myles O’Grady checked out with €1.37 million;  Michael Stanley of Carin Homes certainly had a roof over his head, earning €2.28 million.

And all 21 are men.

The average weekly pay pack works out at €83,846,15.

Is it any wonder a litre of milk costs upwards of €1.25.

The day Concorde crashes heralded the end of a dream

Twenty five years ago today

Air France Flight 4590 crashed shortly after take-off in Paris with all 109 passengers and crew, and four on the ground killed. This was the only fatal incident involving Concorde; commercial service was suspended until November 2001. The surviving aircraft were retired in 2003, 27 years after commercial operations had begun. Eighteen of the 20 aircraft built are preserved and are on display in Europe and North America.

It was the end of a dream. It had been a joint UK and French project. It travelled at Mach 2.04, twice the speed of sound, which works out at 2,179 km/h.

Because of the sonic boom Concorde only flew at supersonic speeds over water. 

Every day in West Kerry approximately at midday the wonder aircraft could be heard breaking the sound barrier as it flew out over the Atlantic.

They were great times, detente between East and West, the Berlin Wall had tumbled down, early days of peace in Northern Ireland, indeed, the crash of the Concorde that day in Paris may well have been an ominous sign of things to come.

Israeli government must be called out for what it is doing

For myriad reasons this blog

has seldom commented on the current war in the Middle East. 

Watching the pictures on our screens every evening of children dying from starvation it is difficult to remain quiet.

Hearing wise, considerate, good people condemning the behaviour of Israel it’s clear that what Israel is now doing to the people of Gaza is wrong and is clearly a war crime.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has strongly criticised the current behaviour of the Israeli government.

I have been to Büchenwald, Oranianburg, Auschwitz, I am aware what it means to write about the banality of evil. The world must never and can never forget the evil that was perpetrated on the Jewish community by the Germans. Intentionally I never say the Nazis, I always say the Germans. By using the word Nazi one can easily consider them to be the monster people who did monstrous things. It was German people, with their subordinates in other countries who did monstrous acts. They came from all walks of German life, teachers, academics, lawyers, tradespeople journalists, train drivers, women and men. There were clergy too who supported and kowtowed to the then Hitler-led German government. 

It was evil and it must never be forgotten. 

But that does not mean that today we cannot criticise the behaviour of the current Israeli government for the brutality it is unleashing every day and night on the Palestinian people.

To try to say that by being opposed to such behaviour one is an anti semite is, indeed, preposterous.

The German theologian and Lutheran priest Martin Niemöller’s poem is prescient today. He was an opponent of the then German government for which he spent time in a concentration camp.

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

It’s time we the people said we’ve had enough

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

While waiting on someone last week I was browsing about in a pharmacy, looking at products for sale and prices. 

The last words a retiring dentist said to me was to make sure to dental floss my teeth every day; for once I’m doing what I was told. While in the pharmacy I spotted a dental floss brand I’d never seen before. 

There was no price tag on the product nor on the shelf above or below. I brought the floss over to an assistant, explaining that there was no price on the product. She said she would check on the cash register which she did, but I pointed out that the price should be on display and easy to see. 

The assistant said that because the prices change so often there was no price on that particular dental floss. It sounded a daft reply to me and again I said that it was a legal requirement clearly to display the price of every product for sale. I have no doubt if I had pursued the issue it could have become awkward, even contentious; I simply said thank you and left the shop.

A few days earlier I returned a pair of walking boots to Lidl. The boots were a replacement pair for a faulty pair I had bought earlier. This time the sole had come away from the boot and indeed was very nearly the cause of my falling down a stairway.

Because the boots had been bought in April the Lidl assistant told me that he was unable to refund my money. Because it was more than three months since I bought the boots I’d have to contact Lidl HQ either by post, phone or email. I was having none of it and explained this was totally unfair; the rigmarole I would be put through to have my refund. In the end he gave me my refund. What would I’ve done had I not my electronic receipt of purchase? 

In the last few days I have been helping someone change her telephone provider. She is shy, not-so-young, indeed, scared to say boo to anyone. I have no idea of the cumulative time I spent on the phone waiting to speak to a human voice. How much nonsensical advertising I had to endure before speaking to a person. Is it possible to survive today without a computer or smart phone?

But besides that, I keep thinking we are in many respects being treated like slaves.

Someone said to me that it is a strategy of companies to leave you waiting on the phone so that you will run out of patience and hang up.

