New film by von Donnersmarck

Florian Henckel  von Donnersmarck's new film 'Never Look Away' is not to be missed.

In many aspects it complements 'The Lives of Others', also  a von Donnersmarck film.

In an interview on CNN yesterday von Donnersmarck said that art can be a weapon against extremism.

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A special day in Russian history

On this day, January 12, 1945 the Red Army began the Vistula/Oder offensive, the final attack against Germany. Soviet forces outnumbered the German Army 11 to one.

Zhukov's troops travelled 500 kilometres in 14 days.

A word in the ears of US bishops

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa gave a retreat to the US bishops near Chicago from January 2 to 8.

All the talks are available at this link.

They can be seen in their entirety here. 

Bolsonaro and his evangelical friends

This from yesterday's Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-minorities-rainforest?CMP=share_btn_link

Our personal greatness

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

Woody Allen

TV Trump tries to scare people

Guardian's Richard Wolffe casts a cold eye on last night's Trump television performance.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/09/border-wall-speech-trump-is-losing-the-macho-game-of-staring-himself-down-in-the-mirror?CMP=share_btn_link

Belligerent words about keeping people out

Guess who said this.

I am the greatest builder of fortifications of all time.

It sounds familiar, sounds like something a current world leader might say.

It was said by Adolf Hitler as the Germans built their Atlantic fortifications against an imminent allied invasion.

Everything about their wall-building proved a failure. And it certainly did not stop the allied invasion.

Edith Eger's 'The Choice' a book not to be missed

This week's Indepenent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column

Michael Commane
Before Christmas I met a friend for lunch. He usually arrives with a book for me but on this occasion he had no book in hand but strongly recommended I read 'The Choice' by Edith Eger.

I had vaguely heard about the book some time back. The author may have been on 'The Late Late Show' and I'm sure Ryan Tubridy mentioned the book on his radio slot.

By coincidence a work colleague also mentioned the book and was enthusiastic about it and suggested I read it.

'The Choice' does exactly what it says on the tin. It's about making our own personal choices in the here and now, living in the present, using the wealth of knowledge and wisdom we have gained during our lives.

Edith Eger was a 16-year-old girl, living in Hungary in the warmth and love of her gifted family. It was 1944 when they were brutally removed from their home and shipped in a cattle train to the Auschwitz death camp.

On her arrival she and her sister Magda were separated from their parents, who were sent off in another line, which ended in the gas chamber.

Edith and Magda spent a year at Auschwitz. Edith was forced to dance for Mengele, the doctor of death. It was Mengele who decided the fate of many of the people who entered through the gates of Auschwitz.

Edith and Magda with the help of luck and their tenacity to stay alive survived the hell of Auschwitz and went on to live healthy and happy lives in the United States. Of course their lives were not trouble-free.

But the book is an account of how Edith Eger made her life-decisions and how much of her decision-making was partly formed by her experiences at Auschwitz and her subsequent forced march to Gunskirchen.

She says that the worst moments in our lives, the moments that set us spinning with ugly desires, that threaten to unglue us with the sheer impossibility of the pain we must endure, are in fact moments that bring us to understand our worth. It's as if we become aware of ourselves as a bridge between all that's been and all that will be.

She went on to become an eminent psychologist in the United States. Her terrible suffering at the hands of the Germans gave her great empathy when dealing with her suffering patients.

In Auschwitz the stakes were life or death and the choice was never hers to make. But even in that hell she could choose how she responded. She could choose what she had in her mind.

Eger constantly stresses that while we can never erase the past, we are free to accept who we are and move on.

It was astonishing to read that when Auschwitz was liberated and the gates thrown open there were prisoners who went through the gates but then returned back to the camp.

Of course there are those who live in the present and get on with their lives but I'm all too aware many of us hark for the past and have unreal hopes for the future, always edgy about living in the present and making the best of it.

Eger tells us we can't change the past but we can change how we live now.

So much of our lives are based on accident, the flip of a coin. Edith Eger's 'The Choice' is an inspiring work that opens the reader's eyes to the power of the human spirit.

How leaders allow little officials to be cruel

This is a brilliant article that appears in today's Guardian.

Guardian columnist, Emma Brockes captures almost perfectly the mood in that room, the horrible nasty behaviour of the officials, their sarcasm, the fear of the Hispanic group of men.

But one would have to experience it before she/he could really understand what's happening in the world right in front of our eyes.

