There was an item on German news last evening about the drop in sales of new electric cars. They showed a salesroom where a new VW ID3 was on sale for €30,000.
Germany’s new-car market went into a free fall in December, led by a near halving of new electric-vehicle sales, pulling the sale of new EVs in the broader European Union down for the first time since early 2020.
There is an upswing in Germany in petrol and diesel car sales.
On the subject of cars, the link below is most interesting.
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
RTÉ’s programme ‘The Last Priests in Ireland' aired on Monday, January 15 was a respectful portrayal in chronicling the ever dwindling numbers of men studying for the Catholic priesthood. Ardal O’Hanlon did a good job and the priests who featured were impressive.
The Army chaplain spoke wise words. I liked the Limerick priest’s understanding of community and how he had reconfigured the church interior. The priest from Tipperary came across as an enthusiastic young man, who was making it his business to help people and to be with them in their search for God.
The majority of Catholic priests are fine men but priesthood is in trouble. The dogs on the street know there is something wrong but really is there any genuine attempt to improve matters? Anyone who is a member of any organisation or grouping knows when matters are amiss.
I get the impression there is little or no real and honest communication between priests and then between priests and their bishops or provincials.
The sort or style of shadow boxing that made the sad shocking story of clerical child sex abuse so bad and horrible still exists in the clerical world.
For reasons beyond my understanding, people of faith who love their church are far too slow in challenging the priest or indeed, bishop. When last did you speak your mind, openly and honestly with your local priest? Did you ever tell him you disagreed with how he conducts the Sunday liturgy?
In the context of the parish is there ever open discussion about our image of God? What does the Trinity mean? What relevance does the Virgin birth have to believing people? What role does a parish council have? Is there any place for theological discussion in a parish? What do we know about the Bible, indeed, what do we know about the lay out of the Mass? Many parish newsletters are embarrassing to read.
Do bishops or provincials make it their business to reach out to their brother priests in a real and meaningful way? The system is collapsing in front of our eyes and while that’s happening a far-right brigade is in the process of taking over and bringing us back to a closed dark church of the 1950s.
I’m aware of a situation where a religious congregation called in a consultant to survey the lie of the land. The management team was not happy with the findings so the full report was never published. That’s where the Irish Catholic Church is today.
What’s happening in politics all over the world is also at play within the Catholic Church. Our church is being far too influenced by an American style of Christian nationalism, which is neither Christian nor national. Just look at how American evangelists are throwing their holy weight behind Donald Trump.
He is offering to restore America to its rightful place in the world. He pretends he wants to go back to the good old ‘Christian’ times. Other dangerous men play similar games. That’s not where our future lies
Yesterday the world remembered what Germany unleashed on the Jewish community during the Hitler years. Yesterday was Holocaust Day.
It was on January 27, 1945 that the Soviet 322nd Rifle Division liberated the remaining inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
It was noticeable that Irish media outlets, including RTÉ, when referring to the liberation of the death camp, where over one million Jews were murdered, there was no mention of who the liberators were, the Red Army.
The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.
Michael Commane
I think it fair to say that some people are powerful orators. It doesn’t always mean that we have to agree with what they say but if we do, it even makes their words stronger and more powerful.
I had the good fortune when working in Concern Worldwide to hear Bill Clinton when he was on a visit to Dublin. I heard him speak in Dublin Castle. It was that dead hour, immediately after lunch when it’s difficult to stay awake. I was enthralled by him, listened to every word he said and felt he was speaking directly to me. The topic was aid to the developing world and every word he said made complete sense to me.
He reminded me that day of the Pied Piper of Hameln. And that phrase the ‘pied piper’ has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.
In tomorrow’s Gospel (Mark 1: 21 -28) People follow Jesus. Word goes out that he can cure people and his followers see him as a kind and good person. In fact they are so impressed with him that they are ‘astonished’. ‘And his reputation rapidly spread everywhere, through all the surrounding Galilean countryside.’