And there is something very odd about it all. We believe that we are living in enlightened times; we can all speak up for ourselves, the individual reigns supreme. 

That might be so for some but certainly not for the ordinary people. If we want to get what’s due to us we have to grovel or simply be brazen and scare the person to give us what is our due.

What exactly are the regulators doing? They certainly need a wake up call, that is, if you know where to find them.

The scam would be hilarious if not so dangerous

The world seems to become a stranger and madder place with the passing of every day.

Who might have advised Missionary Monique Janssens? Was it DJ Carey or might she know something about how the various charities raise funds.

This email was sent to this blog today. It’s a wonder she/he/it/AI doesn't sign off with Sisterly love or some other pseudo religious jargon.

Probably no need to tell readers of this blog to stay well away from everything to do with she/he/it/AI.

It’s all so frightening; where is it going to bring us?

Yes, it’s hilarious but also scary and dangerous.

HELLO BELOVED,

My name is Monique Janssens, a Missionary formerly with Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church. Located in North Beach/Telegraph Hill, 666 Filbert St San Francisco, CA. I have the sum of US $5,325,000 in the bank in America before I was diagnosed with cancer of the blood and according to my doctors I will not survive this illness that I have only few weeks to live.

So, I want you to help me as my next of kin, To transfer the money to you but please note that you will only be able to take $3,325,000 out of this $5,325,000 and give the remaining US$2,000,000 to any charity in United States, Europe, Africa, Canada and Asia. Because that was the vow, I made to God Almighty to donate to charities.

I would like you to get back to me immediately if you are interested in being my next of kin. So that I can introduce you to my Bank and direct you on how to proceed before I pass away.

1 Full Name.............
2 Country State City Name.............
3 Occupation.............
4 Sex..................
5 Age.................
6 Telephone Number...........
7 A Copy of Your Passport Driver's Licenses........

    ATTENTION: PLEASE GET BACK TO ME ON MY ALTERNATIVE EMAIL ADDRESS : (8686552pt@gmail.com )

Missionary Monique Janssens.
Saints Peter and Paul Church

Trump’s $10bn court case while Ukraine burns

US President Donald Trump said he would stop the Russian Ukraine war in 24 hours. It’s been a long and deadly 24 hours.

Remember Trump’s birther issue with Barack Obama? Remember QAnon? It was Trump who questioned the birthplace of President Obama and was part of the QAnon conspiracy agenda.

Trump wanted all the files on Epstein to be made public. Why the change of heart now?

And while Trump is now caught up in the Epstein scandal the world is on fire.

He is now suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion.

Every human being has some good qualities; Trump must be admired for his energy.

How and why can anyone give any respect to this man?

Germany remembers Claus von Stauffenberg

On this day, July 21, 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg and four fellow conspirators were executed for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

While Stauffenberg never joined the Nazi party he did support the invasion of Poland and admired much of Hitler’s views in the early days.

He took part in the invasion of Poland and Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Stauffenberg is a respected figure in post war Germany. There are no ifs and buts in history but had the Red Army not defeated the Germans at Stalingrad would Stauffenberg have attempted to assassinate Hitler?

The ghost of Epstein is haunting Trump’s presidency

The long read in yesterday’s Guardian.

Might this be Trump’s Epsteingate?

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/19/trump-epstein-maga-revolt?CMP=share_btn_url

Time for all State agencies to make simple savings

In the first six months of this year the HSE recorded a €218 million overrun in current spending.

The HSE is to curb staff training and attendances at conferences in a bid to reduce spending.

Is there ever a study done on the amount of wastage across all public bodies; the food that’s wasted, money spent on unnecessary taxi expenditure.

Are there audits done on inefficient heating systems, and then action taken to cut down on waste?

The stationery that must be wasted across all government and State agencies.

It’s the little things that make the difference.

The new gaudy trappings of United States power

It appears the clips we see of the room where US President Donald Trump receives foreign visitors with elected media present has been redecorated; has it suddenly become extremely gaudy and indeed ugly with gold trappings and ugly decorations?

It certainly looks if it has been changed. 

Wednesday, July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg

On this day, Wednesday, July 17,  1918 Tsar Nicholas of Russia and his immediate Romanov family were executed in Yekaterinburg.

It was and is a significant day in the events of the Russian revolution; it marked a significant day in the future of Russia and indeed in world history.

'The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom'

This comment might be lost as it appears on the post titled What on earth is an indulgence of June 17, 2025.