And this hatred is all the time being egged on by populist right-wing leaders.

These officials have suddenly been given an importance or significance that is allowing them to behave in such a manner.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/07/detained-us-immigration-jfk-white-woman-british-passport?CMP=share_btn_link

Elizabeth Warren to run for the White House

It's looking ever more likely that US Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren will run for the presidency in 2020.

Te 69-year-old lawyer is a strong critic of big banks and unregulated capitalism.

She was born in Oklahoma and is the senior senator from Massachusetts.

Warren has native American ancestry.

'Clerical and lay'

This surely has to be an extraordinary death notice.

 It must be a caricature of itself.

Note how clerical and lay are spelt, upper case c, lower case l. 

Funny, if it were not so tragic and real.

And it says so much about where the Irish Catholic Church is right now and where it is heading.

The death notice as it appeard in rip.ie and Irish newspapers:

Greenan O.P, Fr Lambert (Larry) (Ireland, Rome and Alabama), who died 29th November 2018 in his 102nd year in Birmingham, Alabama, where his Funeral Mass and Burial took place on 5th December 2018; mourned by his sister-in-law Jean, nieces, nephews and their families, relatives, Dominican confreres, Sister Servants of the Eternal Word (Birmingham, Al) and a wide circle of friends both Clerical and lay.

May he rest in peace.

A Memorial Mass will be celebrated in St. Saviour’s Dominican Church, Dominick Street, Dublin 1 on Sunday coming, 6th January at 11:30am.

The coming of the Magi

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

Michael Commane
Former Irish ambassador to the EU, Britain and Italy Bobby McDonagh wrote a piece titled 'Christian harmony can coexist with modern beliefs' in this newspaper last week.

And the article does exactly what it says on the tin.

McDonagh recalls how he learned at school that there is no contradiction between Christian faith and philosophy or science or literature. 

To back up his observation he is reminded of the Raphael painting, which was commission by Pope Julius II for one of the rooms beside the Sistine Chapel. Raphael's 'The School of Athens' McDonagh says: 'captures perfectly the harmony between spiritual and worldly wisdom'.

But maybe the central theme of the former diplomat's article, it certainly was the catalyst that inspired the writing, was the recalling of the life and times of a great teacher he had at school.

He writes in glowing terms of his former teacher Jesuit priest Paul Andrews, who died on November 27.

Although Paul Andrews had left the school 47 years ago more than a third of McDonagh's classmates attended the funeral Mass.

McDonagh writes: "Sometimes it seems important for each of us to find a moment to remember a life which has been directed neither at fame nor at fortune, to acknowledge achievements which require no validation from tabloids or treasuries. We all know people who lived such lives. For me, Paul was one of them."

It's abundantly clear that Fr Paul Andrews was a brilliant teacher, who left an indelible mark on many people, including Bobby McDonagh.

Paul Andrews was a gifted man, who had the ability to see, speak and think about God in the environment in which he lived. He made God possible to many people, to those he accompanied, to those he taught and to those who read his works.

Tomorrow the Christian churches celebrate the great feast of the Epiphany. It's the feast that celebrates, the making present, the manifestation, the blossoming of the kingdom of God. Three wise men make known to the world the reality, the fact that this infant Jesus is the Son of God.

In tomorrow's Gospel Matthew recounts for his readers how the Wise Men were directed by means of a star to Bethlehem. In that same Gospel we learn of the tension between the worldly power of King Herod and the Wise Men, who manage to avoid the dangers that King Herod is plotting.

This Christmas I have encountered so many views of life and reality. I have sat down and listened to people who do not believe in God. 

I have experienced a church packed to the rafters. I have observed a brand of right-wing Catholicism that I can no longer abide and then up pops the feast of the Epiphany and the article by Bobby McDonagh.

McDonagh's article, at least for me, is a shining light. In so many ways it's the coming of the Magi, the wise men, who direct me to the greatness of God.

Obviously, Paul Andrews, in his own quiet, intelligent and charitable way sowed a seed in his students, a seed that helped many of them to go in search of God.

There is little or no point in bemoaning the world, indeed, so often it can be counter-productive and even a giveaway that we are placing all authority and power in ourselves rather than trusting in the greatness of God.

Tomorrow's feast might help all of us to be guided by a shining light. And don't we all encounter people who inspire and impress us with their kindness and goodness. They get on with it, irrespective of the clamour and noise about them. They don't seek headlines. And they live in the present in awe of the world about them.

