Jeanne is fascinated by 'Mr Tayer'

Former teacher at Synge Street CBS Frank Burke gave me an A4 sheet with text on both sdes, which I put in my back pocket and forgot about.

A week or so later I read it. A gem. Eventually, via Google, I dscovered the full text. And this is it.

A great great read.

Mr Tayer, by Jean Houston

When I was about fourteen I was seized by enormous waves of grief over my parents’ breakup.  I had read somewhere that running would help dispel anguish, so I began to run to school every day down Park Avenue in New York City. I was a great big overgrown girl (5 feet eleven by the age of eleven) and one day I ran into a rather frail old gentleman in his seventies and knocked the wind out of him. 

He laughed as I helped him to his feet and asked me in French- accented speech, “Are you planning to run like that for the rest of your life? 

“Yes, sir" I replied. “It looks that way."

“Well, Bon Voyage!” he said.

“Bon Voyage!” I answered and sped on my way.

About a week later I was walking down Park Avenue with my fox terrier, Champ, and again I met the old gentleman.

“Ah." he greeted me, “my friend the runner, and with a fox terrier. I knew one like that years ago in France. Where are you going?"

“Well, sir." I replied, “I’m taking Champ to Central Park."

“I will go with you." he informed me. “I will take my constitutional."

And thereafter, for about a year or so, the old gentleman and I would meet and walk together often several times a week in Central Park. He had a long French name but asked me to call him by the first part of it, which was “Mr. Tayer" as far as I could make out.

The walks were magical and full of delight. Not only did Mr. Tayer seem to have absolutely no self-consciousness, but he was always being seized by wonder and astonishment over the simplest things. He was constantly and literally falling into love. I remember one time when he suddenly fell on his knees, his long Gallic nose raking the ground, and exclaimed to me, “Jeanne, look at the caterpillar. 

Ahhhh!” I joined him on the ground to see what had evoked so profound a response that he was seized by the essence of caterpillar. “How beautiful it is", he remarked, “this little green being with its wonderful funny little feet. Exquisite! Little furry body, little green feet on the road to metamorphosis." He then regarded me with equal delight. “Jeanne, can you feel yourself to be a caterpillar?”

“Oh yes." I replied with the baleful knowing of a gangly, pimply faced teenager.

“Then think of your own metamorphosis." he suggested. “What will you be when you become a butterfly, une papillon, eh? What is the butterfly of Jeanne?” (What a great question for a fourteen-year-old girl!) His long, gothic, comic-tragic face would nod with wonder. “Eh, Jeanne, look at the clouds! God’s calligraphy in the sky! All that transforming. moving, changing, dissolving, becoming. Jeanne, become a cloud and become all the forms that ever were."

Or there was the time that Mr. Tayer and I leaned into the strong wind that suddenly whipped through Central Park, and he told me, “Jeanne, sniff the wind." I joined him in taking great snorts of wind. “The same wind may once have been sniffed by Jesus Christ (sniff). by Alexander the Great (sniff), by Napoleon (sniff), by Voltaire (sniff), by Marie Antoinette (sniff)!” (There seemed to be a lot of French people in that wind.) “Now sniff this next gust of wind in very deeply for it contains.. . Jeanne d’Arc! Sniff the wind once sniffed by Jeanne dArc. Be filled with the winds of history."

It was wonderful. People of all ages followed us around, laughing—not at us but with us. Old Mr. Tayer was truly diaphanous to every moment and being with him was like being in attendance at God’s own party, a continuous celebration of life and its mysteries. But mostly Mr. Tayer was so full of vital sap and juice that he seemed to flow with everything. Always he saw the interconnections between things—the way that everything in the universe, from fox terriers to tree bark to somebody’s red hat to the mind of God, was related to everything else and was very, very good.

He wasn’t merely a great appreciator, engaged by all his senses. He was truly penetrated by the reality that was yearning for him as much as he was yearning for it. He talked to the trees, to the wind, to the rocks as dear friends, as beloved even. ‘Ah, my friend, the mica schist layer, do you remember when...?” And I would swear that the mica schist would begin to glitter back. I mean, mica schist will do that, but on a cloudy day?! Everything was treated as personal, as sentient, as “thou." And everything that was thou was ensouled with being. and it thou-ed back to him. So when I walked with him, I felt as though a spotlight was following us, bringing radiance and light everywhere. And I was constantly seized by astonishment in the presence of this infinitely beautiful man, who radiated such sweetness, such kindness.

I remember one occasion when he was quietly watching a very old woman watching a young boy play a game. “Madame", he suddenly addressed her. She looked up, surprised that a stranger in Central Park would speak to her. “Madame,” he repeated, “why are you so fascinated by what that little boy is doing?” The old woman was startled by the question, but the kindly face of Mr. Tayer seemed to allay her fears and evoke her memories. “Well, sir,” she replied in an ancient but pensive voice, “the game that boy is playing is like one I played in this park around 1880, only it’s a mite different." We noticed that the boy was listening, so Mr. Tayer promptly included him in the conversation. “Young fellow, would you like to learn the game as it was played so many years ago?”

