Another loaded Antonov flies into Ireland

An Antonov-124 Ruslan at Dublin Airport in 1994
delivering the first of the new Loco 201 series. 

The world's largest aircraft, Russian built, six-engine Antonov AN -225 Mriya, will land at Shannon Airport this afternoon with a cargo of PPE for the HSE.

Almost to the day, on June 9, 1994, the then world's largest aircraft, an Antonov-124 arrived at Dublin Airport. It was delivering Irish Rail's new 201 series locomotive. It was delivered by plane because of its late delivery.

It was the first of 32 GM 201s to be bought by Irish Rail.

The locomotive is operated on the Dublin Cork and Dublin Belfast lines.

Close to 20 of the locos are now falling into disrepair at Inchicore.

It seems soon after buying the GM locos Irish Rail switched over to the lighter South Korean-built rail cars, which they now use on most of their services, including the Dublin Cork line.

How many African Americans among US Dominicans?

President Barack Obama's speech in London in May 2011. Impressive words.

There are approximately 600 male members of the Dominican Order in the United States of America.

In my 52 years as a member of the Irish Dominicans, I can never recall meeting a black member of any of the four United States Dominican provinces.

Approximately 14 per cent of the population is African American. I am sure there is nowhere near 84 US Dominican brothers.

It would be interesting to know how the Dominican Sisters fare?

In the current issue of Veritas, the periodical of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia Congregation or Nashville Sisters, there are approximately 65 pictures in the 20-page periodical and there is not one African American sister to be seen.

‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’.

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

Michael Commane

Vodafone is running an advertisement, which includes: ‘We’re at our best when we’re together.

It set me thinking of the value of being together and working in harmony with one another. 

American writer and political activist, Helen Keller said: ‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much’.

Since mid-March the government has put great emphasis on how important it is that we all work together in ‘flattening the curve’.

Our effort in protecting ourselves and others is working.

Talking to a friend at the weekend he reminded me of an Irish school debate fadó fadó. The debate was about the advantages of people working together. 

The proposer of the motion gave the example of how the strength of a rope is made up of all the individual strands, none of which is particularly strong - but together they make a rope. His punch line was ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’.

When we work in harmony and when there is a definite goal to be reached, people rally together and can achieve great results.

The killing of George Floyd in police custody, in Minneapolis on May 28 has had the effect of setting a tinder box on fire. 

People across the United States have come out in large numbers to demonstrate about the death of an African American. Indeed, the demonstrations crossed the Atlantic; people have been out in European cities, including Dublin, Berlin and London, demanding justice and calling for a better world for African Americans.

‘I can’t breathe’, ‘Say his name’, have reverberated around the world. People have been outraged at the murder of George Floyd.

It’s vital that all people are cherished. Imagine if we all treated others as we ourselves wish to be treated.

Across the United States the majority of the demonstrations have been peaceful. Yes, there has been violence and looting. Such behaviour can never be tolerated. It was pathetic to watch looters leaving shops laden down with stolen merchandise.

But what was even more pathetic and as scandalous was to see US President Donal Trump standing in front of St John’s Episcopal Church near the White House, holding up a Bible, while minutes earlier he was threatening to set ‘thousands and thousands of troops’ against his own people.

He walked from the White House to the church surrounded by a large security detail. Among those with him was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was smiling. In order for the president to get to the church, police fired tear gas at peaceful demonstrators.

The Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde on learning of Trump’s appearance at St John’s said: ‘Let me be clear, the President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.’

She told The Washington Post: “I don’t want President Trump speaking for St John’s. We so dissociate ourselves from the messages of this president.’

Bishop Budde was outraged at Trump’s behaviour.

How must millions of alienated and frustrated Americans feel?

Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago said: ‘We need to take up the hard work of healing the deep wound that has afflicted our people since the first slave ships docked on this continent. And we need to start today.’

