Bits and pieces about Donald Trump and his antics

Most days Pope Leo speaks out in opposition to war and those who cause war. It’s disappointing that Irish media never refers to what Pope Leo is saying.

Has Pope Leo told US Maga bishops to say nothing?

Celebrating  Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday evening in the papal basilica of St John Lateran, Pope Leo told his brother priests that they are to serve the Lord by giving all of their lives to the people of God, and stressed that in this time of great brutality around the world, we, too, are to kneel alongside the oppressed and all in need.

Has anyone noticed how President Donald Trump is walking slower up and down those steps to Air Force One?

English writer Michael Morpurgo spoke out strongly on Channel 4 News last against the behaviour Donald Trump.

President Macron criticised the US president for changing his mind on a daily basis.

New rules in Germany allow fuel stations raise prices only once a day and that’s at midday.

That Trump should say the US will bomb Iran back to the Stone Age is proof  he is an ignorant and stupid man. But clever to identify and harness the anger in people.

Comment made about former Dominican priest Tom Brodie

This comment was made yesterday. It also appears under the obit for Tom Brodie. It is posted here as it might be missed:

Thanks for posting this. I met Tom, back in the early '80s, when he attended the Catholic Biblical Institute at St. Scholastica in Duluth MN. He was a good friend for years. Then I lost track of him. I’m so grateful to learn his last years were not spent alone.

Blessings!
Mary D. Hudson

And the women were there… - a poem for Holy Week

A poem by Gillian Hick. Gillian is chaplain in the Training Unit at Mountjoy Jail. She studied theology at the Priory Institute.

‘Many women were there also, looking on from a distance’  (Mt. 27:55).

In that liminal space of Holy Saturday, 

the women were there.

And it seems like nothing has changed.

The women are still watching and waiting in that endlessly enduring liminal space.

And maybe that’s how it was always meant to be.

In the liminal space – intimately connected to the before, and the after…

In the liminal space – where words and doctrines and dogma have no place…

In the liminal space – where everything is, was and ever shall be…

In the endless depth and length and breadth of that liminal space – a place to hold, to encounter, to bear witness –  to all that is sacred – all that has been – all that will be …

Encircling - ever before - ever after..

Endlessly integrating, weaving – guided by the seamless input of the Divine - following, in the apparent silence, the unheard whisper…

In the liminal space – hearing the untold truths lurking deep within a wounded soul…

Painstakingly, agonisingly – drawing forth what has been held back – in the liminal space that knows no judgement of what has been or what will be…

In the liminal space, it is the women who sit, silently - nourishing, caressing, holding the vast heartache as it emerges from the wounded soul.

For in the liminal space, the penance is not just to love, but to love more extravagantly - to open the gate for unconditional love to flow – in harmony – in unity -

                   through Him,

                   with Him

                   in Him

  As it is, as it was and as it ever shall be…

Good manners refine and exalt us, they soothe us

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

It was dusk, heading towards darkness when I entered a Lidl shop on Monday. Directly at the barrier to enter the shop there was a young boy, probably 12 or 13, wearing a bicycle helmet. He was obstructing the entrance so I kindly excused myself; I did notice it took him a few seconds to react but I paid no more attention to him and went about my shopping.

Later at the self service check out I spotted him again, this time he was with another boy of similar age. He was having difficulty with the self-service till and in the process he was shouting the F-word to his friend. 

Wisely or unwisely I suggested to him that I’d prefer not to have to hear such vulgarities in a public place. He had no difficulty staring at me with a warning and threatening look. I carried on with my check out, paid and packed my groceries. 

When I came out of the shop both boys were hanging about on their bicycles. As soon as I appeared they started shouting repeatedly the F-word at the top of their voices. I presume they were waiting for me to react. 

Yes, I can still remember as a child how we would on occasion ‘look for a chase’ or indeed in the classroom how we would know what buttons to press with specific teachers. I think I can say it was all good innocent fun. But this was different; these two chaps were close to being intimidating. I did not react to their taunting, got on my bicycle and cycled home. En route I did check a number of times if they were following me, no, there was no sign of them. But even the fact that I thought they might be, surely is worrying.

I’ve been thinking about both boys. Wondering what their home-life is about, are there problems in their homes, is there a shortage of money, problems with alcohol or drug abuse. It struck me how vulnerable these two boys would be to getting caught up in the world of drugs. 

And how do we prevent it? I came across this quote in a newspaper article and it reminded me again about the two young boys I met. It’s from the Irish writer, philosopher and parliamentarian Edmund Burke:

‘The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.’ 

Burke was born in Dublin in1729 and died in England in 1797. He was a cousin of Nano Nagle, founder of the Presentation Sisters.

When you hear the most powerful man in the world call someone a scumbag and say that he was delighted to hear that former FBI director Robert  Muller had died, the world must be in a strange place. 

What’s happening?

But it’s not just Trump who behaves as a barbarian. Is it possible to go through a day without hearing the F-word? I doubt it. After all, our behaviour does matter and Burke makes great sense. Good manners refine and exalt us.

Jesus does not listen to the prayers of war mongers

Probably three weeks ago President Trump and his team were seen praying around the presidential desk.