“Well. . .yeah. sure, why not?” the boy replied. And soon the young boy and the old woman were making friends and sharing old and new variations on the game—as unlikely an incident to occur in Central Park as could be imagined.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Mr. Tayer was the way that he would suddenly look at you. He looked at you with wonder and astonishment joined to unconditional love joined to a whimsical regarding of you as the cluttered house that hides the holy one. I felt myself primed to the depths by such seeing. I felt evolutionary forces wake up in me by such seeing, every cell and thought and potential palpably changed. I was yeasted, greened, awakened by such seeing, and the defeats and denigrations of adolescence redeemed. I would go home and tell my mother, who was a little skeptical about my walking with an old man in the park so often, “Mother, I was with my old man again, and when I am with him, I leave my littleness behind." That deeply moved her. You could not be stuck in littleness and be in the radiant field of Mr. Tayer.

           

The last time that I ever saw him was the Thursday before Easter Sunday, 1955. I  brought him the shell of a snail. “Ah. Escargot." he exclaimed and then proceeded to wax ecstatic for the better part of an hour. Snail shells, and galaxies, and the convolutions in the brain, the whorl of flowers and the meanderings of rivers were taken up into a great hymn to the spiralling evolution of spirit and matter. When he had finished, his voice dropped, and he whispered almost in prayer, “Omega ...omega. . .omega.." Finally he looked up and said to me quietly, "Au revoir, Jeanne”.

 “Au revoir, Mr. Tayer,” I replied, “I’ll meet you at the same time next Tuesday."

For some reason. Champ, my fox terrier didn’t want to budge, and when I pulled him along, he whimpered, looking back at Mr.Tayer, his tail between his legs. The following Tuesday I was there waiting where we always met at the corner of Park Avenue and 83^rd Street. He didn’t come. The following Thursday I waited again. Still he didn’t come. The dog looked up at me sadly. For the next eight weeks I continued to wait, but he never came again. It turned out that he had suddenly died that Easter Sunday but I didn’t find that out for years.

Some years later, someone handed me a book without a cover which was titled ThePhenomenon of Man. As I read the book I found it strangely familiar in its concepts. Occasional words and expressions loomed up as echoes from my past. When, later in the book, I came across the concept of the “Omega point." I was certain. I asked to see the jacket of the book, looked at the author’s picture, and, of course, recognized him immediately. There was no forgetting or mistaking that face. Mr. Tayer was Teilhard de Chardin, the great priest-scientist, poet and mystic, and during that lovely and luminous year I had been meeting him out side the Jesuit rectory of St. Ignatius where he was living most of the time.

I have often wondered if it was my simplicity and innocence that allowed the fullness of Teilhard’s being to be revealed. To me he was never the great priest-paleontologist Pere Teilhard. He was old Mr. Tayer. Why did he always come and walk with me every Tuesday and Thursday, even though I’m sure he had better things to do? Was it that in seeing me so completely, he himself could be completely seen at a time when his writings, his work, were proscribed by the Church, when he was not permitted to teach, or even to talk about his ideas? As I later found out, he was undergoing at that time the most excruciating agony that there is—the agony of utter disempowerment and psychological crucifixion. And yet to me he was always so present—whimsical, engaging, empowering. How could that be?

I think it was because Teilhard had what few Church officials did—the power and grace of the Love that passes all understanding. He could write about love being the evolutionary force, the Omega point, that lures the world and ourselves into becoming, because he experienced that love in a piece of rock, in the wag of a dog’s tail, in the eyes of a child. He was so in love with everything that he talked in great particularity, even to me as an adolescent, about the desire atoms have for each other, the yearning of molecules, of organisms, of bodies, of planets, of galaxies, all of creation longing for that radiant bonding, for joining, for the deepening of their condition, for becoming more by virtue of yearning for and finding the other. He knew about the search for the Beloved. His model was Christ. For Teilhard de Chardin, Christ was the Beloved of the soul.

Years later, while addressing some Jesuits, a very old Jesuit came up to me.  He was a friend of Teilhard’s—and he told me how Teilhard used to talk of his encounters in the Park with a girl called Jeanne.

Jean Houston
Pomona, New York
March, 1988

Jean Houston is internationally know for her work in the field of human development.

The fabulous value of listening and chatting

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

Jean Vanier is a 90-year-old Canadian philosopher and humanitarian, who has dedicated his life to caring for people with special needs. 

He set up the first L’Arche community in 1964 by welcoming two mentally disabled men into his home in France. 

L’Arche is now an international organisation of 147 communities in 35 countries. 

In a recent piece in the English Catholic magazine ‘The Tablet’ Vanier lists 10 rules for making life more human. Among the 10 is this: To meet is to listen: Tell me your story? Tell me where your pain is? Tell me where your heart is? What are the things you desire?” He adds, “I need to listen to you because your story is different to my story.”

I thought of those words during the following encounters.

I was cycling in a West Kerry village when a car pulled up and asked me for directions to a nearby beach. I paused for a moment, and then explained to the two women in the car how to get to their destination.