In spite of all the provocation, it’s important to remember: ‘We are at our best when we are together’.  And that’s a lesson for all of us.

Colin Powell destroys Trump in a sensational interview

Retired US politician, four-star general  and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell  made an extraordinary attack on President Donald Trump in a CNN interview yesterday.

It was sensational television. He told CNN's Jake Tapper that the president had drifted away from the constitution. "We are at a turning point. He lies, he lies about things and gets away with it. He is always talking to his base," he said.

He stressed that Trump does not understand the constitution. "Our moral standards have been demonised. The world is looking at us. He is insulting us around the world, and these current demonstrations are justified. ,” Colin Powell said.

The four-star general pointed out that the world is now looking on at America in horror. 

Before the 2016 presidential election Powell realised that Trump was a racist, when he was pushing his 'birther' theory about Barack Obama. "He lies all the time," he repeated.

He blamed Trump for tearing up any sort of coherent US foreign policy and for annoying and aggravating US allies.

Powell, a Republican, who served as Secretary of State under  George Bush, said on CNN that he will be voting for Joe Biden in November.

President Trump on seeing the interview tweeted: "Colin Powell, a real stiff, who was very responsible for getting us into the Middle East Wars, just announce he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden. Didn't Powell say that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction?" They didn't, but off we went to WAR! (sic)

It's difficult to comprehend that this man is the president of one of the world's super-powers. But then again, another great power, a people of culture and genius, elected Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933. 

Is it possible that Trump's hoisting the Bible will prove his demise?

Words of inspiration from Alfred Delp SJ

Thirty eight-year-old Alfred Delp was a Jesuit, who objected to the Nazis and was a member of a resistance group to Hitler.

He wrote the lines below at Tegel prison before being moved to Plötzensee, where he was hanged from a meat hook on February 2, 1945. Another three months and he would have been saved. The fragility, the accidentalness our our lives.

Today, the feast of the Trinity, these striking sentiments are worth noting.

"The world is full of God. From every pore, God rushes out to us, as it were.

"God knocked all my assets out of my hand and let my self-assurance fall to pieces.

Delpt describes the Holy Spirit as the breath of creation.

God has taken has taken my case entirely into his hands. I have learnt how to send up met cry and to wait for the message of encouragement from the eternal hills.

Elsewhere Delp writes: "Whoever doesn't have the courage to make history is doomed to become its object. We have to take action."

Woman replaces episcopal vicar in Switzerland

An interesting news item in The Tablet. Charles Morerod is a Dominican.

Swiss bishop Charles Morerod of Lausanne, Geneva and Friburg has appointed a woman theologian to succeed the present episcopal vicar.

On 1 August, Marianne Pohl-Henzen will succeed the present episcopal vicar for the German part of the diocese. 

Pohl-Henzen (60) studied theology and philology at university and has three children and four grandchildren. For the past eight years, she been the right hand of the present episcopal-vicar of the German-speaking vicariate (region in the diocese) of Fribourg, Fr Pascal Marquard, who is moving to Zurich.

The diocese has announced that in her new post, she will be “the person responsible in the vicariate/diocesan region in the bishop’s name”. In other words, as from 1 August, she will represent the bishop in the vicariate and will be a member of the episcopal council.

Vatican News first called her an “episcopal vicar” but later withdrew the term. According to church law, only priests can become episcopal vicars. Church papers are now calling her an “episcopal delegate” or “episcopal adjutant”.

She herself recalled in a KNA interview, that, unlike her predecessor, she would not be able will to administer confirmation, install parish priests or hold funerals for priests, “that is anything to do with Sacraments and liturgy”.

She understood her appointment as a sign that Bishop Morerod “was doing what he could to promote women in the Church”, she said.

She told domradio.de that “this time” there had not been a lot of discussion before she was appointed. “I think that if I had been appointed 8 or even five years ago, that would have been a far bigger watershed. 

