Pope insists Society of Saint Pius X must accept Vatican II

 This week Pope Leo  was asked about the case of the Society of Saint Pius X, which has said that on July 1 it will carry out four episcopal consecrations without papal mandate, despite the Holy See’s warning about the risk of schism.

The pope spoke of the communication between the Society and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: “We are still considering making another appeal, to say ‘do not do this, let us try to live in communion in the Church.’ But it is their choice. 

We must realise what it means for them and for the church. Certainly, division among Christians is always a painful point, but they refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with various points of the Second Vatican Council. If they make that choice, I am sorry, but we must move forward.”

The shocking horror of the only certainty in our lives

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

There was an interview in the weekend edition of The Irish Times with Ireland’s top athlete Ciara Mageean. In my ignorance it was the first I heard about her cancer. I then realised Ciara did a 40-minute interview on Saturday with Brendan O’Connor on his RTÉ Radio 1 programme.

How fortunate we are to have the RTÉ Radio Player facility. I tuned in and listened to every moment of an extraordinary interview. Ciara talked about her stage four cancer. And honestly I am finding it difficult to write or say anything. Ciara’s words have left me feeling extremely emotional. She is 33, a gifted world-famous Olympian. She now has bowel cancer.

The reason why I’m late writing my column this week is because I was prevaricating about writing about death.

Ciara’s interview; her  attitude, her courage, her hope gave me the green light to do so.

In the last seven days I’ve experienced on three occasions the turmoil of death and what it is like for people facing the end of life. 

On Thursday I visited a man in hospital, who is my age. We were on the same school relay team. He was the fastest of the four on the team, I the slowest. 

Sitting at the side of his bed he told me he had a few short weeks to live. It’s almost impossible to process that news.

I’m friendly with  a woman in her early 60s, who has serious cancer and is in a nursing home. Last week her sister died of cancer. It’s difficult to comprehend that. 

On Friday a woman contacted me to tell me her husband was close to dying. He has been ill for a number of years. He’s 80, a gentleman; we first met over 10 years ago. His family is distraught.

It’s been a lot to take in, in seven days. Death is something ahead of all of us. I’m no grim reaper but I am forever asking what is it all about. I ask the question sometimes flippantly, sometimes seriously.

And now that I am far closer to death than birth, the question often rings loudly in my head.

As to why I became a priest is a serious question; why I have stayed so far is an even a more serious question. 

But right now I can’t avoid asking the big question: is there a God? I have wrestled with the idea all my life. 

Some of my closest friends insist there is no God and yes, they influence me; sometimes I’m inclined to nod my head and agree with them, but most times I pull back and go to my default position and say; yes, I believe in God.

Having worked as a prison and hospital chaplain having taught at post primary level I’ve seen first hand how fragile we all are, no matter how well we hide it, or unaware of it.

I can’t visualise my parents have been annihilated; I believe they are experiencing, in ways incomprehensible to me, the mystery and delight of God. 

Ciara Mageean said to Brendan there are no guarantees in life. What about our faith guaranteeing God? It’s a huge question. Dare I say it; I believe. We have been made to be with God. I believe, but weakly.

Revolut sends money to wrong person with same name

This is a worrying story. It’s written by Conor Pope and appeared in The Irish Times on Monday. 

It becomes ever more worrying how large organisations treat the public.

Is Conor Pope correct in saying the ‘Other Johnny S’ is the big winner; is he really in the long-run? What might the morality of this story be? Should he not have returned the money to Revolut?

Did you know that Revolut might actively help you to send money to a random person who you’ve never met and never had any interactions with and whose number you don’t have stored in your phone – just because they happen to share a name with someone you actually do know?

And did you know that if such a thing were to happen to you, you might never see that cash again unless the random stranger who Revolut suggested you send the money to agrees to give it back?

It was certainly news to us, and we’d still be in the dark about such a possibility were it not for a reader called Elaine.

