Watching life go by from behind the window

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

I had an early morning appointment with my dental hygienist last week.

I arrived shortly before the 8.30am deadline. Maybe I spent 10 to 15 minutes in the waiting room before I was called.

Have you ever noticed if you are taken away from your morning routine and find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings how you are more inclined to observe what’s happening around you?

The dental clinic’s waiting room faces out on to the street which is on a main thoroughfare, approximately three kilometres from Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge.

It’s a busy street, and it was morning commuter rush hour time. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and people were walking in all directions.

I was sitting at the window, literally watching life go by.

A van had pulled up outside a Spar shop and was making a morning delivery. A large sized man was manipulating a trolley on the ramp of the van. It all looked so easy to do. But I remember once standing on one of those ramps on the back of a van and being scared of my life. This man was doing it with such facility, it all looked so easy. Practice makes perfect.

As he was manipulating the trolley on to the footpath a young woman passed with a boy. He was probably 10 or 11 and I presume the woman was his mother.

Obviously she was bringing him to school. Both of them were laughing as he skipped along, wildly gesticulating with his hands. The two of them were in deep conversation. And as they talked and laughed a young man got off his bicycle and locked it to a lamppost. It was an expensive bicycle and he was making sure a thief would have difficulty trying to steal it. Bicycle locked, off he went about his business.

It was fascinating watching them all live that moment in their daily lives. They were in that magic space of normality, getting on with their lives. And guess what, from my vantage point it looked charming and wonderful. 

Imagine if my window were in Mariupol or Kharkiv, or indeed, anywhere in Ukraine. The glass might be gone from the window frame and I can’t imagine the people I was looking down on would be as relaxed and as oblivious to their surroundings as they were that morning I was observing them.

My 10/15 minute looking down on the street reminded me of aspects of the famous Alfred Hitchcock 1954 film ‘Rear Window'. It is considered by many critics as one of his best films and indeed one of the best films ever made. 

It’s about a professional photographer, who was recovering from a broken leg. Confined to a wheelchair he spends much of his time looking out on to a busy courtyard from his Manhattan window. 

One night he hears a woman screaming. It turns into a mystery murder story.

My morning of observing proved nothing as exciting or as dangerous as the Hitchcock film. But I was fascinated watching people simply getting on with their lives. 

They all looked decent people, indeed, I'd go as far saying, they looked relatively content, indeed happy.

The Guardian’s journalist on the great man

What appears in the Guardian on Lester Piggott.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/may/29/lestor-piggott-a-rare-talent-who-left-his-mark-on-an-audience-of-millions-horse-racing?CMP=share_btn_link

Trump, NRA, gun lobbyists and 19 murdered children

Donald Trump was a guest speaker at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting at Houston on Friday.

In his address the former US president referred to Satan and it was his prayer that the perpetrator of the shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, some 450 kilometres away, would roast in hell.

In his speech he used much Christian imagery and vocabulary.

It would seem the majority of those who are in favour of loose gun laws, are in favour of teachers carrying weapons and are in favour of the death penalty, are opposed to abortion.

On the other side, those who are calling for stricter gun laws, who are opposed to teachers carrying guns and are opposed to the death penalty, are calling for women to have the right to seek an abortion.

The Archbishop of San Antonio Gustavo García-Siller has been interviewed on many occasions since the murders in Uvlade. He has spoken with great courage, grace and clarity. He expressly called for tighter rules concerning the purchasing and carrying of guns.

Lester Piggott dies in a Swiss hospital today

Lester Piggott died in Switzerland today. He was 86.

The legendary flat racing jockey was born in 1935 into a famous racing family. He won his first winner at 12.

Piggott won his first Epsom Derby on Never Say Die. It was the first of nine Epsom Derbys he would win. 

Legend has it that after his win on Never Say Die, the 18-year-old young man avoided the celebrations and instead went home and cut his father’s lawn.

He had a long and successful relationship with Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien and always said the best horse he ever rode was Derby winner Sir Ivor, trained by O’Brien.

He was partially deaf and also had a slight speech impediment. It meant people often thought he was rude. But he did often use it to his advantage.

It was joked that he could ride between rails and the paint, so dexterous was he in the saddle.

He was a regular visitor at the Curragh where he had many famous victories. As a result of his links with the Curragh he made many lifelong friends in Ireland, especially in County Kildare.

Tracy Piggott, who worked for RTE, is his daughter.

