Make sure to check carefully all your service bills

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Regular readers of this column may remember I wrote some weeks back about my travails with Lidl; the issue is now solved. I received a gift card for €30, which means they gave me an extra €10 on top of the price of the new hiking boots. Originally when I exchanged them I was told my bank account would be credited. That did not happen. 

But really it is a case of one step forward, two steps back.

More trouble and annoyance; this time with my AA membership and with The Irish Times. Again, I found myself wasting valuable time and getting annoyed and frustrated. I find it hilarious when a recorded voice assures you that one of their agents will be with you shortly when you know there are only two or three agents at the call centre. 

And then we are being told that modern technology is making everything work so seamlessly, humbug. 

Some time back I spotted my AA monthly sub had jumped from €26.97 to €40.09. I phoned and what a wait I had before I was ‘privileged’ to speak with a human voice. 

I explained that I was shocked to see how my sub had jumped by 33 per cent. I told the agent I was closing my membership account. She asked me had I read the email they had sent me. No I hadn’t, as they bombard me with emails. She asked me to hold while she’d make some enquiries; more waiting time on the phone. She returns to tell me that they would bring my monthly sub back to the old price of €26.97. 

Imagine, had I not been vigilant in checking my bank statement I would have been left paying the higher price. And to think by one phone call the AA was willing to reduce my monthly sub by 33 per cent; that is outlandish. It means an annual saving for me of €157.44.

Talking to a friend on Saturday she told me her monthly bill with Virgin Media is €140. That’s for her television, landline and broadband.  The woman is not great for checking details on her accounts. Obviously she is paying for services of which she is not availing.

The following day I discovered my access to the online version of The Irish Times had been closed. 

The Saturday newspaper was delivered to my door but it seems the digital edition is not available to me; that means more phone calls, more waiting to speak to a human voice.

There is urgent need for an up-to-speed, smart regulatory agency that ensures people are being properly and clearly informed how much they are paying for the services they require. 

My friend with Virgin Media may well have an extra tv socket somewhere in the house, for which she is paying, but is not even aware that it is there.

With the disappearance of paper bills it is so tempting not to log on and check for what exactly we are paying. Are companies aware of this phenomenon and take advantage of it?

Far too many people are intimidated by the antics of multi nationals and large companies.

Just think what’s in store for us when AI is up and running.

What on earth Is an indulgence?

The word indulgence has been mentioned many times during this Holy  Year. The bishops have sent out letters to various bodies, including chaplains in schools, hospitals and prisons. Many people when they first see the word indulgence are left wondering; this article by Vivian Boland, which appears in Conversations, might help those of us who are not familiar or maybe at sea about what exactly an indulgence is. 

In this Holy Year there are many references to ‘the indulgence’ but few explanations on what it actually is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.1471) says that an indulgence is ‘a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven’. This raises more questions than it answers. Pope Francis spoke of the indulgence in his letter announcing the Holy Year (Spes non confundit, n.23) but he glides quickly over it, says a couple of important things, but does not enter into the question of what exactly it is.

Inevitable misunderstanding?

Any mention of indulgences immediately brings to mind that their abuse contributed significantly to Luther’s protest and the Protestant Reforma- tion. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had already tried to act against abuse of them while the Council of Trent (in 1563), acknowledging the critique, sought again to eliminate abuses.

Even where they were not abused, indulgences were frequently misun- derstood, leading to strange notions such as the remission of ‘time in purgatory’. People often regarded this as happening automatically as long as one recited certain prayers, engaged in various devotional practices or even made donations to good causes. It seemed to lend itself all too easily to a superstitious, and even magical, understanding of how sacred power is attached to times, places and objects.

But abusus non tollit usum, the abuse of something is not sufficient reason to eliminate its practice where it is otherwise a good, helpful and perhaps necessary thing. If it is clear that the practice of indulgences is an essential part of the Church’s ministry of reconciliation and mercy, then what is needed is proper understanding and morally correct practice.

At the Second Vatican Council it was clear that further theological reflection was necessary and Pope Paul VI sought to do his in his 1967 letterIndulgentiarum doctrina which is the most recent magisterial statement about indulgences. That letter substantially informs the Catechism of the Catholic Church in its presentation of indulgences (nn. 1471-1479), seven of the 10 footnotes to those paragraphs being citations of Paul’s letter. In seeking to head off abuse and misunderstanding, Pope Paul also sought to present those aspects of Christian teaching which the Church believes led to the practice of indulgences and continue to be served by that practice.

