Those with money and power always come out the winners

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

The success of RTÉ’s Toy Show was mainly measured by the amount of money it collected for charities.

Of course it is great news that charities  benefited from the programme. But the more I heard about the millions that had been collected the more I found myself asking has everything  to do with money. I suppose you can add power to that. Is it the monied and powerful who are the controllers of our lives. Should it be that way? Are there other possibilities?

The day after the Toy Show Notre-Dame cathedral was reopened in Paris. I watched the ceremony on BBC NEWS television. It is remarkable that such a job could have been done in little over five years. 

As French president Emmanuel Macron said, it was a sign of what can be done when people work together for a great cause. President Macron during his opening speech never mentioned once how much it cost. He did thank all those around the world who had pledged financial support. 

Side by side with the magnificence of the work done and the otherworldly atmosphere in the newly restored cathedral it could not have been done without money, lots of money. 

In attendance was the US president-elect Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon. If I were found guilty in the Irish courts of a crime, even the slightest misdemeanour, I would not be granted a visa to enter the US. And to make the situation even more laughable, it is Donald Trump who would insist that I should be expelled if I had managed to get there illegally.

When I saw kings, queens and presidents of the world smile, laugh, shake his hand in Notre Dame on Saturday and treat him in such an obsequious manner, again I began to think what money and power can do.

How does it fit in with the Christian message? I’m currently reading Derek Scally’s ‘The Best Catholics in the World’. 

At the beginning of the book he relates how the then archbishop of Dublin placed great interest in collecting money for the parish church in Dublin’s Edenmore. Scally recalls the methods the archdiocese used in collecting money, money from people who had very little to spare. 

The Archdiocese of Dublin engaged and paid a US-based professional fundraising outfit but gave the impression to the people that the local fundraising campaign was grassroots.

Money does make the world go round, anyone who says otherwise is talking nonsense. At least that’s how it works on this planet.

The Russian revolution tried to change it, alas it didn’t work. More irony, probably some of the wealthiest people in the world are to be found in the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, which still flies the Red Flag.

As always, I’ve no answers but I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s lines in Hamlet, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’.

Is it simply the way of the world? It would seem so.