Jeering and sneering at people is obnoxious

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

In the Christian calendar last Sunday week was the feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday before the first Sunday in Advent. We are now in those days when the Christian tradition reminds us of the time of preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ. Ministers of religion will speak a lot of holy words. It’s the thing to do. And it’s the busiest time of year for the commercial world, which will be selling us everything under the sun. 

I have to admit that I am at somewhat of a loss to see such a vast array of Christmas lights and assorted material on sale. Surely we need to cut back on such non-essentials when electricity is costing 40 cent a kilowatt hour and millions of people in Ukraine have no power.

But back to the feast of Christ the King. I’m not into kings and royalty. The feast was introduced in 1925 by Pius XI. It was to emphasise how we as Christians believe God is the creator of all. But maybe there was a political aspect to it as well. The Vatican was not too enamoured by the growing secularism, kings and queens were not the flavour of the month and the Weimar Republic in Germany had said goodbye to its monarchy.

All that aside, when reading the Gospel for the feast of Christ the King one word jumped off the page for me. St Luke (23: 35 - 43) describes how the leaders jeer at Jesus when he is hanging from the cross.

Fortunately we are making great strides against bullying, which is the same family, in our schools and workplaces, but don’t let us fool ourselves, jeering and sneering are always lurking in the background.

 

Leaving Donald Trump’s politics aside, one of his hallmarks that is particularly irritating is how he constantly jeers and sneers at people. It is obnoxious. But his followers love it.

It’s easy to point the finger at others and criticise them for such activity, as it is to look back in history and be outraged with those who behaved in such a manner. But I’m inclined to think that given the correct conditions we are all capable of jeering and sneering at those whose behaviour does not fit with our way of doing things.

We all take shelter in our own groups, find strength and support with likeminded people but very easily that can mean we cast scorn or laugh on those who hold different opinions than we. How often might an accent or incorrect use of grammar make us pause for a second and tempt us to ask how credible is the person who is speaking? 

Last week I heard a man on radio making wise suggestions on an issue and then in the middle of it he said: ‘….. I done that every week.’ I immediately called into question the earlier suggestions he was making. Yes, in my little pedantic snobbish way I was sneering at the man’s poor grammar. I doubt I am the only one who behaves in such a way.

Once we start jeering or sneering at people we break down all sorts of possibilities of ever appreciating or understanding them. And I think there’s far too much sneering and jeering about.

Honestly, the Gospels can be a treasure trove.

Ford CEO says far fewer needed to make electric cars

The CEO of car and truck manufacturer Ford  Jim Farley said last week that making electric vehicles will mean 40 per cent fewer workers than required to build cars and trucks powered by petrol.

And most likely the CEO of Henry Ford knows a thing or two about the making of cars.

Farley traces his interest in the car industry back to his grandfather who began work at the Ford Rouge plan in Michigan in 1918.

He is also on the board on Harley-Davidson, which is one of two major US motorcycle companies to have survived the Great Depression.

To understand the past is to cease to live in it

Éamon Phoenix, who died on November 13, was a scholar, a gentleman, a teacher, writer and journalist but above all he was a gentleman and ever so humble.

I remember him coming into The Irish News Office in Belfast. The man was as timid as a mouse. He was always encouraging and said it with a pleasant smile.

In a 2014 newspaper interview he recalled two pieces of advice that had served him well. One was from his mother, who said education is easily carried and the second was from Derry-born historian FSL Lyons, who wrote at the outbreak of the Troubles that ‘to understand the past is to cease to live in it’.

He paid great heed to that wisdom.

Bank branches disappearing off the landscape

There are at present approximately 500 bank branches in the State.

In 2008 there  were close  to 1,050.

The main banks have outsourced services to An Post, which allows post offices to handle over-the-counter lodgements and withdrawals.

Three quarters of ATMs in the State are owned by unregulated companies such as Euronext and Brinks.

The blind spots of powerful people

This makes for a great read. Brilliant and says so much. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/powerful-people-neuroscience-authority-privilege?CMP=share_btn_link

Russian ambassador to UK, Andrey Kelin admits it’s a war

The Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Andrey Kelin was interviewed on Wednesday evening on BBC One's Newsnight.

The ambassador admitted that the Russian Army has committed crimes in Ukraine but went on to justify it by saying that happens in war. It was an outrageous comment to make.

Right through the interview he kept calling it a war. It was surprising the interviewer did not ask him had the Russians now finally admitted they are at war. President Putin has consistently called it a ‘Special Military Operation’.

At another point in the interview he seemed to imply that he was not sure what the intentions of President Putin were.

It was a remarkable interview. Will President Putin leave Ambassador Kevin at the `court of St James?

Below is a link to the interview.

https://youtu.be/ICDCWFHzlq0

An enchanting walk from Rathgar to Grand Canal Dock

09.30 on a November Saturday might sound early for setting out on our walk. It is. But they were the orders that had to be obeyed. And they were.

Eleven of the hospital staff meet outside the main entrance and head off on our urban walk. The plan is to walk from Rathgar to the Grand Canal Basin and back.

We join the Dodder at Dartry.

