Maga Catholics trying to take back control of the church

This article appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday. Much to recommend it but it could have said much more. Maybe the Maga people copied the rule book of a growing fundamentalist trend which was alive and well in the Catholic Church for many years before Trump ever appeared.

It is surprising how many priests connected with the Legionaries of Christ are visible in these days leading up to the burial of Pope Francis. It’s also worth noting how many media outlets are turning to EWTN for stories, coverage and news.

What would Pope Francis think?

THE IRISH TIMES 

Jesse Romero, a Catholic podcaster based in Phoenix, Arizona, says the time has come for a “Trump-like pope” who will restore traditional Christian values in the wake of Pope Francis’s death.

“Anyone who’s soft on abortion, who has Marxist tendencies, who’s pro-homosexual – we’ve got to get rid of them,” the conservative influencer and author said. “There are bishops who have marched on Pride parades . . . they’ve got to be fired.”

Romero is one of a growing cohort of conservative Catholics in the US who hope that Francis’s death will mark a decisive shift away from the reformism he personified, towards a more doctrinaire, traditionalist approach to the faith.

“They will definitely be hoping to see a rejection of the Francis pontificate at the next conclave,” said David Deane, who teaches Christian doctrine at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada. “A lot of them were fundamentally opposed to Francis.”

The mood in the hardline camp was summed up by Roger Stone, a Catholic and long-time ally of President Donald Trump, who denounced on X the posthumous paeans to Francis on US network TV as “nauseating”.

“His papacy was never legitimate and his teachings regularly violated both the Bible and church dogma,” he wrote. “I rather think it’s warm where he is right now.”

In a further X post yesterday, claiming that Pope Francis gave the Chinese Communist Party a veto over the appointments of Catholic Church bishops in China, Stone said: “Because God’s judgment is perfect Pope Francis burns in hell for his accommodation with evil.”

Stone’s posts reflect an animosity towards Francis among US traditionalists that emerged early in his papacy and has only grown stronger. The mood has spread throughout the clergy and energised conservatives who have been empowered since Trump returned to the White House.

“There is a significant range of American Catholic opinion that would have preferred someone who was a little less doctrinally adventurous, a little more traditional and – as they would see it – someone who was a little less anti-American,” said John Allen Jr, editor of Crux, a Catholic news website, and author of several books on the church and the papacy.

Distrust of Francis was particularly widespread among the “Maga” Catholics, a group that combines support for Trump’s populist, nationalist agenda with an embrace of Christian orthodoxy and deep suspicion of liberal trends in the church.

“There’s a symbiotic relationship between Maga and the Catholic post-liberals in which each fuels and encourages the other,” Deane said.

Border protection

“Trump has boosted Catholicism by reaffirming some essential things, such as border protection, the defence of human life and the fact there are only two genders,” said John Yep, leader of Catholics for Catholics, a political campaign group. “That was good for Catholics and that’s why 58 per cent of Catholics voted Republican in November.”

The most celebrated Maga Catholics are Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, and vice-president JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and was one of the last world leaders to meet Francis during a brief encounter at the Vatican on Easter Sunday.

Vance caused an outcry in January by accusing the US Conference of Catholic Bishops of only supporting illegal immigrants because of the substantial federal funding American dioceses received to help resettle them. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, called the remark “scurrilous” and “very nasty”.

Trump himself has worked hard to align Maga with the church. In February he created a taskforce to “eradicate anti-Christian bias”. He also appointed Brian Burch as US ambassador to the Vatican, an outspoken critic of Francis and head of a group that mobilised Catholic voters for the Republicans last year.

But if anything, the movement is broader than Trump and Vance and is the result of long-term trends in a church that is shifting right.

“The clergy that has graduated from seminaries in the last 10-20 years [in the US] tends to be more conservative,” said Janna Bennett, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

Conservative reputation

She noted the role played by institutions such as the Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio and Ave Maria University in Florida, both of which have a conservative reputation and have provided a pipeline of aspirant priests and lay ministers with a traditionalist mindset.

