The church is always in need of reform

This week’s mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Nelofer Pazira, an Irish based Afghan-Canadian journalist and film maker, wrote an opinion piece about Afghanistan in ‘The Irish Times’. 

She quoted Bengali poet Rabindranath Tafgore, who said that the Mujahideen ‘spiritualised politics’. He argued they used religion to achieve political victory. Pazira adds that it was the Taliban who perfected the art of brutality through religion.

Pazira’s piece rang all sorts of bells in my ears.

 

During the Northern Ireland Troubles I spent many days and nights trying to explain to Germans that the violence in Northern Ireland was not caused by religion. I argued that it was a mix of injustice, incompetence, gerrymandering and wrongdoing. 

I still say that today but in the intervening years I’m sure I’ve learned more about human behaviour and how religion becomes immersed in other areas of our lives.

I’ve experienced many positive aspects of religion. I have seen how faith and belief in God has nurtured the lives of people. I’ve also met remarkable priests, great people of God. I have been privileged to meet outstanding priests. 

But I’ve also seen how religion can be abused. I’ve seen how easy it is for fanatics to use religion for their own purposes.

Just as extreme elements in other religions can misuse religion for their own ends, crookedness too, so it is with the Catholic Church.

Could it really be a mortal sin not to attend Mass on a Sunday? The expression ‘a holy day of obligation’ sounds greatly off-putting to me. I can still remember all the rules and regulations about the three-hour fast before receiving Holy Communion. Was God ‘up there’ with a stop watch? I doubt it. If I ate meat on a Friday was it really a mortal sin?

What exactly is a mortal sin? What do those words mean for people today? Has our theological vocabulary broken down?

It has always intrigued me how the hierarchical church seems so often to mismanage its affairs. I’ve seen crass behaviour by a small minority of priests. It has been a source of great mystery to me how these same men seem to know so much about God? 

The church is always in need of reform but right now there really is a need for an open and honest debate between all Christians of good will.

The new Catholic archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell has set up a task force to begin an assessment of the needs of the people of the archdiocese. It’s a great idea. The chairperson is a priest. I’d much prefer to have seen someone who is not a member of the clergy appointed as chair.

Would that be too much to expect?

In an interview with Alan O’Keeffe in the 'Sunday Independent' last Sunday week Archbishop Dermot Farrell quoted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who said to his Irish friend Maurice Drury:

"Only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

He also said that the housing and climate crises must be addressed with urgency nationally and globally. 

That gives me hope.

IMF pays out $650 billion to developing countries

Last week the IMF - International Monetary Fund -  distributed $650 billion to help poor countries pay down debt and withstand the costs of fighting Covid-19.

Olaf Scholz heading for the top job in the city on the Spree

On Sunday, September 26 the Germans go to the polls to elect a new parliament, which will in turn elect a new chancellor.

This blog is predicting that the current federal finance minister, Olaf Scholz will succeed Angela Merkel.

Scholz is the SPD - Social Democratic Party of Germany - candidate for chancellor. He is a former mayor of Hamburg.

When Scholz was asked during the current campaign by a journalist why he was looking so grim despite growing election momentum for him and his SPD party he replied: “I am applying for the job of chancellor and not that of a circus director.”

Brilliant response.

Martin Luther King’s I have a dream

On this day, August 28, 1963 the famous march on Washington for freedom and jobs. Martin Luther King Junior gave his famous I have a dream speech.

I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream - one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream....

Below is the famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King at the Lincoln memorial on August 28, 1963.

17-Minute Listen

• Download
• Transcript

China has 1,058 billionaires

In 2020 there were 1,058 billionaires in the People’s Republic of China compared to 696 in the US.

Approximately 600 million people in China live on a monthly salary of $154.

Vladimir Putin on the dangers of foreign intervention

 “I think a lot of politicians in the west are beginning to realise that you can’t impose your standards for political life and behaviour on other other countries and peoples, regardless of [their] ethnic and religious make-up .... and historical traditions.