They let me ramble on until one of the women took off her sunglasses. Of course I knew her, she was simply clown-acting with me. We ended up chatting for the best part of 10 minutes, with she introducing me to her friend, who was driving the car. 

All this nonsense taking place on the main road of a small village. All this excitement and fun with me on my bicycle and they in their car. And no rush on any of us, that is until the four-year-old in the back seat asks: ‘what  are we waiting for’.

The following day I was preaching at a harvest festival at a Church of Ireland liturgy. It was a small rural church.

At one stage while talking, I moved away from my notes and mentioned how Trump avoided fighting in Vietnam, which meant he was a draft-dodger. A woman in the congregation pipes up that Clinton was also a draft dodger. I wasn't expecting it, so for a millisecond or so I was confused and nervous and then said that so too was Bush a draft dodger but in the case of both Clinton and Bush they did not constantly talk about their love and respect for the military and the flag as Trump does.

I’m back to my text and talking again when a man in the front seat stands up and leaves.

I’m floored, don’t know what to say or do, stop for a moment, wondering should I ask was he ok. But no, I fluster again for another millisecond and then go back to my text.

I sure was rattled and a most unhappy punter.

When the service was over I made for the woman who had stopped me in my tracks and explained the context of why I had said that about Trump. We both laughed and shook hands. A few minutes later I met the man who walked out. He explained he urgently had to go to the toilet.

We exchanged a few words and smiled.

Human encounters can be great fun, they don't always run easily and smoothly but when we make the effort of listening to the other person, taking heed of what they say we are experiencing life-enhancing moments. As Jean Vainer says, we need to listen to the other person because their story is different from mine.

Listening and chatting with people makes our world a far better place. And does us great good too.

A graphic history of the rise of the Nazis?

From Saturday's Guardian.

A good read.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/30/graphic-history-of-the-rise-of-the-nazis?CMP=share_btn_link

The day the Boeing 747 made its first appearance

Fifty years ago today the Boeing Corporation rolled out its Boeing 747 and showed it to the public for the first time.

Two years later, in 1970 the first wide-body aircraft made its first commercial flight.

Todate 1,548 Boeing 747s have been manufactured.

First Lady of the United States Pat Nixon christened the aircraft in Wahington in January 1970 and the 747 entered service on January 22, 1970, on Pan Am's New York London service.

The American church divided

From this week's The Tablet

Interesting piece. 

A number of Irish religious congregations have unfortunately been influenced by the American conservative-traditionalist church.

The story of the Catholic Church in the United States of America is a success story. A small community of poor migrants and missionaries, barely tolerated and often unable to worship freely in a new nation founded by religious dissenters fleeing from European Christendom, grew to become its single largest religious denomination. 

This is the Church in which my wife was received as a convert to Catholicism just two years before we got married, and in which our children were born and are being raised. It is the Church that welcomed me ten years ago, when I moved from Europe to take up an academic job in its impressive network of Catholic schools and universities – the largest in the world.

I grew up in a Catholic family in Italy, and spent part of my academic and cultural formation in France and Germany. From the moment I arrived in the US, I experienced something quite new. The first surprise was the encouragement from colleagues to go “parish shopping”, in other words, to traipse around different parishes from Sunday to Sunday until I found the one that was “right for me”. 

The assumption was that I should look around not just for a community I found friendly and welcoming, but for a parish where I would find the theological views congenial and the liturgical performances to my taste. 

This was something I had never thought to do before. I soon came to discover the huge diversity between, for example, the diocesan downtown Euro-American parish with wonderful pre-twentieth century liturgical music and the LGBT-welcoming university parish. 

I remember, a few years ago, spending a weekend in a monastery so assiduous in observing gender-inclusive language that I never heard the word “Lord” spoken in three days of liturgies, homilies included. This polarisation extends to social and political issues, where Catholics of a conservative stamp have crafted an alignment (shocking to the average European Catholic) between opposition to “socialised medicine” (in the language of the Catholic Social Teaching: universal access to health care), opposition to gun control, and support for the death penalty.

Some years ago, before we moved to the Philadelphia area, our parish organised a debate on the death penalty, and I was astonished to hear that the speaker defending the proposition that the death penalty was an integral part of current Catholic teaching was a Catholic theologian teaching at a local Catholic college. 

During a panel discussion of the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century I was dumbfounded when a professor of theology and business at a Catholic college dismissed Piketty’s critique of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a diminishing minority as the fruit of his “envy”. 

Trying to reduce wealth and income inequality was, he told us candidly,  basically sinful. My wife and I decided to baptise our second child in the parish in Italy where I had been raised and where we had got married, rather than in our parish in the US.

The history of Catholicism in the US is chronologically shorter and very different to that of most Churches in Europe, and it can be read as a history of shifting internal tensions and divisions. 

There was a first period in which immigrants from different national Catholic cultures co-existed uneasily: the predominant Irish American Catholics jostled with German, French and Polish Catholics, but these communities and others of European origin together asserted supremacy over other cultural and theological expressions of Catholicism (especially the Latino). 

But they were united in being the butt of anti-Catholic prejudice at the hands of the undeclared religious establishment of the US, that is, Protestantism.