Late last month, Elaine sent a Revolut payment to cover her portion of a restaurant meal with a friend, and was less than pleased when it ended up in the hands of a completely different person.

She had what can only be described as frustrating interactions over and back with the digital banking company, which ended when Revolut told her there was absolutely nothing it could do to get her money back.

“I was sending €120 in settlement to a person sitting across from me at a table in a restaurant on May 22nd,” Elaine writes.

She and her husband ate with a third person, a man. We probably don’t need to tell you therefore that the third person was known to her, right? For the sake of completeness, we will make that clear.

This man was saved in her contacts by his name – and for the sake of this article we will call him Johnny S, although that is not actually his name.

“Before sending, I told him I’d text the word ‘Revolut’ to his number to be sure it was his, in case he might have changed it since I was in touch,” Elaine writes.

“He confirmed verbally that it was his number and I also got the blue tick marks to show he read it. After this I sent him €120,” she continues.

She and her husband left the restaurant and thought no more about it – at least until she heard back from Johnny S a couple of days later.

He texted Elaine “to say he never got the money”.

So where had it gone?

Suggested name

Elaine did some digging, and quickly established that when she had gone into Revolut and started typing Johnny’s name into the search space to find him as a contact, “Revolut suggested their own Johnny S, not mine. In fact, my safe and ‘saved’ Johnny S didn’t even appear in the screen; the only Johnny S that appeared in the search bar was ‘their’ Johnny S – a random person of that name who I don’t know and have never met,” Elaine says.

She recalls that when she started typing in the name “Johnny”, the first name she was prompted with was another contact whose name started with the same letter. “Seeing that I knew that he was from my saved contacts, I had no reason to think that the Johnny S that then appeared was not from my saved list and he was the only Johnny S that was prompted,” she continues.

‘No red flags’

Elaine stresses – and this is probably important – that at no point was she given the choice of sending the cash to two Johnny Ss – the right one and the wrong one.

“There were no red flags, and only one name appeared suggested by Revolut. No numbers showed up at all. Just names,” she says.

After finding out that the money had gone Awol, Elaine asked among her various WhatsApp groups about saved contacts being effectively ignored or not prompted by Revolut and random people with the same name coming up instead.

“They have all told me that you cannot send money by Revolut to random Revolut account-holders who are not in your saved contacts. One software engineer I know said he has had to save people in his contacts first in order to send them money,” she writes.

She says her experience, “one that is completely verified by my screenshots, shows that this is actually not the case. Revolut’s algorithm can and does ‘leapfrog’ random Revolut account-holders with the same name ‘over’ your saved contacts.”

Obviously when she found out the cash had gone to the wrong Johnny S despite her best efforts, she contacted Revolut. She sent us some screenshots of the correspondence she received from its representatives and chatbots.

“I completely understand how frustrating this must be, sending €120 to the wrong person,” she was told in one instance. The message from Revolut said this would be especially concerning as she had “trusted the suggested names in the app”. She was told her concern “is absolutely valid and I want to make sure we handle this properly”.

Another message told her “suggested recipients can include Revolut friends, past recipients and people matched through details linked to a Revolut account such as a phone number, email or Revtag, so yes, two very similar Johnnies can appear separately even if only one is in your contacts”.

A third message accepted that she had done “what any reasonable person would do. You checked your contact number, texted him to confirm and then sent the money through the app. The fact that your saved contact didn’t appear and someone else’s did is a legitimate concern and I’ve noted your feedback, and your experience with us is truly important and we will do everything possible for our end to improve it.”

Another message said it was possible for a suggestion to appear even if she never added the name and number to her contacts list, but it added that the sender “can’t verify from here why that profile was ranked above your saved contact or why it appeared first in the suggestion”.

The communication continued.

“I know how incredibly frustrating this entire situation is,” another bot said.

“When my colleague mentioned that your experience was a ‘legitimate concern’, they were referring to your feedback about how the app’s contact search displayed the names. We take that feedback very seriously and I’ve passed it on to help improve the app’s design so this doesn’t happen to others; however, that doesn’t change the regulatory rules around the transfer itself.”

