The President of the country, the Archbishop of Dublin and Journalist John Waters all attend the Communion and Liberation gathering in Italy this week. The President commended the Archbishop for doing a good job. The Journalist commended the gathering for providing liberty to speak and the Archbishop exercised that liberty in a penetrating way not always possible when speaking on his home turf!

Using the opportunity of the late Cardinal Newman’s Irish associations he delivered a trenchant expose of the ills of his church and lamented over the fact that after 15 years of catechesis, young people remain theologically illiterate.

But it was his use of the term “Civil Religion” that was so helpful in revealing to a large extent how things are. Referring to the Irish situation he said, “The Church provides a unique space in which people, even though secularised, can share the events of their lives and find a ritual to express the more profound human experi ... Read More »

So the prison system doesn’t work! At least not for sex offenders. It simply removes them from circulation for a time then returns them as marked men under surveillance by the authorities. The early release, for good conduct i.e. not breaking the prison rules, of Larry Murphy created media frenzy as reporters tried to trace his movements.

Needless to say this had a knock-on effect in society which was enhanced by graphic details of his original conviction and the innuendo that he may have been accountable for other women who disappeared without trace. The fact of his refusing all forms of remedial treatment over the last 10 years does not augur well for the future neither does his absence of remorse.

In a country awash with pornography and sexually explicit clothing we can look forward to many more Larry Murphy’s in the future.

What has the Bible to say on these things?

It advocates the Gospel of grace as the only remedy ... Read More »

A couple of uncut diamonds or two “dirty looking stones” as the supermodel described them displaying a naivety which must have surprised the international war crimes tribunal sitting in The Hague. Even more surprising was the fact that two men coming to her hotel bedroom door after dark with a package was nothing unusual. The fact that she often received anonymous gifts from unknown fans did not arouse her curiosity and it was not until breakfast that she opened the pouch.

They were identified as diamonds and had possibly come from Charles Taylor the Liberian President who was present at the dinner party the night before. She obviously preferred the cut variety of diamond as she passed them over to the director of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund telling the tribunal they had only been six hours in her possession.

The director retained the diamonds to protect the supermodel from the law, as possession of uncut diamonds without a licence is illegal in South Af ... Read More »

There is an old tale of a leaking horse trough which had served the community well and refreshed many horses in its day. The leak had become worse and the villagers got together to decide what to do about it. After some discussion it was decided not to repair the tank but to shoot the horse!

This story came to mind when I heard of the sacking of Tony Haywood the Chief Executive Officer of British Petroleum. He had been in the job for a couple of years having been dealt a bad hand by his predecessor whose dramatic career had been powered by going for the big oil fields which were in dangerous drilling locations. Safety had been sacrificed for speed and the net result was that Tony found himself with a burned out oil rig and a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the 20^th April, which has only now been plugged.

True, Public Relation skills were not Tony’s strong point but no one had tried to seal a gushing well one mile down on the se ... Read More »

This is the 25^th Anniversary of the moving statue of the Blessed Virgin at Ballinspittle.

That was a year when we had many moving statues but few, if any, interpretations. Sightings and messages from the Blessed Virgin are not uncommon – indeed they are to be expected by Marian devotees at the various Marian shrines.

One of these places, our own Knock got a bit of publicity recently when Dublin faith healer, Joe Coleman claimed that Mary would appear at Knock and named the day and the hour. After several of these predictions, all of which attract crowds, RTE did a programme this week entitled “Apparitions”. This explored, in a somewhat sceptical way, the events at Knock with contributions from journalists, medical people, priests and devotees.

Apparently Mary appears in the sun which makes her hard to see and she is also hard to hear. However Joe both sees and hears her and many of his followers confirm that the sun “d ... Read More »

So the figures don’t add up! The ace Banker and “brains” of the Irish financial world ran out of options this week. Just when we thought he would never be caught he declared himself bankrupt. His liabilities exceeded his assets by a cool €96.7 million.

Such was his confidence in his abilities during the “good times” that he not only loaned generously the banks money but took a stake in many of these investments himself.

How did he do it? One financial source quaintly put it that he had a “piggy bank” within the bank with which he indulged himself. In fact it seems that he had become a “deal junkie” drawing down funding from four other financial institutions in addition to his activities in Anglo-Irish. As one developer put it, you could put a proposition to him in the morning and get an acceptance by the afternoon!

Sadly competition drew our other banks into the ... Read More »

After many months of drought (we had lambs this year that never got wet) the rain came yesterday right on cue for the Oxygen Music Festival. There must be something about the name O₂ which attracts the rain! Its not just rain but real Irish rain – the wetting, fine droplet variety that penetrates the best of raingear in a matter of minutes.

The sound blasters got going yesterday at Punchestown some 3 miles away and as I write the drums are still pounding away impervious to the weather. Of course the only dry people there are the performers but even they must find their guitars slippery in the humid conditions.

An addition to the cacophony this year has been the invasive South African horn – the vuvuzela! The one note horn makes up for its lack of versatility by being easy to play!

Designer wellies are all the rage. About the only one not wearing them was the hip hop superstar Jay Z. The Brooklyn ma ... Read More »

The men of Issachar were commended because they understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do” 1 Chronicles ch.12 v 32. We could do with some of these men today to show us what Ireland ought to do!

An attempt was made this week by a letter writer to a National newspaper. His letter quoted Archbishop Fulton J Sheen who wrote the following some 50 years ago.

“It is a characteristic of any decaying civilisation that the great masses of the people are unaware of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times.

If there is no fixed concept of justice, how shall men know it is violated? Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are ... Read More »

I think it was Winston Churchill who said "Democracy is the worst form of government with the exception of all the others"! It is founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, who vote for them on the basis of their stated views.

We have been able to avoid the grosser sins of widespread vote rigging, or the more brutal treatment of the military regime in Myanmar where Aug San Su Kyi has to be kept under house arrest to prevent her party getting into government. However the power vested in our representatives, once elected, can be engineered to ensure their continuing in office, irrespective of the people’s wishes.

Shades of this were seen in the Banking Reports where, over a lengthy period, government appointed watch-dogs forgot to bark. The environment in which they were kept was not conducive to the sound of barking!

The leader of the “Greens” barked at the Catholic Church to be quiet about the ... Read More »

The host nation for the soccer World Cup, South Africa, has introduced us to the modern horn of Africa – the vuvuzela. This instrument, blown with vigour, is responsible for the incessant noise which has blighted the opening matches of the competition. Heard on the telly, it resembles a swarm of bees in the room. Experienced in the stadium, each horn producing up to 135 decibels, the noise must be mind numbing.

At least that is the only explanation I can offer for the miserable standard of football being played on the pitch. The players are cut off from each other so that familiar calls at key moments in the game go unheard. Encouragement or advice from supporters, for so long an integral component in the enjoyment of the game, has been neutralised. Communication, by radio between the referee and his officials, has been rendered impossible so that yellow cards have been substituted for the referees “word of advice”!

Broadcasters like BBC have turned to technol ... Read More »