Despite the deep divisions that emerged within Catholicism about the legitimacy of slavery, in the nineteenth century American Catholics were kept together by the fact that they belonged to a Church that was growing not only demographically, but in influence and social status. 

They also united around deepening allegiance to the papacy: the growth of the US Catholic Church coinciding with the “Romanisation” of Catholicism in the nineteenth century.

In Europe, the Church declared itself under siege from liberalism and the rise of nationalism, and unity with the Pope became an implicit silencing of voices questioning the unity of the Church. 

The Americanisation of the US Church followed a different trajectory from Catholicism elsewhere: in Europe, nations tended to be built at the expense of the Church, while American ideals and rituals – such as Thanksgiving – took on almost sacred significance, and nationalism had many of the features (to quote Robert Bellah) of a “civil religion”.

The twentieth century was “the American century”, in which the US came to assume an increasingly unchallenged role as the sole global superpower. This was a factor in keeping American Catholicism together, but fault lines around attitudes to social issues, mostly to do with sexual morality, were visible as early as the 1930s. 

But there were no serious tears in the fabric of the Catholic Church until the closing years of the century. The Second Vatican Council provoked a period of tumultuous change almost everywhere in the global Church, creating a new balance between different sensibilities; it produced different kinds of Catholicisms, usually described as “liberal-progressive” and “conservative-traditionalist”. 

There’s a certain degree of approximation in these labels, which are borrowed from Western political history, and they conceal the diversity within both camps.

But the tension between liberal and conservative played out in the US in a dramatic way. I am familiar with the same tension between more progressive-leaning and more traditional Catholics in Europe. But it is only here in the US that have I found the Church to be so riven by the so-called “culture wars”. 

There is not only the theological drive to reverse the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s (the post-liberal and the neo-conservative theological movements), but this project is now hitched to a larger political and civilisational narrative – a narrative that is technically partisan, in the sense that it forces the citizen to select a political party in an electoral system where there are – in effect – only two parties to choose from. 

In a sense, a two-party system has created a two-party Church. This has led to a series of fault lines in the Church that build on the fault lines of the nineteenth century (the tensions between different national-ethnic Catholic tribes, the rift over slavery) and of the twentieth century (the divide over politics and economics and over sexual morality): fault lines always there but masked until relatively recently.

This polarisation of American Catholics in the US has become more serious and potentially fatal for the unity of the Church because it has followed – I’d say, has followed religiously – the political radicalisation of the cultures of the two political parties on a range of issues, especially social issues, where it is now very hard to find the middle ground. 

For Catholics such as Steve Bannon and Cardinal Raymond Burke, this is about the “defence of Judaeo-Christian civilisation” from its destruction by a pincer attack by liberal elites and “Islamic fascists”.

Enter the sexual abuse crisis, which is now in a phase very different from when it exploded in Boston in 2002: the old rift between conservative and progressive is complicated by the freefall of the credibility of the bishops. 

In this moment in the life of the US Catholic Church, the divide is wide open and there is some kind of analogy with the anti-establishment mood that elected Donald Trump: those who would like to root out gays from the clergy; those who would like to have women priests now; those who dream of a Church run by the lay members of the Church only; those who dream of lay members of the parish able to hire and fire the priest – and of course that new generation of young “anti-Roman Ultramontanists”, who since the very first months of his election have been convinced that Pope Francis is a near heretic.

The abuse crisis has revealed the anger of US Catholics across the board, but also the asymmetry between the two ends of the spectrum. 

At the progressive-liberal end there is a wide variety of ideas and aspirations (not yet concrete proposals) concerning the relationship between lay people and clergy, the role of women in the Church (from those who would like to see women deacons – this is where I sit on the spectrum – to those who want women priests, to those who want women cardinals); how the churches are funded; greater outreach to those on the margins of the Church; the urgency of radical reform of the Vatican establishment. This melange of ideas does not take into account the huge pushback against the baby steps taken by Pope Francis on these issues.

At the conservative-traditionalist end of the spectrum (and I apologise again for what is an overly schematic description of what is often a more blurry picture), the picture appears to me to be very much less confused: the call is for a reassertion of clear and firm teaching of traditional sexual morality, with a determined focus on the evils of homosexuality. 

The larger cultural moment seems clearer on the right than on the left: it’s been the fate of Pope Francis’ pontificate to coincide with a transition from a neo-conservative and post-liberal Catholic culture – less preoccupied with sexual morality – to a new generation of conservative Catholics: a neo-traditionalist, anti-liberal, and illiberal Catholic culture whose theology is very hard to distinguish from the schismatics of the Society of Saint Pius X.

The abuse crisis has entered a new phase, but not because of a new wave of cases. The grand jury report into incidences of clergy abuse in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania was deeply disturbing, but the evidence would appear to be that the policies put in place by the “Dallas Charter” in 2002 are working. Yet the abuse crisis in 2018 has become an integral part of the increasingly ugly war between competing narratives about the future of the Church in the US. 

