It takes a woman to speak truth to power

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

It’s a challenging exercise to prepare wise words to speak at Mass on Sundays. The Gospel reading in the Catholic liturgy on Sunday October 19 was the story of the crooked judge who would not listen to the poor widow. (St Luke 18: 1 - 8) She kept pestering him until she converted him to do what was right. 

Many of the commentators suggest the story is about the need for prayer, and it is that too. The first paragraph reads: ‘Jesus told his disciples a story about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.’ But on many readings of the Gospel I became fascinated with the idea that it took a woman to convert the judge; and not just any woman but a poor widow, who had nothing. In modern parlance this surely was truth speaking to power.

My mother died in the Meath Hospital in 1988. My father and I were contacted early in the morning and when we arrived she was dead. 

While I was standing at her bedside a priest, all dressed in black, muttered some unintelligible words. When he saw me crying, said: ‘get a hold of yourself’. Some minutes later a woman on cleaning duty offered my father and me a glass of water. 

On Sunday, October 19 I was cycling to celebrate Mass with a group of women, who have hit on hard times. With about four kilometres to cycle I suddenly felt the air was fizzling out of my back tyre, yes, I had a puncture. Panic set in. 

I did not want to leave the bicycle on the side of the road as the lock I had was of poor quality. I eventually found a teaching establishment, where I thought I could leave my electric bicycle. The security man with his high vis and dangling lanyard said I could park the bicycle up against the wall. He would not hear of putting it away in a safe place. 

I got talking to a woman, who works in the catering department at the institution. She calmed me and told me she’d go talk to the security man but she got nowhere with him. Eventually she suggested I remove the battery and she would keep it safe for me. She was so nice and helpful. 

I made it on time for Mass with the women. After the Gospel I spoke about the power of women and the influence they can have in the world.  I asked if men held the dominant position simply because of their physical strength. I think we agreed that that was an interesting possibility. Isn’t it true to say that the people in control decide the programme, write the script?

Listening to Limerick sportswoman Jackie McCarthy O’Brien on Thursday on RTÉ’s Oliver Callan I was ashamed of being a man and a priest. Well done Jackie. 

Her mother was a single mother, who came home to Ireland with her new daughter. They were living with her mother’s father. One day two gardaí and a priest came knocking and took Jackie away to an industrial school, where she spent many years. And that was Ireland as late as the 1960s.

It’s all in her new book, ‘We Made It, Kid’.