What is it that some people have that makes them powerful orators or speakers? What is it about their words that can be so seductive?
In these very days 80 years ago the German Army was being destroyed at Stalingrad. The German troops on the ground knew the game was up. And yet just two months earlier Hitler gave a speech in Munich ranting on, telling the vast crowd present that victory would be theirs. All through the speech he received tumultuous applause. Carpenters, philosophers, teachers, scientists, doctors, the majority of Germans believed he was the man to make Germany great again.
What did he have that was able to lead people to such darkness and evil?
Isn’t it an age-old problem? In tomorrow’s first reading (Deuteronomy 18: 15 - 20) it’s brought to our attention that there are prophets who do great good but also there are those prophets who can cause terrible harm.
We seem to be living in a time of great divisions. Or maybe better said, people today are more forthright in expressing their views in as strong a manner as possible. It seems people easily get caught up in the passion of a situation and become blinkered to any other way of thinking. The concept of nuance or the possibility of another way is dismissed as weak, even treachery.
Very often in such a climate the person who speaks the loudest, has clear cut and definite solutions wins the day. Social media is a catalyst whereby shouting and stupidity can thrive.
I can honestly say that in the current climate I’m having difficulty whom to follow. Earlier this week listening to a man discuss a matter on television I thought he was talking sense and yet my views and his are diametrically opposed.
Later that evening I was thinking of how parents watch over and guide their children. Parents never want their children to be influenced for the bad by other children they consider not a good influence on them. Parents have that innate sense to protect their children. I’m not at all talking about social class or snobbery.
Parents want the best for their children, they want them to be good people, they want them to be influenced for the good. The good parent will want their child to be in the company of children who are wholesome and bring the best out in their own child.
And on that note children in their innocence can remind their parents when they step out of line.
Goodness does in some extraordinary way diffuse itself. Through good habits we build up a sense for what is right and wrong. That’s what virtue is.
An intelligent and faith-filled approach to reading good literature, including the Scriptures is a key in helping us how we decipher whom to follow.
The kindness and authority with which Jesus speaks in tomorrow’s Gospel proved attractive to the people around him.
I pray that I can be influenced by the wise and kind words of other people and indeed by the words of Scripture too.
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
- Oscar Wilde
On this day, January 25, 1943 two separate thrusts of Soviet troops joined in the centre of Stalingrad. It meant cutting the remaining German forces into two small groupings. This was the famous cauldron at the city on the Volga, which had been meticulously planned and designed by Field Marshal George Zhukov.
Six days later, on January 31 at 07.35 Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the superior forces of the Red Army. It was the beginning of the end and a pivotal point in World War II. Paulus was the first ever German field marshal to surrender.
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column
Michael Commane
It was the Thursday evening of the cold spell when I called Noel to say hello and ask him if it was cold in West Kerry. He assured me it was not too bad. We chatted about this and that. We had our regular banter. I asked him was he okay and in his usual good humoured manner told me he was.
Within 48 hours a friend phoned to tell me that Noel had been found dead at home on Saturday afternoon.
I cannot believe he is dead. There is no good way to die but I do know that Noel, who was 85, could not have wished for a better death. Someone saw him driving his car on Friday. He died with his boots on, exactly what he would have wanted.
The older I get the more confused I am about life and death. These days I see it all as one big mystery. Eight years working as a hospital chaplain has brought me face-to-face with the fragility of our lives. What we worry about one moment is of no importance at the blink of an eye.
In recent years Noel and I often spoke about the transience of our lives.
Noel was one of the most generous people I ever had the good fortune to meet.
He lived in a small village. Everyone knew him. He would do anything for anyone. Noel was a talented photographer. He took photographs at every village event, had the photos printed and gave them to the relevant people and did it all for free.
Many years ago I gave him a gift of a digital camera, it was not an expensive one. At first he did not use it.