It is now an agent in the spread in Rome of the kind of American Catholicism championed by Bannon and Cardinal Burke. This brand of Catholicism is a small minority amongst American churchgoing Catholics, but it is the best-organised faction in the media, in the seminaries, and in the world of Catholic donors.

The “united” in “The United States” is now as aspirational as it is factual. The unity of the US is in question more now than at any time since the Civil War, 150 years ago. Something similar could be said for the Catholic Church in the US: it is more divided today than it has ever been. 

The “holiness” of the Church is something objective; it does not depend on the holiness of its members. And the “oneness” of the Church too, does not depend on the unity of its individual members with one another. But “the Church is one” means also “one Church throughout the world, united and non-sectarian”. 

This is why the increasingly bitter crisis in the Catholic Church in the US is not just a problem for US Catholics or for Pope Francis. It is a problem for all Catholics.

Massimo Faggioli is professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia.

Corbyn slams 'greed is good' capitalism

On Wednesday at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool Jeremy Corbyn vowed to tear up decades of economic thinking, denouncing “greed is good” capitalism while pledging to pump billions of pounds of public money into green industries.

Alcohol linked to cancer

Teenagers in the UK and Ireland are among the worst in Europe when it comes to getting drunk, a long-term study by the World Health Organisation has found. However, the rates, while still dangerously high, have fallen considerably.

Falls in harmful drinking across Europe have been greatest in countries with the highest prevalence, which includes those in the Nordic region, according to a report in yesterday's Guardian.

Ireland is currently legislating to put warning labels on alcohol drinks.

After much confusion as to whether or not the warning label should include the link between alcohol and cancer, it has now been decided to include the cancer risk on the labelling, something strongly advocated by Dr John Crown.

A bad day in the Bundestag for Angela Merkel

The defeat of Angela Merkel's man Volker Kauder as head of the CDU's parliamentary group to the almost unknown Ralph Brinkhaus in the German Bundestag yesterday spells the end of the political career of the German Chancellor.

The far right AfD might soon be as strong as Germany's oldest political party, the SPD.

It is highly likely the AfD will become a significant political force in Bavaria, where there are elections next month.

The AfD is the party whose members object to the Holocaust Memorial in central Berlin, the structure is a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe.

Road safety in the dark days and nights

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Micheal Commane

The days are getting shorter. It is dark in the morning close to 6.30am and it’s back to darkness again at 8pm. Not a nice feeling and there’s a lot of darkness ahead of us. There’s nothing we can do about it, that is, unless we head off to the southern hemisphere.

It’s that time of the year when we all need to be extra careful on our roads.

I had planned to write this column on a different topic this week, that is, until I was nearly knocked off my bicycle last week.

A passing car came far too close for comfort and it was also travelling at an unsafe speed. Please, can I call on all road users to drive safely. And you know what, a little bit of kindness and care goes a long way, whether we are driving, cycling or indeed, walking on the footpath.

It’s great to see extra cyclists on our roads. It is a pity we don’t have safer and better designed cycle paths but we have what we have so we have to make the best of it.

Of course pedestrians and cyclists are at the mercy of vehicular traffic. That goes without saying.

But there is a relatively new breed of cyclist on our roads and their behaviour has to be stopped ASAP.

Those clowns who consider the road a race track and are travelling at unsafe speeds on our roads.

 They are easily spotted: all that lycra gear and usually topped off with a camera fitted on the helmet. Other bits and bobs too.

A Dublin Bus driver said to me that that particular species is one of the most dangerous on our Irish roads.

The morning that the car came far too close to me some minutes later one of these ‘man-cycle-racers’ passed me, leaving millimetres between us. Had I as much as veered slightly to the right we would have collided. There was no cycling path where we were.

And the cycle paths we have are certainly not built for racing cyclists.

A cycling disaster is waiting to happen.

Cyclists must obey the rules of the road and if they don’t they should be penalised.

With shorter and darker days on top of us it’s time for cyclists to make sure they have properly functioning front and back lights. And these days they are so cheap and simple to attach. Every cyclist should wear a high-visibility jacket and a helmet.

It’s well worthwhile to visit the Road Safety Authority atwww.rsa.ie. And guess what, they will post you out a high-vis jacket and a cover for your back pack. And it’s all for free.

The RSA phone number is 096 – 2 50 00, Lo-Call, 1890 – 53 25 32. You can write to them at RSA, Moy Valley Business Park, Primrose Hill, Ballina, Co Mayo.

But a warning. If you try phoning them, you need a large dose of patience. When I called the Lo-Call number, I was told it was closed.

They also give another Lo-Call number on their website, 1890 – 40 60 40. The number did not work for me. That is not good enough. The RSA should be far more user friendly and lead by example.

Last year 15 cyclists, 30 pedestrians, 20 motorcyclists, 66 drivers and 26 passengers were killed on our roads, not to mention all those severely injured.

Please keep safe on the road, cycle carefully. Kindness and consideration go a long way. Good road behaviour saves lives.

Trump and a walk out in a church

This is a funny story.

Speaking yesterday on the Gospel in a Church of Ireland church a woman took exception to what I said about US President Donald Trump. She spoke her mind. I replied. After the service we shook hands.