"When GKChesterton was asked why he became a Catholic, he answered 'to get rid of my sins'. He says that only the Catholic Church can do that, and that when a man steps out of the confessional, he is only five minutes old. His whole life has started over again (Dale Ahlquist, Knight of the Holy Ghost, p.8).
Nonsense? Of course. Or rather non-sense. If your conscience tells you not to believe it, you must not believe it. But for those who do believe 'the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, the weakness of God is stronger than human strength' (1 Corinthians 1.25).

-Vivian Boland OP

The things you might hear on a hospital escalator

This week's column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Travelling down a hospital escalator last week I asked a woman for directions to a ward. We got chatting. I knew from her lanyard that she worked in the hospital. 

I asked her if there were any nuns, technically speaking, religious sisters, now working in the hospital. She replied: ‘if there were I wouldn’t be working here’. What could I say to that? 

We were now down off the escalator and both of us were walking in the same direction. I asked her why she had said that. She angrily explained the fear, dread and cruelty she experienced at the hands of the nuns. 

She said they had not all been cruel but the majority of the nuns, who taught her, were horrible women. I had no idea what to say, stood for a moment before we parted company. 

I had gone about two or three steps before going back to her, introducing myself and telling her I was a priest. She immediately says she never met an unkind priest, yes, she knows all about the priest child molesters but she personally and emphatically said she had never encountered an unkind priest, and they were her very words. The tables seemed to turn because I assured her there were unkind priests, and that I had first-hand experience of encountering such men. 

Our conversation began on a hospital escalator, there was something almost absurd, maybe hilariously funny about the toing and froing between us. We chatted on for a few minutes, I told her I was heading back to work. She stopped, looked at me for a moment and then said: ‘Father would you please say a prayer for my son’. I hesitatingly asked her what was wrong, her face suddenly looked downcast and sad before telling me that he was a drug addict. I assured her of my humble prayer; they were our last words. 

She went in one direction, I in another. But our final glances were ones of smiles.

It is highly unlikely we’ll ever meet again, then again, I’ve learned over time how small our world is.

My immediate response to the woman when she spoke about the cruel nuns was to say how sad it was; instead of inspiring young women with the mercy and love of God, all she could remember was their cruelty. 

Of course, I was annoyed and upset but I did say to her, they can’t all have been nasty; she insisted the nasty ones were in the majority.

But then when she told me she never met an unkind priest my mind did all sorts of somersaults; I began asking myself how accurate was her memory.

I thought it interesting how she asked me to pray for her son. All during our conversation I had a feeling that this woman was a woman of faith, who had been seriously hurt and wounded by nuns.

I was reminded of a saying of the famous Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: ‘Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God’.

de Chardin was in much trouble with the Vatican, before being later exonerated.

It’s so easy to mangle the story of Jesus; it’s done over and over right down through the ages.

We are being taken for clowns as the rich take our money

Much talk these days of food

inflation, and rightly so. Prices of basic necessities have crossed a red line. How are poor people paying for food.

Sitting down in a cafe has nothing to do with necessities of life. Yesterday in south Dublin a cafe charged €00.60 cent for a cube of ice. That is absurd and wrong.

We are constantly criticising past generations for the wrong that was done, especially to the poor and marginalised. Wouldn’t it be great if we cared and respected the living poor and marginalised.

The picture above appears on a self-service till in a well-know ‘low cost' supermarket. And it so happens the German is not translated into English. What’s in German has nothing to do with the English on the screen.

One might get the impression we are being colonised, again. It is insulting and shocking.

One needs great patience and time in any attempt to contact and then speak to a human voice when requiring information or lodging a complaint. So much for modern technological advancement.

Chinese government at odds with the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, who celebrated 

Ninety-year-old Dalai Lama

his 90th birthday last week, said the Tibetan Buddhist community has the ‘sole authority’ to recognise the spiritual leader’s future incarnation.

The Chinese government has repeatedly challenged the Dalai Lama’s authority and says the succession process should be decided within its borders

DJ Carey’s US scam raises many interesting questions

Over the last days DJ Carey has been in the news for defrauding people, telling people he needed money to help pay for the cancer he did not have.

The Irish Independent carried an extensive piece on how DJ tried to scam wealthy Americans for money.

It sounds and is obscene. Reading The Irish Independent story many readers might ask is it ‘right and fitting’ that some people should have so much money side-by-side with people who have noting.