According to a survey published in 2023 by the Catholic Project, a research group at the Catholic University of America, more than 80 per cent of priests ordained since 2020 described themselves as theologically “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox”.

The researchers said that while theologically “progressive” and “very progressive” priests made up 68 per cent of new ordinands in the 1965-69 cohort, that number had today “dwindled almost to zero”.

It is no surprise, then, that Pope Francis became such an irritant to many American Catholics. Traditionalists were particularly angered by Amoris Laetitia, his 2016 apostolic exhortation, which raised the possibility of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.

They also denounced his 2023 decision to approve blessings for same-sex couples, his advocacy of action against climate change and his welcoming approach to migrants. For conservative Catholics who had always been uncomfortable with the reforms of Vatican II, his hostility to the Latin mass was particularly hard to accept.

Anti-Francis camp

Experts say the orthodox, anti-Francis camp never constituted a majority of Catholics in the US. “Their noisiness is out of proportion with their number,” said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.

But they have become increasingly influential in recent years, thanks in part to institutions such as EWTN, the world’s largest Catholic media network, which has amplified hardline views.

Based in Alabama, EWTN has raised millions of dollars in donations, with the money going in part towards “creat[ing] more programming and content that gives glory to God”, the network’s website says.

“Francis was a great gift to them, because it’s an industry that thrives on a spirit of opposition,” said Millies. “One must have an enemy in order to outrage people into opening their wallets.”

The late pope did not take the criticism of his US antagonists lying down. After the conservative cardinal Raymond Burke attacked him over Amoris Laetitia, Francis threatened to evict him from his Vatican apartment.

He also dismissed the Texan bishop Joseph Strickland, another vocal critic in the US church, from his diocese.

Francis had made clear his distaste for the policies Trump has enacted during his second term, writing in a letter to American bishops in February that deportations of migrants violated the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families”.

Romero said he hoped the next pope would usher in a change of direction.

“We’re looking to someone who can heal the fractures within the church and eradicate some of the modernist tendencies that have crept in,” he said.

But that view may not necessarily be shared by the senior American clerics taking part in the upcoming papal conclave.

Of the 10 US cardinals under the age of 80 who are eligible to cast ballots in the selection process, six were elevated to their current rank by Francis and are generally sympathetic to his vision of the church.

“There’s a much better chance that we’ll have someone in the image of the late pope – a Pope Francis the second,” Yep said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025

Two historical events worth noting

On April 25, 2007 Boris Yeltsin’s funeral took place in Moscow. It was the first funeral sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church of a head of state since the funeral Emperor Alexander III in 1894. 

Also on this day, April 25, 1945 the Red Army and US troops crossed the River Elbe at Torgau and shook hands, brothers in arms.

Sarah McInerney’s has discovered a new church in Rome

At 16.36 on RTE Radio’s Drivetime presenter Sarah McInerney speaking on happenings in Rome today referred to the church of Mary Medugorje.

Our national broadcaster, funded by the tax payer, you and me.

What exactly would Pope Francis make of these days?

Many wonderful words are being spoken about Pope Francis, who was a great pope. But it’s difficult to take some of the comments made by people, who were and are opposed to so much of what he said and did.

Pope Francis has been an inspiring and holy man, a pope who captured the imagination of millions of people. 

Are we living out his words and beliefs right at this moment? 

One example; the president of the US will be attending the funeral. Has the man who screams ‘Drill baby Drill’, read or even heard of Laudato Si'?

Laudato Si' discusses the damage being inflicted on the earth by humans and calls on 'every person living on this planet' to make urgent changes to our lifestyles and how we consume energy in order to protect the planet. It deals with many environmental issues including: pollution. climate change.

Pope Francis supported the world’s migrants. He himself was the son of migrants.

‘Adolescence' shows us how we are all being tricked

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Netflix miniseries ‘Adolescence’ has received great reviews. It’s about Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, who is arrested for the murder of classmate Katie Leonard.