Some moments later, while still speaking, a man in the front seat, got up and walked out.

Shivers, confusion set in at that stage.

Only later to discover he was heading to the bathroom.

China and the Holy See draw closer

The Holy See is to recognise bishops appointed by the Chinese government.

It has been a long diplomatic road and something to which Pope Francis and his predecessors have given much time and  energy.

But what about all those Catholics who worked and survived in the underground church in China?

How must they be feeling today?

What will the retired archbishop in Hong Kong think and say? He has already spoken his mind.

It is a tangled web.

There are 10 million Catholics in China.

In Vilnius yesterday Pope Francis spoke courageously and strongly against populist politicians who are closing  their doors to migrants.

What will Germany's AfD say and how will the Bavarian government respond? There are elections in Bavaria in October where the AfD are expected to hoover up votes.

Germany's SPD and the Vatican on the one side. That's an interesting scenario.

Crack cocaine

In a war setting "combat is like crack cocaine."

- Karl Marlantes a veteran of the Vietnam War

Jean Vanier's 10 rules for making life more human

From the current issue of 'The Tablet'

I’m just somebody who was born ninety years ago and will die in a few years time and then everybody will have forgotten me. This is reality'

Jean Vanier, the Canadian philosopher and theologian and the founder of L'Arche communities, turned ninety this week.

To commemorate the occasion he released a YouTube video laying out his “ten rules for life to become more human” by sharing his thoughts on life and on growing older. He speaks about success, vulnerability, listening, fear and love. 

1. Accept the reality of your body

Vanier says, “For a man to become a man he has to be at ease with his body. That body is fragile, like all bodies. We are born in weakness (as a little child); we will die in weakness. And when we get to a certain age – ninety – we begin to get weaker.” He adds, “I have to accept that I’m ninety. I’m not fifty, or forty, or thirty.”

2. Talk about your emotions and difficulties

He acknowledges that men in particular “have difficulty expressing their emotions.”

3. Don’t be afraid of not being successful

Vanier adds, “you have to discover you are beautiful as you are” regardless of whether or not you are successful.

4. In a relationship, take the time to ask “How are you?”

“Has he married his success in work, or has he married his wife? What is the most important? Is it to grow up the ladder in promotion?” asks Vanier.

5. Stop looking at your phone. Be present!

To young people he says, “You are people of communication.” But then he asks, “Are you people of presence? Are you able to listen?” "To be human is to know how to relate," he adds. 

6. Ask people “What is your story?”

Vanier emphasises the importance of relating to people and listening to them. He says, “To meet is to listen: Tell me your story? Tell me where your pain is? Tell me where your heart is? What are the things you desire?” He adds, “I need to listen to you because your story is different to my story.”

7. Be aware of your own story

“You are precious. You have your ideas: political, religious, non-religious, you have your vision for the world. Your vision for yourself,” says Vanier. He acknowledges that when we fear our identities, worldviews, and cherished opinions are being taken away from us we are liable to become angry. He adds, “we have to discover where our fears are because that is the fundamental problem.” He asks, “Maybe in your story there is a story about fear?”

8. Stop prejudice: meet people

Vanier says, “The big thing about being human is to meet people.” We need to “meet people who are different” and “discover that the other person is beautiful.”

9. Listen to your deepest desire and listen to it

Vanier says, “We are very different from birds and dogs. Animals are very different.” He says that unlike with animals there is a “sort of cry of the infinite within us. We’re not satisfied with the finite.” He asks, “Where is your greatest desire?”

10. Remember that you'll die one day 

“I’m not the one who’s the king of the world and I’m certainly not God,” says Vanier. “I’m just somebody who was born ninety years ago and will die in a few years time and then everybody will have forgotten me. This is reality. We’re all here, but we are just local people, passengers in a journey. We get into the train, we get out of the train, the train goes on.”

Vanier set up his first L'Arche community in 1964 by welcoming two mentally disabled men into his home in the town of Trosly-Breuil in France. Today, L’Arche has grown into an international organisation of 147 communities in 35 countries. Its aim is to create homes, programs and support networks with and for people who have developmental disabilities.

Vanier, the author of over 30 books, suffered a heart-attack in late 2017. He is said to have been resting in his home in France. 

RTE and BBC mispronouncing Salzburg

Why are most people at RTE and BBC mispronouncing the name of the Austrian city Salzburg?

It's not a posh Sálzburg, rather a common Salzburg.

In favour of 'general absolution'

From The Tablet of September 18.

Cartoon by Jonathan Pugh 

'Priests can be too inquisitive in Confession...don’t cross-question. If someone is sorry, give them absolution'

On his recent visit to Ireland, Pope Francis gave a “clear signal” to priests that the Church needs a different format for Confession, according to Fr Brendan Hoban of the Association of Catholics.

Recalling the Pope’s visit to the Capuchin Day Centre for the Homeless in Dublin, Fr Hoban said the Pontiff had remarked in an aisle: “Priests can be too inquisitive in Confession. Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, don’t cross-question. If someone is sorry, give them absolution.”