The world has the gift of throwing up geniuses from time to time. Piggott was one of the those geniuses.

He was a great man and masterclass jockey.

It’s difficult to comprehend that Pioggott is gone.

'We can’t live with people who support Putin’s war'

From yesterday’s Guardian. And these are not the ‘elite’ from Moscow or St Petersburg. These people are from Tomsk in Siberia. And that  tells its own story.

Tomsk is 3,600 kilometres east of Moscow and a two day drive from the capital. It lies north of  Novosibirsk.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/28/tv-chief-who-fled-russia-viktor-muchnik?CMP=share_btn_link

Former Russian TV anchor presenter speaks her mind

Zhanna Agalakova was

interviewed on BBC 2’s Newsnight last evening. It was short but riveting television.

Agalakova was a major player as a journalist on Russia's most watched television station.

She has resigned from her job and has left Russia and may now be living in Paris. The BBC interview took place in Amsterdam.

She spoke about the two worlds, the world of destruction and war that is happening in Ukraine and how it is presented on Russian television as Ukrainian cheering citizens greet Russian soldiers with flowers.

She is not convinced sanctions will work.

Her advice to all Russians is to switch off Russian television and to get their news anywhere but on Russian television.

Zhanna Agalakova said that the malevolence of Putin has spread right across the country, as far as its eastern borders.

Riveting television.

President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power

Catherine Belton joins Dan Snow to discuss the remarkable story of Vladimir Putin's rise to power. 

After working from 2007-2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, Catherine's career has offered an exclusive insight into the workings of Putin's Kremlin. Her book 'Putin's People' is packed with interviews with the key inside players, uncovering fascinating details about how Putin subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. 

It's a story of billions of dollars being siphoned out of state enterprises, murky networks of operatives and the suppression of independent voices. 

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=1042631089&i=1000563188277

Former Dominican John O’Keeffe (1945 - 2022) - obituary

The death has occurred of former Dominican, John O’Keeffe. He died in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on Tuesday.

John was born in Cork on November 29, 1945. He began his noviciate in St Mary’s, Pope’s Quay, Cork in 1964, making profession in 1965 and was ordained a priest in  July 1971.

Before joining the Dominicans John attended Newbridge College, where he was a boarder. After school he joined the Irish Army, spending a year in the cadette college on the Curragh. It was a close move from Newbridge College to the Army. It was from there that he joined the Dominicans. 

After his priestly ordination he was assigned to St Mary’s Priory, Pope’s Quay, Cork and began his arts degree at University College Cork. While at UCC he was diagnosed with epilepsy. The illness interfered with his studies, which meant John never completed his degree.

It was during his time in Cork that he took leave of absence from the Order, which eventually led to his leaving the Irish Dominicans.

John was highly intelligent, a man of precision and exactitude. If he was a Christian, then he was a Christian with all its consequences and if an atheist, it followed he was the perfect atheist. He could never understand how people could be halfhearted in their faith or in their non-faith. John was in so many respects a perfectionist.

He was an avid reader, his specialities being history and philosopher and he also dabbled in theology. As a result of his lifelong interests he regularly visited the late Frs Henry Peel and Hugh Fenning and Fr Liam Walsh.

John O’Keeffe was quietly spoken, gentle in his disposition. He was to the end a person of total integrity, finding it difficult to understand how people could say one thing and do another.

On leaving the Order he kept up his contact with a number of Dominicans, indeed, he cherished their friendship.

He was a good man, who never did harm to anyone and took a grim view when people were unkind or cruel. John was a man of his word.

A prayer service takes place at 12.30 today at Corrigans’ funeral home in Dublin’s Camden Street. 

Funeral Mass at 1pm on Saturday in St Patrick’s Church, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork followed by cremation at Island Crematorium, Rocky Island, Ringaskiddy.

 May John rest in peace.

Three Belarusian women win prestigious German award

Belarusian pro-democracy activists Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Veronika Zepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova were awarded this year's Charlemagne Prize during a ceremony in Aachen yesterday.

Tsikhanouskaya and Zepkalo are currently living in exile and accepted their awards in person. But  Maria Kolesnikova is serving an 11 year sentence in Belarus, so her award was collected by her sister.

The prize has been awarded since 1950 and is named after Charlemagne, known historically as the 'father of Europe’.  The prize recognises work done in the service of European unification.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock attended the ceremony, praising the three women as the 'bravest women in Europe’.