“You have to give these peoples the right to determine their fate by themselves, however long it takes them to go down the path of democratisation"

Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president as a young man spent many years working east a KGB operative in Dresden in the former German Democratic Republic.

New New York governor has close links with west Kerry

New governor of New York Kathy Hochul has close links with west Kerry  Her grandparents are from the Maharees in the parish of Castlegregory.

The new mayor was sworn in as New York's first female governor yesterday. 

A Buffalo native, Hochul served as  lieutenant governor since 2015. 

She plans to launch her own bid for reelection next year.

The goal that brought a tear to my eye

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

I know little or nothing about most sports. In school I enjoyed athletics and table tennis. I ran on the school senior relay team and I won the odd game of table tennis. Over the years I have dabbled in other sports, did it for the fun of it and enjoyed it all.

I tuned in to the Cork Kilkenny hurling semi final and found myself shouting for Cork. Was that because Kilkenny has been at the top for such a long time? Probably. But I spent five years living in Cork. That may have had something to do with my shouting for Cork. And then there was the Dublin Mayo game.

Again I was cheering on the underdog.

Obviously that sort of support is total anathema to the experts, the fanatics, the purists, who sleep, eat and drink the sport.

But after the Mayo victory over Dublin I have been thinking about the world of sport and how people follow different teams. I found myself reading every word the Sunday Independent  printed on the Mayo Dublin game. At this stage I even know enough to read Joe Brolly first as he might well give me a bit of a laugh.

 

There is an aside to the Mayo game. Last month I found a wallet, which contained a betting slip. It was a bet on Mayo to win the All-Ireland at 12/1 and the person had waged €50. I tracked down the owner and gave him his wallet, with all the contents, including the betting slip.

A work colleague is a supporter of Leeds. He’s a man I like and gradually I find myself keeping an eye out to see how Leeds are doing in the English Premiership. 

Anytime I stop him on the corridor I’ll ask him how Leeds are doing. At this stage I even know the names of one or two of the players.

Some weeks ago I arrived home from a swim in the sea. The RTE One 6.01 News was almost over and just as I tuned in they were showing a clip of the Kerry Derry minor All-Ireland final. I was half watching until I heard the name Maurice O’Connell being mentioned. He was scoring a goal in the dying minutes of the game before they lost by a point. I was stuck to the floor and found myself shedding a tear. 

Maurice O’Connell is from Castlegregory in West Kerry. I know him from the day he was born, I baptised him, I am great friends with his family. I have kicked ball with him in his garden. I have watched him over the years and seen first hand his love, dedication and enthusiasm in playing football. I just found watching him on the tele scoring a goal so emotional.

Some days later talking to his mother she was enthralled with what fun and the pure joy he and his teammates get out of kicking a simple ball and she also added how it keeps them out of all sorts of trouble. ‘All they need is a simple ball that costs a few bob. It really is amazing,’ she laughed. 

Kerry meet Tyrone on Saturday. Maurice O’Connell has not yet made it to the senior team. But if he does, then I’ll be screaming like a lifelong supporter for Kerry to win.

I often hear people telling me I’m far too subjective. So much to do with our lives is subjective. And so much to do with sport certainly is.

The first day of the battle at Stalingrad

On this day, August 23, 1942 the Germans began their assault on Stalingrad, now Volgograd.

They were confident and convinced they would take the city on the Volga in two weeks.

Early the following February the Germans surrendered.

Hitler proclaimed that after Stalingrad's capture, its male citizens were to be killed and all women and children were to be deported because its population was "thoroughly communistic" and "especially dangerous”.

Confidence is a double edged sword. Seventy nine years ago today the ancestors of Mercedes, Krupp, BASF, Bayer, German Rail et al placed their complete confidence in the then leadership of Germany.

It was a misplaced confidence.

Archbishop quotes Wittgenstein admitting to problems

In an interview with Alan O’Keeffe in the 'Sunday Independent' yesterday Archbishop Dermot Farrell quoted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who said to his Irish friend Maurice Drury:

"Only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

The Archbishop went on to say that we need to examine the quality of both our liturgies and preaching of the word of God.