Punishment?

Another difficulty that arises immediately comes from the definition of an indulgence as ‘remission of the temporal punishment due to sin’. To speak of God punishing people for their sins generates images of God that are childish at best, blasphemous at worst. Pope Francis is quick to point out that when we speak of punishment for our sins we are not to think of God punishing us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is equally swift in addressing this concern: ‘punishment [for our sins] must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin’ (n. 1472). Just as virtue is its own reward, sin is its own punishment. The punishment is implicit in the sins themselves, and is part of what sin is rather than anything added later. St Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the fourth century, already saw this:

... even if one says that painful retribution comes directly from God upon those who abuse their free will, it would only be reasonable to note that such sufferings have their origin and cause in ourselves (Life of Moses II, n.87).

Two kinds of punishment follow on sin. One is eternal because sin is an offence against God who is infinite and eternal. But God’s mercy is also infinite and eternal and such punishment, paradoxical as it might seem, is easily remitted through the grace of contrition and absolution received in the sacrament of Penance.

The other kind of punishment is temporal: this is more difficult to understand and it is the one with which indulgences are concerned. It refers to sufferings of various kinds, following on from our sins or other- wise related to them, and happening within the context of our world and its history, affecting our physical nature, relationships, community situa- tions, and particularly our spiritual condition, all that we call ‘suffering’.

Who can deny that the world is full of suffering? Or that many wicked things are done every day? In some cases we easily see a link between sin and suffering whereas in other situations it is impossible to see any direct link. There are texts in the Bible which grapple with the problem of ‘innocent suffering’, i.e., a suffering which comes on people who are totally undeserving of it. Job’s friends offered him a simplistic mathematical solu- tion: ‘the amount of your sufferings is in proportion to the extent to which you have sinned’. This remains a powerful instinct in people: a cousin dying at a young age said to me ‘I must have done something terrible to have ended up like this.’

But a Christian understanding of human suffering will regard it always in the light of Christ’s sufferings and this radically subverts any easy connection between sin and suffering. We believe him to be the sinless human being whose sacrifice saves the world from its sins by making expi- ation for them (Rom 3.25; 1 Cor 5.7; Heb 2.17, 27; 9.26; 10.12; 1 John 2.2 and 4.10). Christians are called to follow Christ by aligning their sufferings with his. Taking up our cross, we can ‘make up what is lacking in Christ’s suffer- ings’, St Paul says (Col 1.24), and so collaborate with Christ in the work of salvation (Rom 12.1; Eph 5.2; 2 Tim 4.6; Heb 10.26; 13.15f; 1 Peter 2.5).

Thomas Aquinas says that punishment is concerned with healing human relationships, restoring justice, and responding to scandal. He distinguishes ‘simple punishment’ – the sufferings I experience that follow directly from my own sinfulness – from ‘satisfactory punishment’ which is suffering that is either freely chosen, when we make sacrifices and engage in penitential practices, or is freely accepted, when I’m not quite sure why I’m suffering but seek to align my sufferings with those of Christ. Aquinas says that people can bear each other’s sufferings in this satisfactory way when they are united in a union of love. Christ has done this for our sins but he also enables us to share in his redemptive suffer- ings on behalf of humanity. That gives us a clue as to the meaning of the indulgence: it is a way in which people united in a union of love share with others the grace they receive through accepting whatever sufferings come their way.

The Communion of Saints

There are two understandings of sin in the Bible. For one, sin is an evil force that contaminates human life and passes from one generation to the next whereas for the other each individual is personally responsible for their own sin (Jer 31.29; Ezek 18.20). On the first view sin is a force or power that promotes evil in the world and contaminates all relationships. On the second view the guilt of a person’s sins belongs simply to that person and is not to be offloaded onto anybody else. Likewise the grace of each person will be individual. Each one will answer to God for their own life and receive whatever credit or blame they deserve (1 Cor 3.12).