 

The police raid the Miller home while they are in bed asleep. Little 13-year-old Jamie is arrested and taken away.

This had to have been a mistake, they must have called to the wrong house. No, innocent-looking little Jamie did stab to death a little girl his own age.

He denied it for a long time but eventually owned up to the crime.

The film is about many aspects of our lives but that mobile phone that is either in your possession right now or just a hand’s length away plays a major role in the four-part miniseries.

Katie accuses Jamie of being an ‘incel’ after Jamie posted Instagram messages commenting on models. An incel is teenage lingo for an involuntary celibate. Isn’t it incredible that children know and use such terms? Or is it?

The children are using language and emojis that are almost exclusive to them.

The film is also about the relationship between Jamie and his father Eddie, who is annoyed, upset, even embarrassed that his son is no good at football. Jamie is more interested in drawing and sketching. Of course the little girl is the victim.  But how can a little boy do such an evil act? 

Jamie spends hours on his laptop and phone. What must he have been looking at? He’s no exception.

I use public transport every day, sit upstairs on buses. The majority of passengers are on their phones. Most of it seems total nonsense. I saw someone looking at a naked person on their phone. There’s that permanent scrolling on to something new.

And all the time mega companies are making a fortune at what we are watching, writing and saying on these machines. It is such a business that the president of the United States has dropped his tariffs on these machines moving from China to the US.

We all have been seduced, fooled and tricked up to our eyeballs on what’s happening.

Of course we’d be lost without our phones and laptops but look at the cost we are paying. It’s worse than the Wild West. I’m by no means a luddite but surely the person always has to be in charge. 

To think that little children are being abused and seduced, indeed, destroyed by large multi national corporations is beyond belief. It’s not that long ago since the ‘dirty magazines’ were on the top shelf in the shop. There’s much worse now in the pockets of little children.

A mother with young children told me she and her husband go through their children’s phones every night. They’ve had to look up short hand texts and emoji meanings online in order  to decode some of their messages. Sounds great idea to me.

Anglo American poet TS Eliot’s words sure are prescient: ‘All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,/All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,/But nearness to death no nearer to God./Where is the life we have lost in living?/Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?/Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ 

Pope Francis - a man of hope

The world mourns the death of Pope Francis. World leaders of all shapes, sizes and beliefs paid tribute to Pope Francis.

He will be most noted for his humanity, his kindness, his openness to others, Christian and non-Christian alike.

He had no time for pomp and all the meaninglessness that goes with it. Francis was above all a pastoral pope. He was a man of hope.

Francis was a pope who wanted to put his arms around people, not a pope who wanted to wag his finger.

May his successor carry on the great work he was doing. 

English Dominican Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe will just make it to the Sistine Chapel for the vote. After August he would not be eligible to vote as he will be 80 that month.

Timothy was in Ireland last year where he spoke in Haddington Road church.

Urgent attention is needed on the running of the Luas

Luas real time information was not in service on the Blue Line yesterday, Easter Sunday.

Luas should have advertised more extensively the disruption to services on Easter Sunday.

The lift on the northbound platform at the Luas stop in Phibsborough has now been out of action for several weeks. There is a half-torn notice on the door telling passengers the door is broken.

Does it take that long to fix a door?

Anyone familiar with the Phibsborough stop will be aware of the steep steps to ground level. It’s not a pleasant experience for someone in a wheelchair, someone lifting a pram or bicycle up those steps.

It’s a regular event on Sundays that both lifts are not working before 08.00.

For the last number of weeks there is no reply to the Luas number anytime before 08.30.

On Sundays the trams are overcrowded. It’s clear the company needs to increase frequency on that day.

The PA systems on southbound trams immediately before they cross the Liffey give incorrect information.

It wouldn’t take a multi million public inquiry to know what is happening or, for that matter, how to fix  it.

A Luas driver when asked about these issues replied, nodding his head in resignation and saying simply: "yes, I know”.