However, as the last three episcopal vicars were all only part-time episcopal vicars and I did a lot of their work, it will hopefully be a lot easier for me now and easier for the faithful and the population to accept me (in the position)”, she said.

One of her chief concerns would be to promote and engage the laity wherever possible in the diocese, she said. A lot of priests would soon be retiring and there were no new vocations.

Asked if she planned to become a Catholic woman bishop, she replied: “No, certainly not. It was never my plan. Neither did I plan to become an episcopal delegate, that is to act as a delegate for the bishop, which I have now become. It just happened with the experience and the years and above all with the confidence the bishop had in me.”

There are five episcopal vicars in the diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg. Each is appointed by the bishop as his deputy in the five diocesan vicariates. 

R F Kennedy on the death of Martin Luther King

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From 'The New York Times' yesterday.

Robert F Kennedy’s speech on the night Martin Luther King was murdered.

Without pretension, without condescension and without recourse to notes — reached back to the Greeks, as he stood that night in the back of a truck, in a struggling neighbourhood of Indianapolis.

“My favourite poet was Aeschylus,” he said, after referring to the killing of his own brother. “He wrote, ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’

Remembering D-Day 76 years ago

On this day, June 6, 1944 155,000 allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy.

It was the largest amphibious military operation in history.

The D in D-Day stands for 'day'. It was the term used for any important military operation or invasion.

The previous day British bombers dropped 5,000 tons of ordnance on German gun batteries along the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

On the day, 4,000 allied troops lost their lives and a further 10,000 were injured. An estimated 4,000 to 9,000 Germans were lost

This date and the earlier battle at Stalingrad were the two most significant events in defeating Germany.

The Master of the Dominican Order, Gerard Timoner

A short clip from the new Master of the Dominican Order.

It's a nice piece. And there is a refreshing honesty to it all. Why do any of us join the Dominicans? IS there a book on the topic?

Gerard Timoner was elected in Vietnam to the job on July 13, 2019.

Setting not a great idea. A regal touch to it. Not good PR.

One could easily ask what exactly does the Master of the Dominican Order do?

Is it a cynical question? But if the man is a forward-looking, inspirational person, surely his vision will filter throughout the Order.

Two Irish men held the post, Michael Browne and Damian Byrne.

Right now, the world, the church, the Irish Dominicans need inspiration, and certainly the Irish Dominican Province is in urgent need of large doses of inspiration.

The Irish Dominicans are due to elect a new provincial in September.

Urgent prayers are needed. Prayers that will help elect a man of vision, not an apparatchik, and no pseudo piosity.

A man who will inspire, work hard and communicate with his fellow Dominicans in honesty and openness. 

General Mattis lashes out at Trump for dividing America

Below is the article written by James Mattis in the current issue of The Atlantic.

It is sensational that a retired Marine Corps general and a former secretary of defence would criticise in such forthright terms a sitting US president.

Mattis served as Trump's secretary of defence from January 2017 to January 2019.

                     ______________

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. 

This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. 

The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. 

Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” 

At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. 

It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. 

Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” 

We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ 

Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. 

We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. 

This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. 

The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community.

Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. 

We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. 

At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Obama - make people in power uncomfortable

In response to the current situation in the United States of America, former President Barack Obama said yesterday:

Make  people in power uncomfortable.

German unemployment figures

German unemployment figure for May stands at 2.813 million.

This works out at 6.1 per cent of the workforce.

Ireland's unemployment figure for May was over 25 per cent.

Werenfried Pesch OP, RIP

Werenfried Pesch OP

Dominican priest Werenfried Pesch died  in the Dominican Priory in Worms on Monday morning, June 1, it so happens, on the 35th anniversary of the death of Irish Dominican Paul Hynes. Werenfried suffered a severe stroke.

Werenfried was born in the German town of Kempen, close to Düsseldorf, on November 11, 1931.  

Kempen is the birthplace of Thomas à Kempis. 