He said that music in the liturgy is not just to entertain us - great music will always take us to the silence of the mystery from which it comes.

Archbishop Farrell said that he is about to publish a pastoral letter on climate change in the coming days.

He admitted that the housing and climate crises must be addressed with urgency nationally and globally.

Taliban perfected the art of brutality through religion

Nelofer Pazira is an Irish based Afghan-Canadian journalist and film maker. In The Irish Times yesterday she wrote an opinion piece titled, ‘How long can the ‘rebranded' Taliban keep up appearances?'

In it she writes: 

“It was the Mujahideen who ‘spiritualised politics’ in the words of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tafgore.

“They used religion to achieve political victory.

“But it was the Taliban who perfected the art of brutality through religion.

An antidote to feeling useless - but not at all

This is a meme that is currently doing the rounds.

If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and four US presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

- Dr Norman Finkelstein

But why is there no mention of the dead? 

It could have been so clever, but not mentioning the dead it is grotesque.

One of the defeats of World War II was the defeat of men

Harald Jähner’s Aftermath is a gripping description of what life was like in Germany between 1945 and 1955.

The journalist Marta Hillers wrote in her diary in April 1945

"Deep down we women are experiencing a kind of collective  disappointment. The Nazi world - ruled by men, glorifying the strong man - is beginning to crumble, and with it the ‘Man’.

"In earlier wars men could claim that the honour of killing and being killed for the fatherland was theirs and theirs alone.

"Today we women, too, have a share. That has transformed us, emboldened us.

"Among the many defeats at the end of this war is the defeat of the male sex."

Empires behaving badly

On this day, August 19, 1953 the governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom overturned the legally elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran. 

MI6 and the CIA, using immoral, illegal and brutal tactics reinstated the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in Iran.

Mosaddegh was a fine statesman, lawyer and parliamentarian. His administration introduced a range of social and political measures such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes, including the introduction of taxation of the rent on land.

But his government nationalised the Iranian oil industry. The British and Americans were having none of it.

Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death and was buried in his own home so as to prevent a political furor.

Have the British and American governments ever apologised for the terrible wrong they did to the Iranian people?

In 2013, the US government formally acknowledged its role in the coup, as a part of its foreign policy initiatives.

How many empires have put the boots of poor soldiers on the soil of Afghanistan?

 

No need to get sucked into stuff

It’s very easy to get sucked into stuff. 

In the reality we live in, that’s shown to be the only possible reality, the only way of life, but that’s not true.

It’s just an ideology. That’s all it is. 

Having studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton Claire-Louise Bennett was soon disillusioned:

It was the first time I really saw proper wealth and I saw inequality and I started to feel that most people were being fobbed off, taken for a bit of a ride and sold a bit of a lie really; oh you just have to work hard and all the rest of it, what a crock of shit that is.

Claire-Louise Bennett is  author of newly published Checkout 19, published by Jonathan Cape.

A lesson learned from the fall of the Berlin Wall

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

It so happens that this year August 13 fell on a Friday. For those who are superstitious it’s a bad omen. 

But another August 13 brought much bad news to many people.

On Sunday, August 13, 1961 the people of Berlin woke up to the devastating news that their city was being divided in two.

After World War II Germany was divided between the four victorious powers, the Soviet Union, the USA, Britain and France. The eastern part of Germany was under the control of the Russians. But Berlin, which was in the heart of eastern Germany came under the control of the four powers. 

In 1949 when East Germany was set up as an independent State, East Berlin became its capital city. 

From 1950 West Berlin was governed by the Berlin Senate and was politically and socially linked to West Germany but in law it was not part of West Germany, officially known as the Federal Republic of Germany.

Early on August 13, 1961 East German troops and police began erecting a 156-kilometre barbed wire fence cutting off West Berlin from East Berlin and East Germany.

The barbed wire was duly replaced over the years by a large cement wall dividing the city and dividing East from West Germany. Between that fateful Sunday in 1961 and 1989 the East German authorities spent massive sums of money fortifying and strengthening what they called the Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart but was called the Wall of Shame by West Berliners.