Below are words spoken by Pope Leo on Palm Sunday.

“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.  

“He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

As with dictators Trump’s mugshot now on currency

Maureen Dowd’s column in The Irish Times yesterday, which is taken from The New York Times.

A great piece of writing; compelling reading.

Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.

He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.

“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”

His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers.

Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air.

The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America”.

Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House.

He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans.

He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.

“I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”

You can do anything.

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.

On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out”.

He was steaming that Nato was not bending to his will and he was vowing that it would rue the day.

“This was a test for Nato,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements.

“They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget’. We can never forget.”

The Twin Towers

It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the Twin Towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in lower Manhattan.

Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and the Gaza Strip.

After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy.

“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.

Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence – certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run the US military when he blocked the promotion of two black officers and two women to be one-star army generals.

As The New York Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favourite breed, on the promotion list.

When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.

The Kennedy Center

He forced his name on to the Kennedy Center. He scratched the “US” out of the US Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multi-storey banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice.

He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.

Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-karat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage. Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface US currency.

His signature

The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money.Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender – he’s shoving the US treasurer’s signature off the bills.

Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job – ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.

“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement.

“Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the US treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)

As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing – just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.

You can do anything. – The New York Times

As with dictators Trump’s mugshot now on notes

Below is Maureen Dowd’s column in The Irish Times, which is taken from The New York Times.

Great writing.

Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.

He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.

“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”

His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers.

Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air.

The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America”.

Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House.

He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans.

He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.

“I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”

You can do anything.

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.

On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out”.

He was steaming that Nato was not bending to his will and he was vowing that it would rue the day.

“This was a test for Nato,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements.

“They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget’. We can never forget.”

The Twin Towers

It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the Twin Towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in lower Manhattan.

Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and the Gaza Strip.

After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy.

“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.

Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence – certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run the US military when he blocked the promotion of two black officers and two women to be one-star army generals.

As The New York Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favourite breed, on the promotion list.

When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.

The Kennedy Center

He forced his name on to the Kennedy Center. He scratched the “US” out of the US Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multi-storey banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice.

He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.

Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-karat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage. Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface US currency.

His signature

The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money.Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender – he’s shoving the US treasurer’s signature off the bills.

Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job – ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.

“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement.

“Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the US treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)

As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing – just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.

You can do anything. – The New York Times

It's so easy to blame the other, find a scapegoat

Father Richard Rohr identifies the human impulse to solve problems by blaming others: 

The human delusion seems to be this: We think someone else is always the problem, not ourselves. We tend to export our hate and evil elsewhere. In fact, this problem is so central to human nature and human history that its overcoming is at the heart of all spiritual teachings. Mature spirituality tries to keep our own feet to the fire—saying, just as the prophet Nathan did in convicting King David, “You are the one!” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Human nature always wants either to play the victim or to create victims—and both for the purposes of control. In fact, the second follows from the first. 

Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. So, for untransformed people, there is no reason to stop creating victims or playing the victim.

If we read today’s news, we see the pattern has not changed. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together, for some reason. The creating of necessary victims is in our hardwiring. Philosopher René Girard called this “scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. 

It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been sacred violence, or more accurately, sacralised violence. 

Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. We imagine we are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble like God, religion, truth, morality, our children, or love of country. It takes away our guilt. As a result, we can even think of ourselves as representing the moral high ground or as being responsible and prudent. It never occurs to most people that they can become what they fear and hate. It’s a well-kept secret. Without wisdom, we justify violent and even immoral actions for the sake of something honourable like “protecting the children.” 

Unless scapegoating can be consciously seen and named through concrete rituals, owned mistakes, shadow work, or repentance, the pattern will usually remain unconscious and unchallenged. The Scriptures rightly call such ignorant hatred and killing “sin.” 

Jesus came precisely to “take away” (John 1:29) our capacity to commit it—by exposing the lie for all to see. Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both church and state (Jerusalem and Rome), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be. 

“He will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was really in the right, and about true judgment” (John 16:8). 

Explaining how to make coffee as the world begins to burn

Listening to a woman talking on the Brendan O’Connor programme on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday it was difficult not to think of moving the chairs on the Titanic.

In 2023  Dmitry Medvedev wrote that if the West opposes Russia in Ukraine, “the life that existed before will be forgotten for centuries until smoky debris ceases to emit radiation”. 

Last December, Vladimir Putin warned that if Europe “starts a war” with Russia, it will end so swiftly that there would be no one left to negotiate with Russia.

Yesterday the Israelis bombed Tehran, the Houthis fired a missile into Iran. The world is on fire.

Who’s talking about razed Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the violence of Trump and his team. Yet we take time out about how to make coffee or even 

Germany preparing to defend itself against Russia

The link to the article below is from the BBC website. BBC Radio 4’s 5pm news programme, PM reported on how Germany is in the process of rebuilding its army. 

Russia’s threat to Europe has seen Germany become Europe’s most important army.

Bundeswehr head, General Carsten Breuer believes Russia’s present rearmament will allow them to be strong enough to launch an attack on Nato territory by 2029.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvge7r31989o

The piece below appears on the website of the Irish Dominican Province.