The upshot was that without the other Johnny’s consent – the wrong Johnny S – Revolut couldn’t get the money back, and it said it was not in a position to issue a refund directly.

“Since the recipient did not agree to return the funds during the six-day time-frame, we have sadly exhausted all the options available to us as a bank,” the concluding message said.

“I know this isn’t the outcome you were hoping [for],” it added, saying that her “best next step to try and recover the funds is to file a report with An Garda Síochána or to proceed with a formal complaint”.

Revolut bots

By the time Elaine had decided to contact us, she had given up on a refund.

“They have a six-day wait to see if the incorrect recipient returns the money. But they do nothing really. The person hasn’t returned the money. Revolut bots do most of the communication, then it is handed over to a person (I dealt with five as I had to keep following up). They seem to work off what appears to me to be a script. I explained they ignored my safe, saved contacts and suggested an unknown Revolut account-holder, and this was shocking to me and it just shouldn’t be that easy.”

We can only agree.

We contacted Revolut and asked about Elaine’s story to see whether someone might be able to explain why its systems had prompted a random Johnny S as the most likely recipient of her cash, rather than the Johnny S who was saved in her contacts.

Pricewatch also went digging. We were able to establish that it is indeed possible for someone to save a contact, but be prompted to send the money to someone else in certain conditions.

In this case, our reader saved her friend’s full name which – coincidentally – happened to match the Revtag of a Revolut customer of the same name as her friend.

Revtags are unique, customisable handles that Revolut customers can use to send and receive transfers without having to share personal details such as an Iban, account number and all the rest.

So when Elaine searched for the person we have named as Johnny S, she was prompted by Revolut to send the money to another Johnny S who had that as his Revtag. We have seen screen grabs that suggest she would have been alerted to the fact that the Johnny S she was actually sending the cash to was not in her contacts, but it might easily be the kind of alert a normal person would miss if they knew the person they were sending the money to and if they were prompted with a matching name.

Apparently this “Show Revtag results” step comes before any non-contact user is presented to a customer, and users such as Elaine need to explicitly click on “Show Revtag results” for non-contact users to appear.

When we contacted Revolut about what happened, we were sent the following statement.

“We advise all of our customers to take extra care and to ensure that they are making a payment to the person they are intending to at all times. This was a very rare instance. In recognition of this, we have made a goodwill payment of €120 to [our reader].”

It seems like the big winner here, however, is the wrong Johnny S – who got €120 for absolutely nothing.

Magna Carta sealed on this day in 1015

On this day, June 15, 1215 England’s King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede.

It established  the principle that everyone, including the monarch is subject to the law.

How well are we keeping it?

Musk and his trillion and John O’Gorman’s Punt yarn

The news that Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire  has people trying to understand how much it means.

One trillion equals 1,000 billion. One million seconds in the past is less than two weeks ago, but a billion seconds puts us in 1994, and a trillion seconds goes back to approximately 29,000 BC, predating recorded history.

The late Dominican John O’Gorman, who was a mathematician and taught computer science at the University of Limerick, often told the following story about Dominicans, numbers and money: If a Dominican asked his prior for £10o the prior would put him through the ringer, asking him all sorts of questions why he wanted the money and what he would do with it. On the other hand, if the brother asked for £1,000 the prior would most likely give it to him without asking a question.

And, guess what, there is an element of truth to John’s story.

The euro became legal tender in Ireland in January 2002, John died in November of that year. He told the story during the life of the Punt.

Talking about numbers; this blog began in 2007 and in that span of time it has had 3.44 million hits. In the last seven days it has had 76.88k hits.

Is there any digital Irish Dominican publication that can compete with that?

Money spent on this blog is €/£0.00.

A word to those church leaders who make decisions

The link below is from The Rest is Politics podcast hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart.