Wilfrid Harrington’s hopeful vision of the church

"Wilfrid Harrington had a scripturally inspired passion for justice: especially justice and decency (or the lack of it) in the structures of the church and how it related to its members and the wider world. 

"To say anything about Wilfrid, to venture into this direction, would be to move into a theological-political area, which would mean addressing his continuous, radical, scripture-based critique of the way the church actually behaves in the modern world. As opposed to Gaudium et Spes - Vatican II's beautiful, hopeful vision of, literally, 'the Church in the Modern World'.

"The Wilf I knew, and I don't think he changed much on that, was inspired by three sources;

•⁠  ⁠his deep, personally rooted faith 

•⁠  ⁠his profound knowledge of Scripture 

•⁠  ⁠the beautiful, hopeful vision of a church ministering to the World expressed in Vatican II

"You could perhaps add in a typical West Cork stubbornness/rebelliousness combined with a typical West Cork sense of justice!

"But all such thoughts lead any reflection on Wilf and his work into the political. As they must. Wilf never shied away from the radical political implications of the scripture he knew so well. And when he contrasted this with the hypocrisy he saw at every level of the exercise of power and authority in the church, he didn't pull his punches.

"That's the Wilfrid Harrington to whom Sinead O'Connor dedicated her album."

- A former student of Fr Wilfrid Harrington OP 

Happy and blessed Easter to all readers. 

Powerful words written on Fr Jack Harrington - perfection

The texts below were posted as comments on this blog yesterday.

Every word  is so true and real. The words jump off the page. When moments like this happen I’m delighted I write this blog. Truth, goodness and simplicity always win out. I don’t know the name of the first writer but thank you and hope to meet you at the funeral Mass on Monday, indeed both of you.

Thank you.

Michael Commane

Comment 1/ "Fr Jack, as we knew him was my Mom's first cousin, he was the kindest, most sincere and gentlest person. The exact description of a gentleman. He was not boastful. In fact it was only my digging online that I found out just how prolific a writer he was and how important in the world of scripture and theology he was. 

"Having Sinead O'Connor dedicate an album to him blew me away. But I remember the man, who visited weekly with my parents, when I was young, he never showed up without at least six bars of dairy milk chocolate for my brothers and me. 

"My father died in 1998 and he came every Thursday to visit with my Mom. When he became unable to leave the priory, my mother kept up the visits but now at his abode. 

"He was so wonderful to my Mom and she will miss him dearly. For me, he was Fr Jack a loving and wonderful priest uncle. 

"He gave me hope that there are truly pure and good men in the world, particularly in the world of the Catholic Church. You sometimes have to search for them as they are quiet and unassuming individuals. Fr Jack was one of these wonderful men.

Comment 2/ "A beautiful tribute Michael. I’m sure Wilfrid is resting in the mercy and love of God of which he constantly preached. I’m always grateful to have been taught by such a beautiful human being."

- Edel Murphy

Seventy six years ago today Ireland became a republic

On this day, April 18, 1949 Ireland became a republic and was no longer a member of the Commonwealth.

Are Irish citizens born before April 18, 1949 eligible or entitled to a British passport?

It seems they have to be born prior to 1949. And yet if one’s grandparents were Irish it allows the offspring to play at international football for Ireland.

Wilfrid John Harrington OP (1927 - 2025) - an obituary

Wilfrid (also known as Wilf or Jack)
John Harrington was born 

Fr Wilfrid Harrington OP

in Ardgroom, Co Cork, right on the Cork Kerry border on March 18, 1927. Ardgroom is 13 kilometres from Castletownbere.

He joined the Irish Province of the Dominican Order in September 1946 and ordained a priest in Rome on February 28, 1953. Before joining the Dominicans he was a boarder at Newbridge College. Coming from far away Cork he had never before seen a rugby pitch. His immediate reaction on seeing the goalposts in Newbridge was to say that their size made it very difficult for the goalkeeper. 

Travelling from Castletownbere to Dublin you reach halfway while still in Co. Cork.

He studied at the Dominican studium in Tallaght, the University of St Thomas in Rome and the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem.