The practice of indulgences belongs with the first way in which the Bible speaks about sin. It presupposes an understanding of human solidarity in sin and in grace which can be at odds with contemporary understandings of the human person. In contemporary culture the promotion and protec- tion of individual rights and freedoms is a fundamental obligation. That the human person is a social or political animal seems secondary. Herbert McCabe, O.P., wrote that ‘for the modern view society is made of individ- uals, for our view the individual is made of societies’ (‘On Obedience’, in God Matters, 1985, p. 231). By ‘our view’ he means the tradition coming from Aristotle through Aquinas for which the human being is by nature a social or political animal. On that view societies create individuals, not vice versa. Think about how many societies – linguistic, cultural, national, familial, religious, political – are needed to establish what I regard as my ‘personal’ identity.

Another way of thinking about this is to ask the question ‘what happened to fraternity’? Of the great values which stand at the gatepost of the modern world, liberty and equality continue to receive the lion’s share of attention. Pope Francis’s preoccupation with fraternity is not surpris- ing, not only because of the challenges facing human communities but also because it is central to the understanding of human life which Catho- lic Christianity brings to social and political debates, with notions such as common good, solidarity, social charity, participation.

This opens the way to a series of very interesting questions that unfortunately cannot be explored further here. Our present interest in them is to suggest that the kind of solidarity in sin and in grace which is presup- posed by the teaching about indulgences faces a challenge on this point: such solidarity may seem strange for a culture which values the individual in the way the present dominant culture does. But the doctrine emerged within a worldview where it is not only my sins that have consequences for the whole body of which I am a member, but where my virtues and any success grace might have in my life also have consequences for the whole body of which I am a member.

This is the most important doctrine highlighted by the teaching about indulgences: we belong together, in sin and in grace, we are one human family in Adam and in Christ. The help of Christ comes to us through his body, the Church, Paul says: ‘where one suffers all suffer and where one is honoured all are honoured’ (1 Cor 12:26), ‘the life and death of each of us has its effect on others’ (Rom 14:7). We are all affected by the sin and by the holiness of each of us.

The practice of indulgences thus highlights the doctrine of the communion of saints. This is about our ‘sharing in holy things’ such that our solidarity in sin is matched, and in fact overtaken, by our solidarity in grace (‘where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’: Rom 5:20-21). In his 1967 letter Pope Paul spoke powerfully of this solidarity as the basis for the doctrine of indulgences (n.4). The communion of saints means soli- darity in sharing what is termed the ‘treasury of the Church’. This notion – also controversial, it needs to be said – refers to the merits, prayers and good works accumulated across the centuries by God’s grace, supremely in Christ but also in Mary and the other saints. It is part of the Church’s ministry of mercy and reconciliation to share with poor struggling sinners the wealth of that treasury of grace which provides the ‘resources’ for the practice of indulgences.

Undoing the Consequences of Sin

If the doctrine of the communion of saints is highlighted by this practice, there are recent experiences of the Church which call for a serious re-con- sideration of another aspect of it. The residual effects of sin are addressed by the indulgence, Pope Francis says, consequences of sin that remain even after sins have been absolved. But these are not just in the sinner, they are also in the world in which the thoughts, words, deeds and omissions of the sinner have certain effects. In sins of injustice, for example, the practice of restitution is well established. If I sin against justice, through theft or destroying someone’s good name, the sincerity of my repentance is seen in my willingness to do all I can to undo the consequences of my unjust actions. In one way or another all sins are violations of justice and so all sins call for some restitution, an effort to undo and to heal their conse- quences, or at least to make amends and give satisfaction for the offences committed. It is, if you like, the positive face of ‘punishment’, the work involved in trying to restore an order of justice that has been distorted.

In the traditional presentation of the doctrine of indulgences this aspect is not completely absent – see especially Pope Paul’s 1967 letter, nn. 2-3 – but the focus tended to be more on undoing the effects of sin in the life of the sinner. What remains after the guilt of our sins has been absolved is an undue attachment of our wills to things that draw our affection away from God. It is to the rectification of this weakening of our will that the indul- gence is particularly addressed. In view of how indulgences have often been misunderstood, however, there is the risk of encouraging a kind of ‘spiritual narcissism’, a preoccupation with my own spiritual condition before God. It is something with which I should be concerned, of course. And indulgences can be gained also for others. But what about the conse- quences of my sins in the world, in my relationships not just with God or with myself but with my neighbour also? What about their consequences in the lives of those who have been sinned against?