He was slow enough to go digital but when he did, he took to it like a duck to water. He was fascinated with sight and sound. Along with his photographic talent he was interested in sound production. He spent long evenings transferring old tapes on to DVDs, whether or not he ever digitised them I don’t know. He was a regular visitor to the annual Fleadh Cheoil, where he went armed with his camera and recording equipment. Most times when I called to his home he was working on tape or film, doing work for someone. Noel would always oblige and he never charged a cent.
He made currachs and canoes and took to the water in them too. Noel was a fit man, cycling his bicycle around the village up to last year. Indeed, many is the time he cycled from West Kerry to work on a Monday morning at Cork Airport.
He was the man to call when someone wanted to attach a plug onto a wire or repair a toaster. He could do anything with his hands and those hands were always there for those who found little jobs difficult.
He called to people who might have been lonely and no job would be left undone.
In his 80s you’d see him up a ladder cleaning the gutter of someone else’s house, or replacing a down-pipe that had seen better times.
A quiet unassuming man. A wonderfully gifted human being, who inspired me.
Seósamh Laurence Collins died
Larry, as he was known in the Order, was born on December 18, 1939 in County Galway and spent his early years on the north side of Dublin. He attended Newbridge College as a boarder from where he joined the Dominican Order in 1957. On receiving the habit the young Seósamh was given the name Laurence. He made first profession in September 1958 and was ordained a priest in Clonliffe by Archbishop McQuaid on July 12, 1964.
He did post graduate studies in theology at the University of St Thomas in Rome, where he also obtained a doctorate in Canon Law.
On returning from Rome he was assigned to St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght, where he was on the teaching staff for a number of years. Larry worked in the marriage tribunal of the Archdiocese of Dublin from 1968 to 1992.
He succeeded Antoninus Delaney as student master in the 1970s and remained in the job until the early '80s
During his years in Tallaght Larry was a constant on the football field, where he was a force with whom to be reckoned. As a pupil in Newbridge College he played rugby and indeed, while in Rome badly damaged his shoulder, playing with the Irish College in a game against an Aer Lingus squad.
Larry was close to being a fanatical follower of the Dublin senior GAA team. He and the late Andrew Kane spent hours discussing the finer points of the strategy of the Dublin team. On one occasion during the run of Dublin All Ireland wins I suggested to him that it would be good for the game if Dublin were beaten. He was having none of it and actually got annoyed with me.
In the summer months he seldom if ever missed swimming in the outdoor pool in Tallaght, which has long disappeared and is now but a memory. Later, when prior in Newbridge, he’d swim in cold days in the Liffey. It was a hop step and jump from the main door of the priory. He was sea swimming up to three years ago, usually at the Forty Foot.
He was never without a bicycle. When in Tallaght as a younger man his main transport to and from the city was his bicycle. Approximately two years ago he bought an electric bicycle. It was a bad buy. He bought the wrong one. Within days of using it he fell off it. An electric bicycle is not the easiest of machines for an 80-year old person to handle. And that particular model was cheap with the centre of gravity in the wrong place. Larry never cycled again and kindly gave me the bicycle. That fall greatly added to his pain and suffering at the time.
He held many positions of leadership in the province. He was prior in St Mary’s, Tallaght; St Eustace, Newbridge and was provincial of the province between 1992 and 2000. Larry was also a member of many boards, including those of schools
He was a Gaeilgeoir and on the board of the gaelscoil in Tallaght.
When Damian Byrne was elected master of the Order in Rome in September 1983 he turned to Larry asking him if he could borrow his habit. Larry duly obliged. There may well have been much symbolism for both men in that handover.
Larry was provincial at a difficult time in the province and in Ireland. He had to deal with much of the fallout concerning the scandal of child clerical sex abuse, which meant he was directly involved with a number of Irish Dominicans, who had been found guilty of crimes and he also had to deal with those men, who had allegedly committed crimes, but were never in front of an Irish Court.