Some years ago, before the financial crisis, CIÉ was thinking of selling the Dublin Bus garage in Donnybrook. It must be worth zillions. The depot houses a number of the new hybrid vehicles. You can spot them from their panoramic back window. Bus nerds will know they are all numbered with the letters PA.

We zip along the edge of Herbert Park, still hugging the Dodder, across the busy bridge, whose name makes up part of the Dublin suburb’s name.

The walk from Ballsbridge to Ringsend is a reminder how dangerous the Dodder can be when it floods. High stone walls with steel doors are visible along that stretch before we go under the DART bridge. It’s a tiny passage way.

In front of us towers Lansdowne  Road, oops, am I meant to call it the Aviva Stadium?

The world of branding dictates I do. Ouch. I never know whether or not I like it, that is the stadium. Not gone on branding. It can be soulless.

Between the Dropping Well and Donnybrook  we spot at least three cormorants, picture attached.

The stretch beyond the football temple gives one a view of much of the high rise in the city. The restored gasometer adds a gentle touch to the scenery. Here the Dodder is extremely shallow, obviously suited to ducks, swans and birds of every variety.

Shelbourne Park must be in the sites of developers with deep pockets. As we pass the dog track, church bells ring out. It’s 11.00. A lovely sound.

That spot where the Dodder and Grand Canal flow into the Liffey has a wonderful magic about it. An assortment of old locks and bridges, some old, some new. We’re lucky to have Grand Canal Basin.

After our coffee/tea/water break we head back. It’s suggested we return via the canal. Clever idea. A whole new vista. Google, Google everywhere. Through Ranelagh, up wide and leafy Palmerston Road, through the park and back in the Orwell Park pedestrian entrance to the hospital. Home at approximately 13.20.

We walked close to 15 kilometres, over 20,000 steps in perfect weather. And what a lovely way to meet staff, some whose names we didn’t know before we set out. I for one learned so much about Romania, some gossip too.

A fabulous eclectic urban walk. A most enjoyable Saturday morning, good fun and great team building too.

Nothing at all smart about Electric Ireland customer service

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

Last Thursday week Environment, Climate and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan was talking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Claire Byrne Show before heading out to the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. He spoke about how we are at the vanguard when it comes to wind generation. Two-thirds of our electricity is on occasions generated by wind, which is impressive. Mr Ryan made great sense and I got the impression he was on top of his brief. 44,000 family homes have solar panels on their roofs and they now have the facility to sell electricity back to the grid.

But as he was speaking my mind wandered back to my experiences with Electric Ireland.

On the previous Tuesday I dialled 1800 372 372 to obtain information on how to use my new smart meter. That is the telephone number that is printed on the top right-hand side of my Electric Ireland bill.

I dialled the number three times. Each time I was told by an automatic answering machine: ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised, please check and try again’. Sometime later I tried it again and guess what, I got through to Electric Ireland. I spent an inordinate length of time waiting to get speaking to a human voice. 

When I asked about my new smart meter I was told I would be redirected to a different number and the wait time would be approximately 15 minutes. I terminated the call.

I phoned the Commission for Regulations of Utilities (CRU), who told me, yes they were aware of the problem with that number. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t and Electric Ireland is aware of the issue.

Can it get any crazier than that? Yes, it can, the following morning I phoned 1800 372 372 again. There was no ringing tone, silence for close to a minute, before an automated answer told me I was through to Electric Ireland. After all sorts of useless information I was told that my wait time would be approximately 65 minutes. I closed the call.

It does appear the problem with the 1800 372 372 number has been resolved but why were customers not informed about the problem?

Just as the Eamon Ryan interview was concluded I received this SMS from Electric Ireland: 

'Dear Customer, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. We apologise that you were not successful in speaking with a representative on your recent contact. You may find the answer to your query on our website https://www.electricireland.ie/help/billing.'

Some weeks ago I sent two queries via such a medium. So far they have not replied.

On a subsequent call I was told that Electric Ireland would phone me within two working days to answer my queries about the smart meter. So far I have received no call back.

Electric Ireland’s customer care is shambolic. I sincerely hope the generation and distribution of our electricity is not in a similar  shambles.

The bravery of Iranian World Cup captain Ehsan Hajsafi

The captain of the Iranian World Cup team Ehsan Hajsafi said at press conference today: 

“My condolences to all the mourning families in Iran … we stand with them and share their pain … we must accept that conditions in our country are not right and our people are not happy … my people are sad and our presence here does not mean that we cannot be a voice for them or should not respect them … we owe our lives to our people and we are here to work hard, fight, show our best performance and score goals, and present them to the bereaved Iranian people … I hope that things will improve and everyone will be happy.”

What a brave and honourable man. We need to salute Ehsan Hajsafi.

Compare his words with the bizarre speech of FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino. Infantile.

From a dodgy election to the arrival of the aggressor

On this day, November 21, 2004 the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election was held, giving rise to massive protests and controversy over the election's integrity.

The Russian-leaning Viktor Yanukovych with 49.42 per cent defeated Viktor Yushchenko, who obtained 46.69 per cent of the votes cast.