The well-known saying that grace does not replace nature but brings it to perfection means there is no magical undoing of the consequences of sin. Grace is not a magic wand but rather an enabling power that strength- ens us for the difficult challenges that come with facing up to the conse- quences of our sins. Think of the work involved in the quest for truth and reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland, work seen also in many individual situations, in families and communities, where painful processes of reconciliation, truth and healing have been sought. These are works of grace, not replacing nature, as if grace steps in to do these things for us, but grace enabling people to do what needs to be done.

It is clear that today the teaching about indulgences needs to be devel- oped in order to embrace more explicitly and more comprehensively the questions that arise now about the consequences of our sins not just in ourselves but in those who have been sinned against. The thirteenth century mystical writer Mechthild of Magdeburg wrote that we can already find ourselves in purgatory, as we sometimes find ourselves in hell or in heaven. We easily fall into imagining these as future places, still somehow subject to conditions of space and time, when they are spiritual realities which we experience at all levels of our being, already here in this world as well as in the life to come. So we are already subject to processes of purification and healing, reconciliation and redemption. The difficult aspects of these processes, the sufferings they entail, consti- tute ‘the temporal punishment due to sin’. To seek the indulgence is to seek God’s help, through the ministry of the Church, with the demands these processes make on us.

Concluding remark

In this short article I have tried to do three things. First, to acknowledge that the notion of indulgences is problematic for various reasons even while the Church continues to speak of them, encouraging people to gain the indulgence of the Jubilee Year. Second, to show that the most impor- tant relevant doctrine is that of the communion of saints, in other words the solidarity of all human beings in the call to share the grace of Christ. Third, to stress that the residual effects of sins already forgiven refers not just to those effects in the sinner but also in the sinned against and in the community as a whole. I hope it might encourage others to offer further reflections on this question.

A powerful example of how we are damaging Mother Nature

 Well worth a watch:

See this Instagram video by @wisdom.keepers: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKxFg-Lot-K/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Killing has moved from Gaza to Iranian cities

Is it wise to keep in touch with news these days? Where are we heading? Yesterday politicians assassinated in the US, Trump has his big military parade.

Suddenly the plight of the people of Gaza is wiped off our screens. Why? Because the Israelis have now turned their weapons of destruction on the people of Iran.

This may sound a naive, maybe silly question; if one country has nuclear power why can’t another?

At present Russia, France, Pakistan, US, UK, Israel, China, India and North Korea have nuclear capability. Who gave them permission/authority to produce such weapons?

Why did the world not take heed of all those ‘hippies’ back in the 1970s, ’80, ’90s, who were out with their placards protesting against nuclear armaments.

The world must be heading for catastrophe; it’s looking bleak.

From Newfoundland to Galway in one long hop

On this day, June 14, 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. They flew from St John’s Newfoundland to Clifden in Co Galway.

The plane, a Vickers Vimy, carried 200 letters, the first transatlantic airmail. 

US Bishop Robert Barron makes too many glib comments

US Bishop Robert Barron in an interview with Tucker Carlson said: ‘Friends, it’s no coincidence that the Church’s sex abuse scandals spiked during the sexual revolution.’

It’s time the US Catholic episcopacy had a word with the bishop. His comments are becoming more outrageous every day.

What facts has the bishop to make such a statement? In the same interview does he mention a word about how the church covered up for generations/centuries the wrong doing of its priests?

How can he verify this comment?

The bishop is far too glib in so many of his comments. What other US bishops appear on the Tucker Carlson show?

The bishop begins all his social media comments with the word ‘Friends’; the man might check the meaning of the word.

Trump wants to make America hate again

Michael McDowell’s column in The Irish Times yesterday, a good read.

Back in my youth we were taught in Latin class about the problems faced by Rome because of neighbouring wetlands known as the Pontine Marshes. Although Romans did not fully understand how malaria infected humans, they connected the marshes with illness and death. Their combined engineering skills failed to drain the marshes and it was only in the 1920s that Mussolini made reclamation of the marshes his successful national prestige project.

I thought of the Pontine Marshes when Donald Trump promised American voters that he was going to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC. It was hard to see how he intended to effect a political revolution that could amount to draining the Washington swamp. The influence of powerful lobbyists and financial interests seemed to prosper between 2016 and 2020, when the Republican Party held the reins of power.