The County Mayo-based parish priest said the Pope was “sending a clear signal to priests that we need a different format for Confessions, not the traditional ‘number and kind’ fixation of some priests but a format more acceptable and more respectful to penitents.”

Speaking to The Tablet, Fr Hoban said that some priests were already using general absolution while “many priests are using a variation of it”.

He added that he was not surprised that the bishops didn’t comment on the Pope’s remark on Confession because they had been “complaining” about priests’ use of General Absolution “for years”.

Censured Redemptorist, Fr Tony Flannery, has said that he was beginning to change his mind on the matter.

Fr Flannery noted the proposal of Australian writer and commentator on religious affairs, Paul Collins, that in future the Church should decree that general absolution would be the only permitted way to celebrate the sacrament.

That might be a way of side-stepping the challenge to the seal of confession following the Royal Commission report on clerical child abuse in Australia, he said commending the proposal as a good idea.

He recalled that general absolution had been fairly common in the seventies and early eighties, but that Pope St John Paul ll had “put an end to it”.

He also noted that the Vatican in 1973 had approved three forms or ways of celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation.

One is the traditional one-to-one with the priest, usually in a confession box; one is general absolution, where the absolution for sin is celebrated with a gathering of the believers without individual confession; the third is Form 2, which he said is “a sort of a compromise” between these two, offered to a specific group.

Vietnam: all the lies and dishonesty

'The Vietnam War' is a 10-episode series on the history of the United States war in Vietnam. The film, available on Netflix, includes how the US first got involved in the country. 

It is a powerful but worrying account of the realities of war.

I am a child of the Vietnam generation.

On the day in 1975 that the war ended and Vietnam was liberated from US aggression I took part in a celebratory demonstration in Rome.

The film tells many stories, among them how far removed the political and military hierarchy were out of touch with what was happening on the ground. And both the White House and the Pentagon refused to believe what soldiers in the field were telling them.

As early as 1966 they knew the war was unwinnable. Both politicians and military kept the full story from the people, in other words, they told them lies.

One of the strongest advocates of the war, Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara eventually realised his folly and retired from politics.

Interesting how three future US presidents never saw service in Vietnam. Clinton, Bush and Trump were all age-eligible to have been sent. That tells its own story. 

And Trump, who is constantly roaring about his patriotism, respect for the flag and his devotion to the military, was and is a draft dodger.

War never makes anything better, it makes it worse.

Bill Clinton looks embarrassed

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

Concern Worldwide celebrates its 50^th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, the Non Governmental Organisation held an international conference at Dublin Castle on Friday September 7.

Over a period of 50 years, Concern has grown into Ireland’s largest humanitarian and development organisation. But the agency has never forgotten its roots as an instinctual response to the outrage of human suffering.

Having spent 10 years working in the Concern press office they kindly invited me to attend.

Among the speakers were President Michael D. Higgins and former President Mary Robinson. It was an impressive turn out of people from the world of diplomacy and aid agencies.

Concern chairman John Treacy welcomed us to the conference.

Michael D. Higgins gave a scholarly talk on the importance of the role Concern plays in development work. In his speech he had hard-hitting words to say to those who manufacture and sell arms in the developing world. He pointed out how the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, the US, the UK, Russia and France, manufacture two thirds of the world’s armaments.

President Mary Robinson in a panel discussion said it was ‘disgraceful how Europe is treating migrants’.

After our lunch-break we were advised to be back in our seats at 1.45pm. Áine Lawlor, who was MC on the day, told us that we had to be seated well before the next speaker arrived. We were told his ‘people’ were ‘sanitising’ the room. 

Businessman Denis O’Brien introduces President Bill Clinton.

The 42nd US president and former governor of Arkansas talks for close to an hour. That deadly time, immediately after lunch, when people have trouble staying awake. But we are on our toes listening to Bill.

It was a class act of how to talk in public. He is charismatic, funny, and above all so well briefed on his topic. The man knows how to engage his listeners. He has that rare gift that you think he is talking specifically to you.

He has complimentary words to say about Concern and the work it does.

He regularly refers to the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

It's clear that his involvement in the Northern Ireland Peace Process has left a long-lasting impression on him.

The central theme of his talk is that we are all tribal in our outlook but the overall good of humanity supersedes our tribalism. He stresses the importance of compromise wherever there is conflict in the world. Clinton believes that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones.

At one stage he quips that Concern with its skills in bringing people together might well be needed right now in the United States.

When he is finished talking, Áine Lawlor has a few private words in his ear, she then returns to the rostrum and thanks him for the work he has done in Northern Ireland. 

As she speaks, I look over at Clinton. It seems as if he is about to walk away, but then he hears her speak and stops. He is listening. His head is bowed and he appears genuinely moved, maybe even embarrassed as Áine speaks her words. It is one of those extraordinary moments.

President Clinton tells us that it is his third visit to Ireland this year and is looking for excuses so that he can come back again next year as many times as possible.

It was a privilege to have been there. Inspiring too to hear about the work Concern is doing.

Dominic Michael O'Connor OP, RIP

Dominican priest Dominic Michael O'Connor died at Glengara Nursing Home, Dún Laoghaire on Saturday, September  15.

