Two anniversaries

On this date, October 11, 1962 Pope John XXlll convened the Second Vatican Council. The first such council in 92 years.

And on this day in 1905 Fred Trump, father of US President Donald Trump was born.

What would the 57-year-old Fred have thought of the events going on in Rome, or indeed what might his then 16-year-old son Donald thought about it all.

A referendum on one word - blasphemous

From where has the referendum on blasphemy come?

The referendum on Friday October  26 is not about removing Article 40.6.1 but rather the removal of one word 'blasphemous' in that article.

The sections on sedition and public order will remain, just that one word 'blasphemous' is the subject of the referendum.

How much is this referendum costing?

All seems quite bizarre.

'Fake news' is making fools of us

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

Michael Commane

‘A nightmare is haunting Europe, the nightmare of Communism.’

That is the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848.

There is a new ghost haunting Europe and the developed world and it is the ghost of populism, better called fascism or far-right ideologies.

When Marx and Engels wrote their Manifesto there was great unease in Europe, people were angry and authorities were nervous.

Today people are again angry, they feel marginalised and disenfranchised. There are European elections next May which could well see the established parties lose their control of the European Parliament to right-wing/nationalist parties.

Why is there such widespread alienation and anger today? The following story might throw some light on why we are where we are.

In August Dublin City Council closed its Bring Bank in Dublin’s Rathgar in order to improve the facility. A large notice was erected to tell customers it would reopen in October.

Last week a council employee assured me it would never open again. He and I occasional chat, have a laugh and solve the problems of the world. He is adamant in his opposition to how we are governed. He sees it all as a big conspiracy against the working person and genuinely believes that the ‘ruling classes’ lie to him.

When he told me that the Rathgar Bring Bank would never open again I was slow to believe him. I put it down to gossip and the usual banter, in which we engage.

Some days later I was disposing my recyclable waste at the Rathmines Bring Bank, where I overheard a conversation about the potential fate of the Rathgar facility.

I decided the best approach was to phone the council, which I did. I explained my concern. Initially she told me that she had no idea it was closed. Came back to me a few minutes later to tell me that there were different opinions as to whether or not Rathgar was closing.

She gave me the name of the person who could answer my questions and suggested I phone that person on Monday. And that’s exactly what I did. I was assured that Rathgar would be reopening. The site was being rearranged but because of technical problems there would be a delay of a few weeks in the reopening date.

I doubt too many people would have the inclination to do what I did and go back to the source to get the relevant information. But now that I have done that, I know exactly what the facts are.

Whether it’s the inaccurate gossip figures of the numbers of homicides committed by migrants across Europe or the millions of pounds the UK would save every day if it left the EU, we are all being sucked in by rumour and gossip. Trump’s ‘fake news’ works in the most devious ways.

But one way to counter what is going on at present would be for people in charge to be fastidious in telling employees exactly what is happening, in other words, to use that awful, over-used word, ‘transparency’.

If my council employee friend was told what was happening, if he were made feel he played a central and important role in the smooth-running of Dublin City Council he may well indeed have a completely different take on reality. Instead of feeling marginalised and forgotten he might be proud and even enthusiastic about his employers.

Far too many ghosts rise from the ashes and then cause terrible destruction.

Vatican sacks German Jesuit from his post

The rector of St George Institute in Frankfurt-am-Main, Jesuit priest, Ansgar Wucherpennig has been sacked from his job.

Fr Wucherpennig had been reelected rector at the theology philosophy institute but the Vatican demanded he be removed from his post.

The Jesuit priest two years ago questioned the biblical understanding of homosexuality.

He works in Frankfurt city as a priest for the homosexual community.

He has called for the church to recognise the love between homosexuals.

The Bishop of Limburg, Georg Bätzig supported the reelection of Wucherpennig, as did German Jesuit provincial, Johannes Siebner.

Vicar of the city, Johannes zu Eltz has criticised the Vatican decision, stressing that Wucherpennig is a priest of good standing and a dedicated academic.

"How stupid can it get," he added.

The so-called 'self-made' Donald Trump

According to the New York Times Donald Trump, who claims he is 'self-made', was given $413 million by his father through tax dodges and sham corporations.

'No to warring among ourselves'

The text below is an extract from Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel by Pope Francis.

This pope knows something about the divisions that are happening across the world, within religious communities.

What at all is happening in societies, in communities and countries around the world. 

Is Trump, is Trumpism causing it or is he/it a symptom of what's going on?

The vitriol that is loaded on Pope Francis by right-wing Catholic media is also manifest in religious communities.

We are living n scary times. Something has to give.

How many wars take place within the people of God and in our different communities! In our neighbourhoods and in the workplace, how many wars are caused by envy and jealousy, even among Christians! Spiritual worldliness leads some Christians to war with other Christians who stand in the way of their quest for power, prestige, pleasure and economic security. 

Some are even no longer content to live as part of the greater Church community but stoke a spirit of exclusivity, creating an “inner circle”. Instead of belonging to the whole Church in all its rich variety, they belong to this or that group which thinks itself different or special.

Our world is being torn apart by wars and violence, and wounded by a widespread individualism which divides human beings, setting them against one another as they pursue their own well-being. In various countries, conflicts and old divisions from the past are re-emerging. 

I especially ask Christians in communities throughout the world to offer a radiant and attractive witness of fraternal communion. 

Let everyone admire how you care for one another, and how you encourage and accompany one another: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). This was Jesus’ heartfelt prayer to the Father: “That they may all be one... in us... so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21). Beware of the temptation of jealousy! 

We are all in the same boat and headed to the same port! Let us ask for the grace to rejoice in the gifts of each, which belong to all.

One view of church

An aspect of the Irish Catholic Church in autumn 2018.

A decisive day in Derry that changed Northern Ireland

Today is the 50th anniversary of the RUC in Derry violently suppressing a civil rights march.

At least 30 people, including the then MP Gerry Fitt and some children, were injured.

Police tried to disperse the protesters by using their batons indiscriminately and spraying water from hoses on armoured trucks.

The demonstrators retaliated with petrol bombs. A number of bonfires were lit in the Bogside area and when a fire engine arrived, the crowd turned on it and threatened to set it alight.

Things would never be the same again in Northern Ireland after that day in Derry.

The TB killer

Tuberculosis claims the lives of 4,000 people every day.

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.