Musk-Trump spat

The image of draining a swamp was powerful. But what have we now in its place? Trump’s second term has turned the Oval Office in the White House into a veritable political pigsty.The Musk-Trump spat (which saw Musk asserting that Trump’s name was to be found on the Epstein files and Trump countering with the claim that Musk had “lost his mind”) was remarkable. Trump is not now interested in an immediate reconciliation – presumably for fear of weakening his authority or appearing to reward those who inflict political damage on him.

Meetings in the Oval Office political pigsty are obviously distasteful to his visitors. Apart from the ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the absurd encounter with South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa (in which Trump made grossly untrue allegations about persecution of Boer farmers and attempted to prove his lies with fake photographs), other world leaders have simply sat for 45 minutes hoping that no diplomatic damage would be done.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping have not participated in the ludicrous charades to which others have agreed.

Trump’s promise to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours now appears as some form of sick joke. But apart from childish antics (including threats to abandon any role in the dispute) the question remains as to what, if any, is America’s preferred outcome of the Ukraine war. Trump has vaguely spoken about sanctions.

To what end? Does he think that Ukraine will buckle under a combination of aerial and missile attacks and meatgrinder attritional warfare along its eastern frontline? What has happened to his “deal” to Americanise half of Ukraine’s mineral and energy resources? Is there any rational strategy in play, or is Trump simply both incapable of stopping Putin’s invasion and unwilling to admit his abject weakness?

The evidence suggests that Trump’s sole political yardstick is the state of US stock markets. Markets don’t like war. For a president who has majored on controlling immigration, it is surprising to hear Trump advocate the introduction of golden visas for rich people, presumably including Russians, who wish to reside in the US in exchange for million-dollar investments.

We had similar schemes in Ireland which turned out to be political failures. Why would America bare its security throat to an influx of dubious investor migrants from overseas states? Is that strategy a necessary part of making America great again?

While it is obvious that Trump’s vision of American greatness is to be measured in the wealth of its plutocrat class, I find it hard to understand how public opinion in America is not revolted by events such as the $200 million “gift” of a jumbo jet from Qatar destined to become Trump’s private property, or the launch by Trump of a cryptocurrency fund designed for his personal enrichment.

Trump’s promise to deport one million illegal migrants was easily made. Rounding them up and expelling them is a very different matter. They will turn out to be parents and spouses and sole economic providers of American citizens. They will turn out to be the fruit pickers, labourers, cleaners and counter staff of countless small enterprises. They may even include the maids and pool boys of Trump’s billionaire coterie.

In Trump’s first term, I gave a number of my friends Maga hats embroidered instead with the message “Make America Hate Again”. Sending marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles and other cities that have tolerated illegal migrants for many many years is a cowardly, premeditated Trump stratagem to provoke communal hatred. Democrats need to be a lot more politically agile than they have been in the past four years to stop Trump’s political rampage.

A tale of either one or four tails

On RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday justice minister Jim O’Callaghan said that there was only one cadaver dog on the island of Ireland; he went on to say that it takes a long time to train, and the dog’s working life is short, lasting three years.

On Monday on RTÉ 1’s Morning Ireland a dog expert said there are four cadaver dogs on the island and their working life is between seven and eight years.

Who’s correct? 

Our journey of faith is an exciting adventure

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

As a result of last week’s column on the feasts of Easter a reader contacted me. She felt that at the end of the piece she was none the wiser and thought I had walked away explaining nothing.

We had a 30-minute conversation about faith, what it means to say we believe in God; do the feasts of Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Holy Trinity have any meaning for us. It was a most interesting conversation. 

Since then I’ve been asking myself whenever do we speak honestly and openly with one another about matters of faith. Where at all are we with our faith, where have we ever been with it?

Pope Franics’ plan in setting up the Synod was to get people talking about their faith, talking in a language that is real and makes sense to the people who are speaking and listening.

A Synod is an age-old way the church uses in helping us listen to each other and to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. I can imagine few are aware of the recent Synod and how important it is for the church, the people of God.

Why is it that so many people feel alienated, want nothing to do with the church, are bored with, and by it all? Indeed, at this stage it is an irrelevancy for many.

Whatever Pope Francis tried to do, unfortunately the Catholic Church has been nastily contaminated by all that is wrong with clericalism. Clericalism plays a major role in clerical child sex abuse. 