Observers for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that the vote did not meet international standards and US election observer, Senator Richard Lugar claimed fraud was evident on polling day.

A second run-off election was held in December when the results were reversed.

The link below is from the Guardian and is about what happened the men who defended Snake Island. A great read.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/19/russian-warship-go-fuck-yourself-ukraine-snake-island?CMP=share_btn_link

Is this a time for breathtaking salaries?

Albert Manifold, CEO of building materials group Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) earned a total of €13.9 million in 2021.

The median salary in the group was €48,200. This was the worst ratio in the  FTSE 100 index.

We are living in exceptional times. Power generation companies are being asked to pay windfall taxes. Should large personal earners be asked to pay similar windfall taxes?

The people of Ukraine have suffered too much for too long

The people of Ukraine have suffered far too much for far too many years.

Today over 10 million people are without power, millions are without water in Ukraine. And all of this is a result of the unimaginable violence and brutality of the Russian aggressor.

It so happens on this day, November 19, 1943 another aggressor carried out indescribable  acts of savagery on the people of Lviv. 

After a failed uprising and an attempted mass escape at the concentration camp in Janowska near Lviv, then called Lemberg, the Germans murdered 6,000 Jews.

Putin tells the people of Russia part of the reason for his ‘Special Military Operation’ is to denazify Ukraine. 

It is ironic that the country he wants to denazify is now being brutalised and destroyed by his army, which is taking page by page out of the German playbook of the early 1940s. 

And more irony, the president of Ukraine is of the Jewish faith.

Yesterday an 82-year-old woman in the city of Kramatorsk said: "I was been born into war and most likely would die in war.”

 Profoundly tragic and sobering words.

Problem solving

A throwaway comment made by a wise person:

If you deal with a problem you’ll be left with it. 

Iranian police open fire at Metro station in Tehran

This from yesterday’s Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/iranian-police-open-fire-at-tehran-metro-station-and-beat-women-on-train?CMP=share_btn_link

An attack on Poland is an attack on Nato

Yesterday evening’s report that a Russian missile entered the territory of Poland killing two people and destroying a grain silo must scare the world.

Putin’s army has now crossed a red line.

There is uncertainty about the identity of the missile. Moscow has denied it was a Russian missile and said it is Ukrainian provocation.

Yesterday Russia fired 90 missiles across Ukraine including firing on civilian facilities. Large parts of Kyiv and Lviv were without power last night.

While Putin may have support among the Russian population it would appear more and more people are wondering what this war is about. They certainly know now it is no ‘Special Military Operation’.

Putin is an example to the world of what one man can do, the work of a dictator.

An attack on Poland is an attack on Nato, so says the rulebook.

May wisdom and patience prevail in these perilous days.

It is absurd to attempt to put God into a straitjacket

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane
Over the last week or so the airwaves have been filled with strong words on sermons, church and sin.

People deciding who’ll go to hell and why they might be heading in that direction. Even some people were earmarked for the journey to everlasting fire.

Derek Scally wrote in his column in The Irish Times about how our church debate was making the news in Berlin. He argued how the story reminded many of us of our own past. It’s easy today to get up and walk out of a church, not so 30 or 40 years ago. Scally recalls how when researching his book, ‘The Best Catholics in the World’ he spoke to a man about the Tuam babies. The man told him that the fathers of the Tuam babies came from ‘local respectable families, but you’ll never get them to talk’.

I often look back at the theology I tried to learn. Has any of it stood to me? Yes, I well remember and indeed often quote how a lecturer once told us that it is close to impossible to say anything about God. I like that. And it so happens he was one of the kindest of people, a gentleman.

On the other hand and at the other end of the spectrum I remember in sixth class in primary school a teacher telling us about hell, the fire that was there and the large clock that never stopped. His story was terrifying and terrified this 12-year-old boy, indeed so much so that I can still see him there in the classroom giving us a graphic detailed account about hell.

Maybe hell is happening right in front of our eyes as we continue to destroy our planet.

Anyone who tries to pigeon hole God and resurrection needs to be treated with the greatest of suspicion. It’s unwise to create our own image of God. In World War II on the buckle of every German soldier’s belt was written: ‘God is with us’.

At the end of his life the Dominican saint and doctor of the church Thomas Aquinas said that everything he had written in all his theological works was but straw.

It’s important not to lose sense of the mystery of God. Trying to put God into a straitjacket  is simply absurd, it’s the stuff of fairytales.

I’m chaplain in a hospital. It has been a life enhancing experience. I cherish the people with whom I work.

I’m inclined to say I know next to nothing about God. What do I know about myself? All I do is listen, chat and even laugh with those I meet every day in my work. I meet the loveliest of people, some who are very sick. In my six years in the hospital I have seldom if ever heard an angry or cross word. I want to keep it like that.

 

I recently discovered that there are 86 billion neurons in the brain. They are information messengers. They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system. How did they happen to come about? 

Even if I’ve lost a handful or more a long the way. Anything we say about anything surely has to be nuanced. And that certainly includes our words about God.