Bobby McDonagh paints a picture of a teacher and priest who was obviously always in search of wisdom and intent on passing it on to others.

Surely his was the living out in everyday life of the feast of the Epiphany.

It's also worth noting that the Epiphany celebration is the setting of James Joyce's 'The Dead'.

Joyce was educated by the Jesuits and Paul Andrews played a significant role in rehabilitating Joyce within the Jesuit community in the 1950s. As Fr Bruce Bradley SJ said at Paul's funeral Mass: "Paul was quite prepared to break the disapproving silence and begin the process of setting the record (on Joyce) straight at last."

Another example of following a bright star, when it may not have been the popular action to take.

Another step in our carbon footprint

And early sighting, even if in the dark.

Words, their meaning and usage

On RTE Radio 1's Drivetime today NTA's CEO Anne Graham said: "... putting in place new fleet."

And during the interview she kept talking about 'new fleet', when she meant adding vehicles to the various public transport fleets.

It all sounded odd but dictionary definition of the word fleet is ambiguous

Words are indeed funny things.

The front page

The front page of the Irish Dominican website, www.dominicans.ie.

The content on the front page:

/by Luuk Dominiek Jansen OP

This week in the Light of Truth Fr. Luuk OP literals makes a flying visit to the Radio Maria studio to discuss the Gospel Passages relevant to the end of Advent and the Christmas season. The program is broadcasted live on Radio Maria Ireland from 4-5pm each Thursday. The Podcast follows but generally with a small delay. […]

Read more

Herzog Bring Centre still closed

There is a notice on the door of Herzog Park Bring Centre in Rathgar, Dublin  informing the public that it will be closed for renovations from Monday August 13, reopening in October 2018.

The bring bank is still closed and not a word of information to the public about the delay in reopening.

This is not how people should be treated.

And as it is a facility to support a cleaner environment it makes a statement about Dublin City Council's real interest in the environment.

Or does it?

So often it's the little things that say so much about us.

Trump's notions on being a general

"I think I would have been a good general, but who knows."

One of the many comments made by President Donald Trump in Washington yesterday.

In a wide-ranging Q&A President Trump referred to how the Soviet Union engagement in Afghanistan bankrupetd the USSR. He spoke about the high wall around the Vatican and the library India has built in Afghanistan.

He told us how he spent Christmas alone in the White House looking out at soldiers with guns on the lawn. He never before saw so many submachine guns.

It was a fabulous 60 minutes of television.

Most noticeable was to watch the all-men platoon who sat by and listened to what he was saying.

Civic duty to combat 'fake news'

Interesting article in The Irish Times on Saturday, December 29 on our duty to combat 'fake news'.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/combating-fake-news-the-21st-century-civic-duty-1.3739327#.XCtanYx6VpI.mailto

In search of wonder

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

Michael Commane

An article in 'The New Yorker' magazine caught my attention over Christmas.

Award winning journalist Louis Menard wrote a piece about whether or not Einstein believed in God.

It begins about Einstein's so-called God letter, which was sold by auction in Christie's in New York in early December for $2.9 million. A short 10 years earlier the letter made $404,000 at a British auction house. Not a bad return on an investment. And does it add weight to the generally held view that there's money in religion?

At the end of 'The New Yorker' article Menard argues that Einstein is saying in the letter that it doesn't matter what our religious or philosophical commitments are. The only thing that matters is how we treat one another. Menard quips that he doesn't think it takes a genius to figure that out and goes on to say: 'But it's nice that one did'.

In churches, that throughout the year are sparsely attended, there was standing room only for Christmas Mass. In one Mass that I celebrated I was told there were 800 people in attendance. That's a lot of people and they had come to church to pray and celebrate the feast that was in it. 

Maybe there were some there for other reasons. So be it. We were of course celebrating the Christian belief that Jesus Christ becomes man. Isn't that what Christmas is about? Or at least it's the original idea why we make such a big occasion of the last days of December. 

At all the Masses over Christmas the Gospel stories recounted the birth of Christ. We read how Mary was told not to be afraid, how his name means 'God is with us' and that 'the Word was with God and the Word was God'.

Certainly a lot of food for thought in all the words and ideas that were spoken in churches over the Christmas.

