Author: Michael Kirke

Michael Kirke was born in Co. Donegal and attended St. Eunan’s College in Letterkenny, 1957-1962. In 1966 he graduated from University College Dublin (History and Politics). In 1966 he began working on the editorial desk of The Evening Press in Dublin and in 1968 went to the newsroom of the Irish Press group of newspapers – contributing news and features to the group’s three titles, The Irish Press (morning paper), The Evening Press and The Sunday Press. In 1969 he went to Belfast and covered the initial unravelling of the Unionist hegemony in the province. Later that year he became the group’s education specialist. In 1973 took leave of absence to pursue postgraduate studies in education in Trinity College Dublin where he graduated in 1976. In 1978 he left journalism and moved into teaching. In 1981 was appointed headmaster of Rockbrook Park School in Dublin (www.rockbrook.ie). In 1994 resigned from that post and moved to live in the West of Ireland (Galway) where he began working part-time in media again. He is now back in Dublin working, among other things, as a freelance writer. His main interests are in political, cultural and educational affairs – as well as issues related to religious faith.

Breaking bad, breaking good

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments

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Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us…
And no religion too…

Well, we have tried. Not only have we tried. We’ve been there, done that, and the results were pretty hellish.

Man’s inhumanity to man has a long track record and down through the millennia of recorded time there have been some grim epochs. But it is difficult to find any prolonged episodes of bloody mayhem and cruelty to match those which the twentieth century produced. And what is the common denominator linking the worst that this terrible epoch has left to haunt our collective memory? It is the very thing which John Lennon’s superficial and puerile anthem eulogies – an imagination devoid of God, religion and our sense of the eternal.

Power hungry men and cadres of men – mostly men – in the twentieth century tried like no other to imagine not just a world without religion, they actually tried to recreate the world in this image. What did we get as a result? We got tyrannies on a scale never seen by mankind before.

The horrors began with the Mexican Revolution in 1915. By 1917 that adventure had degenerated into an orgy of killing, accompanied by a raft of laws proscribing religion of all denominations, which cost Mexico something in the region of two million lives. Then came the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Up to the death of Stalin 20 million souls paid for that monster’s atheistic fantasies with their lives. The virulently anti-religious Nazi epoch and its attendant consequences accounted for 65 million lives worldwide while the figment of Mao’s utopian and godless imagination wiped out about 40 million Chinese.

And whose were the fertile imaginations which bore the seeds of all these atrocities? Karl Marx, for whom religion was nothing more than another dangerous narcotic, and Frederic Nietzsche who had worked out in his wisdom that God had actually died.

That covers what we might call the macro-atrocity dimension of a godless world. There is also the micro-atrocity dimension, that of the daily drip-drip murder which goes on under most people’s radar but is no less horrifying.

This morning I read a report on the BBC website which included the following:

The hospital said there was an “extremely rigorous procedure” in place before any patient was put to death. “When we have a case which is… complicated, we ask ourselves more questions in order to be certain about the diagnosis,” Dr Jean-Michel Thomas said.

Thank you Dr. Thomas. Very reassuring. This was a report on the “euthanizing” – that means “killing”, in case the modern world’s euphemisms for the previously unthinkable are bewildering you – of a disturbed 44 year-old transvestite man/woman whose search for what he/she thought might be a true identity ended in despair. The Belgian doctors caring for him/her complied with the poor creature’s last desperate wish to be “put to death”.

This is not science fiction. This is happening every day – and the malady is spreading by the hour. This is the inevitable legacy of the world envisaged in John Lennon’s Imagine.

But there is another world we can imagine. It also is “easy if you try”. Imagine this, and see what it might promise us – and actually deliver. We have also been there, done that – but we just haven’t done it as well as we might have. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that the Twelve chosen by Jesus Christ to be the first bishops of the Church which he founded did not just listen to him talking. They also walked the talk – with one exception. Look what happened to the world when they did, and when they gathered enough men and women, families and communities around them who were prepared to do the same. They transformed a cruel, murderous and euthanizing pagan Roman world.

Then look at what happened at different stages in the history of the Christian civilization which emanated from this foundation when its peoples lost the plot for one reason or another – leadership faltering, hedonism becoming rampant again: chaos returned and wars ensued.