Wilfrid Harrington was a special person. He was a great scholar and a perfect gentleman, one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.

On completion of his scripture studies in 1957 he moved to the studium in Tallaght, where he lived until yesterday. He was the longest serving member of the Tallaght community.

A student of Wilfrid's in 1957 recalls how he brought the Bible alive. His students at the time referred to him as the young Turk. And that was something he was until the day he died.

Thirty years later, a student who sat at his feet in the 1980s, could not believe the life and excitement Wilf brought to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. “His course on the Pentateuch  was simply fascinating,” he said.

Wilfrid appears in Wikipedia, where there is a list of some of the books he wrote.

On the academic side, the Bible was his life. But it was more than that. His favourite book in the New Testament was the Gospel according to St Mark, and Jeremiah was his favourite prophet.

In 1989 Wilfrid was awarded the STM (Master in Sacred Theology) the highest Dominican academic award.

To celebrate the publication of his 25th book he was presented by the then provincial, Fr Tom Jordan with a new laptop in St Mary’s Priory Tallaght. Soon after the lunch he disappeared, noticing his absence, the late Fr Redmond Fitzmaurice smiled, saying: “He’ll have his 26th book ready by the evening”.

On one occasion preaching at Mass on the parable of the person seeing the splinter in his brother’s eye and never noticing the plank in his own  (Matthew 7: 3 - 5), Wilfrid said that the plank in his eye was the Vatican.

In older age on being taken to hospital one day in an ambulance, the paramedic asked him if he had any allergies, he immediately quipped: ‘yes, bishops’.

The late Fr Ephraim MacCarthy, who was on the teaching staff in Tallaght with Wilf, said to him one evening over a cup of tea that the only way he would lose his infallibility would be if he were elected pope. Fr Ephraem would have had a slightly different understanding of the hierarchical church than Wilf.

Along with teaching Dominican students, he also lectured in a long list of other universities and academic institutions, including the Priory Institute, Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, the Church of Ireland Theological College. Every year he taught at summer schools in the United States. His favourite venue was the Department of Religion at the University of Vermont.

He also lectured the Irish Dominican Sisters and Nuns in their communities and when the Dominican Sisters had their noviciate in Bancroft in Tallaght, their novices attended his lectures in the Dominican studium in the priory. He taught the Westminster Diploma at Mauckross Park.

The late Sinead O'Connor, who studied Old Testament Scripture at the Milltown Institute under Wilfrid, dedicated her 2007 album to him.

But there was far more than teaching to Wilf. He was generous, gracious and kind, pastorally tuned and a saintly confessor.

The late Fr Eddie Conway, who was prior in Tallaght, said of Wilf that he was the busiest man in the house but he would never refuse a call to the hall door to meet and speak with someone.

Fr Donal Roche, who was Wilf’s prior for nine years, said that he would often approach him offering to hear confessions for him, saying: “I’ll do that for you, you have enough to be doing”.

“He would be one of the first to write down his name to do the wash up after supper, though he seldom if ever came to the evening meal. He had no airs or graces whatsoever,” Donal said.

Wilfrid was the nephew of  Fr Reginald Harrington,  who preceded Fr Louis Coffey as provincial. Reggie, as he was known, only did one term as provincial. And thereby hangs a tale. Reggie, like his nephew was a kind man, humble and gentle. His style did not suit the ‘high and mighty’, the arrogant ones, those entrenched in clericalism. They had the power an made sure he would not be reelected.

"The Harringtons were on the side of the students and not on the side of power,”  words from a contemporary Dominican.

In January last year Wilfrid lost the sight in his second eye, making him totally blind. For those 16 months he was bed bound. For a man who spent his life reading, rising every day at approximately 5am, now not able to read must have been the cruellest of blows. He took it all with such calmness and serenity. The staff who cared for him were in awe of his attitude. Indeed, a special word of thanks must go to the staff and Fr Donal Roche, who cared for him with such dignity, attention and grace.