                           Angelic Warfare Confraternity

The history of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity begins with the Angelic Doctor himself, St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas was born in 1226 as the youngest son of a noble family in Italy. His parents were so vehemently opposed his decision to become a Dominican that they had him arrested by his own brothers and jailed in one of the family castles. They swore they would not release him until he abandoned the Dominican Order, and they attempted many times to persuade him to change his mind. For a full year he refused to relent.

Finally, after becoming tired of waiting, the brothers of St. Thomas conceived one last plan. They were certain that physical temptation would drive him to break his vow of chastity, after which he would surely abandon his religious vocation. So one night, the brothers introduced a scantily clad prostitute into the room where St. Thomas was being held. The plan did not work as intended. Immediately, St. Thomas snatched a burning brand from the hearth, drove the woman out of the room, slammed the door behind. He then fell to his knees with tears of thanksgiving and prayed to be preserved in his chastity, his purity, and his intention to live the religious life as a son of St. Dominic.

According to the records of his canonization, Thomas fell at once into a mystical sleep and had a vision. Two angels came to him from heaven and bound a cord around his waist, saying, “On God’s behalf, we gird you with the girdle of chastity, a girdle which no attack will ever destroy.” In the records of his canonization, many different witnesses who knew St. Thomas at different points in his life remarked about his evidently high degree of purity and chastity. The angels’ gift preserved St. Thomas from sexual temptation and bestowed upon him an enduring purity that ennobled all his thoughts and actions. Over his lifetime, St. Thomas’s conduct revealed that he had indeed received a special grace of chastity and purity—a grace that he is now ready to share with others through the communion of saints.

The Angelic Warfare Confraternity in Ireland is a spiritual community for the pursuit and promotion of the virtue of chastity. Men are enrolled in order to receive assistance from God in the chaste life, under the patronage of St. Thomas Aquinas & the Blessed Virgin Mary. Each member of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity wears the medal of St. Thomas, and says daily prayers to receive the special graces that the Lord pours out through the Confraternity.
The Confraternity is an apostolate of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), and is directed by the friars of the Order. It has existed in various forms from the 15th century, and was officially established in 1727 by Pope Benedict XIII.

The Confraternity, once very popular in Ireland, no longer has an Irish branch. However, in Autumn of 2026, the Dominican Fathers, in Ireland, intend to relaunch this most essential Confraternity, as a fellowship for Fathers and Sons. Watch this space!

Edmund Burke has words for those with bad manners

"The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. 

"Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in."

     - Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)

A glimpse at how the church can fail to act justly

The article below is in the current edition of the National Catholic Reporter. It’s the usual story of clerical sex abuse, cover up, laziness, incompetence, arrogance too.

In an open letter to the pope, Jonathan Ficara recounts how, on the night before his priestly ordination, he encountered a glimpse of how the church can fail to act justly, an experience that would ultimately derail his vocation.

Read more: https://www.ncronline.org/node/327056

‘We don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything’

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane Have you ever noticed when you are down the entire world looks and sounds miserable. I have a dose of the man-flu, which is annoying. It’s not bad enough to take to the bed but bad enough trying to get through a day’s work. 

I’m reminded of my time working as chaplain in St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network, experiencing people suffering great pain but also watching people returning to good health. There’s a flip side to everything.

Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb in 1879 said: ‘We don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything.’

That made me ask myself who am I. Honestly, most times I have no idea. There are occasions when I say that God loves me. But do I really believe that or do I say it because I’ve been told to say it, or that I’ve heard it so often I’ve been brainwashed into believing it?

The Irish writer John Banville says that he would love to remove the word ‘evil’ from the dictionary and replace it with ‘chance’. He goes on to say that people will do anything circumstances require. He tells the story of an occasion he tripped and people rushed to help him. He goes on to say that maybe in other circumstances those same people might be shipping him to a death camp. There’s a flip side to everything.

Who or what are we at all?

We take so much for granted. I think I see the glass half empty rather than half full; right now I’m an anxious person. Ever before I visited Iran I recall saying that if the US touched the country it was curtains for the world. 

These evenings as I watch the black smoke billowing from oil wells and refineries across the Middle East I can’t help but think we are in a far more serious situation than we realise. And there is nothing we can do about it.

A former work colleague and good friend, who lives in Australia, said to me on Saturday that this current war is closely linked with religion. He pointed out it is Christian US and Jewish Israel in battle with Muslim Iran. I disagree with him but he is far more intelligent than I, and in discussion I find it difficult to counter argue. I’m inclined to say it has to do with oil, power and control, generations of bad government too. 

The previous day another man said this war is the work of Zionists. He said it to me in a public place, so I suggested he keep his voice down. Why did I say that, was I afraid his words would upset people? But I don’t agree or believe what he said.

The current world chaos, the fragility of everything, pushes me to say there must be more to life than this. WB Yeats talks about how the centre cannot hold; it looks like that now. 

But what if you take a broader look at life and place God at the centre? I’m reminded of the Psalmist’s words: ‘How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth.’ (Psalm 8) There’s a flip side to everything.