Parish councils are far too often dominated by the parish priest, and the council members are usually his chosen few. 

It’s precisely here that bishops should be actively involved in opening the doors and windows of parishes and insisting that there should be a far wider cross-section of people involved. 

Bishops have difficult jobs but are they still tied to old ways that have no relevancy today? How well informed are they about life in their parishes? Every parish in the country has wonderful talent, why is the church not using that talent?

Timothy Radcliffe, the Dominican cardinal, who attended the Synod, has said that he found it a profound moment, where people opened themselves to others. He said he found it an adventurous experience. He noted that at the beginning there were opposing sides, people had enemies but over the course of the Synod each group came to appreciate and respect one another.

He saw how participants were appreciating that our lives are a journey, we are learning every day. Our faith is a journey, a lifelong process. He stressed the authority of truth, beauty and goodness and how we underestimate these qualities in other people, especially those with whom we disagree.

Radcliffe came away from the Synod with a sense of how important it is to pay attention and listen to one another. And that’s what being Christian is about.

Do we in our parishes get that sense of listening to each other, always aware that we are on a journey and that the other person might well have something worthwhile to say? Even those with whom we disagree? 

Are our parish councils adventurous experiences? And please, tell the truth.

Deliveroo, Just Eat, and Uber fly in the face of safety rules

Anyone who cycles in any urban area in Ireland knows the pest and danger of Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber cycles are to all of us.

It has got out of hand; the speed they travel, the risks they take, the bad manners and the violence they can display is out of control. The majority of their bicycles have been doctored so they can travel faster than the 25 km/h.

It’s easy and lazy to blame the individual cyclist. Surely the companies who employ these cyclists have a duty of care to ensure their staff travel at a safe and legal speed. Obviously they travel as they do in order to make as many deliveries as possible so as to make as much money as possible. And all the while the owners of these companies are making large profits.

One of the many nasty sides of raw capitalism. Why is the State not protecting its citizens and these cyclists, who are clearly being abused?

There is so much talk about Health and Safety, most people have to attend courses on the subject and yet right in front of our eyes Deliveroo, Uber and Just Eat pay little heed, indeed, it seems they are  making it their business to knock us of our bicycles.

The barbarity of how the US kills convicted criminals

 This is an interesting story about Sunny Jacobs who was found dead with he carer Kevin Kelly in Galway last Tuesday,  The piece is in the weekend edition of The Irish Times.

An isolated cottage in Connemara is as far away as one can imagine from an interstate truck stop in suburban Miami, but Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs could not escape tragedy in either location.

There was shock at home and abroad on Tuesday when news broke that Jacobs (77) died in a house fire at her home in Glenicmurrin in Casla – a village in Connemara, Co Galway – along with her carer Kevin Kelly (31) in the early hours of that morning.

Jacobs, who was originally from New York, had, by her own admission, become a “poster child” for the worldwide lobby of those opposed to the death penalty, having spent five years on death row in the 1980s.

Her life story has been told many times over. It featured in a TV drama, In the Blink of an Eye (1996), in a stage play, The Exonerated (2000), which was turned into a film in 2005 of the same name where she was played by Susan Sarandon.

Her story was also told in a documentary, The Sunny Side Up (2019), her own book, Stolen Time (2007), and a book by former Miami Herald journalist Ellen McGarrahan entitled Two Truths and a Lie (2021).

Sonia Lee Jacobs Linder was born in August 1947 to Herbert and Bella Jacobs, a wealthy Jewish couple from Long Island, New York. Her parents were hard-working textile merchants, but Jacobs didn’t live up to their expectations.

She became pregnant as a teenager, leading to a quick marriage to the father of her child, followed by a swift divorce. When her son Eric was two, Jacobs moved to Florida where her parents kept a home. They looked after her child.

It was there she met Jesse Tafero, a charmer, but also a violent criminal. At the time, she was a “hippy flower girl” and a vegetarian. Tafero was her biggest mistake. They had a daughter, Tina, together.

On February 20th, 1976, Jacobs, Tafero, her two children, and a fugitive named Walter Rhodes pulled over at a rest stop on Interstate 95, the highway that runs the length of the east coast of the United States.

Rhodes had agreed to drive the couple and the children from Miami to a house in West Palm Beach further north along the coast in Florida.