Even if Alastair Campbell gets the pope’s name wrong and can’t pronounce encyclical, it’s well worth a listen.

https://youtu.be/VQif1aIlg5I?si=tMYPhfySP7aj3_qn

Below is an extract from Pope Leo’s Human Magnificence. Obviously he is talking to bishops; it’s right and fitting they should all read the entire encyclical. 

How church, people and priests could be inspired by bishops, if bishops lived this in their lives and the running of their dioceses, indeed, provincials too.

86. In conclusion, I would like to touch on a point that is particularly close to my heart. Social Doctrine is not merely a message addressed to society; it is also an examination of conscience for the Church — a home and school of communion that is always called to ensure that the principles outlined in this chapter are applied, especially within its own structures. In the ecclesial context, the common good takes the form of a synodal approach for mission at the service of the Kingdom. Indeed, the Church is the “communitarian and historical subject of synodality and mission.” [113] This requires attention to the way decisions are taken and responsibilities are exercised. The Final Document of the Synod identifies a culture of transparency, accountability and evaluation as key practices for missionary transformation. [114]

Great to see Dominicans speak out on social justice issues

As the FIFA World Cup opens across the US, Mexico and Canada, a group of Dominican sisters, friars community leaders is calling on Catholics to pay attention to the people who may be left behind by it.

Below is the text from the National Catholic Reporter.

It’s heartening to see Dominicans speak out on social justice, echoing the words of Pope Leo.

 https://www.ncronline.org/node/332596

Hoarding all our junk and utter nonsense on data centres

Below is a brilliant letter in The Irish Times yesterday.

Think of the utter nonsense that is being stored on data centres; think of the volume of utter nonsense on your phone.

What about introducing a tax or surcharge on utter nonsense stored on our smart phones?

The buck stops with us, with me.

Sir, – I have listened intently to recent discussions on the exponential growth of data centres and their insatiable appetite for power from an already under-pressure national grid. However, until now I had only a vague idea of what data is stored in these data centres, and even less idea of my own personal responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in.

If you use apps or cloud services, as most of us do, and if you have photographs, old texts and emails on your phone or laptop, all of these items are stored in data centres. To make matters worse, when you delete an item from your phone it is usually still stored in the cloud, and therefore in the data centres, unless you delete from the cloud too.

It is estimated that between 30 and 50 per cent of all data stored in data centres is made up of the personal data – photos, texts and emails – of people such as you and me.

On learning the above, I took out my beloved iPhone to discover I have 8,134 photos stored (1,061 of which are videos). In addition, I have countless old emails on my phone dating back to 2015, including 643 I have never read.

One only has to go to a concert, sporting event or scenic location to see cameras in the air loading zettabytes (yes, that is an actual term) more data into data centres, with the knock-on effect of increasing even more the demand for energy to support the storage of this data.

In light of this reality and my own personal responsibility, I will be spending a lot of time over the coming weeks pressing delete. – Yours, etc,

GARY DOYLE,

Straffan,

Co Kildare.

The magnificence of people must be allowed flourish

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Thursday’s RTÉs Prime Time reported on how children as young as seven are now involved in the drugs trade. Children are being manipulated by malevolent drug pushers to ferry drugs to addicts. 

The modern scooter makes it so easy for them to nip around the cities in jig time. They travel at speeds and in ways that make it impossible for the Garda to catch them. With their black hoodies they are impossible to identify.

There was a discussion on the Prime Time programme about the Garda presence on our streets, but everyone agreed that the problem is deeper than that. 

Most of these young people are living in dysfunctional homes, addictive parents, whether it be drugs, alcohol or gambling. And then there are those children, who experience domestic violence; all those issues are part of the cocktail that leads to so many of our problems. When people are not treated with dignity, feel alienated, there will be problems.

We have a US president behaving as a warmonger and a thug, who uses foul and vulgar language in the public square.

At present I’m reading Pope Leo; it’s called Magnificent Humanity. I’m not finished it yet but I sure will. It’s one of those books once you get into it you cannot put it down. At least that’s my experience with it.