But unlike John Lennon’s imagined universe, devoid as it is of any element of the sense of a meaningful destiny which resides somewhere in the heart of all men and women, the values at the core of the Christian vision speak volumes to mankind. When men and women rediscovered these again – and often it was the women who heard them first – Christian civilization was reinvigorated. It can be so reinvigorated again.

Imagine this, dream this: that the words of Pope Francis today, echoing truly as they do, the words of he whose vicar on earth he is, be taken to head and heart by every bishop in the world and be taken to heart and head by every co-worker priest serving with each of those bishops, – a somewhat more challenging hope – and be transmitted faithfully and energetically to all the faithful whom each of these has been ordained to serve. Imagine then that each member of that faithful community of Christians resolved to live by the spirit of these words.

Imagine this – a far better dream than that of poor John Lennon: That Pope Francis’ words on twitter over the past few weeks, words which reflect the very essence of the Christian vision, might have a fraction of the influence and penetration that much of the poisonous content of pop culture pouring out through the entertainment industry has.

Some samples to help your imagination:

Christ’s love and friendship are no illusion. On the Cross Jesus showed how real they are.

Jesus is more than a friend. He is a teacher of truth and life who shows us the way that leads to happiness.

We must not be afraid of solidarity; rather let us make all we have and are available to God.

We are all jars of clay, fragile and poor, yet we carry within us an immense treasure.

If we have found in Jesus meaning for our own lives, we cannot be indifferent to those who are suffering and sad.

Are we ready to be Christians full-time, showing our commitment by word and deed.

Charity, patience and tenderness are very beautiful gifts. If you have them, you want to share them with others.

Jesus didn’t save us with an idea. He humbled himself and became a man. The Word became Flesh.

Let’s learn to lose our lives for Christ, like a gift or a sacrifice. With Christ we lose nothing.

A Christian is never bored or sad. Rather, the one who loves Christ is full of joy and radiates joy.

With the “culture of waste”, human life is no longer considered the primary value to be respected and protected.

Add to this sample the distilled wisdom of the Christian message contained in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> and the Compendium of its social teaching, imagine it being taught and accepted as a standard to live by. Now that’s worth imagining and with that vision we can comfortably join in with John Lennon’s refrain,

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And all the world will live as one.

“I do not like to use the word optimism” the Pope says in his now famous America interview, “because that is about a psychological attitude….I like to use the word hope instead, according to what we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, … The fathers of the faith kept walking, facing difficulties. And hope does not disappoint….Christian hope is not a ghost and it does not deceive. It is a theological virtue and therefore, ultimately, a gift from God that cannot be reduced to optimism, which is only human. God does not mislead hope; God cannot deny himself. God is all promise.”

The shallowness, the shallowness…

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

This, courtesy of a column in the Washington Post sums it – and him – up.

“Obama warned the General Assembly on Tuesday that “the danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war . . . may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation can fill.” Sadly, it is not just a danger. It was the message of his speech — and the tangible result of his presidency.”

Next up: show trials?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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Roger Scruton, apart from his extensive academic and literary achievements, worked to found underground free universities in several Central European countries during Soviet rule. He knows what he is talking about. He says this in the context of the latest dangerous foolishness from Italy: “You can’t imprison thought with law,” he said. The proposed law “is the criminalization of intellectual criticism on the subject of gay marriage. It’s a new intellectual, ideological crime, as was anti-communism during the cold war.”

“To me, this Bill on homophobia is reminiscent of the Moscow trials, and those of Maoist China, where victims confessed their crimes enthusiastically before being executed.

When political activists accuse opponents of “hate,” he said, there is a “moral inversion”. “If you oppose the normalization of homosexuality you are a ‘homophobe’. If you believe in Western culture, you are an ‘elitist’. Accusations of ‘homophobia’ means the end of a career, especially for those who work at a University.”

He compared this process of political manipulation to the process described by George Orwell in his classic political satire 1984. The “Newspeak” of the bill is an example of the use of langauge to create a “spell”.

Read more here:
http://www.ilfoglio.it/soloqui/19923
And here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/italian-anti-homophobia-bill-reminiscent-of-maoist-stalinist-politics?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=29697157a3-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines_06_19_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0caba610ac-29697157a3-397480385

Goodness, Truth, Beauty in the Cinema

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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At the end of September, Pope Francis, addressing the annual plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications meeting in Rome, said “The challenge is to rediscover, through the means of social communication as well as by personal contact, the beauty that is at the heart of our existence and our journey, the beauty of faith and of the encounter with Christ.”

