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.

Adding once more to the follies of four thousand years

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

“What are they thinking”, we sometimes cry out in near despair as we look on at the folly of governments and their agents, here and around the world, dismantling and destroying before our eyes the very substance of our social and economic fabric.

The economic fabric is, in most if not all western societies, the patient currently in intensive care. The medical teams are furiously arguing with each other about the treatments being applied to bring the wounded subject back to some level of well-being. The austerity faction has the upper hand but no one is really sure – with the exception of the opposing team – what history’s verdict is going to be on that. We are hoping for the best.

What there is no doubt about in anyone’s mind is what the judgement of history will be on why we got here. Everyone now knows that the folly of greed brought the house down about our ears.

But while we worry and fret over this patient, a deeper and more sinister folly remains rampant and untrammelled in the corridors of the powerful and is tearing apart something which will be much more difficult to restore to health. Every day – and for some decades now – the people entrusted with the care of the common good are putting new measures in place which are one by one destroying the very core elements which sustain our human and social well-being.

Booms and busts have been and will always be, we are told, part of the economic cycle. They come and go and as we muddle through them we learn a little each time – and then promptly seem to forget it again, falling back to some earlier position as in a game of snakes and ladders. But generally our muddling along seems to work out on average like three steps forward and two steps backwards.

With our social fabric the story is frighteningly different. For some reason, probably because the process of collapse is more silent and slow-moving, we are being lead onwards blindly into what a a growing clamour of voices is warning us will be a morass of social dysfunction and disintegration.

How is this happening? Part of the answer may be found in a wise and sobering book by one of the great popular historians of the Twentieth century, Barbara Tuchman. In The March of Folly, she dissects the “wooden-headedness” of the world’s leaders – of every political persuasion, from tyrannical despots to dedicated democrats – in their pursuit of public policy. This is a book which makes sober but certainly not consoling reading and explains something of the riddle we are forced to contemplate in our own day and age.

 A phenomenon noticeable throughout history, she writes, regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggest? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?

 Tuchman wrote her book in the early nineteen eighties so she did not have a chance to witness or comment on the economic follies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She did not need to. Her case is watertight without them. From the lesson on man’s folly shown to us in the mythological tale of the wooden horse of Troy, through the follies of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, down through to the follies of any number of empire builders who ended up destroying their own work, to any number in our own day, the embarrassment of the powerful should be assured.

The mystery she puts before us is why can mankind, elsewhere than in government – and in government she includes all agencies engaged in the shaping of public affairs, like trade unions, representative organisations, and others – accomplish such marvels: inventions to harness wind and electricity, raising earth-bound stones into soaring cathedrals, construct the instruments of music, and so much more, and yet make such a mess of government. She quotes John Adams, the second President of the United States who had just witnessed one of the greatest follies of the 18th century – Britain’s blundering loss of her extension into the North American continent. Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, “While all other sciences have advanced, government is at a stand; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”

Indeed, if we look at the United States today and compare it with the achievement of its founding fathers, we would have to question whether its governance is a “little better” or a good deal worse than in John Adams’ day.

No country or state has a monopoly of the commodity we call folly when it comes to public policy. The Chinese state is forging ahead to economic world-dominance while at the same time it is cutting its own throat with a one-child policy which will cripple it in the not too distant future as pampered spoiled brats grow into selfish adult males who will wreak havoc on a limited female population brought about by the whole-scale culling through sex-selective abortion. India, another state promising itself great achievements in the economic sphere, is silently destroying itself with its unlimited sex-selective abortion on demand.

Meanwhile in Europe the old countries which began their domination of the planet a millennium ago are slowly dying under the weight of their self-indulgence, aided and abetted by governments at every turn. Rampant divorce rates are wrecking families. Marriage is being destroyed in the rush to facilitate homosexual self-indulgence in the name of a concept of equality rooted in an utterly flawed anthropology.  Marriage has been further weakened by fiscal arrangements which facilitate cohabitation without commitment. The unintended consequence of this: rampant child abuse – where mothers seek to nurture multiple children begotten serially by nameless fathers.

All of this is fostered in one way or another by governments.

Tuchman qualifies her concept of folly in a way which makes it more than just idiocy but makes it culpable. Idiots can be excused. Culpable fools should not be excused.

To qualify as folly the policy adopted by a government or a representative agency must meet three criteria, she says. Firstly, it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. Judging a past era by the standards is a rampant modern practice which generates its own kind of folly. The injury which is perpetrated by the folly must be something recognised and predicted and warned against by contemporaries. Secondly a feasible alternative course of action must have been available.  Thirdly, to remove the problem from reasons of personality, a third criterion must be that the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime.