They were all asleep in the car when a passing highway patrolman, Phillip Black, spotted a gun on the floor of the car. He ordered Rhodes and Tafero out of the car. Shortly afterwards, Black and a visiting Canadian police officer, Corporal Donald Irwin, were shot dead.

Rhodes testified that Tafero and Jacobs shot the two police officers. They were sentenced to death and he, as the chief witness, was spared the electric chair. He later changed his testimony several times and admitted to the killing.

Jacobs spent five years in solitary confinement on death row. Her death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1981. Tafero went to the electric chair in 1990 in a notoriously botched execution in which flames projected from his head. It took 13 minutes for him to die.

Two years later, Jacobs won her appeal against her sentence and was released from prison after 16 years and 233 days, but there was a sting in the release. Rather than seeking a retrial, which the Florida state prosecutors were entitled to do, they entered into a special plea bargain known as an Alford plea. Jacobs did not admit guilt, but admitted the prosecutors had incriminating evidence against her. She would later state that she agreed to this plea under duress.

The state of Florida was reluctant to admit it made a mistake in convicting her, she believed, as this would leave them open to paying her compensation.

In her book Stolen Time, Jacobs recalled spending five years in solitary confinement because there was no death row for women. Her coping mechanisms would serve her well both in prison and when she was released.

“The work that had begun in my death row cell, which I had expanded into my everyday life in prison through yoga, meditation and prayer, now became a way of life and a paradigm for living in the world,” she wrote.

She toured the world campaigning against the death penalty. It was while speaking at an event in Galway in 1998 that she met her future husband, Peter Pringle.

Pringle, like Jacobs, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was arrested and convicted of the capital murders of two gardaí, John Morley and Henry Byrne, who were shot dead by a republican paramilitary gang during a bank robbery in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, in July 1980. He was sentenced to death along with two other men. Their death sentences were commuted in 1981 by then president Patrick Hillery to penal servitude for 40 years.

Pringle, though a known republican who had spent time in jail, always claimed he was not involved in the murders and was nowhere near the scene at the time. In 1995, his conviction was deemed to be unsafe and unsound by the Court of Appeal and he was released.

He attended Jacobs’s 1998 talk in Salthill and she noticed that he was crying during her presentation. They agreed to go for a cold water swim afterwards and fell in love.

“I was 51 years old, in the sixth year of my new life when I met someone with whom I found the deep connection I had been seeking all my life. I hadn’t been trying because I don’t think I could ever find anyone to live with again,” she wrote in Stolen Time.

They eventually married in New York in 2011. They lived in a number of houses in Connemara before settling in a three-bedroom cottage Glenicmurrin with views of the Twelve Pins mountains.

“Life has turned out beautifully,” Pringle told the Guardian in 2013. “Sure, it’s not without its difficulties. We have no money. But we do good work. We are at peace. And we have a great life together. We look forward and we live in the moment.”

McGarrahan, the former Miami Herald journalist who wrote a book about Jacobs, was one of the witnesses to the execution of Tafero and was haunted by what she saw. She resolved to get to the truth of what happened on the layby of Interstate 95, given the many different versions of the truth.

She concluded Tafero murdered the two policemen, but that Jacobs was not altogether innocent and had fired a taser gun from the back seat, which started the whole tragedy.

Having reviewed the evidence, she concurred with the pre-sentence hearing that she and Tafero had lived the “classic fugitive lifestyle”.

“These individuals simply moved from place to place exchanging narcotics for whatever was available, and living from hand to mouth, day to day,” she wrote.

That was then.

Jacobs admitted to making mistakes in her early life, mistakes for which she paid a terrible price, but never admitted to murder or even being party to murder.

Her husband Pringle died in 2023 at the age of 84. He had been looked after in his final years by Kelly, who also became Jacobs’s carer, and who is originally from Moycullen, Co Galway. He was a dog lover who was involved with the local Madra charity.

While Jacobs and Pringle lived in Connemara, many exonerees from around the world came to stay and avail of their hospitality. According to Ruairí McKiernan, a friend of Jacobs, she lived a full life until she died, constantly advocating for victims of injustice.

The rough boreen up to her house in Glenicmurrin was closed off this week by gardaí as forensic examinations of her cottage took place.