Developing world needs $2 trillion to prevent catastrophe

According to scientists and politicians between now and 2030 developing countries will need $2 trillion to deal with the damaging effects of climate change.

A trillion is 1,000,000, 000, 000, or 10 to the power of 12, or one million million.

Yesterday at 08.15 on the island of Ireland the system demand for electricity was 3,695 mw of which 3,371  was wind generated.

Unwise to underestimate the woebegone Russian bear

Presidents Vladimir Putin and 

Donald Trump look woebegone. Two dejected men wondering what went wrong. One is a spent force, the other might well be heading in a similar direction. But never underestimate the firepower of the Russian Army. They lost at least 20 million in World War II. 

Between four and five million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army. Close to 410, 000 were awarded medals for bravery and 961 became heroes of the Soviet Union.

Among the first victorious troops to arrive in Berlin in 1945 were Ukrainians under the command of Andrey Ivanovich Yeremenko, who was born in Kharkiv in Ukraine. Yeremenko also played a vital role in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Siegfried Sassoon writes on the folly and badness of war

The war in Ukraine, the loss of life in the armies of both sides, the wanton killing of civilians and then the current controversy surrounding the wearing of the poppy during November reminds one of Siegfried Sassoon’s powerful poem Suicide in The Trenches.

Suicide in The Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

                        

                            -Siegrid Sasoon February 23, 1918

Former Newbridge College pupil remembers Canice Murphy

Readers continue to write in comments on the blogpost on the obituary of Fr Canice Michael Murphy.

This comment arrived today and appears on the blogpost on the obit of Canice. But readers would most likely miss it, so here it is as today’s blogpost.

It is anonymous. If the reader who wrote it would like to contact me she/he can always send details to this blog via the comment tab and of course it will not be published.

Fr Murphy was indeed a legend, but more than anything one of the kindest and most generous human beings you could ever have the honour to meet. 

As a student he made boarding school a less unpleasant experience, in fact he made the school enjoyable, and was a great educator. 

We all had immense respect for him and recognised he had something 'special' about him. He walked the walk, and was the essence of simple Christian love.

He cared for the students, especially the quieter or less popular ones, and shielded us from danger. He went above the call of duty when it came to advancing our participation in extracurricular activities both inside and outside the college.

It was Canice 'spud' Murphy who made the college more a university of life and inspired many of us to pursue our passions such as aviation, engineering, business, etc. 

We shall not see his like again, a gentleman indeed, a generous and talented educator and a true Christian in the best sense. 

Thank you Fr Murphy, may you be now living a new renewed life of purpose and energy in the kingdom family God has prepared for all of us one day. 

Thank God for people like you, who made this world a better place. 

A pupil. 

The Russians pull back from Kherson on a day to remember

 Yesterday, November 9 marked three historical events in the German calendar.

The Germans had thought of making November 9 German unification day but they went for October 3 instead, which is the date the German Democratic Republic joined or was united with the Federal Republic of Germany.

The night of November 9/10, 1938 reminds the Germans of the night of the Nazi pogrom against the Jews. The majority of Germans looked on as the Nazis smashed the windows of Jewish premises. 

It’s called  Kristallnacht - Crystal Night but that’s far too nice an expression. They used that term because of the shards of glass that scattered the streets of Germany after the Nazi handy work.

But yesterday also carries good vibes for Germany. On that day in 1921, Albert Einstein, the man from Ulm, at his birth in the German Empire, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. He did not receive his award until the following year. Einstein warned the Americans about the Germans preparing a nuclear warhead. 

And then of course November 9, 1989, the day the Wall came down.  The East Germans called it the 'Antifascistischer Schutzwall’ or the Antifascist  Protection Wall’. Maybe had the West and Nato treated Mother Russia with more respect after the fall of the Wall Putin might never have been given the oxygen to head for the river Dneiper. 

And that too is filled with irony. Turning the tables around, the Dneiper is really the mirror of the Volga. The mighty Germans arrived at Stalingrad in August 1942 convinced they would take the city in three weeks. In February the Red ran them out of the city and chased them all the way to Berlin. 

It is said Putin expected to cross the Dneiper in three weeks. Not only is it not happening but again on another November 9, the Russian Army has been given instructions to leave the city of Kherson, which lies on the River Dneiper. Failure or a trick?

We didn’t like the reflection in Fr Sheehy’s mirror

Derek Scally’s article in The Irish Times on Monday.

Three days is all it took for Fr Seán Sheehy’s “rampant sin” sermon to reach Berlin.

When a friend here asked why Irish people were so annoyed, I suggested it was because the priest stuck to the letter of Catholic teaching while ignoring the spirit. By striking such a deeply wounding tone, the priest’s words reminded many Irish why they departed the Catholic Church long ago.

It’s not how Irish people see themselves, I said, at least not any more.

Fr Sheehy’s sermon, and the subsequent righteous indignation across the airwaves, are an unwelcome reminder to many in Ireland of who they were, or at least who they once tolerated and what they once went along with.

According to the 2016 census, 76 per cent of Irish identify as Catholic. But the shock, horror and embarrassment of Catholic Ireland’s worst excesses is so complete that many – channelling their inner St Peter – deny ever being there in Catholic Ireland.