The follies we fret over and predict above, as the harbingers of social disaster, fulfil all these criteria.

President Obama and his administration are constantly being warned of the legacies they are bequeathing to their society as a consequence of the destruction of the institution of marriage in which they are currently engaged. The same is true of the Dutch, the French, the British and now the Irish. David Cameron – with his government – is proceeding relentlessly with his redefinition of marriage in spite of a petition from well over half a million of his citizens to stop his folly – not to mention the wise and solemn warnings from the leaders of all the main religious denominations.

In relation to another folly, the world’s legislators were well warned by the teachers of the Catholic Church about the consequences, moral and social, which would follow the generation of a contraceptive mentality by the whole-scale ignoring of its teaching on human life and human sexuality in Humanae Vitae and the provision of contraception services to all and sundry. There are plenty of warnings on record to both the Chinese and the Indians about the folly of the abortion and semi-eugenicist practices which their policies are generating.

The governments of the world’s oldest states, and some relatively new ones, are verifying once again the truth placed before us by Barbara Tuchman and John Adams. Tuchman concludes:

 If John Adams was right, and government is “little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago,” we cannot reasonably expect much improvement. We can only muddle on as we have done in those same three or four thousand years, through patches of brilliance and decline, great endeavour and shadow.

 That is a worrying thought, for the stakes involved in our current follies seem much more serious than any since the follies she listed which lead to the tragic religious rupture of Europe in the sixteenth century. The injuries which mankind will sustain from our current follies will require much more than some geo-political adjustment or economic tweaking to put them right. The consequences may require much more than a bit of muddling on.

The crisis would have occurred even if bankers had been saints

On By Michael KirkeIn National and International AffairsLeave a comment

This is from a very interesting article by the ever-astute Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in today’ Daily Telegraph:
“Let us all agree that top bankers behaved very badly. Let us agree too with Vince Cable that the fraternity operated like a cartel, rewarded far beyond ability or worth to society.
That said, the global crisis would have occurred even if bankers had been saints. The roots lie in the “China effect”, the world “savings glut”, and the whole way that globalisation has worked for 20 years.
The rising powers of Asia and the oil bloc accumulated $10 trillion of reserves, flooding bond markets with money. Japan put $1 trillion into play through the carry trade. Central banks in the West played their part by running negative real interest rates. They set the price of credit too low, especially in Club Med and Ireland.
All this combined into one colossal bubble. Bankers were the agents, not the cause. The witchhunt against them gathering force in this country has a nasty edge, and it has the character of a pogrom in much of Europe. We should be careful.
It is hard to see how this crisis can be defused. Germany’s Wolfgang Schauble has belatedly realised that the EU is playing with fire by pushing the UK too far. British exit would be “catastrophic”, he said, asking how the EU could convince anybody in Asia that it has a future if a key member is walking out.
This olive branch comes late in the day. Euroland leaders cannot exempt Britain from the Tobin tax because they know that their own finance will migrate en masse to London if they do, yet they are too committed to this suicidal enterprise to retreat altogether. So we must fight.”

Is this how Kenny’s reinvention of himself came about?

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Lest Enda Kenny get carried away by the shameless self-promotion and the consequent adulation he received on his recent bout of surfing the St.Patrick’s Day waves of Irish American euphoria, one of that country’s conservative magazines, the Weekly Standard, has given us something of a counter balance.

Author and senior editor of the Standard, Christopher Caldwell, in an in-depth and long article entitled “Irish Stew”, examines – among other strange metamorphoses in modern Ireland – the transformation of Kenny. He explores and suggests why the Irish Taoiseach moved in a matter of weeks from being a conservative rural Catholic into “an outright anticlerical politician”  and a comfortable fellow-traveller with the ultra-liberal socialist party to which he has hitched his own mildly right of centre Fine Gael party.

Of Kenny’s now notorious and still, for many, baffling attack on the Holy See and the petulant penny-pinching rupture of the historic diplomatic links between the Irish State and the Papacy, he says it was much more suggestive of Cromwellian England than of twentieth-century Ireland.

The main substance of Caldwell’s article is concerned with the impending debate on abortion legislation in Ireland. That issue, however, he sees as intrinsically linked with the political ramifications of post-boom Ireland.