It is not a totally neglected challenge. The website, Impact Culture (http://www.impactingculture.com) recently published a list of films made in the last decade (in chronological order) – to celebrate the good movies that are still being made.

The Passion, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and The Chronicles of Narnia are not on this list. That’s just because they’re explicitly Christian. These others are not.

“The cinema,” Pope John Paul II said, “with its vast possibilities, could become a powerful means of evangelization.” These movies undoubtedly tell some of the “good news”. If you haven’t seen all of them, we must issue a SPOILER ALERT. A lot of them are chosen because of the way they end, so… beware, you’re going to be told how how they end.

Spider-Man (2002)
I remember reading an article by a seminarian when this movie was in theaters, and what he said has stuck with me ever since. He compared Peter Parker to a priest. In the film, Peter’s Uncle Ben tells him, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter takes the words to heart – his superpowers are meant for something great, and he has a responsibility to use them for the good of society. What’s more, the weight of this responsibility (this is where the priest bit comes in) means that he must sacrifice his desire to be with Mary Jane, the girl of his dreams. Being Spider-Man is Peter’s vocation.

Finding Nemo (2003)
If you read Uninterested, you probably already know where I’m going with this one. In fact, a few of these films were selected on the basis of this same theme: the theme of fatherhood. It’s a theme that I think resonates with a very broad audience because fatherhood in our culture is so broken. Nemo’s father, Marlin, overcomes all his fears and character flaws, faces death and danger, all for love of his son. The film beautifully explores the meaning and power of friendship as well. The love of friends helps all the characters grow in one way or another to become better people (er… fish).
Also, you should know that I originally had a lot of other Pixar films on this list, but I figured that was a little unfair – Pixar is not the only studio making great movies (although they are probably the only one that consistently makes great movies). So Finding Nemo is basically representing all Pixar films on this list – it just happens to be my favorite one.

Cinderella Man (2005)
This movie, like Finding Nemo, was chosen mainly because of its portrayal of fatherhood, but also because of its broader theme of family. Few films show us a stable, nuclear family anymore. Despite all the obstacles this Depression-era family faces, the audience never worries that Jim Braddock will leave his wife and kids or that his wife will leave him because he can’t provide for them. The family is a source of strength and motivation for Jim Braddock – he does everything he does in the film for the sake of his family, and his family, in turn, is always there to support him.

I Am Legend (2007)
This film actually took me by surprise. The symbolism, especially at the end of the movie, is very obviously Christian. At least it was obvious to me when Will Smith literally gives his blood to save the zombies – his blood is pure, untainted, immune to the disease that has turned the rest of the human population into monsters, and he has spent his years of solitude searching for a way to use his blood to cure them, to make them human again. But as soon as he finds the cure, the monsters are closing in. He sacrifices his life to give a woman and her son a chance to get away, but not before he gives them a vial of his blood – the cure. A man pouring out his blood and giving his life to save humanity from their own depravity… sound familiar?

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Far too few people have seen this movie, and when I tell you what it’s about, you might think I’m crazy for putting it on this list. Lars is a reclusive young man whose only real companion is a sex doll he ordered on the internet. But trust me, this movie is not what you think. It’s actually a very sweet story about community. When Lars orders this doll, he succumbs to the delusion that she’s a real person, and we soon find out that this delusion – this illness – is a manifestation of Lars’ fear for his pregnant sister-in-law’s life. The love and compassion of the small town community around Lars helps him to overcome his illness and his fears.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)
This is another father one. Christian Bale’s character is, in a lot of ways, similar to Marlin. He starts out afraid. A coward. But by movie’s end, he’s stepping in front of bullets for his son. There’s also something beautiful here about Russell Crowe’s character. He’s evil through and through for almost the entire movie. But by the end, we see the flicker of mercy and nobility.

The Dark Knight (2008)
Like I Am Legend, I think the Christian symbolism in this one is hard to miss. Batman chooses to take on the sins of another. Putting his physical life on the line for others is nothing new – he’s always done that. But this time around, he’s willing to be counted among sinners and thieves for the sake of Gotham City.

The Blind Side (2009)
This one’s almost too easy – I debated putting this one in the same category with LOTR and The Passion. I really don’t think the filmmakers realized what they had on their hands, though, so I’m putting it on the list. This movie shows us what it really means to put our money where our mouth is as Christians. The themes of family, honesty, integrity, and courage are all explored in this little gem.