Others are playing Pilate: they concede being part of Catholic Ireland but wash their hands of it now. The Fr Sheehys were always the problem, they tell themselves, not the people like them who listened to them every Sunday, week in, week out.

Researching my book on Catholic Ireland’s rise and fall, I revisited my old Dublin parish, dwindling like so many, and was struck by how much pride – and deep faith – remained. But among ageing parishioners much old anger lingers, along with shame.

Anger and shame at – among the good priests – having had more than their fair share of bullies and abusers. Looking back, one Mass-goer told me: “Weren’t we very stupid to believe everything they told us?”

That is the awkward truth of our past, that is the source of anger far deeper than one loud priest in Listowel. Many Irish put people on pedestals who didn’t belong there and are angry at themselves now for doing so.

A key finding of the 2009 Murphy report into clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese was the term “undue deference”: the abuse happened because people – through fear, conditioning, opportunism or apathy – gave free rein to clerics which, in turn, opened the door to the abusing priests and obfuscating bishops.

Everyone had a different experience – complex and conflicting – and it is understandable how, in the recent rush to modernise and liberalise, many want to bury that old landscape of old pain.

The pain of hunger that saw post-Famine Ireland embrace a new, retooled, extra-holy version of Catholicism that, in part to protect middle-class land assets, framed sex as a snare and entrapped many.

The pain of post-independence Ireland, where defending an idealised dual Irish-Catholic identity meant destroying, or sacrificing, anyone who didn’t fit the new narrow definition of holy Irishness.

Walking out today on a priest who denounces homosexuals comes at no social cost. When homosexuals or unmarried mothers were denounced from the pulpit 30 years ago, when it actually counted for something, only the brave walked out.

Everyone else who stayed in the pews back then – in Listowel and elsewhere – was in on it. For every parish with a Fr Sheehy, many others had enough lay denunciants and quiet conformists not to need one.

Brinsley MacNamara’s 1918 novel The Valley of the Squinting Windows describes a fictional yet familiar village where locals thrive on the “singular and special persecution of each other”.

Visiting Tuam while researching my book, locals told me how the full story of the former Bon Secours mother and baby home – and the remains found underground – has yet to be told. The whole story, reaching far beyond one religious order, may never be told.

In the Tuam men’s shed behind a deserted school, men told me of local girls and women, their sisters and aunts, disappearing in the night.

One older man talked of how his sister, who was living with mental illness, was placed in a local home where she became pregnant – and not by a priest.

“There were men willing to have sex with her,” he said. “They got away with f***ing hell and there wasn’t a word about it, they disappeared.”

A well-known figure in town, when I asked about the fathers of the Tuam babies, said they came from “local, respectable families, but you’ll never get them to talk”.

The problem of old Catholic Ireland was not priests preaching rampant sin but ordinary people feeling – and making each other feel – rampant shame.

Explaining Catholic Ireland here in Germany, one friend, a therapist and committed secularist, asked me once if I could remember the greatest Christian commandment.

Scouring my brain for traces of flimsy 1980s religious instruction, it eventually came to me: “You should love your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself.”

Nodding, she continued: “Now: what if the church in Ireland didn’t teach you to love yourself?”

That is the point: the Catholic Church in Ireland didn’t collapse in on itself simply because of the march of secularism and Sunday shopping, or because of a concerted media campaign against it. Irish Catholicism collapsed because it ignored its own, most important teaching.

Fr Seán Sheehy is a provocation to many because he reminds them of the love they struggled to show themselves – and the love they failed to show others.

Derek Scally is Berlin correspondent and author of The Best Catholics in the World

A good laugh can be the best of medicines

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

There are often funny moments in our lives that make us laugh. Cycling home from work last Wednesday I started laughing at something that happened at work that  day. My laughing was so severe or intense that my bicycle actually swerved and for a microsecond I thought I was going to land on the ground.

Earlier in the afternoon there was a reception for Margaret, who was retiring after 45 years and seven months working in the catering department in our hospital.

As readers will know I work as a hospital chaplain. 

It’s a job that brings me face-to-face with pain and suffering. I’ve learned firsthand how fragile we are. But there are also moments of humour and laughter.

I began in the job six years ago. I had come from working in the press office in Concern Worldwide and before that The Kerryman newspaper. Both jobs involved scribbling. Chaplaincy was new territory.

 

The first days I was nervous, had a feeling of being out of place and not quite sure what I was to do. I knew no one in the hospital. I once heard a university chaplain say that his job involved ‘loitering with intent’. That’s how I felt in my first days as chaplain.

Every time Margaret passed me she would say: ‘Hello Fr Michael’. She gave me my first tiny sense of feeling as if I belonged here. Last Wednesday at our reception I told the gathering how Margaret had welcomed me. I said that during my first days in the hospital I was shy and nervous and how Margaret had been such a help to me in settling in and most likely she had no idea the lovely effect she had on me. 