He joined the North German Dominican Province in 1957 and was ordained a priest in 1962.

I write these few words about him because I had the great good fortune to get to know him.

In the summers of 1972 and 1973 I lived at the Dominican Priory in Lindenstraße in Cologne. It was there I got to know Werenfried.

I was 23/24 and he was 41/42. At the time I thought he was an elderly man.

He was a quiet, gentle person. He had that wonderful gift of accepting a person where they were. He was always willing to see the good in another person.

By nature he was a prayerful person and from what I can recall, he spent some time with a contemplative congregation.

Werenfried had that unique gift of making people feel important. In his presence one felt special.

There were many parts to him. Aren't there to all of us? While by nature he was more conservative than liberal, yet he embraced all that was good of the Vatican Council. He would shrug his shoulders and smile when conservative men in the community would criticise modern German theologians. He would never say a word at the time but later in his inimitable quiet way he would remind his fellow Dominicans of what they had said and point out to them how unwise their words had been.

At the time the Dominican students at nearby Walberberg were keenly listening to the latest world and church events, the Vietnam War, Baader Meinhof, the Willy Brandt government, the Munich Olympic Games and the treaty signed between East and West Germany, the Interflug air disaster at Königs Wusterhausen, killing all 156 passengers, Volkswagen launched the Passat.

Young Dominicans were seeing the world through different lenses. Homogeneous thinking was disappearing. 

The late Dominican, Dominik Germeshausen said that Christoph ‘changed sides’ close to priestly ordination.

It was a place full of energy, a great place to be. 

At the time Irish Dominican Gregory Kirstein, was a much loved member of the community, if considered slightly eccentric. The current archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn was a student in Walberberg in the late 1960s.

Werenfried had the wonderful gift of embracing with open arms the various 'disagreeing' factions. And they all in turn greatly respected him.

He was an honourable man. His word was his bond.

We belonged to different generations, different cultures. It was my first time in Germany. He had never been to Ireland. Werenfried helped make me feel at home in the summers of 1972 and '73 in Cologne.

Such a gentle and gracious person and born just two short years before Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.

Werenfried, rest in peace and thank you.

Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich is outraged that the price of a black life is a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill

Below is a powerful statement of Cardinal Blase  Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, on the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath.

The past nights I have watched in great personal pain as the pent-up anger of our people caught fire across our country. I saw the city where I was born, the cities where I have lived, the city I pastor now, catch embers from the city where I was educated and burn. Was I horrified at the violence? Yes. But was I surprised? No.

As the saying goes, if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. What did we expect when we learned that in Minneapolis, a city often hailed as a model of inclusivity, the price of a black life is a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill? 

When we added another name to the list of those murdered for being black or for caring about the marginalised?

I will not pretend to speak with any authority about the challenges people of color experience in our society.  I do not share the fear they put on when they and their children leave their homes every day. 

I do not know what it means to be “other.” But I know there is a way to fix it.  And the fix begins when we stop talking about the proportionality of “their” response and start talking about the proportionality of “ours.” 

Surely a nation that could put a man in space, his safety assured by the brilliance of black women, can create a fair legal system, equitable education and employment opportunities and ready access to health care. 

Laws do not solve problems, but they create a system where racism in all its forms is punished and playing fields are levelled.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been called a great equalizer. It has been even more a great revealer of societal cancers as deadly as the virus. As others have pointed out, health insecurity kills, and poverty is poison.  

We can and must make a society that views the soaring of a child’s potential with more joy than the soaring of a rocket.

I stand ready to join religious, civic, labor and business leaders in coming together to launch a new effort to bring about recovery and reconciliation in our city.  

We do not need a study of the causes and effects. Those answers can be found on the shelves of government offices and academic institutions across our burning nation. 

No, we need to take up the hard work of healing the deep wound that has afflicted our people since the first slave ships docked on this continent. And we need to start today.