In recent weeks I regularly visited Wilfrid, and as with the staff and Donal, I was blown over with his serenity, calmness and graciousness, his belief in the loving God. I never once heard him complain about his plight. On one occasion I told him I was in trouble over something, he immediately smiled and said: “why am I not surprised”. On a later visit I asked him did he believe in the devil. He replied, telling me it is blasphemy to say there is a Devil.

Wilfrid until his health broke down regularly celebrated the Sunday morning Mass in Irish in the priory church in Tallaght.

He was a man of inspiration to the moment of his last breath.

May Wilfrid John Harrington rest in peace.

Wilfrid's body will be reposing in the large parlour in St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght on Easter Sunday from 3pm to 5pm, reception in the priory church at 5pm. Funeral Mass at 2pm on Easter Monday. Burial in the community cemetery.

Fr Wilfrid Harrington OP, RIP

Fr Wilfrid Harrington died this morning in St Mary’s Priory, Tallaght.

May he rest in peace.

Obituary to follow.

The psychosexual dimension to Trump’s latest debacle

Fintan O’Toole’s column in The Irish Times yesterday.

It’s a great read. And it seems no one out there who can stop him. What about all the checks and balances of democracy?

Echos of Paul Lynch’s novel ‘Prophet Song’ are beginning to appear in the trump presidency.

---

Americans have a five-letter summary of their best selves: can do. Their tragedy is that Donald Trump has added a suffix to it: can do anything .

Trump is excited by the challenge of infinite licence. His fetish is seeing how far he can go and how much he can get away with. As he puts it on the notorious Pussygate tape from 2005, “I just start kissing them ... Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything .” Twenty years on, for kiss (or grab) read tariff. Don’t wait, don’t ask, just do whatever you want and assume they’ll let you do it.

It would be overstating it to say that the great tariff debacle that sent stock and bond markets into a spin was an old man’s substitute for sexual predation, Trump’s late-life way of getting his kicks from exerting dominance over all the pussies of the world. But only slightly. Just listen to him last week, shortly before he backed off: “These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are: ‘Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything , sir!’”

That echo of “do anything ” from the 2005 tape is not random. In Trump’s mind, the global economy was a woman over whom he had complete power. All she could do to avoid his wrath was to offer whatever sexual favours he desired – anything , sir! The world was his bitch.

You don’t have to be Dr Freud, or even Dr Ruth, to recognise this psychosexual dimension to Trump’s attempt to upend the entire regime of international trade. After the markets forced him to retreat, Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, tweeted: “You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history.”

Actually, what we had been watching was a fantasy of domination and submission playing in garish but grainy colours in the grindhouse cinema of the American president’s fetid imagination.

If this suggestion seems outlandish, it’s because reality itself is preposterous. It is Trump himself who chose to perform his own psychodrama before the cameras, acting out the scenario in which all the countries of the earth were prostrate before him, rising only to kiss his behind and surrender unconditionally to his demands and desires.

This, indeed, is what is so compelling about Trump: it’s all out there. His sycophants retrofit every disaster into “master strategy” – like God he may work in mysterious ways but we must have faith that behind the plagues and the earthquakes there is a secret plan.

The secret is that there is no secret. Trump’s fans are not wrong to see him as more authentic than other politicians. Ordinary politicians obsessively control their public utterances. Trump makes a pyrotechnic display of the firing of random neurons deep in his grey matter.

Logorrhoea

His speeches often seem to bypass conscious thought altogether: “So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question, and [a guy who makes boats in South Carolina] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology], my relationship to MIT – very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”Why does he indulge in this logorrhoea? Because he can. It is another expression of power. For thousands of years, orators have held audiences in thrall through the power of their beautifully wrought rhetoric. How do you trump them all? By holding your audiences in thrall with whatever nonsense comes into your head. Only losers have to make sense.

But the nonsense that’s in Trump’s head isn’t just sharks and batteries or (to take other recent examples from his speeches) the greatness of Hannibal Lecter or the size of golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis or the evil of shower heads that limit the flow of water. It’s tariffs and trade and obsessions from 40 years ago about the way America is being (as he put it in his Liberation Day speech in another page for Dr Freud’s casebook) “raped” by everyone.

