Royal weddings and beatifcation ceremonies

The article below appears in today's INM Irish regional newspapers.

By Mihcael Commane
On Friday a friend and I went by motorbike to Newmarket in Co Cork. The bike needed servicing so it was an ideal spring day to drive through the lush north Cork countryside.

Newmarket is a small town. On the main street there is a low size sculpture of Newmarket born writer Alice Taylor.

On the day there was only one show in town. Of course it was the royal wedding in Westminster Abbey and every television in the town was tuned in to the wedding.

On one occasion I joked to someone and asked what would the men of 1916 say about all this? I got the impression that my question was not appreciated. I was out the door before I could analyse the comment.

On the way home we called to visit someone in a nursing home. We were lucky to catch her as she had just returned from her daughter’s house where she had been watching the royal wedding on a wide screen TV.

And then, later that evening, I found myself watching a replay of the event on BBC.

Nothing to do with being for or against the Windsors, I’m just not in to that sort of thing. I’m inclined to ask who pays for it all and where and how ultimately do people with large sums of money amass such fortunes.

Nevertheless, I come out with my hands up and admit that I did watch much of the replay on Friday evening.

I was also wondering what the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who performed the ceremony, was thinking about it all.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, preached an impressive sermon. He quoted the great Dominican saint, Catherine of Siena, whose feast day it was and also my birthday. It is a quote well worth remembering: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

Fast forward to Sunday morning and to the beatification of Pope John Paul II.

It so happens a Dominican colleague of mine was doing the commentary for RTE. I watched the greater part of the ‘event’. I switched channels as two German networks were showing it, as was ETWN.

On Saturday’s newspaper it had been reported that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe would be attending the Vatican ceremony.

I’m sort of confused with the fast tracking of beatification for John Paul II but again I come out with my hands up and say that I watched most of the ‘event’ and listened attentively to Pope Benedict’s sermon. Because I have spent most of my teaching life teaching German I am interested in all things German and its people too. So Benedict interests me.

Sitting in my armchair watching the second spectacle within 48 hours I am again wondering what a cleric is thinking about – this time Pope Benedict XVI.

Between the royal wedding and the beatification ceremony billions of viewers were tuned in.

These events clearly attract worldwide attention. In both events cameras zoomed in and showed us people so emotional that we could see the tears slowly trickle down their cheeks.

The commentators at the royal event told us it was living proof of the respect in which the royal family was held. On Sunday at the beatification ceremony we were told that the crowds through their silence were showing the world the strength of their faith.

Is it as simple as that? Nothing in this crazy world of ours is simple.

I’ll put my cards out on the table straight away. I’m not too sure about royalty. I am never happy with people who put themselves beyond the rest of us and then go on and consider themselves with some sort of ‘divine right’ to sit on thrones and live in palaces.

I can’t help thinking of unacceptable levels of unemployment right across the UK, swathes of urban areas lying in ruins, people unable to read and write and then the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding.

On Sunday watching the beatification ceremony I think of how the institutional church has dealt with so many issues of clerical child sex abuse. I think of how Pope John Paul seems to have handled the case of the leader of the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Marcial Maciel Degolado It seems to be an unmitigated disaster. And what is most worrying is that it all seems to be covered up – all the time the underlying thinking is, the institutional church must never ‘cause scandal’. It’s that mantra that is the overriding principle.

Watching both events it struck me that they were really ‘spectator events’. The great masses were looking on in awe and jubilation as if they were adoring their lords and masters.

Okay, with the beatification there was a minimal or token participation of the non clerical world but watching the rows upon rows of clerics dressed in their finery it was difficult not to observe a great divide between the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’.

I’m just wondering is that the way it should be either in State or church. But especially in church where our founder Jesus Christ was born in a stable and spent his life at odds with the ruling classes.

I’m just not so sure about all the pomp and ceremony. On the other hand maybe we need an excuse to be distracted from the terrible mess we are in.