After a short break, on completion of his time as provincial, Larry moved to St Dominic’s parish in Tallaght in 2001 where he remained as administrator until late last year. In many ways he flourished there and became a friend and supporter to so many in the parish.
Larry was my student master, prior and provincial. During his time as provincial he visited me one day at the Kerryman office to inform me of matters concerning an incident of child sexual abuse in the province that was about to come to court. Earlier in the day he had visited the priory in Tralee to inform the community. He was upset and tired, yet made it his business in late evening to come to the newspaper office to explain in detail to me the details of the case.
There are those in the province who would say that as long as Larry Collins was provincial Commane could do what he liked. Of course that is not at all true. Larry genuinely listened to people and if people were open and honest with him he responded accordingly.
In many ways he could be a shy man, maybe even diffident at times. He also may have had an ever so slight lisp.
Larry had time for everyone. He went that proverbial extra mile to help the weak, those who had been forgotten and not considered important. He had absolutely no time for nonsense or codology. He had no time for pomposity or show.
Less than a month ago the two of us were chatting about this and that. I asked him, half jokingly/fully seriously, might he be coming around to my way of thinking. He looked at me, smiled and said nothing. Did that say it all? All forms of clericalism greatly annoyed him and he was genuinely concerned with what was happening in the Irish church.
Larry was extremely supportive of the Irish Dominican Sisters and Nuns and always called for more cooperation between the women and men.
Larry was attentive to attending the funerals of fellow Dominicans, women and men. He went out of respect for the dead and their families and friends.
The sudden and unexpected death of his 12-year-old grand nephew earlier this month was a sh0cking burden for him to bear.
I had the good fortune over the last number of years to get ever closer to Larry, listen to his wisdom and appreciate his goodness and humanity.
While he had been ill, suffering from a number of ailments, his death was sudden and unexpected.
He was intellectually gifted and a man of prayer.
To finish on a funny note and a tale about an Ireland of the past: Larry was waiting for a bus in Dublin city centre on a Sunday afternoon to go visit his family on the north side of the city. A 16A was parked at the stop. Larry, wearing his Roman collar, got chatting with the driver and conductor. They asked him what bus he was waiting for. He replied a 16. The driver said: 'not a problem Father', changed the destination board to 16 and off they drove.
May he rest in peace.
Larry's body will be lying in state in St Dominic’s Presbytery, St Dominic’s Road, Tallaght, Dublin 24 tomorrow, Wednesday, January 24 from 2.30pm. Removal to St Dominic’s Church at 5.30pm. Funeral Mass in St Dominic’s Church at midday on Thursday. Burial afterwards in the cemetery at St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght.
Dominican priest Seosamh Collins, known in the Order as Larry, died early this morning in Tallaght University Hospital.
An obituary to follow.
May he rest in peace.
Germany is anxious. The Germans are worried.
Over the weekend hundreds of thousands of Germans demonstrated across the land objecting to the rise of far right xenophobic groupings and the ever growing popularity of the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany).
People who never before came out on the streets were demonstrating, parents with their children, young women and men, who are not in any political party, took part and they were out on the streets from Hamburg to Munich. In Berlin over 100,000 demonstrated, another 100,000 in Munich and Cologne. And more peaceful demonstrations are planned for the coming week.
They are determined it will not happen again in Germany.
Later in the day the leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz complimented the demonstrators on the new Caren Miosga programme aired on public broadcaster ARD.
While praising the demonstrators, he said that if one out of every 10 people who were on the streets at the weekend joined a democratic party, they could put a stop to the rise of the far-right and halt the rise of the AfD.
The net worth of the world’s
Over a billion people on the planet have not enough food to eat.
Last evening Channel 4 interviewed forensic accountant Ian Hederson on the UK Post Office scandal.
The Post Office sacked him because he was getting too close to what was going on.
He said that the Post Office was at all costs going to protect the brand.
Again, so similar to how the Catholic Church has behaved and most likely how it still behaves. The brand must at all times be protected. And any and all forms of scandal have always been issues with the church.