Words are fascinating. Their use, the meaning, the tone in which we say something is all part of the cocktail that gives expression to what we say, or at least what we are trying to say. So often in our daily exchange of ideas we can be misunderstood. Imagine what it must be like when we try to say something about God? Surely it must be all-too-easy to fall into saying words and expressing ideas about God that are ridiculously meaningless.

I keep saying to myself anytime we ever try to say a word or indeed anything about God we need to be extremely careful.

As the German Army pillaged, burned and raped its way across Europe in World War II every soldier had inscribed on his belt 'God is with us'. Can it get more absurd than that?

While all words are fascinating and involve elements or aspects of nuance and interpretation, words about God are super-fascinating.

Yes, it can be difficult to say anything about God, God's name is extraordinary, that God becomes man is extraordinary.

But aren't many aspects of our lives extrordinary, from birth to death.

People who filled our churches this Christmas gave me a glimpse of our search for the wonder, the extraordinariness of our lives and that includes our search for God.

Maybe there is the temptation to be far too filled with our own importance, our own certainty, to miss the wonder of all creation in front of our eyes, including the existence of God.

There can be something exciting and exhilarating in our lifelong search for God. 

Happy new year to all readers

As is now customary, the Germans celebrate the new year with special events at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

As the clocks struck 00.00 the choirs  on the Fan Mile sang out Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union.

A far cry from a city which on January 1, 1934 made a law for the prevention of genetically diseased offspring. In other words, all such children were to be aborted.

Happy new year to all readers of this blog and may 2019 be kind to you.

Changing times indeed

This on the front page of the digital version of today's Der Spiegel.

The piece is about English people applying for Irish passports.

On the cheap with Irish Rail from Waterford to Kildare

An interesting glitch in Irish Rail's fare structure.

The single flexible rail fare from Waterford to Limerick Junction is €5.29. The single fare from Waterford to Kildare is €14.49.

Irish Rail has two daily direct service from Waterford to Limerick Junction.

You may travel on the direct service at 07.20 to Limerick Junction but you may also travel on the 07.50 Dublin service, changing at Kildare.

The single flexible fare to Kildare to €14.49. Which seems to imply that with a little rail knowledge a passenger can travel to Kildare for €5.29.

The USSR

On this date, December 30, 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.

The present

The only place where we can exercise our freedom of choice is in the present.

Edith Eger in The Choice.

Christian harmony can coexist with modern beliefs

Former Irish diplomat, Bobby McDonagh wrote a piece in The Irish Times yesterday on his once teacher and headmaster, Jesuit priest Paul Adams, who died.

He writes how more than a third of his class attended the funeral, which says something about the man given that his stint at the school ended 47 years ago.

This is an excerpt from the piece.

On the one hand, there are those who see Christianity and other religions as being in contradiction with science and even with rational thought. Inspired by the observation that some religious beliefs, such as creationism, can indeed be irrational mumbo jumbo, they make the mistake of tarring all religious belief with the same brush. 

This requires them to ignore the great philosophers, scientists and writers who have seen no contradiction between their work and their religious faith. 

On the other hand, there are those within the church who believe that there are clear unambiguous answers to all the great questions of life and that these answers are available through what they consider official church teaching. They act as if such teaching is not to be questioned. 

Thus, coming from the opposite point of view, they likewise see some contradiction between faith, on the one hand, and rational thought and secular culture on the other. 

It is this view which in the distant past gave us the hauling of Galileo before the Inquisition, in the more recent past the censorship of great literature, and today, for example, a dismissal out of hand of the strong case for women priests and for gay marriage.

Self-disclosure of God in everyday life

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

Michael Commane

In conversation with a friend in the last few days we were talking about how in vogue the word ‘experience’ has become. He brought it to my attention how everything is now regarded as an experience. 

People look forward say to the experience of going for a meal, to Christmas.

One gets the impression that it really doesn’t do any longer to live simply in the now and enjoy the moment in which we find ourselves.

But experiences are not confined to the future. They are also part of the present moment.

We all seem to be programmed to behave in a way that sends us off chasing rainbows.

It certainly looks like that at times and maybe especially so in the run-up to Christmas. All the frenetic shopping. I heard about a major food retailer in Dublin, that usually takes in €20,000 on a normal day, last Christmas Eve had its tills ringing to the tune of €60,000 and the shop closed early on the day.