The three women have become the face of Belarus' opposition movement. Tsikhanouskaya was a political novice and stay-at-home mother of two when her husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who had launched a presidential campaign against Lukashenko, was arrested.

She took his place in the presidential election and is widely believed to have won the August 2020 vote, which Lukashenko claimed to win.

In Aachen, Tsikhanouskaya called for European unity in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, accusing both Belarus and Russia of trying to divide the West.

"Without free Belarus there will be a constant threat to Ukraine and to our western neighbours," Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said.

She demanded that Russia withdraw all troops from Belarus. The Belarusian regime is collaborating with Russia, she said, but the people of Belarus support Ukraine with some fighting on the side of Kyiv.

Tsikhanouskaya also dedicated her award to the Belarusian people engaged in a peaceful struggle against tyranny, as well as "every child waiting for their mother or father to be released from prison."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke at the ceremony, vowing that Germany "will not rest" until Lukashenko's regime ends its repression against the Belarusian people.

"Lukashenko proceeds against his critics with shocking severity", Baerbock said. "In doing so, the Russian and Belarusian regimes are cynically holding in contempt precisely the things for which the three of you are fighting: Peace, freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

Baerbock acknowledged that Europe had been wrong in how it dealt with Lukashenko's regime. "The belief that cooperation is possible to a certain extent even with dictators like Lukashenko may have made us act too hesitantly toward the Belarusian regime," she said.

"For me as German foreign minister, it is clear that in the future we have to look more critically, act more decisively when our values and freedom are being attacked," she added.

The blustering buffoonery of Boris Johnson yesterday

British prime minister Boris Johnson held a press conference yesterday to speak about the Sue Gray ‘Partygate' report, which was critical of the ethos and environment at 10 Downing Street.

Johnson allowed a specific number of questions to be asked and insisted that each journalist ask just one question.

Many questions he did not answer. And not one of the journalists present pushed him to answer questions he refused to answer. It was his usual subterfuge, pretending to stumble, changing the subject and then attempting to behave as one of the lads and trying to be funny. It was a shameful performance from the occupant of 10 Downing Street.

It was almost like the performance of a poor school teacher in the classroom with the attending journalists being the students. No insult to the teaching profession intended.

It was the usual blustering performance by Johnson. The timidity of the journalists was worrying.

‘Ashamed’ Russian diplomat resigns

This is an inspiring story. It appeared in The Irish Times yesterday.

It is always impressive and heartening when someone in the name of truth and justice takes a stand against the prevailing opinion.

Polina Ivanova

comments in statement on social media

A Russian diplomat has resigned in protest at Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, describing himself as “ashamed” of his country in a rare rejection by a government official of president Vladimir Putin’s war aims.

Boris Bondarev, an arms control adviser to the Russian UN mission in Geneva, made the highly critical comments in a statement posted on social media accounts.

“Long overdue, but today I resign from civil service. Enough is enough,” he wrote. “For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year,” he said, referring to the date that Russia invaded Ukraine.

Mr Bondarev’s statement, which also criticised Russia’s veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, said the foreign ministry was riven with “lies” and was no longer about diplomacy. Instead, he wrote, “it is all about warmongering, lies and hatred. It serves [the] interests of [the] few”.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Bondarev confirmed he had resigned and said he did not think he could return to Russia for the time being, for fear of repercussions.

“It became obvious that our government was doing the wrong things, absolutely not in the interests of the country or the society, quite the opposite,” he said, speaking by phone. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with that.”

“As a staff member I carry some sort of responsibility for all of this. So I decided that was it,” he said.

He added that he knew of “quite a significant” number of people who had already resigned from jobs in Russian diplomacy but had done so without making any public statements.

Fear of change and of possible repercussions kept many others in their jobs, even if they might disagree with the war, Mr Bondarev said.

Though he felt he had been “putting up with nonsense” at work for some time, Mr Bondarev said he might have stayed in his job had it not been for the invasion, after which he felt it was time “to signal, are you a person or what are you”?

The office of the permanent mission of the Russian Federation to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Writing in his resignation statement, Mr Bondarev said his former boss, Mr Lavrov, had gone from being a “professional and educated intellectual ... held in high esteem, to a person who constantly broadcasts conflicting statements and threatens the world...with nuclear weapons”!

“I studied to be a diplomat and have been a diplomat for 20 years. The ministry has become my home and family. But I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy,” he wrote.