The East German authorities built the wall to stop the haemorrhage of people, especially highly qualified and technical people from moving from East to West. It is estimated that 19,000 people left East Germany for West Germany via West Berlin in June 1961.

Approximately three million people moved from East to West between 1948 and Sunday, August 13, 1961. It was obvious to the East German authorities the only way to stop the flow of people was to build a wall, making it physically impossible for them to exit the country.

I worked in West Berlin in the mid -1980s. Never once in my time living in the divided city did I think for one moment that the Berlin Wall would come down in my lifetime.

In those years of a divided city, West Berlin became a quaint place to live and it attracted interesting people, especially from West Germany. German men, who lived in West Berlin were not obliged to do military service. 

The West Berlin authorities offered many incentives to attract people to the city. The city enclave in the heart of East Germany became a type of Mecca for artists and musicians and indeed refuseniks of all shapes and sizes.

Watching on television the Wall come down on Thursday, November 9, 1989 I made a solemn promise I would never again pay heed to anyone who tells me that something or other is impossible or can’t be done. That is of course, unless it defies the laws of gravity or other physical impossibilities.

And it’s important to note that not one life was lost in taking down that wall. 

Sergei A Kovalev - a champion of justice and truth

The Irish Times on Saturday carried the obituary of Sergie A Kovalev.

It is an interesting read about a fascinating person.

Sergei Kovalev was born on March 2, 1930 in Seredina Buda, in northeastern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. His family moved to the Podlipki district, near Moscow when he was two.

He was 11 when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and 12 during the battle at Stalingrad.

He was opposed to the Soviet system and then went on to campaign against post-communist leaders Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

At one stage in his life when he was in internal exile, his son Ivan was charged with undermining and weakening the Soviet Union, while his wife Tatiana Osipova was serving out a sentence in a labour camp.

He studied physiology at Moscow State University from 1951 to 1959. During that time he was interviewed by the KGB during which veiled threats were made against his two-year-old son and his then wife Elena Viktorovna.

Kovalev was a founder of the first independent rights group in the Soviet Union.

He spent time in the notorious Perm camp 36 and was in isolation in Magadan, approximately 6,000 kilometres east of Moscow.

Kovalev opposed  Yeltsin’s first Chechen war from 1994 to 1996, which was the cause of a fall out between the two men.

Reading the obituary one meets a man who spent his entire life campaigning for what was right and just, whatever the cost.

He was a personal friend of physicist and one time designer of Soviet nuclear weapons Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov, the dissident, became a powerful influence on Kovalev.

During the era of Gorbachev Kovalev was rehabilitated and indeed took a seat in parliament.

In March 1995, parliament voted to dismiss him as Russia’s first human rights commissioner.

Sergei A Kovalev died on August 9, 2021.

So, who and what was Kovalev? A permanent complainer or someone who campaigned to do what was right, just and correct?

A man of outstanding and prophetic courage. 

What the missing tourists mean to our economy

In non-pandemic times Irish hospitality employs 300,000 people and earns for the Irish economy about €6 billion, and adding €2 billion to the Exchequer.

In 2019 more than 11 million people visited Ireland. This year, the year of the pandemic, that number shrinks to two million. 

Mary and the Christian story of redemption

The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

Tomorrow is the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I find it difficult to write about it. Putting words on mystery or anything that touches the divine is always problematic. 

But it does remind me of my first experience living in the southern German state of Bavaria. I was greatly surprised to discover that German Railways timetabled their trains as per Sunday running on August 15. 

I found it interesting that in the heartland of industrial Europe one of the world’s biggest railway companies marked a Christian feast that reminds us of how the human and divine touch one another.

Tomorrow’s feast is the celebration of the incorruptibility of Mary’s body after death and her assumption into heaven. It is the celebration of our belief that there is another dimension to us far beyond our flesh and bones. In so many ways it is an extraordinary thing to say. 

Of course there are moments in my own life when I am greatly tempted to say that this life of mine ends with the grave.