Michael was born in Dublin in 1930, joined the Dominicans in 1950 when he was given the name Dominic, made his profession the following year and was ordained a priest in 1959.

He was an altar boy in St Saviour's, Dominick Street in Dublin. DOC were the initials on his soutane. It meant he was always called 'Doc O'Connor'.

Before joining the Irish Dominicans he spent a short time working in Clery's in Dublin.

Dominic, known affectionately as Mickey, spent most of his life in Trinidad and Tobago. He also spent a short time working as a priest in the UK.

In his 70s he returned home to Ireland where he lived at the Dominican communities in Athy and Newbridge before moving to the nursing home in Dún Laoghaire.

He was an engaging man, who was enthusiastic and imaginative in his preaching. He took his preaching seriously.

Mickey was a lively person, a great talker with very definite opinions. At one stage he saw money as the root of all evil.

The story is told that on one occasion he arrived in a fellow Dominican's parish in Trinidad having come from Tobago. Mass was about to start. 

He asked his friend could he concelebrate with him and then when it came to the Gospel asked if he could read the Gospel, which he did and then went on to preach on how money is the root of all evil. 

When he was finished preaching, he explained to his friend that he had forgotten that he had an appointment and must leave immediately, which he duly did, during the Mass.

Mickey was a fearless person.

He liked the camaraderie of his fellow Dominicans, because of which he took to the golf course.

Dominic Michael O'Connor had that lovely quality of appreciating other people and complimenting them when they had done well.

In his company one always felt that he was genuinely interested in you.

Dominic was dedicated to his parishioners.

There was a great sense of fun about him.

We are all unique but Mickey's uniqueness was always evident, indeed enjoyable and exhilarating to observe.

He was a gracious and kind man.

Pope Francis meets his Jesuit colleagues in Dublin

A lovely story of Pope Francis meeting his Jesuit colleagues in Dublin.

And again he talks about power/control and  clericalism.

A strong piece.

https://laciviltacattolica.com/it-is-not-enough-to-turn-the-page-life-must-be-given-anew/

'Who do people say that I am?'

'The Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

It really is a startling question. In tomorrow's Gospel Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?" They went on to tell him the various answers they get to that question and eventually Peter tells him: "You are the Christ.”

Being human means being part of society, it means we interface with other people, we like to know what they think of us. All of us relax in the knowledge that we are accepted, appreciated and loved among our own people.

Concern Worldwide celebrates this year its 50th anniversary and to mark the occasion the international aid agency held a conference in Dublin Castle last week. The speakers included the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and former US President Bill Clinton.

Many people with experience in humanitarian work took part in panel discussions throughout the day. Among those on the panels were recipients of Concern's work, Irish and UN diplomats and also a former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.

As I spent 11 years working in the Concern press office, the agency kindly invited me to attend.

The conference began with a welcoming address from Concern's chairperson John Treacy. With a short lunch break, it was non-stop talking until 6pm . Many words were spoken during the day.

Tucked away in all the talking, someone told a story about how they had come face-to-face with a young woman who was living in terrible conditions in Syria during aerial bombardment. The gist of what she said was that she felt she was lost, that no one recognised her, no one looked into her eyes and spoke to her as one person talking to another.

It left an impression on me. I came home from the conference, tired but inspired by what I had heard, my interest in humanitarian/development work rekindled.  

The next day I read tomorrow's Gospel and in a completely new light I read that line - "Who do people say that I am?" I thought of the Syrian woman who is not recognised as a person.

Imagine, the millions of people around the world who are not recognised as people. It is shocking.

President Michael D. Higgins in his address to the conference accused the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council of embarking on a new arms race. He said that France, China, the US, the UK and Russia are responsible for two-thirds of the world's weapons production.

He spoke of the scandal and madness of how the world's manufacturers of arms sell their tools of death in the developing world.

And they are the very weapons that kill and maim and cause untold suffering to so many people. They are part of the situation that makes it impossible for that Syrian woman to feel any sense of dignity that would allow her to be recognised for what she is by another person.

The Concern conference brought home to me how important it is for all development work to home in on the dignity of the individual person, recognising the world and culture in which they find themselves.

At one point during the day Mary Robinson, without any hesitation, said that Europe's 'migration policy is disgraceful'. Again, the emphasis was on caring for the individual person.

I'm back thinking of those images of people frightened out of their lives being herded from place to place around Europe's southern borders. How can they ever get a sense of being respected or listened to? Should they ever ask themselves the question, "Who do people say that I am", they know immediately what the arms manufactures think of them and what the rich developed world thinks of them.

President Higgins stressed the important role women play in conflict resolution. He instanced the work they did in the Northern Ireland peace process. It is generally accepted by those working in humanitarian relief aid that women play a vital role. 

The conference was packed with wise words spoken by knowledgeable and wise people, some of whom I have already named. And yet one of the finest nuggets of the day for me was that sentiment which the Syrian woman said to an aid worker.

When we treat all our sisters and brothers with dignity we are embracing Peter's response to Jesus: “You are the Christ”.