The man in the White House is a 'gangster and dictator'

Film directory, Spike Lee talking about President Donald Trump:

"He's a gangster, he's a dictator."

Do Johnson and Cummings link words with truth?

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

Michael Commane

UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings has been in the news of late. The controversy has brought home the importance of words.

There’s that great expression ‘my word is my bond’. Yet it would be an unwise person who would make an agreement without a contract and written signature.

There are some words and phrases that go in and out of fashion.

I’m going to leave strict instructions in my will that when I die, no one dare say: ‘Michael Commane has passed away’, But must say: ‘Michael Commane has died’.

As with so many aspects of our lives, people have different tastes, and the words we use are linked to our personalities, fashions and styles.

There is no end to what one could write about the meaning, etymology and use of words.

For example, did you know that the word inflammable and flammable have the same meaning. Only in recent days an engineer told me that those two words have been replaced with combustible and non-combustible.

Keeping a keen eye on the Cummings controversy I was amused with British politicians and their use of words in the affair.

It’s important to note that we come to situations with our own particular bias. I am no supporter of Johnson or his chief adviser Cummings. Before the last UK general election, a member of the Conservative Party and a former senior cabinet minister publicly stated that he believed that Boris Johnson had issues with the truth.

I carefully listened to Boris Johnson’s press conference on Sunday, May 24, and to the interview with the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps on the Andrew Marr BBC programme earlier that day.

It may have appeared that they were floundering, at sixes and sevens. But might that have been their strategy, to confuse people?

They avoided and dodged the questions. But what was most striking was, how careful they were in the words they used. They were real masters with their words. I was left in a haze of confusion having watched both men.

We can use words to tell the truth, to tell lies, to say nothing, and to befuddle. Clever people have the ability to confuse and befuddle when it suits their purpose.

I came away from both the Johnson and Shapps interviews in the belief that both men were being economical with the truth. 

The following day Cummings gave an hour-long interview in the garden of Downing Street. Some of what he said was absurd. He told journalists that he drove his car on an hour-long journey to see if his eyesight was okay so that he could drive back from Durham to London the following day. 

That must go down as an infamous quote.

Cummings has a way with words. He’s clever and in his press conference he managed to garner a certain sympathy. I never before saw such a human side to the man.

I’m thinking of the late Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, the time he said that he had made a mental reservation. Is that another phrase for telling a lie?

The story with words can often be like everything else in our lives: there's one law for the rich and another for the poor.

But I have no doubt our world would be a better place for all of us, rich and poor, if the words we used were linked to truth. Words are sacred.

Johnson and Cummings are dogmatic and incompetent men

This has to be journalism at its best. Nick Cohen writing in Saturday's Guardian

This extract is the final two paragraphs of the article.

Unlike Trump and Johnson, Cummings is not trying to fool the public but fool the fool who employs him – not the hardest of tasks, I grant you. He sinks to the level of the petty cheat because he must convince Johnson that he is a political mastermind.

Don’t be fooled as well. Too many liberals see Cummings as a manipulative demon with supernatural powers, when the most frightening thing about him, and Johnson, is their pathetic inability to control events. 

They are not evil geniuses but lazy, dogmatic and incompetent men, whose shabbiness is revealed as much by their little deceits as grand blunders. Don’t inflate them into monsters, who can never be beaten. Draw courage from their littleness. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/dominic-cummings-boris-johnson-evil-geniuses-hardly-lazy-incompetent?CMP=share_btn_link

A reader posts an interesting comment

Below is a comment, posted yesterday, on the blogpost of Thursday, May 28.

The comment is clearly self-explanatory.  It's worth posting. It tells a tale.

It doesn't take rocket science to know that the website of the Irish Jesuits is 'far superior' to its Irish Dominican counterpart.

Billy said...

Michael,

The well written obituaries which you publish on your blog for Irish Dominicans who die are, it seems to me, measured and fair.