The King’s Speech (2010)
There’s nothing obviously Christian about this film, but I love it for its portrayal of marriage. The king has a strong, happy marriage as does his speech therapist. The husbands love their wives, and the wives support their husbands. It strikes me now that I’m writing this that the films I’ve chosen for their portrayal of marriage and family are period pieces… interesting. Anyway, there’s also a lot here about duty and courage and patriotism too.

Tangled (2010)
Okay, this is my one cheat. I chose this movie more for what it’s not than for what it is. I want to draw a comparison here between this movie and The Princess and the Frog. I was a little disturbed by the latter, and it really put me in doubt about Disney’s ability to deliver quality children’s movies. The prominence of voodoo and the assertion that voodoo can be good just really rubbed me the wrong way – probably because I know that the voodoo culture actually exists and thrives in some regions. Tangled, on the other hand, is purely fairytale. It’s set in an imaginary place, and the “magic” in it is not rooted in reality in any way. Plus, Rapunzel is one of the better heroines I’ve seen in recent times – a strong, driving protagonist, but still completely feminine.

So who is obsessed then?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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The real story revealed by the brouhaha over “that” interview is what it tells us about much of the international secularist media and it’s take on the Christian message. The interview is a moving and penetrating reflection on that message, our response to it, and ways in which we might be transmitting it to each other. For the media, deaf and blind to the spirit which moves the man who gave it, it was about obsession with sex.

In 12,000 words, about 18 pages printed out, the Pope mentions abortion and homosexuality a total of three times. As has been pointed out, a search for other buzzwords shows that Pope Francis referred to God 37 times, Jesus 26 times and St. Ignatius 15 times. As Word On Fire’s Fr. Steve Grunow said on American radio, “Pope Francis referred to Italian and German opera more than he did abortion and homosexuality.”

Wake up! There is no obsession with sex in the teaching of the Catholic Church. What there is, however, is an obsession by the media with the teachng of the Catholic Church on human sexual behaviour. This is plainly because the consensus on this realm of human behaviour within the media generally is deeply resentful of the Christian understanding and teaching on the nature and purpose of human sexuality.

The media pursues this obsession by reporting incessantly on every utterance from the Church on the subject, every sign of any rebellion or resistance to it inside the Church, to the exclusion of the rest of the entire corpus of its teaching on the Decalogue. It would be unfair if the Pope were to blame his bishops for an obsession just because the media grossly distorts the balance of everything they teach, from pastoral letter to pastoral letter, from homily to homily, day after day, year after year. He hasn’t, and they are adding to their distortion by putting words into his mouth. If anyone has a case to answer about obsessions, it is the media.

Kathryn Jean Lopez – in a rare exception in the flood of coverage on the Pops’s interview – points out in a piece she wrote for Fox News that not everything in the world is about sex and politics. That message may take the Irish Times, The New York Times, the BBC, among many more media prganizations, a few more homilies and interviews with Pope Francis to understand. As Shelia Liaugminas concludes on her blog on MercatorNet, “The Catholic Church – or at least those preachers and teachers who are outspoken on matters concerning human sexuality, especially when catechetical discussions are turned into clashes in the public square for political or cultural reasons – is often accused of being obsessed with sex. But the obsession might just be the media’s.” I dont think there is any “might” about it.

A letter in today’s Irish Independent

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

A letter in today’s Irish Independent tells us that “there is insufficient moral consensus in Ireland to ground consideration of the country’s future.”

“The clash of antagonistic wills,” Philip O’Neill writes, “evident in the abortion debate and in current discussion of what to do in Syria or with our economy, often parades as rational debate, leaving us with little more than intensified divisions.” So far so good. Certainly, a lot of parading, a good deal of intensity and deep, deep division. Parading is clearly a sham but intensity and division are no bad things in themselves. Fear and loathing of both, which O’Neill seems to harbor, may well be harmful if they lead you to some of his conclusions.

“The continuing drift away from the church”, he writes, “is perhaps the most telling change. However, this is not indicative of a new paganism but a justifiable expression of dissatisfaction with a form of religion that had become radically focused on itself. Even the priests express unease at the church’s sometimes neurotic fear of the slightest shift from fidelity to its programme.”