 The present Irish government, he says, shares a peculiarity with many Western governments (including the American one): Like them, it came to power primarily because it was not in power when the bottom fell out of the world economy in 2008. All these governments claimed a mandate to act with unprecedented force to set their countries’ finances to rights. But the complexity of the crisis stymied them, and they failed to come up with anything in the way of economic innovation. They did notice, though, that the Bubble Era ruling parties had been reduced to a smoldering political wreck, wholly unable to act as an effective opposition. So with a combination of zeal and self-delusion, these new governments clung to their mandate to act forcefully, diverting it from the purpose for which it had been granted—the economy—and towards a variety of long-cherished partisan (or interest-group) projects. Barack Obama passed health reform in the United States.

He sees David Cameron’s  gay marriage manoeuvres in England fitting into the same pattern.

 This, he thinks, is how Kenny’s reinvention of himself came about and led to Kenny tacking in line with his Labour coalition partners on the abortion issue rather than with his own mildly anti-abortion party. The European Court of Human Rights offered him a way to do this with the decision it issued in December 2010 asking Ireland to “clarify” the circumstances in which women could have an abortion under the X case.

 Kenny, he thinks, may have calculated that those he describes as the “scoundrels of Fianna Fáil” were now so discredited by their “wallet-stuffing greed” and their financial incompetence that he would face no viable opposition anytime soon. If so, Caldwell says, he was mistaken. In the months since Kenny embarked on the path for abortion legislation, he notes, Fine Gael’s support in the general public dropped like a rock, from 34 percent to about 25. Left for dead as recently as last fall, Fianna Fáil found itself restored this spring to its position as the country’s most popular party. Twenty-five thousand people demonstrated against Fine Gael in front of the legislature—not as impressive as the crowds that came to protest the Iraq war in 2003 or austerity in 2009, but far more impressive than anything the opposing side could muster.

Caldwell now thinks the expectation that Ireland, after a brief political to-do, will settle into a European-style consensus about abortion is probably wrong. Ireland, he suggests, is more likely to resemble the United States where the abortion issue, recklessly addressed at the outset, has done decades’ worth of damage to the political system.

He interviewed Clare Daly for his article, describing her as “an ebullient, forthright, charismatic North Dublin radical who advanced a groundbreaking abortion bill last year. A veteran of Labour and the country’s small Socialist faction, she has yet to find a party she cannot get herself kicked out of for being too left-wing.”

Daly was very honest with him, in a way that suggests that those introducing the crucial abortion legislation are less than honest. She accepts, recognises, that the change that Fine Gael is trying to pass off as a mere tweak is nothing of the sort. “Symbolically it changes everything,” she told him. “And once you’ve legislated one circumstance, well, then, you’re immediately dealing with fatal fetal abnormalities, rape, incest, blah-blah. That’s why they’re all kicking so much. That’s why they’re going mad. That’s why they have the campaign that they have.”

She means the pro-lifers. I say, rather hesitantly, “So the Rónán Mullens of the world—”

“They know!” Daly interrupts. “They’re right!”

Is there no escape from war, famine, pestilence and death?

On By Michael KirkeIn National and International AffairsLeave a comment

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Ten years after the invasion of Iraq by the American led coalition the air is still full of condemnation and recrimination. Much of it is far too simplistic. A piece in today’s Washington Post, combining as it does both heart and head, is much more nuanced than any of the other assessments, for or against, which I have read. This article, by a participant and undoubted victim of the war and its aftermath, reflects the perplexity which must assail anyone trying to unravel the complex tragedy that is Iraq, past and present.

When people ask me, he wrote, “Was the war worth it?,” I am often unsure how to respond. The world is a better place without a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. But poor U.S. post-invasion planning helped unleash sectarian furies that will plague not just Iraq but the broader Middle East for decades. I think a better question is “What should the United States do now?” My answer is that the venture into Iraq must not result in American detachment from the region. American ideals and aims are too noble for isolationism. The United States must learn from its errors and use its unequaled power to positively shape the world, helping to prevent future conflicts rather than sparking them.

Was it worth it to me? I can’t deny that my wife and child are healthy or that there is limitless opportunity for me in the United States. But is that worth losing my friends, family and country? Never.

Is it not true to say that the turmoil of this entire region, stretching from the borders of India and Pakistan to the Mediterranean coast, presents a problem for mankind which is well beyond the limits of what the powers of the rest of the world can either understand or cope with by either war or diplomacy? Leave them to their own devices is the explicit or implicit consensus which now prevails.