Mr Bondarev said the war was also a “crime against the people of Russia, with a bold letter Z crossing out all hopes and prospects for a prosperous free society in our country”. The letter Z, used on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, has become a nationalist symbol of backing for the invasion. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

It’s a life-long journey seeking out the truth

This week’s Independent News & Media/Mediahuis Irish weekly newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

A wise man once quipped:‘If you see the other fella’s point of view you are finished.’

It presupposes you have a position on something and should you listen to other people’s views you might change your thinking.

On May 12 Paul Johnston, the British ambassador to Ireland was interviewed on RTE 1’s Prime Time. He was talking about his government’s views on the Northern Ireland Protocol. He was supporting the decisions of prime minister Boris Johnson.

Listening to him set me thinking about the job of an ambassador. With no disrespect to any ambassador, but aren’t they simply the mouthpieces of their governments.

Yuri Filatov, the ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ireland, assured us up until February 24 there would be no invasion of Ukraine. 

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Putin explained that Russia was obliged to de-nazify  Ukraine and the country had to protect its borders from the advance of Nato. Subsequently Filatov gave us the Putin line. Is that what diplomat do? Do ambassadors have minds of their own?

 

It is said that the majority of the Russian people support Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. If you or I were Russians living in Samara or Novosibirsk would we be supporting Putin?  Most likely we would.  In World War II the majority of Germans supported Hitler. That’s why I’m always nervous when people talk about ‘Nazi Germany’. 

When one uses that term one can easily think it was a small group of Germans who were mad and bad enough to support Hitler. Just as Hitler had the German people behind him, no doubt Putin too has the majority of the Russia people supporting him.

We say they have been brainwashed. Are we brainwashed?

Do any of us think for ourselves? How influenced are we by our surroundings, by what we read and see? 

Are we all marionettes submerged in the prevailing environment, controlled by the powerful?

How do we ever know what is true and honest?

I read an article in the May issue of the free-sheet ‘Alive'. It was attacking the veracity of ‘The New York Times’. It is true that the newspaper’s Berlin correspondent in the 1930s was a Nazi supporter but that does not mean that one can rubbish the history of the newspaper because of one instance of bad judgement.

The ‘Alive’ author based his argument attacking the newspaper on the works of Mark Crispin Miller. I googled Miller to discover that he is an anti-vaxxer, says the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. And he also claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 United States presidential election. 

How can we discover what is true?

Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds is a waste of a life. Our lives make sense when we spend our time and energy seeking out truth and goodness. It’s a life-long journey.

German poliitican says Scholz does not want Ukraine to win

Last evening on the Anne Will Show on Germany’s ARD television station, CDU member of the Bundestag and a former Bundeswehrgeneral staff officer, Roderich Kiesewetter sensationally said that he believes that German chancellor Olaf Scholz does not want Ukraine to win the war against Russia.

The three faiths of new Australian prime minister

The three faiths of the new Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese.

 “I was raised with three great faiths: the Catholic Church, the Labor party and South Sydney Football Club.”

Albanese will be sworn in as prime minister-elect today.

Leipzig win the DFB Pokal for the first time

For the first time in its history RB Leipzig won the German Football Association Cup by beating SC Freiburg in a penalty shoot out.

It had many similarities with the FA Cup Final, where the Liverpool Chelsea game also went to a penalty shoot out.

British government tries to shield dangerous MI5 agent

This is from the BBC website. It is a very disturbing story and seems to have more or less disappeared from most new platforms.

A woman who was terrorised and abused by an MI5 agent is taking legal action against the security service. 

Beth, not her real name, has lodged a formal complaint with the watchdog for the intelligence agencies, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). 

On Thursday, a BBC investigation revealed her then partner used his security status to coercively control her.

He also attacked her with a machete and threatened to kill her. 

The Centre for Women's Justice (CWJ) said Beth was asking the IPT to investigate MI5's recruitment and handling of the agent, X, and whether any steps were taken to address the clear risk of harm he posed.

She will also argue that MI5's conduct may have breached her human rights by "enabling X to subject her to serious violence and abuse with impunity".

• MI5 agent used secret status to terrorise girlfriend
• Court ruling allows BBC to tell MI5 agent story

The IPT is an independent, official panel that considers complaints about conduct by or on behalf of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. 

The IPT has the power to consider alleged breaches of human rights by intelligence agencies.