Having said my few words, just as I sat down, the staff member sitting beside me said: ‘Shy me arse’. It was brilliant, brilliant in every respect, the timing, the wit, the way she said it, the spontaneity, the sarcasm, the pure funniness, the context, the moment and in the company of the people who were there. It was something direct out of a Brendan Behan, James Joyce or Samuel Beckett work. 

A one liner with a perfect fit in either of Roddy Doyle’s films The Commitments or The Snapper. And there could never have been any sort of a sensible reply. Pure magic.

It so happens that Margaret reads this column every week as it’s her regional newspaper, so in the weeks before she retired I approached her on many occasions and asked her if she would sit down and I’d write a column about her. Every time I asked her in her own quiet way she ran me. 

On the day of her retirement party I asked her again. This time she told me in no uncertain terms what to do with myself. Another moment for a great laugh.

The daughter of a former patient came to me and told me how wonderful Margaret had been to her father when he had been in our hospital. He also noted how funny she was. 

That says it all about a wonderful woman who gave a life of service to sick people. She gave a good laugh to so many of our patients. And she was also the cause of my breaking down in laughter having been ‘rebuked’ for saying I was shy.

Happy retirement Margaret and I shall miss you.

Fomer Irish Dominican Pat Colgan (1938 - 2022) RIP

Pat Colgan died on Thursday, November 3.

Pat was born in 1938. On completing his Leaving Certificate at Coláiste Mhuire in Dublin’s Parnell Square in 1956 he joined the Irish Dominican Province and was ordained a priest in 1963. 

After ordination he did a year’s post graduate studies in Rome. 

On his return to Ireland he moved to St Mary’s Priory, Pope’s Quay Cork and studied at University College Cork where he obtained a BA.

He spent a number of years teaching at Newbridge College and on leaving the Dominicans moved to third level education and spent most of his working life as a lecturer at Dundalk RTC, later becoming Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Reading through the comments posted on RIP.ie it is clear to see that Pat was a fine teacher, who positively influenced his pupils and students.

Many fine young men left the Irish Dominicans, specifically in the 1960s and '70s, and the province has been a much poorer place without them.

He is survived by his wife Meg, daughter Ann-Louise, son John-Paul, their spouses, grandsons Cameron and Peter and family members and friends.

May he rest in peace.

Reposing in McNally’s Funeral Home, Balbriggan on Monday from 6pm to 8pm.

His funeral Mass takes place in SS Peter and Paul’s Church Balbriggan on Tuesday at 11.00.

Reposing and funeral Mass will be live streamed. Below are the links:

https://churchmedia.tv/camera/church-of-st-peter-st-paul

https://www.dctrust.ie/location/dardistown/dardistown-chapel-webstreaming.html

A tiny dot that might offer wise thoughts to the Sheehyites

Every word we say about God is said in terms of analogy. We are grasping at straws. Everything to do with our lives with the Word of God is drenched in nuance. For anyone anywhere and in any time to speak with certitude about God and the plan of God surely must be taken with a grain of salt.

It’s unlikely that conversion can ever take place in an environment of rudeness and angry outbursts.

Surely there is eating and drinking in the link below for the Sheehyits.

https://twitter.com/wonderofscience/status/1587799186573082626?s=20&t=OXdOTEb5zYJhhlWYoP_Jww 

Is it appropriate that COP27 should take place in Egypt?

Taoiseach Micheál Martin will be among 120 world leaders who will attend COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, which begins in Egypt next week.

COP (Conference of the Parties) was a treaty that came into force in 1994. The summit was attended by the countries that signed the United Nations Framework on Climate Change(UNFCCC).

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has changed his mind and is now to attend. US President Joe Biden will not be present for the leaders summit because of the US midterm elections. India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are not expected to attend. What if Putin did turn up?

But is it appropriate that it should take place in Egypt? Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi, who has been in power since 2014, could hardly be considered a democratically elected leader.

In conversation with a young Egyptian, recently arrived in Ireland, he assured me that el-Sisi is a dictator.

The more we think we know, the less we understand

The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

It’s probably a bad habit and certainly not a good idea with the the kilowatt hour of electricity costing 39.59 cent, but I tend to leave the radio on all night. In those moments moving from being awake to falling asleep I have vague memories of what I might have heard.

On one such  recent  occasion I heard the announcer on BBC Radio 4 bid farewell to his listeners with the two words -  oíche mhaith.  Yes, that was the British Broadcasting Corporation wishing good night in Irish to its listeners. 

Later that night I heard someone talk about the workings of the brain. At one stage I thought I remembered hearing that there are 86 billion neurons in the brain. Some days later listening on the RTÉ Radio Player to Benedictine monk Mark Patrick Hederman talking about God and resurrection I was reminded of what I had heard on the radio in my semi-awake state. I checked in Google and yes there are 86 billion neurons in the brain. 

And Google further told me that neurons are information messengers They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

Like much else in this world, it’s beyond my understanding. In his interview with Brendan O’Connor Fr Hederman said that it would take a person 32 years to count to a billion. Mysteries accumulate. The more we think we know, the less we understand. 

So, when it comes to saying anything about God, I for one am always nervous when I hear people speak with certainty about matters which go beyond what Christ has taught us.