Speaking to girl from Kharkiv before the bombs hit

Late Friday early Saturday morning the Russian Army launched a major attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

On Friday morning I chatted to a 15-year old girl from Kharkiv. She and her mother boarded a Local Link bus near the West Kerry village of Castlegregory. They were travelling to Tralee to do some shopping. The young girl told me she is in Ireland three years and is now attending school in Tralee.

Some few hours later bombs rained down on her home town. What must it be like for her and her family? No doubt she has family and friends in the city.

The resilience of human beings is extraordinary; there she was, able to smile and converse with me. She was even able to tell me she criticises her mother for her poor English. We both laughed.

She is fond f Ireland but for the rain and of course, she misses her home place. But she said Ireland has been good to her and her fmaily.

Kharkiv is no stranger to wars, violence and occupation. In World War II it changed hands many times between the Russians and the Germans.

Russia is at war with Britain, US is no longer a reliable ally

From yesterday’s Guardian and well worth a read. We are living in perilous times.

Fiona Hill always speaks wise words; needs our ears.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/06/russia-is-at-war-with-uk-and-us-no-longer-reliable-ally?CMP=share_btn_url

All smiles in public for Friedrich Merz in White House

History never ceases to surprise but do we ever listen?

Yesterday, newly elected German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited US President Donald Trump and all seemed to go swimmingly well

Merz thanked Trump for the invitation and the support that the US has always given Germany. Trump complimented Merz on his good knowledge of English, asking him if English was his mother tongue.

Merz stressed all sensitive issues would be discussed away from the cameras.

It so happens that on the same date in June 78 years earlier, June 5, 1947 United States Secretary of State George Marshall, in a speech at Harvard University, called for economic aid to help Europe rebuild. And the irony that it was announced in Harvard.

When the German chancellor reminded Donald Trump that today June 6 was liberation day for Europe thanks to the US, Trump reply was astonishing. He obviously had no idea what Merz was talking about.

When great words are spoken one simply has to listen

These are truly inspiring words.

Abraham Verghese addressing Harvard students.

https://youtu.be/m45Lqo5rUyQ?si=lBIzArww_kDxfbvr

It’s so easy to play the religious game

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

I have been causally watching what the commentators are saying about new Pope Leo; from my perspective most of it is leaning towards the right and being silly at the same time. Maybe right-wing thinking and silliness go together, especially in church matters. 

Sunday was the feast of the Ascension, some weeks earlier we had Easter Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection, next Sunday Christians celebrate the feast of Pentecost and then the following Sunday we celebrate the great feast of the Holy Trinity.

Outside of the clerical bubble and a small number of regular Mass goers I wonder what all those feasts, indeed, what all those words mean? The Ascension might remind people of an elderly man with a long beard living above the clouds and we call him ‘God’.

In 1984 Anglican priest David Jenkins was appointed Bishop of Durham. He had taught theology at Leeds University. He was a controversial figure and questioned the interpretation of many of the stories in the Bible. On the Ascension he said that at the time had he been there with a video camera he doubted he would have captured on film Jesus rising above the clouds. 

What do you think of that? Do you believe that Jesus headed upwards above the clouds on into blue skies? And dare I ask where are you with all that?

These Easter feasts all have a thread going through them. The feast of the Resurrection is about Jesus overcoming human death, the Ascension is the idea of Jesus returning to the Father, Pentecost is the Spirit of God living in our presence and then the feast of the Trinity is a reminder to us that this God we believe in is made up of three persons but three persons so perfectly united with each other that it is One. It is love gone mad, love so perfect that it is one. 

These Christian feasts are shouting at us that we who are made in God’s image are at our best when we are living in love, harmony and kindness with one another, a reality that has no hatred or wrong doing; respect is writ loud and clear.

Look at our world; the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, the divisions there are in every corner of the planet. 

How can there be billionaires living side by side with people who have nothing.

These Easter feasts are telling us of other possibilities. But of course we are not listening, so what do we do; we cliche them out of existence and turn them into some sort of pious games we use to satisfy and justify our own styles of living.

When I hear right-wing commentators spout that ‘Pope Leo is no Pope Francis II. Viva il Papa’ I laugh but really want to scream.

Why have so many in established religions placed such emphasis on aspects of the Christian faith that are simply not at the core of what it means to be Christian? I can’t help thinking so many have walked away because they know in their hearts that, that man with the beard above the clouds has nothing to do with the merciful God that Jesus Christ preached.