It has received much good publicity around the world. Its official title is Magnifica Humanitas and it’s Pope Leo’s first encyclical. The Latin title and the word encyclical sound highfalutin and may easily put people off reading it.

It has been acclaimed as a masterpiece in warning the world about the potential dangers of AI.

But there is much more to it than that. And where I am at the moment in my reading,  Leo is concentrating on the importance of the dignity of the human person.

Just read these lines: ‘The Gospel remains relevant because it provides the criteria for recognising what humanises or dehumanises and what liberates or oppresses in ever-changing situations.’ He goes on to refer to Pope Paul VI who said that as long as there are people in the world who are excluded from the development befitting human dignity, the Christian community cannot be content with a theoretical proclamation of peace.

Pope Leo later talks about a church that must be capable of listening to the cry of the poor, migrants, and victims of new forms of slavery. He quotes Pope Francis in saying that we should allow ourselves to be evangelised by the poor, with whom we share our history.

I just hope the Irish churches, indeed, all people of good will, will read these words of Pope Leo. On Friday the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally referred to Pope Leo’s words and is clearly on the same page as he.

The sentiments of Sarah Mullally and Leo are a far cry from anything we hear from the lips of the US president and tyrants around the world. 

If those young children on their scooters felt they were valued and were treated with dignity, I can assure you they’d soon take off the hoodies and park the scooters.

Irish Rail faces heightened risk of disruption

The Irish Times yesterday ran a front page story on the problems at Irish Rail. In the weekend edition it ran an almost full-page story on the same subject but left the reader non-the-wiser. Yesterday’s story did give a fuller picture of the travels at the rail company but still no mention of the new building to house the National Traffic Control Centre (NTCC), which was to have been built at Connolly but is now completed at Heuston. 

Saturday’s story had also been written by Martin Wall.

MARTIN WALL Public Policy Correspondent

Irish Rail’s centralised control system to oversee the movement of trains has just two spare central processing units, “heightening the risk of service disruption”, its company directors have been told.

A board meeting in March was told Irish Rail cannot find any more replacement parts for the existing system, which was commissioned more than 20 years ago and was supposed to have been replaced in 2024.

Executives at the State company will this week face questioning by the Oireachtas Committee on Transport about the substantial delays and cost overruns to the introduction of the planned new traffic management system (TMS).

Last month, the board wrote down by €50 million the value of its investment in the project after testing of software to implement the first phase of the new system identified problems.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (Pac) in recent days that the Government was to provide €20 million over the next three years in additional funding to boost resilience in existing signalling on the key rail arteries around Dublin.

This is “to mitigate the risk of a major failure” of the existing central traffic control system at Connolly Station as a result of delays in introducing its planned replacement, the NTA said.

Minutes of the Irish Rail board meeting in March set out the concerns within the company. Directors heard the existing system had been originally commissioned in 2004 and that between 2018 and 2020 high-risk hardware items were replaced and software upgrades were applied.

“It was noted that this was a temporary life extension measure, as TMS was planned for completion in 2024,” the minutes said.

“It was advised that the current centralised traffic control (CTC) system had been reduced to two remaining central processing spare units, heightening the risk of service disruption” from any future CTC failures, and that “Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail) is unable to source any further replacement parts” for the current CTC system. “It was noted that there would also be an inability to support infrastructure changes to increase service frequencies or to successfully bring into service big capital investment programmes.”

However, the NTA briefing document to the Pac said timelines for key projects such as Dart to Wicklow, Dart+ and Navan railway line, due to be commissioned in 2029, 2031 and 2035 respectively, were not expected to be impacted by the current delays in the TMS delivery.

The Irish Rail minutes say the board was told structured, CTC options analysis confirmed the immediate priority was to implement targeted upgrades “to mitigate high and urgent operational risks, manage obsolescence and signallers’ workload pressures”.

The Pac chairman, Sinn Féin TD John Brady, said the delays and cost overruns with the planned TMS were “rapidly becoming one of the most serious public-sector IT failures in the history of the State”.