The website of the Irish province stays silent when a member of the province dies. This is a glaring lack. Your obituaries ought to be also published on the website of the province.

This website needs a lot of work. It ought to be developed and improved. In it's present format it is unfriendly and unattractive. It gives no great sense of the work of the province. You won't like me stating that the website of the Irish Jesuits is far superior. The content is substantive and informative and mention is always made of Jesuits who die.

Schönborn criitical of some John Paul appointments

In a report in The Tablet of May 23 Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said that he is of the opinion that  some of the episcopal appointments made by Pope St John Paul II had gone badly wrong.

He cites the appointment of his predecessor Benedictine, Hans Hermann Groer, whom John Paul appointed personally, and breaking a promise that he would consult Viennese archbishop Cardinal Franz König. Groer was a paedophile.

"It was an unfortunate choice as were several of John Paul II's episcopal nominations in the second half of the 1980s. There is no doubt that John Paul had weaknesses. But who has none?"

Spectacular words from a serving archbishop about a canonised pope. Martini was one of the great cardinals of the church.

But the Dominican cardinal did point out that John Paul II also directly appointed Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini as archbishop of Milan.

The right-wing calls for early opening hours

The extract below is from an article in yesterday's Guardian. The link to the piece is included on this post.

When the US has endured past attacks by stealthy enemies – Pearl Harbor, say, or 9/11 – there has been some effort from the White House down to rally the nation around a common defense. Not so this time.

When Americans are asked about key policies relating to coronavirus, such as when lockdown should be eased and economies reopened, their answer is starkly partisan. A survey by the University of Chicago found that 77% of Democrats want lockdown restrictions to remain in place for as long as needed to protect health, while only 45% of Republicans take that view.

“Politics more than economics is dividing Americans,” the Chicago researchers concluded.

Trump has adopted a similar partisan stance. Instead of acting for the nation as a whole, he has favoured party political point scoring ahead of November’s presidential election.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/28/us-coronavirus-death-toll-racial-disparity-inequality?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Fr Tim Hazelwood, a priest of the Diocese of Cloyne and a member of the Association of Catholic Priests of Ireland, said on RTE Radio yesterday that there was a Catholic media that was calling for a relaxation on the rules concerning the reopening of churches.

When pressed to name who he was talking about he mentioned The Iona Institute and The Irish Catholic newspaper.

Why is the right-wing so intent on pushing for an early opening? In the US it is the Republicans and the Trumpites, who are pushing for early opening. And now in Ireland right-wing Catholics are calling for an earlier opening of churches.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was clear on radio and television yesterday pointing how important it is for the Catholic Church to heed the advice of State authorities.

It is a pity that The Iona Institute and The Irish Catholic are attempting to hijack the Catholic Church in Ireland in order to shape it into a conservative/right-wing organisation.

A thoughtful reminder of the late Michael Neenan OP

Yesterday someone by the name of Mary left the following comment on this blog: "Happy birthday. Gone but not forgotten."

Mary was leaving a comment on the short piece that was written about her uncle, Michael Neenan, who died on February 25, 2016. It was the fourth comment Mary has left on the blogpost of March 3, 2016. What a lovely touch.

Back then this blog was not as systematic as it is today in writing about Irish Dominicans who die. It was a much more hit-and-miss operation. So, apologies for writing such a short piece on Michael Neenan.

There was a short note on the death of Michael on this blog on March 5, 2016.

Not once but indeed, on many occasions a member of staff at St Luke's Hospital in Rathgar, Dublin, where I am chaplain, talks to me about Michael Neenan. He often travelled with Michael to Fatima and speaks in glowing terms of the A'dorney man. People not from Kerry, indeed, many in Kerry, may not be aware that the local people abbreviate the north Kerry village, Abbeydorney to A'dorney.

Michael was born on May 25, 1941.

A lovely thought Mary, and thank you.

So often the small gestures make such a difference.

It's a sign of a person when they are fondly remembered.