The idiocy of the oligarchs who boosted Trump back into the White House is that they failed to see that all this nonsense comes as a package. They thought they could have the harmless gobbledegook – the sharks and the penises – without the dangerous gibberish – wild tariffs and the thrill of imagining the nations of the earth begging at his feet.

But that’s not a deal you can make with an autocrat of Trump’s temperament.

He loves all the mad children of his teeming brain equally. They exist for him on the same level of reality. In the middle of the crisis over tariffs, he was issuing an executive order decreeing that (and this is the official text of the White House statement) “No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless”.

When they bought into Trump (literally so in many cases) the tech bros were purchasing his whole grotesquely inflated persona – every whim, every craze, every caprice, every dark fantasy, all of them supercharged with dictatorial power.

For this is what the monarchical presidency they thought they wanted really looks like. A king’s quirks are not mere foibles. They are law. When “L’État, c’est moi”, you had better believe that the “moi” is the monarch’s whole self, sadistic kinks and all.

There is a system that was devised and struggled for over thousands of years to prevent this from happening. It is called democracy. Many of the denizens of the American billionaire class got bored with it and decided to ditch it. They deserve what they get – the rest of the world doesn’t.

If it cannot impose limits on Trump’s erratic impulses, the US will find itself friendless.

An America that can do anything is one that can be trusted with nothing.

If the hat fits wear it - this one is a perfect fit

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Have you ever done anything on the spur of the moment and then regretted it? Or have there been times when you kicked yourself for not acting in a spontaneous manner?

Is the world divided into two classes; those who are cautious and those who are spontaneous?

Jefferson Smurfit has had a long history in paper manufacturing and corrugated packaging in Ireland. The company had a paper mill in Dublin’s Clonskeagh, which closed in 2009. The factory had been in production since 1952. 

When my father retired in 1974 at age 65 Smurfit offered him a job. He worked at the paper mill in Clonskeagh for the next 18 years, retiring for the second time in 1992 at 82. He enjoyed every day at the mill. He loved his work and colleagues, and in turn Smurfit and staff had great respect for him.

Last September Smurfit and US Westrock merged to create one of the world's largest paper and packaging producers in the world. The company is headquartered in Dublin’s Clonskeagh.

Smurfit Westrock, has a presence in 40 countries around the world, operates 62 paper mills and has 500 paper/cardboard packaging facilities.

Waiting for a train a few days ago I spotted a young man wearing a baseball cap with Smurfit Westrock emblazoned on it with the sigma symbol, which is the original Smurfit logo.

It was my first time to see the new baseball cap and for a few mili-seconds was tempted to grab it and run. How I would love to have had it. But of course I didn’t, nor would I have. But I did think it.

I was immediately reminded of my father.  

That particular day I was on trains for six hours and often thought about the cap. Silly I suppose, but that’s who I am. I got caught up in the day’s activities but kept thinking of the cap.

The next day I googled the Smurfit Westrock website. 

Found a phone number and called. Feeling embarrassed and somewhat stupid I explained my story to the receptionist, telling her my father worked with them, retiring at 82 and how I’d love one of their baseball caps. 

To my total surprise, she asked me my details and the following day two of the baseball caps were delivered by courier to my hall door.

The only reason my father retired at 82 was because he fell and broke his leg. Smurfit were wonderful employers and I know firsthand how my father enjoyed working with them. It kept him so fresh and alive. He was swimming in the sea at 92 and died at 95.

It makes no sense to have mandatory retirement on age grounds.

Pope John XXIII’s wise words applied to my mother and father, and I imagine to most of our parents: ‘Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age’.

The Smurfit Westrock gesture was one of simple kindness but just think of the PR value of it. Any time I’ll hear or see of Smurfit Westrock I’ll think positively. That’s life. And a special thank you to the receptionist who took my call.