If it ultimately ruled that MI5 failed to take appropriate action to protect Beth from harm, that could impact all the UK's intelligence and security agencies that recruit and task undercover informants. 

In practical terms that could force more detailed assessments of the risks that agents pose. It could potentially mean agencies decide some informants are too dangerous to recruit, no matter the value of the intelligence they may have.

In a recent ground-breaking case against the police, the IPT awarded £230,000 compensation to a woman who had been tricked into a sexual relationship with an undercover officer. 

And so a ruling against MI5 in this case would almost certainly lead to damages for Beth. 

If the IPT decides to examine the complaint, its panel will have to balance human rights considerations with wider questions about why the information provided by X was thought to be operationally vital. 

Behind closed doors, the tribunal would be likely to examine MI5's paperwork and witness evidence about why this agent was important. 

The questions Beth's case raise mean its outcome could become a major moment in the law governing undercover operations.

We are at home with God

The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

I can vividly remember being hauled over the coals by a senior priest over his use of the word family.

Talking to young novices he pointed out that they were now part of the family of the congregation they had joined. I disagreed with him,  and counter-argued that the family is a word that is too often misused.

The family is a unique grouping, indeed a most intimate society made up of parents and children.

Yes, we talk about the family of nations, we loosely use terms like “the GAA family”. But the kernel  or root of the word lies in  that place where we find the greatest security, the greatest of love, that place where we can be truly ourselves. 

Of course there are dysfunctional families, broken families, hurting and divided families, but for most people the family is made up of children and parents living most of the time in harmony and love. Modern parlance rightly uses the term the ‘nuclear family’

Homes are places where families live. They are sacrosanct places. Watching our television screens every evening the destruction of family homes across Ukraine tells us something of the abomination and evil that is perpetrated by the aggressor. They are crimes against humanity.

Anytime we use the words family and home we are talking about something powerfully intimate. Our homes, at least for the majority of people, are the places where we can let down our guard, express ourselves for who we are in a manner and way that is not thinkable in any other place or situation. 

We all know the expression ‘street angel, house devil’. We know that the real person and her/his innermost feelings and beliefs are most likely made manifest best of all within the home and family.

It’s the place where reality reigns supreme. And it is also the purest form of community. Everyone has a role to play in the home according to their  circumstances, condition and ability. 

It’s the place where understanding is a given. But like everything on this planet earth of ours, there is no perfect family, never was, never will be. 

Like everything to do with our lives, families can be rough around the edges. But they are special places and demand our loyalty and respect.

 

Everything we say about God is always said in terms of analogy. God’s greatness and perfection make it so that all our words describing God are limited. Any time we use words to speak of God the dissimilarity is greater than the similarity.

As Christians  we believe that the historical person Jesus is God. His words have special significance for us. In tomorrow’s Gospel (John 14: 23 - 29) John quotes Jesus: “If anyone loves me,  he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.”

There it is. The perfect home is to be found with God in magnificent union where community is to be found in total perfection. I often think of the theological gymnastics used in attempting to explain the Trinity. The Trinity is all about perfect communion. The union of persons is so perfect that it is oneness in God.

Tomorrow’s Gospel has two magic themes. It talks about being at home with God and it also talks, maybe it is better to say, hints at perfect communion in some sort of way well beyond our understanding of sharing in the most intimate of ways with and in the mystery of God.

I am often  mystified why Christian churches underplay the importance of communion, solidarity, the idea that we are in some special way united with one another. 

Communists showed a glimpse of the importance of unity among peoples when they deployed their famous slogan:  ‘Workers of the World Unite’. 

As Christians we too often talk about eucharist and communion with little sense of what those words mean. Does it ever cross our minds communion transcends every aspect of the Christian faith?  

When last did we hear of a row among Christians about our communion infringements? Our homes might well give us a glimpse of what St John is writing about tomorrow. And they should. We are at home with God.

There is not a day in my life when I don’t think of and fondly remember my beloved mother and father.

Oops, the Guardian gets it wrong

It seems the past participle is on its last legs.

The text below is from yesterday’s Guardian

"The four employees who used to work at Schröder’s office, located almost directly opposite the Russian embassy on the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin, already resigned of their own accord in early March, after their boss had showed no intention of stepping down from his boardroom roles at Russian oil company Rosneft and pipeline company Nord Stream."

A time for believing, suspecting and knowing everything

"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything."