Others might ask is it ‘right and fitting’ that Irish people should go begging to the US asking the mega rich to help fund their projects. Is it ever asked how those who have been invited to donate made their money?

The DJ Carey story might be the catalyst to question charities, organisations, political parties, running to the US with the begging bowel.

There is something about it that looks and sounds worrying.

The Irish Times doesn’t tell the full story on world debt

 In The Irish Times of yesterday Eoin Burke-Kennedy writes:

"The next financial crisis is coming and this time it will be a sovereign debt crisis. Not my words but those of German chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Speaking before the German election in February, the one that elevated him to the top job, Merz warned that governments had taken on too much debt.

He noted that several EU states, including France, Italy and Spain,now had debts that were bigger than the size of their annual economic output.

The French government collapsed last year while trying to push through a €60billion austerity budget in an attempt to rectify the problem.

Merz could have added the UK to that financial risk list. British prime minister Keir Starmer’s government is tearing itself apart trying to put the public finances on a more sustainable path, fearful of another bond market bust-up like the one that sunk former Tory prime minister Liz Truss."

But in the full article Eoin Burke-Kennedy never mentions anywhere that shortly after the election Merz managed to pass a bill in the Bundestag that allowed the German Government to change the law so that the incoming government could borrow even more money.

That this fact is not mentioned surely takes away from the logic of the argument?

Eavesdropping on a conversation on an escalator

A woman in her 50s is heading down an escalator at the Mater Hospital, she gets talking to a man, who asks her if she worked in the hospital. She said she did; he asks her if there were any nuns now working in the hospital; she replied: "if there were I wouldn’t be working here. The two get talking and she explains she was taught by nuns and her experience was one of cruelty. 

The conversation continues off the escalator.

The man listens and then tells her he is a priest. She responds, saying that she had never come across an unkind priest. He assured her there were indeed unkind priests.

All in a day. More proof to ask what’s it all about, does anything make sense?

Joe Egan’s 'Church, Sacrament of the World’ a great read

 Fr Joe Egan’s recently published Church, Sacrament of the World should be mandatory reading for every church leader.

The book underscores the need for continuing church reform while also insisting on the importance of mutual engagement between church and world, even when the relationship between them is strained and the questions arising are divisive.

The sea can drown out our unease and anxiety

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper

Michael Commane

You may have forgotten, but last Monday week was a horrible day, at least in Castlegregory, where it rained all day, although swimming in the rain can be a fabulous experience. 

But the following day, Tuesday was a different story, blue skies and sun; full tide was 10.00, the perfect time to swim. You could loll about in the water as you would in a bath but the expanse and wonder of the sea at Castlegregory is an infinity away from a tiny bathtub. I was able to swim, jump, even roar in the waters.

Well done to Kerry County Council, who  have placed a number of timber benches and picnic tables in the parking area. 

It was my first time to avail of the new seats, where I sat down and looked across at Kerry Head. I even got a hint of Loop Head, away in the distance.

The council have also done remedial work at the carpark, placing large boulders in an attempt to protect the area from further erosion, another of the many symptoms of our changing climate.

It will be great if it works. No doubt the engineers and designers know what they are doing, but it is all of us, in conjunction with our political leaders, who have to make a better effort in protecting our planet.

The simple pleasure of sitting down on a timber bench looking out to sea and sky, was a moment of extraordinary wonder and pleasure. 

I know it’s not always swimming weather in Ireland but however wintery or miserable it may be on a summer’s day, the water for the majority of people is easily warm enough for a swim. My father kept insisting that September was the best month for swimming in the sea in Ireland as it had the heat of the summer in it.

The sea has a special charm for me and evokes great memories. I recall swimming with my father at the strand in Castlegregory when he was 92. He walked down to the water in his flip flops, I holding one hand, he had his stick in his other hand; as soon as he was afloat I threw the flip-flops on to the sand along with his stick, and off we went a-swimming. How can I forget such a moment. 

That Tuesday I was swimming in Castlegregory, looking out to sea, I kept thinking how it must have looked just like that when my grandfather was swimming there in the 19^th century. And then my father learned to swim in that same spot before the 1916 Rising.

Maybe even my great grandfather or great grandmother were swimming there before my grandfather.

With all our advancement, our technological knowhow, and now the approach of ever more sophisticated AI, isn’t it ironic that the simple pleasure and fun of swimming is hard to beat.

Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) gets it when he says: ‘When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.’

Inspiring words to keep us swimming all year round.