  

In tomorrow’s Gospel (Luke 20: 27 -38) the Sadducees try to trick Jesus with silly questions asking him what the resurrection is about. 

Jesus in his reply quotes how Moses implied that the dead rise again. And then, in what must come as something  of a puzzle to the Sadducees Jesus says: “Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.” (verse 38) What must they have made of that for a reply?

When it comes to saying a word about resurrection or indeed God, we are entering extremely difficult territory. I have no trouble saying that I am asking more often and more fervently what is life all about, is there a God, is there resurrection? In his interview with Brendan O’Connor Fr Hederman said: “Nobody knows what happens when you leave this planet. Resurrection means that your personal identity is raised to a trans-physical reality.” Hederman sees the resurrection as making the best of ourselves.

Elsewhere in the interview he quotes Hopkins as saying that hell means being with your own sweating self for all eternity.

In the Creed, our profession of faith, we pray that we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the  world to come. Christians believe in eternal life. When you pause  to consider  this, it  is an extraordinary thing to say. Yet  when we look at the pictures coming out of Ukraine of broken and dead bodies, ruined cities, and starving children across Africa, many are inclined to say how can a merciful God allow such horror to happen. 

But can’t one also say that in the face of indescribable horror and suffering that there must be more to our lives than all this suffering and pain. Our inhumanity to each other … do we consider our common human responsibility for the suffering?

 

In our cocooned lives, we might feel invincible, certain and secure, everything to do with our lives hangs by a thread. Sit down and talk with a person who has been told they have been diagnosed with cancer, or a person who has lost a limb in an accident you are forced to realise how fragile we all are. 

Christians believe there is more to us than the bedlam of this corporeal world and someway, somehow life continues beyond the grave. Wishful thinking? No, not so. 

It’s a matter of Christian  belief, part of the mystery of our faith that there’s more to us than the apparent finality of the grave and our bodily decay.

I’m back thinking of those 86 billion neurons. How did they happen to come about, even if I’ve lost a handful or more a long the way? 

A nasty side to the UK government and its media friends

In recent days British newspapers have spoken about refugees staying in hotels side by side with the public. The inference being that refugees are not human beings.

With the arson attack on a migrant centre last week right-wing Tory-supporting newspapers told the story but also mentioned that the numbers of illegals entering the UK are unmanageable.

Does anyone ask how long the Conservatives are in government? Were all the problems with managing borders not going to be resolved on the UK leaving the EU?

Last evening on the Channel 4 news the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey in an extraordinary forthright interview named the former British business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg for unfortunate comments he made during the premiership of Liz Truss.

The new British Home Office glossary

 https://twitter.com/mattgreencomedy/status/1587528255300505600?s=48&t=u_pQvgWD-zAYxGkJw4uX4g

Confronting past wrongs in our present behaviour

 This was in The Irish Times on Saturday. The author is Derek  Scally.

Sympathy for victims and survivors of atrocity only goes so far: we must empathise with people who need help now

Enter St Stephen’s Green from Leeson Street in Dublin and the first thing you see is the Operation Shamrock memorial.

A 1956 gift from West Germany, the Three Fates fountain recalls the post-war scheme that brought hundreds of children – mostly from the ruins of Germany – to Ireland.

For the children it was a lifeline to Ireland that has lasted a lifetime. It is, rightly, a proud moment in our history.

In recent years through schools, the Crocus Project, run by the Holocaust Education Trust, has helped erect small Holocaust memorials around the country.

There are no memorials, however, for those Ireland failed in the Holocaust. A mix of ignorance, apathy and anti-Semitism meant that, according to historian Dermot Keogh, Ireland accepted about 100 people fleeing the Nazis.

Taoiseach Éamon de Valera courted celebrity refugees like Jewish-born mathematician Erwin Schrödinger, but who remembers Leo and Kurt Michel? The Jewish brothers arrived from the Rhineland in January 1934, a year after Hitler was elected, and spent two months living with their aunt until they were deported back to their homeland.

Schrödinger’s theoretical cat could, according to his famous quantum theory experiment, be simultaneously alive and dead; the Free State ensured the Michel brothers, too, could be alive in Ireland and, quite likely, dead in Germany.

In an important signal, Dublin Castle has opened its doors to the exhibition Objects of Love. Through documents, photographs and objects, it tells the family story of Dublin-based gallerist Oliver Sears.

The child of a Holocaust survivor, Sears is the founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland and is a panellist next week at a discussion accompanying the exhibition, chaired by former Irish Times correspondent Conor O’Clery. On the panel are two other people linked to the Nazi industrialised murder machine.

Tomi Reichental was born in Czechoslovakia and survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but lost more than 30 of his family in the Holocaust. He moved to Dublin in 1959 and is now Ireland’s most eloquent eyewitness to the genocide.

Writer and journalist Alexandra Senfft comes from a perpetrator family. Her German grandfather, Hanns Ludin, Nazi governor in occupied Slovakia, sent an estimated 60,000 Jews to their death. After Ludin’s execution in 1947, his widow blighted her children’s lives with psychologically damaging denial and disassociation about him as a “good Nazi”.