- Oscar Wilde

Putin takes another page out of Hitler’s text book

In the last few days it has been reported by western intelligence that President Putin is now micromanaging the war in Ukraine and that his generals are playing second fiddle.

If that be the case he is once again doing exactly what Hitler did.

It so happens on this day in 1942 the Soviet Union began deporting Crimean Tartars to the then Uzbek SSR. It was carried out by Laverenity Beria, head of the feared Soviet secret police. He did it acting on behalf of Stalin.

Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during the deportation, while tens of thousands perished subsequently due to the harsh exile conditions.

Bishops don’t always know what is best

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

There’s a house in leafy Killiney for sale. The asking price is €12 million and from the pictures I have seen of it, it sounds a good buy at the price. 

The then Catholic archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid moved in to the fine house in 1945. 

And don’t forget, he still had his pad at his palace in Drumcondra. When I read about the sale of the house in a national newspaper earlier in the month I was reminded of an experience I had with the same archbishop.

My own personal experience of the man is not one I wish to dwell on. Just let me say I have had better encounters than my one with the late John Charles McQuaid. I jumped for joy in January 1972 when I heard on the lunchtime news that McQuaid had retired.

I am aware of many fine jobs and acts of charity the man did. Only last week someone told me how kind Archbishop McQuaid had been to him and how he helped set him out on his career.

And as to his Killiney house I was told by someone it may have been gifted to him. We are complex people and there is good and bad in all of us.

But I’m never surprised why so many Irish people have spoken with their feet when it comes to their allegiance to the institutional Irish Catholic Church.

After the Northern Ireland elections Sunday Independent columnist Joe Brolly wrote his usual incisive piece on the state of play in the North. He argued that in any ordinary democratic political environment heads would roll in the leadership if they failed to achieve their goals. But that doesn’t happen too easily in the North.

Has it ever dawned on the management of our church that there might be something seriously amiss in its leadership?

The type of leadership that has been displayed by far too many bishops and leaders of religious congregations is simply not fit for purpose. Far too many of them have acted as bullies and incompetent people. I have seen it with my own eyes over a long period of time. Please don’t get me wrong, I have also had the great good fortune of experiencing fine leadership.

Right now the Catholic Church worldwide is involved in a two-year synod, which will end next year.

The logo on the Vatican website invites us to ‘walk together as a church with the Holy Spirit’. It is a listening process. But are the people being genuinely  listened to and what role are bishops playing in controlling what is being said? 

The church is the people of God, we are a communion, where all members are on a common journey. It’s not easy to kill old ways and there seems to be something in the psyche of the episcopacy to believe and say: ‘I am the bishop and I know best’. If the current synod is to have any success then a change of heart has to come from our bishops.

Let’s pray to the Holy Spirit for some success for the synod.

By the way, are people even aware there is a synod underway?

A man and his loyal dog

This is a lovely story about a man and his dog. In the midst of bombs, rockets and tanks this man walked over 200 kilometres with his loyal dog to safety.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/15/ukrainian-who-walked-140-miles-to-safety-fears-for-his-canine-companion?CMP=share_btn_link

First president of independent Ukraine

This obituary appears in the

weekend edition of The Irish Times. A most interesting read and gives the reader some insight into the country.

Leonid Kravchuk, who has died after a long illness aged 88, was a Communist Party bureaucrat who became the first president of independent Ukraine and a main player in bringing the Soviet Union to an ignominious end.

At a hastily arranged meeting in a remote hunting lodge in the Belavezha forest in Belarus in December 1991, Kravchuk joined Stanislav Shushkevich, a nuclear physicist who was the leader of Belarus, and Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, in signing a declaration that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Shushkevich died of Covid-19 a week ago. Yeltsin died in 2007.

Kravchuk was the most dynamic and radical of the three men during the fateful discussion. Fearing Russia would continue to try to dominate Ukraine, he told Yeltsin he did not want the Soviet Union to turn itself into a loose confederation. It should be abolished altogether.

The three men’s deal had gone ahead without the knowledge of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet president, who was shocked when he heard the news. He had no choice but to resign two weeks later, after accepting that the three Slavic republics, the core entities of the Soviet Union, were no longer loyal to the system.

The road to independence had begun in August 1991 when the Ukrainian parliament voted for secession from the Soviet Union a few days after the collapse of an abortive coup by communist hardliners in Moscow to reverse Gorbachev’s democratisation programme. Kravchuk led the Communist Party majority in parliament and played a key role in persuading his colleagues to support the opposition’s proposal for independence.