‘Irregular events’ in the past would take place in churches, maybe even in sacristies, early in the morning, so that the ‘faithful’ might not be ‘scandalised’.
What was all that about? Any different from the rational of the UK Post Office?
Channel 4’s evening news yesterday revealed more damning information of the Post Office scandal in the United Kingdom.
It has now come to light that the Post Office board was aware from a very early stage that there were problems with the Horizon software. They were so aware that they brought in their lawyers to discuss the matter.
There are similarities between the behaviour of the top management of the British Post Office and the leadership of the Catholic Church in how it dealt with clerical child sex abuse.
A number of new bus routes came into operation in Dublin in November.
Both Dublin Bus and Go Ahead are operating the new routes.
Advertising about the new routes has been sparse.
Who knows for instance the new S2 links Heuston Station with St James’s Hospital, Sundrive Road, Rathmines, Sandymount?
The new S4 connects UCD with Liffey Valley via Terenure and Rathgar, while the S6 connects UCD with Tallaght and Blackrock rail station.
The S 8 links Citywest with Dún Laoghaire.
Have the S, W and L a meaning?
The Transport of Ireland (TFI) app leaves a lot to be desired. The sooner it happens the better for all who use public transport.
The RTÉ programme on priests, aired on Monday evening made for good television.
It was fair and respectful. Nothing snide or point scoring about it. No crazy people appeared and with one or two exceptions none of the usual personalities.
It would be interesting to know if a bishop had been invited to appear on the programme.
Ardal O’Hanlon deserves to be commended for his treatment of the programme.
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ Column.
Michael Commane
In early January ITV aired a four-part series on the British Post Office scandal.
In 1996 the British Post Office began working on a computer system to streamline the payment of social security benefits through its nationwide post office network. Fujitsu was commissioned to roll out the system, which was called Horizon.
In 1999 a number of sub postmasters/mistresses were accused of falsifying their accounts. Some were taken to court by the Post Office and did time in prison. More had their post offices closed down and their names destroyed. Many were bullied into signing guilty statements. But one brave sub postmaster, Alan Bates, who was wrongly accused of misappropriation of funds decided to challenge the Post Office. He was told that he was the only one who had a problem. He phoned colleagues and discovered the Post Office was not telling the truth.
The London Metropolitan Police is now investigating potential fraud offences committed during the Horizon IT scandal.
Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama series, is an inspiring man, who has no intentions of allowing the behemoth Post Office to destroy him and his colleagues. He discovers over 500 sub postmasters/mistresses have been accused of stealing money from the Post Office.
It is a horrific story of cruelty. Some have even taken their own lives. People have been bankrupted. People’s lives have been destroyed. The Post Office presumed the staff would never be able to afford the cost of going to court.
One of the ironies of the scandal is that the Chief Executive Officer of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, was ordained a priest of the Church of England in 2006.
Since the ITV programme more postmasters/mistresses have come forward with their stories.
Now that the world has seen the behaviour of the British Post Office Fujitsu it’s easy to support Mr Bates and those who have been brutally treated. In every story there is a universal lesson to be learned.
What about those, who away from the public glare, are attempting to criticise the wrongdoing that is being done to them and their colleagues? Mr Bates should be a role model for all who are fighting for the cause of justice. The big company or organisation has the power and the resources to destroy the little person. A wise man said to me once, that the behemoths have a five-plan strategy against the little person, who they believe will get tired, frustrated, run out of money, become ill, die. It’s as nasty and as cruel as that. How can the little person ever afford to go to court?
Mr Bates gives hope to those who stand up for what is right.
It could have all been so different had the British Post Office sat down and spoken with their sub postmasters/mistresses. Surely they knew the history of their people, knew they were honest. But no, they knew better, or so they thought. How wrong they were.
All Alan Bates wanted was the truth, which he eventually got, though hard earned.
This is the story of a Russian Orthodox priest who refused to pray for victory for the Russian Army n Ukraine. Instead he has been praying for peace.