Before writing this column, I asked a 99-year-old man how he understands tomorrow’s feast. He believes that Mary’s body did not corrupt in the grave and went on to say that there is a perfect unity between body and spirit. He believes that the spirit is what makes the body alive and that the human soul is everlasting. 

That same man, who has a great sense of humour, once said to me, if there be no God, we will never find out.

Mary is –  in the deepest of meaning – an ordinary human being. She is chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus. 

In tomorrow’s Gospel St Luke attributes to her an Old Testament prophecy in what is commonly known as the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit exults in God my saviour.” (Luke 1: 46 - 47) She explains how the Almighty has done great things for her. 

She talks about how the same God, who has called her to fulfil a special role in human history is all merciful, how he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

Are there not hints in that Gospel reading that there is more to us than flesh and bone and reason? Surely we have been called to the exquisite delights of the divine, a state of perfection that can only be found in God? Is that wishful thinking? I don’t think it is.

When  I visit my parents’ grave,  I find myself talking out loud to them in belief that they are in some way, somehow in union with one another and God. To say any more than that is beyond my powers of comprehension let alone description. 

Down through the generations philosophers and theologians have argued and counter-argued about the unity of body and soul. For the church Mary represents symbolically how mankind is destined for life beyond the grave.

In the second reading in tomorrow’s liturgy (1 Corinthians 15: 20 - 26) St Paul tells the Corinthians that Christ has been raised from the dead. He goes on to say just as we all die in Adam, we will be brought to life in Christ. As Christ is the new Adam, similarly Mary is the new Eve.

Reflecting on this prompts one to ask the challenging question of how to maximise the ministerial and leadership roles of women in every aspect of the church.

It certainly is a topic worthy of serious discussion and must never be allowed to be a taboo subject. And it is unfortunate that the role of women in the church, better said, their absence of a role, can alienate so many people in their search for the divine. After all Mary, next to Christ, plays the most pivotal of roles in the Christian story of redemption.

But it is important to recall that the church is always in need of reform. The Second Vatican Council made it its business to place far more emphasis on the idea of the church being in need of reform rather than being a perfect society.

Tomorrow’s feast is another opportunity for us to spend more time thinking of the wonder and mystery of how the divine touches the human rather than on concentrating on titles and organisational failings that have nothing more to them than a human context. Significant up to a point –  like the German Railways timetable … 

St Luke recounts how Mary tells Elizabeth that all generations will call her blessed. All generations have every reason to call us blessed, all of us, women and men.

Sixty years ago today the Germans built a monstrous wall

Sixty years ago today the Walter Ulbricht government in East Berlin began the building of the Berlin Wall.

The Government of the German Democratic Republic referred to it as Antifaschistischer Schutzwall - an antifascist protection wall. And the mayor of West Berlin Willy Brandt called it the Wall of Shame.

The Wall came down on November 9, 1989 and its destruction came about by more or less an accident.

At another-wise boring press conference in East Berlin Günter Schabowski when answering a question referred to his notes and said that East Germans could leave the country with immediate effect. 

The news travelled fast. East Berliners headed for the border crossing points. At 11.30pm Harald Jäger, the man in charge on the night at Bornholmer Straße, having hesitated for some time and having made  several attempts to find out what to do, instructed his NVA border troops to hold their fire and opened the barriers.

The Wall was no more.

On 3 October 1990 Germany was united or was it reunited. A thorny issue. 

Is Alive! aware of Orbán’s policy on immigration?

As mentioned in this blog yesterday the free sheet Alive! writes in praise of the Hungarian government.

As recently as June of this year Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán described an EU statement in defence of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as ‘frivolous’.

Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland withheld funds from Hungary because of its domestic politics.

Is the free sheet Alive! aware of Orbán’s policies on immigration?

Readers of Alive! have a right to know who owns this free sheet and what actually are its links with the Irish Dominicans.

Have the Dominicans ever made a public statement about its links with Alive!?

Alive! launches another broadside against the EU

The editorial in the August edition of the free sheet Alive!  discusses the current dispute between the European Union and Hungary.

It depicts the EU as the bully in the playground, which uses inflammatory and emotive language.