The parliament arranged a confirmatory referendum and a presidential election for December 1st. Some 92 per cent of the Ukrainian electorate, including a majority of Ukraine’s ethnic Russians, voted for independence. Kravchuk was chosen as president, a job in which he served until 1994.

In 1992, at a meeting with the US president George HW Bush, Kravchuk agreed to send back to Russia the nuclear missiles that were deployed in Ukraine. Sometimes touted as a magnanimous gesture, Kravchuk told German radio that Kyiv’s possession of a nuclear arsenal was mainly symbolic. “All the control systems were in Russia. The black suitcase with the start button, that was with the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin,” he said.

Kravchuk was born into a Ukrainian peasant family in the village of Velykyi Zhytyn. The village was in Poland at the time, and Kravchuk’s parents worked for Polish landowners. It was taken into the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion in 1939. Kravchuk’s father had served in the Polish army in the 1930s and was killed during the second World War.

Kravchuk graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1958, a year after marrying a mathematics teacher, Antonina Mykhailivna Mishura. He immediately joined the Communist Party and worked his way up through the agitprop department. By 1989 he was ideological secretary of the central committee in Kyiv. His first sense of the strength of feeling for independence came when he discreetly attended the founding congress of Ruch, a popular grassroots national movement, sitting in the back row of the gallery as an observer in 1989.

In 1990 the Communist Party elected him as chairman of the supreme soviet of the Ukrainian parliament, making him the nominal head of state. His low-key style and openness to other views made him the compromise candidate, supported by conservatives as well as reformers.

Even-handed

His term as president was marked by his even-handed approach to foreign policy. He took a pro-European stance, even as he championed Russian speakers and sought to guarantee them better language rights. He spoke in favour of an agreement giving Russia the right to continue to base its Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol in the Crimea. In 1994 he signed a partnership agreement with the EU, but later that year he lost the election to Leonid Kuchma, his prime minister, who argued that the reduction of economic links with Russia had caused Ukraine’s lack of growth.

From then on Kravchuk remained an MP but floated rather aimlessly, switching for a time to a group led by a pro-Russian oligarch, Viktor Medvedchuk, which called itself the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. In the 2004 presidential election, which was marred by fraud and had to be re-run, Kravchuk supported the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych against the pro-western Viktor Yushchenko, who won. In 2006 he failed to be re-elected to parliament.

He then went into political obscurity, appearing only for occasional interviews. In 2014 he denounced Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, telling Radio Free Europe that the Russian president’s philosophy of a broad “Russian world” was centred on “aggression and disregard for the interests of its neighbours”.

In 2020, at the age of 86, he accepted an invitation from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to take the post of presidential envoy in the trilateral contact group on resolving the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. The group consisted of Russia, Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but it failed to make progress.

Kravchuk is survived by his wife and their son, Oleksandr. – This article originally appeared in the Guardian

'If you see the other fella’s point of view you’re finished'

On Thursday evening the British ambassador to Ireland, Paul Johnston was interviewed on RTE’s Prime Time on the current controversy concerning the Northern Ireland protocol.

He explained the position of the UK government and batted for the position taken by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government.

If the UK government changed its opinion tomorrow then Ambassador Johnston would explain why the new position was the right one to take.

Has there been an ambassador of the Russian Federation anywhere in the world who has disagreed with President Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine? Doubtful. If so, it would have received media attention and the ambassador would have been recalled to Mother Russia.

If tomorrow there were a change of leadership in Russia and the new president decided on a totally different policy and withdrew from Ukraine, Russian ambassadors around the world would support the new policy and say it was the correct action to take.

What do ambassadors believe? Do they believe in anything or just mouth off what they are told to say.

But isn’t a similar story right across society in all jobs and walks of life?

While it seems clear to us in the West that the war in Ukraine is an act of aggression on the part of Russia, our counterparts in Russia seem to believe that Putin’s action has been to protect the homeland.

So too with the ‘diehard’ Unionists in the North of Ireland, they honestly believe the Protocol is not the road to take.

Are we all marionettes submerged in the prevailing environment, controlled by the powerful?

It looks like that.

Do we ever hear what people actually believe and think?

Would that lead to chaos and anarchy?

This train of thought is the result of overhearing a wise man say: “If you see the other fella’s point of view you’re finished."