I think we are dealing with more than the “slightest” shifts in contemporary Irish Catholicism here. If the utterances emerging from some of the followers and sympathesiers of the Ascociation of Catholic Priests are anything to go by, a good few Protestants are more in tune with orthodox Catholicism than with this kind of “fidelity”.

Who ever said morality was about consensus? Well, sadly, a lot of people did – and that is where the radical divide lies. The Catholic Church’s teaching will never be developed or defined by consensus. It is a given – by God – or it is nothing. Otherwise we will just be indulging in another bit of democratic groping for the truth. Mankind in human society deepens in its understanding of the revealed truth down through the ages. That is very different from a process of consensus.

There is no doubt but that a search is involved if we are to know the Truth. But is is not to be found in consensus. It will be found in the way and in the spirit which Pope Francis’ encyclical, Lumen Fidei, suggests when he quotes Saint Irenaeus of Lyons who tells how Abraham, before hearing God’s voice, had already sought him “in the ardent desire of his heart” and “went throughout the whole world, asking himself where God was to be found”, until “God had pity on him who, all alone, had sought him in silence”.

The creeping statist menace

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

When I saw a headline in the current issue of The Week it looked like they had got an article about Irish Education Minister, Ruairi Quinn. It said, “You are a bad person if you send your children to a private school.”

That is more or less what Ruairi Quinn, with his ideologically-driven Labour Party and the social engineers in his Education Ministry certainly seem to think. Just this month he has unveiled more legislative proposals to cut the ground from under those evil parents who dare to attempt to form their own judgments as to what kind of school might give their children a better chance in life.

Quinn is proposing, among other things, to put a cap in the number of children any school can accept from families of past pupils of that school. In other words, the great statist leveling machine – regardless of whether that leveling might be down as well as up – trumps parental choice, experience, judgment and loyalty to the old school tie.

The quote was not in fact from Quinn. It was from across the Atlantic, but it surely came from the same soviet ideology to which Quinn subscribes where the family, individual preference, and parental responsibility are always sacrificed to the socialist pipe-dream of an egalitarianism totally divorced from human nature.

Jack Jennings on The Huffington Post dew our attention to the Council for American Private Education’s statistics showing us that there are 33,366 private schools in the US – 25% of the total. Because they tend to be much smaller than publicly funded schools, they cater for just one in ten of the school-going population. Nor are they all expensive boarding schools for the elite, the Post told us. The vast majority have a religious affiliation, and the bulk of these are Catholic.

This freedom of choice really annoyed Allison Benedikt on Slate.com. My take on this is simple, she said, “You are a bad person if you send your children to private school.” That parents choose to send their children to these schools because they live in urban areas with bad schools, or because their kids are gifted or have learning issues, or because they want small classes and personal attention and courses in modern film and Mandarin, cut no ice with her at all.  You know who else wants those things? She asked. “Everyone.”

When affluent parents pull their kids out of public schools, her argument went on, those schools lose the clout and resources they deserve. So don’t run away from the schools poor families are forced to depend on. “Send your kids to school with their kids,” and then fight to make things better for everyone.

Poverty is blamed for everything in this world view, ignoring all the other multiple factors which contribute to quality – or the lack of it – in education. In other words, sacrifice your kids to this social ideology which tells us that the state and not the family is the heart and soul of society. The state in all things knows best.

Rod Dreher, on TheAmericanConservative.com, answered her, describing her line as “the educational equivalent of Soviet economics”. Am I supposed to believe I have a moral obligation, he asked, to give my kids a “crappy” education, “when I know something better and higher is available?” For liberals, he continued, all that matters is that “we are united in the state, no matter how stupid, ignorant, and poor it makes us”.

Another commentator pointed out that Benedikt was also mistaken about her basic premise. John Carney on CNBC.com said competition improves education and numerous studies show that when public high schools have to compete with private schools, they raise their game in every way. So parents who send their kids to private schools aren’t doing something wrong – “they are performing a verifiable public good”.

What hope is there that Ireland might escape from the grip of this wretched ideology? Little at present, unfortunately. It appears that Irish social public policy, in health and education particularly, is captive to a clique of unreconstructed ‘sixties and ‘seventies apparatchiks who would have felt perfectly at home in the soviet block 40 years ago.

An Eastern European observer of the Irish scene recently observed that in terms of the onslaught which he has seen the Irish State making on Irish institutions still maintaining a Christian ethos, the Communists in his country 40 years ago were very much in second place. They haven’t gone away, you know.