The final sentence in the editorial reads: “ Our prayers should be with the Hungarian people as they confront the latest tyranny to arise in Europe.”

Who owns Alive? Who is the editor of Alive!? Does Alive! have an editorial board? 

Is there any connection between Alive! and the Irish Dominican Province?

Does the Irish Dominican Province support the editorial policy of Alive!?

At the bottom of the front page of the free sheet there is the following disclaimer: 'The content of the newspaper Alive! and the view in it are those of the editor and contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Irish Dominican Province.'

This disclaimer would suggest that there is a nexus between Alive! and the Irish Dominicans.

Is there?

Do the Olympic Games unite or divide the world?

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Do the Olympic Games unite or divide the world?

The Olympic Games came to an end on Sunday. Ireland is of course proud of its two gold and two bronze medals.

Looking through the medals table it jumped off the page for me to see that of the top five medal winning countries four of them are nuclear power countries. They are USA, China, Great Britain and ROC.

It took me a while to work out where ROC is. It stands for the Russian Olympic Committee. Due to doping controversies, Russia was banned from taking part in these Olympics. So this is the way they got around it. Sounds odd.

Russian athletes did not have the word Russia emblazoned on their clothing and if they did, it also had to include ‘neutral athlete’. When Russians won gold medals the Russian anthem was replaced by music from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number One.

Politics and sport is an old story. A friend of mine, who is a fanatical rugby enthusiast stopped supporting the Irish national team after the Irish Rugby Football Union allowed members to take part in apartheid South Africa in August 1989.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games took place three years after the Nazis came to power and in spite of all the reassurances Hitler gave to the International Olympic Committee, the Nazis kept few of their promises. On that German team there was only one competitor with Jewish ancestry. It’s worth noting that the Germans won the most medals at those games.

This year there has been the shocking story of the Belarus athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who has taken refuge in Poland. On social media she had criticised the management of the team’s officials and was subsequently told to go home.

We all know the style of leadership of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, so Krystsina decided it was best not to go home.

The IOC always tries to steer a clever path through all the political skulduggery. Maybe it is the Olympics bring home to us the importance of political dialogue and they also highlight to the world those places where dictators and tyrants are in control.

Do the Games bring the world together in some sort of loving embrace or do they simply highlight how the strong and powerful nations in fact control the world, even in sport?

During these games I’ve been asking myself is it a good idea to play the anthems of the winning competitors. And yet when I heard our anthem being played I felt all emotional. I was delighted to see ‘our people’ on the winning podium.

Of course it was sensational to see us win our first gold medals in rowing with Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy and another gold with boxer Kellie Harrington. I’m back thinking of Krystsina Tsimanouskaya afraid to go home. Do we ever realise the good fortune we have to live on this island, no matter how few or many medals we win at the Olympic Games.

It’s easy to criticise our legitimately elected politicians, and it’s probably good that we do, but those same politicians keep us safe from tyrants and dictators. And long may they do so.

We are a land of wasters

Volunteers removed 3.5 tonnes of rubbish from our lakes, rivers, canals and beaches over the August bank holiday weekend. 

Per head of population Ireland is one of the highest producers of waste in Europe.

It is estimated that almost 14 million tonnes of waste were generated in Ireland in 2018 across all economic sectors and households, corresponding to 2.9 tonnes per person.

Main sources of waste included municipal waste, construction and demolition waste and other sources such as industry and agriculture.

The day that Richard Nixon said he was waving day-day

On this day, August 8, 1974 US President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announced his resignation as president of the United States of America, effective from noon the following day.

It’s one of those days that people old enough to remember will recall where exactly they were on that day and indeed, what they were doing.

He announced his resignation on the feast of St Dominic. 

And guess where he lived out his years of retirement? San Clemente.

For readers not familiar with the Irish Dominicans, San Clemente is the name of the Irish Dominicans’ priory on the Via Labicana in Rome.

 

Last week in the Catholic Church with John Allen

 https://youtu.be/DebufWX0DFo 

Large numbers joining the Travel Pass brigade

It’s not just priests who are

growing old.