It happens at Easter but more intensely so at Christmas that people get into a panic when it comes to shopping. With the shops closed for a maximum of two days, we feel obliged to stockpile. It ends up with people buying far too much and then after Christmas there is a scandalous waste of food.

Every year in Ireland we throw out over one million tonnes of food.

On average every household wastes €700 every year, and this peaks at Christmas time. 

At the recent climate summit in Katowice in Poland a commitment was made for greater transparency on efforts to reduce carbon emissions to global warming. Are you playing your part, am I?

Isn’t it true that greedy people are never satisfied with what they have, always wanting more? And isn’t that symptomatic of our lifestyles, we are always jumping to the next place, seldom if ever happy where we actually are.

We seem to be developing some sort of characteristic that is forcing us, constantly wanting us to be in the next place. It’s as if, we are never content or happy living in the present and experiencing the wonder of the now. 

We are rushing somewhere, I’m not too sure where and it seems to manifest itself to a ridiculous degree at Christmas.

These days listening to ‘experts’ giving advice on how to cook the Christmas meal, how to spend the day, how to avoid the pitfalls of the season, I can’t help but think we are losing the run of ourselves.

I recommend we say over and over the first verse of Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘Advent’:

‘We have tested and tasted too much lover  -/ Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder./But here in the Advent-darkened room/Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea/Of penance will charm back the luxury/Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom/The knowledge we stole but could not use.’

‘Tóg go bog e’ makes an awful lot of sense.

Dare I say it, is it that we have lost the sense of wonder or transcendence in our lives? Have we lost the ability simply to stand back, pause and appreciate all that is right in front of our eyes? Was it Wordsworth who saw the extraordinary in the ordinary? We sure could learn from him too.

And it’s no harm to remind ourselves that the self-disclosure of God happens most often in the here and now experiences of everyday life.

Live in the present.

David Miliband on Brexit fiasco

Interesting piece in Monday's Guardian by former British foreign secretary David Miliband.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/24/corbyn-given-up-europe-labour-brexit-vote?CMP=share_btn_link

Urbi et Orbi

Pope Francis called for fraternity "among individuals of every nation and culture" in his annual Christmas message at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

"My wish for a happy Christmas is a wish for fraternity. Fraternity among individuals of every nation and culture. Fraternity among people with different ideas, yet capable of respecting and listening to one another. Fraternity among persons of different religions," he said during the "Urbi et Orbi," or "to the city and the world" address Tuesday. 

Pope Francis added that he hoped that Israelis and Palestinians would find common ground and renew peace talks.

"May this Christmas help us to rediscover the bonds of fraternity linking us together as individuals and joining all peoples. May it enable Israelis and Palestinians to resume dialogue and undertake a journey of peace that can put an end to a conflict that for over seventy years has rent the land chosen by the Lord to show his face of love," he said.

Pope Francis specifically prayed for Syria and Yemen, where long-standing conflicts have bred humanitarian disasters and devastated civilian life. 

"May the international community work decisively for a political solution that can put aside divisions and partisan interests, so that the Syrian people, especially all those who were forced to leave their own lands and seek refuge elsewhere, can return to live in peace in their own country," he said. 

Speaking on Yemen, the pope said it was his hope "that the truce brokered by the international community may finally bring relief to all those children and people exhausted by war and famine."

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all readers.

This paragraph is pennend by someone else. A lovely sentiment.

Let us be gentle with each other in the coming year. Let us not allow ourselves to be dragged down by all the shrill uncouth voices howling division, derision and exclusion.

GDPR and the little bureaucrats

GDPR (General Data Protection Reuglation) is on the minds of all of us these days.

Overheard, senior social worker in Dublin talking about the intricacies and confusion surrounding the GDPR said: GDPR is manna from heaven for little bureaucrats, giving them the power for which they crave.

Edith Eger's 'The Choice

I've never  found it difficult to see that it isn't God who is killing us in gas chambers, in ditches, on cliff sides, on 186 white stairs.

God doesn't run the death camps. People do. But here is the horror again and I don't want to indulge it.

I picture God like being a dancing child. sprightly and innocent and curious.

I must be also if I am to be close to God now.

I want to keep alive the part of me that feels wonder, that wonders, until the very end.

An excerpt from The Choice by Edith Eger, published 2017.

The piece above describes her feelings while at Mauthausen concentration camp. She and her sister had been moved with many others from Auschwitz as the Red Army was approaching from the east.

A great book and highly recommended.