A brave man.
Patriarch Krill has removed him from his job. The patriarch has sided with Putin instead of with one of his own priests.
Father Aleksiy Uminsky is a well known priest in Moscow. He officiated at the funeral last year of Mikhail Gorbachov.
Do we ever appreciate the freedom we have and what it means to live in a liberal free society.
Who would have the bravery to do what this man has done? What’s his future now?
I heard yesterday afternoon that Noel Cummins had died.
Noel was an extraordinary person. He was one of the most generous people I have ever had the good fortune to know.
Noel lived in Castlegregory in West Kerry. I was talking to him on Thursday on the phone. He was in his early 80s, a fit man.
What that man did for people in the village. He would do anything for anyone. A great photographer, could do anything with his hands and up to very recently could be seen climbing up a ladder. Noel spent most of his working life with Posts and Telegraph, later known eircom. He spent many years working at Cork Airport on secondment from P&T.
More to follow, I hope on this great man.
My deepest sympathy to his three children, their spouses and his two sisters. His wonderful wife died many years ago.
May he rest in peace.
German farmers have spent the week blocking roads across the country protesting against government policy, including the removal of their subsidy on agricultural diesel.
The Geman locomotive drivers (GDL) ended a three day strike yesterday which brought Deutsch Bahn to a standstill.
And all the time the AfD and other far right groupings are infiltrating any organisation that is protesting against government policy.
The link below is worth watching.
The piece below is from the Tablet weekly online update. It is written by staff reporter Patrick Hudson.
It’s an interesting story and difficult what to make of it.
Dear Reader,
Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester confirmed the idiosyncratic actor Shia LaBeouf on New Year’s Eve, at a Capuchin church in California.
Catholic reportage intersected – as it quite often does – with Hollywood gossip when the friar who sponsored LaBeouf said he had mooted becoming a deacon one day.
Back in the noughties I enjoyed repeats of his curious sit-com Even Stevens on after-school telly and loathed, with all right-thinking people, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull in 2008, but hadn’t come across him in much else since (except in a slightly-viral song about him being an “actual cannibal” – LaBeouf gamely made a cameo in the music video).
Then he starred as the eponymous stigmatic in last year’s Padre Pio and broadcast an 80-minute interview with Bishop Barron about how the part led him to a love of the faith. Perhaps that’s the kind of handbrake turn that does lead to Holy Orders.
The Capuchins are delighted for him. LaBeouf reportedly spent a lot of time with them in preparation for filming Pio and found solace in the “nuts and bolts” of the faith; it seems the friars took a sensibly dynamic approach towards catechesis, not strictly by the RCIA book. Celebrities who love the old rite make anodyne online copy, but there’s a good and troubling story behind this Tinseltown-clerical gloss – because LaBeouf came to the Church after a period of career drift, bouts of alcoholism and violence, and domestic abuse allegations.
A lawsuit filed against him by a former girlfriend in 2020 makes gruelling, disgusting reading, and is due to go to trial in October this year. LaBeouf indirectly acknowledged the claims in 2022 and accepted that he “****ed up bad”, that he was “a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centred, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being”.
The truth that the Church accepts anybody, however uncomfortable we might be with them, is not something we should be comfortable with. It is not a truism, but part of the radical difficulty of Christianity.
Reports of a potential film-star deacon which nod discreetly to a “scandalous” past are as callous as any
Variety profile, because LaBeouf is another broken person received into the Church as likely to embarrass as to exalt it.
Catholics have another troubled and troubling individual on the books and that – much more than a celebrity convert, and however awkward it turns out to be – is good news.
The unfolding scandal of the British Post Office tells a universal story. The little person versus the behemoth.
It’s the perfect time to read Hans Fallada’s What Now Little Man.
The majority of the very people now coming out to support the sub masters/mistresses were nowhere when Alan Bates was looking for support.
Well done to ITV. But the problem is not yet solved.
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