In Ireland in 2016 there were 630,000 people aged 65 and over, which accounted for approximately 13 per cent of the population.

It is projected that by 2031 that figure will have jumped to approximately one million and 1.6 million by 2051.

At present approximately 50,000 people hit the 65 age group every year. Over the next 15 years this number is projected to grow to 70,000 annually.

The number of people aged 80 and over is projected to  rise from 148,000 in 2016 to between 536,000 and 549,000 in 2051.

Scarr the place to be on August Bank Holiday Monday

There’s a big rush on to

book that holiday abroad. We all want to throw off the shackles of Covid. It’s not that long ago at all since we were not allowed go some few kilometres from our hall door and then when that was

lifted we could travel within our county and then the magic of being allowed cross the county bounds. And right now we can go wherever we like in the country and to many places outside it too. 

In our mad rush to go away do we ever spot what’s right in front of our noses?

On Bank Holiday Monday a friend and I wandered in West Wicklow, taking in a walk up Scarr Mountain.

As the proverbial crow flies it is less than 50 kilometres from my hall door to the top of Scarr.

Best to set off from Oldbridge, which is a short drive from Roundwood.

Scarr is approximately 600 metres high and it is an idyllic walk from Lough Dan to the top. The views are breathtaking.

On August Bank Holiday Monday we met six people on the mountain.

Sensational.

Try it.

Paddy Murray takes his advice from doctors and scientists

Journalist and former columnist at The Star and brother of Bishop Donal Murray writes in The Irish Times yesterday:

I have to confess that I am baffled by the continuing and increasingly hysterical campaign against the doctors and scientists who are leading the fight against the Covid pandemic.

I will listen to Nphet and NIAC and the HSE rather than a bunch of people who don’t seem to be qualified to give me, or anyone else, advice on a pandemic.

Does the hierarchy believe it owns the church?

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

The first time you walk into an important place it’s most likely that you will be awestruck.

I know the first time I was in government buildings or Dáil Éireann I was conscious that I was in a special place, somewhere that resonated with a sense of history, importance too.

I think I was eight when I went down to Roscrea College with my mother and father. My brother was being admitted as a border to the school. I can still remember standing in the entrance hall as my parents spoke to the president of the college. 

It was all so majestic and powerful and as a little boy I perceived both priests and buildings as intimidating. Back then I would not have known what intimidating meant, nevertheless, that’s the effect it had on me.

I think it’s fair to  say that when we walk into some palatial setting with which we are not familiar we are awestruck.

So too when we meet important or famous people, we certainly watch our Ps and Qs. We might not know the first thing about the person but there is that sense we are in the presence of perceived greatness.

In an Ireland of a different era people sidled up beside the teacher, the priest, the doctor. They felt they were in the presence of someone important, while at the same time they might not have known the first thing about the person.

I imagine that same sort of phenomenon still exists in the world of celebrities. And of course there are many sycophants who think it a good move to stay close to the coattails of the great and the good.

I remember once hearing journalist Vincent Browne remarking that when we give titles to people we give them power and control over us.

I’m often struck with the relationship that exists between the institutional church and the individual member.

It goes without saying that in every organisation there’s the good the bad and the ugly. That’s life. But in spite of all the talk I hear, all the words of sorrow that I have heard about historical misdeeds, I still can’t help but think that the institutional church has actually hijacked the church, which is the people of God. 

These days I’m asking myself does the hierarchy actually believe it owns the church. I’m inclined to think it does.

I’m a Dominican and I often wonder what really is the concrete relationship between the people who come to our churches and the Dominican Order? 

What actually do they know about us?

In the case of diocesan priests, have the people in parishes any idea how a diocese is organised and run? 

Have parishioners any say as who should or should not be their parish priest?  Does anyone know how the system works? And then all the silly titles.

Is this heresy? I don’t think so.

It’s so easy to look on in some sort of awe or wonder about the church. But if you scratch away, stop all the wonder and awe, what actually is there?

Any time I go back to Roscrea I feel profoundly sad at why anyone should stand back in awe.