Through her pioneering work, Senfft explores questions of identity and trauma among perpetrator descendants. That work has brought her into contact with survivors and their families and she has appeared in two documentaries with Tomi Reichental.

Bringing together a Holocaust survivor, a survivor’s son and a perpetrator granddaughter might sound like a risky experiment. Though they come from very different perspectives, all three agree that the past which unites them cannot be banished to history: it continues to shape our lives and actions today.

For Senfft, as a perpetrator descendent, meeting the “other side” of the Holocaust divide remains a privilege. But each daunting encounter, she says, helps break down decades-old taboos imposed by wrongdoers and bystanders.

Confronting past wrongs in the present can come at a price: Senfft is estranged from some family members for challenging clan loyalty.

She has no regrets for cutting ties as it interrupted her perpetrator grandfather and his deeds as sources of fear and destructive energy in her life today.

“I bear no guilt but have taken on the responsibility to face the past,” she says. “We must break the silence in order to restore the victim and survivors’ dignity and to break the spell of the victimisers.”

All three are urgent and compelling advocates for viewing the Holocaust not as a black-and-white horror movie from the past but something that once happened in living colour – and could happen again.

For Reichental, this year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine – streamed in real time on social media – has shattered his lingering hope that Europe was immunised against Nazi-like horrors.

“At least with the Holocaust, people could claim, ‘we didn’t know’,” he said. “We are all witnesses to what is happening now. Anything can happen again if people don’t keep alive democracy and its principles.”

Oliver Sears agrees, saying Ireland – like its European neighbours – will eventually face a reckoning on how it responded to refugees from Ukraine.

“The single most defining element moment for a democracy is when you show compassion to a stranger,” he says.

In talks with Irish teenagers, Sears reminds them the largest group in Nazi-occupied Europe were neither the perpetrators nor the victims, but the silent bystanders whose motivations for doing nothing ranged from ignorance and fear to opportunism and profiteering.

“Trying to think about which group you might have belonged to is more difficult that you imagine,” Sears tells them.

While the Holocaust’s horrors are unique, its tools for engaging with that past can be adapted for use on our own lingering historical dilemmas, from the Civil War to vanished Catholic Ireland.

As for Holocaust victims and survivors, they don’t need our sympathy for being failed 80 years ago; they ask us to empathise with those who need help now.

As German author Siegfried Lenz once put it: “The past interrogates us in the present.”

Remembering Kristallnacht? A Reckoning: Jews, Germans and the Holocaust takes place in the Bedford Tower, Upper Yard, in Dublin Castle on November 9th at 6.30pm. Email for tickets: contact@holocaustawarenessireland.ie

Unfamiliar settings can so easily throw us

This week’s INM/Medihuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Every day we see and hear about the devastation that Putin’s war is causing in Ukraine. People dying, people losing everything, millions being displaced. 

And it’s not only Putin’s war, people around the world are forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in safe havens for all sorts of reasons, mostly to do with conflict.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be removed from your environment in such agony and pain.

 

Even in our own familiar settings the smallest of changes can make us feel uneasy.

I was thinking about all that while travelling by rail from Dublin to Wexford last Sunday week to attend the lunch of an art exhibition in the town.

In spite of all the fabulous sea views there was something about the rail journey that was different for me. I simply did not feel at home on it as I do on my beloved Dublin Cork/Tralee line. Had it something to do with the fact that I was away from my familiar environment? 

Yes, there was an element of excitement about it, there was an adventure to it, a newness too. But for some reason or other I felt out of place. I felt something of a stranger and among strangers. I was thinking of all those who land on our shores away from their homes. I cannot imagine ever being able to do that. 

I know little or nothing about the visual arts but I can stand back and look at a painting or drawing, or any piece of art work and say whether or not I like it. I can allow my eyes to be pleased with what I see. I can relax looking at art.

I know two of the three artists who are exhibiting their work during the Wexford Opera Festival.

And again I was somewhat uneasy in a gallery filled with people I did not know, many of them with expertise in art.

 

Mary Moloney is a Dublin based artist whose work consists of two mediums, hand-cut paper collages featuring  mid-century inspired shapes  and colours, and abstract, original alcohol ink paintings, and prints. Patricia Keilthy, a Wexford native, was Head of Fashion at Limerick School of Art and Design, showed fashion illustrations in mediums consisting of pastel drawings, watercolour paintings, and digitally produced pieces, and prints. Jean Ffrench, a well established Wexford artist, exhibited wonderful paintings of various subjects, in exuberant colour palettes.

After an initial nervousness and that feeling of being out of place lifted and I was able to feast my eyes on all the different works and styles, to chat with people and listen to their take on the art.

The exhibition at 95 South Main Street runs until Sunday, November 6.

Creative work can help us in moments of pain and desperation. It can rid us of our loneliness and that feeling of not belonging.

I hope those who arrive on our shores will get the opportunity to realise their talents and feel at home in this wonderful country of ours. We in turn can learn so much from them. And guess what, a kind word never goes astray. A pleasant greeting in a strange place can do wonders.