Is this a just consensus? As the Syrian conflagration inexorably climbs towards the sum total – and perhaps greater – of human misery and suffering endured by Iraq following the West’s intervention to remove its dictator, can we say “better that way”? We say, “we do not know how to solve their problem. Let us not even think of trying”.

The ingredients of the Syrian conflict bear many similarities to those which prevailed in Iraq. They were not adequately understood before the Iraq intervention took place and the consequences of that lack of understanding made that venture into a truly horrendous misadventure. Now they are better understood and the consequence of our better understanding is moral paralysis and “a plague on both your houses”.

No one can yet dare say how Iraq will turn out. But is there not at least a hope that some foundations have been laid on which an eventual peaceful coexistence may be established – a coexistence held in place by the free choice of a free people and not by a tyranny as heretofore? Furthermore, does it not seem that if the fall of Sadam had not come in the manner in which it did, it would inevitably have come in the way that the fall of the Baathist regime in Syria will surely come – after who knows how much bloodshed? Had this been the fate of Iraq then, with its more clearly defined historic enmities, its body count would have far exceeded that which it suffered when it had an external force holding the the factions at bay in however flawed a manner.

The mystery of the evils with which this region of the world presents us tests us to what appear to be the limits of our imaginative powers. But can we therefore, without guilt, succumb to the “bystander” effect and just walk on by? Or do we, all else failing, make a practical judgment on the principles of justice and take up arms to vindicate those suffering injustice? Can it be that there is no escape from condemnation? Here, surely, is a formula for true tragedy.

Defending marriage and the family

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

The government of the Republic of Ireland currently has a national forum in place to review the constitution of the state. For many this is no more than a trojan horse to allow it to introduce radical legislation which the existing constitution prohibits with its pro-life pro-family and pro-marriage provisions. Submissions to this forum have been asked for and the following is one sent by yours truly. More are needed but the deadline for submissions is tomorrow, Tuesday, 19 March. If you want to defend important provisions of the present constitution, do so in the next 30 hours or so.

The re-definitions of marriage which are being proposed and adopted in some other countries are rendering meaningless the institution as we have known it for millennia.

Firstly, essentially marriage is an institution whose ultimate value to society is the protection and upbringing of children. They will be the losers if the institution is destroyed. It has already been severely damaged by no-fault divorce and it is clear to everyone that by a wide margin children suffer more through divorce than through the effort to sustain troubled marriages.

Secondly, the failure of states to support marriage, and the devaluing of marriage which this has resulted in, has led to widespread single-parenthood. Here again, on balance, children are the victims. This movement, based totally on selfish pursuits, falsely proclaiming itself in the name of equality, is one of the greatest threats to a healthy society which the modern age has seen. Look behind this campaign, denied by some but openly admitted by others (eg in this interview here ) and you will see where it is leading us. This campaign is ultimately going to lead not just to a redefinition of marriage but to the destruction of the institution itself by removing all its capacity to do what it is really meant to do in the first place. Individuals do not need marriage to express their love for each other. Children do need marriage to give each and every one of them the mother and father to which they should be considered to have an inalienable right.

If you have any doubts about the need to defend the definition of marriage as we now know it, look at this descriptive video.

The link for making a submission.

Taking Sinn Fein to task on abortion

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments
Donegal South-West’s Sinn Fein TD – where does he stand on the question of the life of children before birth?

Arthur L. Gallagher posted an interesting piece yesterday. In the light of this one wonders how, west of the “border” in predominantly pro-life Donegal, the good people there have returned two Sinn Fein members to the Irish Republic’s parliament in Dublin? They will soon be asked to vote on legislation which, all signals seem to indicate, will put legal abortion on the Republic’s statute books.

Gallagher reported:
29 women from across Northern Ireland have staged a dramatic protest on the steps of the Northern Ireland Assembly today (Monday 11 March 2013) calling on Sinn Fein to protect unborn babies from abortion. The 29 women handed in a letter to Sinn Fein. A spokeswomen for the group said, “We represent women from all the six counties of Northern Ireland. We are here to tell Sinn Fein’s 29 Assembly members that we want unborn babies and their mothers protected. We don’t want the Marie Stope’s private abortion centre in Northern Ireland. We say to Sinn Fein we will never accept abortion – not in our country and NOT IN OUR NAME.” Sinn Fein are opposing an amendment coming before the Assembly that would make it illegal for private abortion centres – such as Marie Stopes International – to operate in Northern Ireland. The amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill is due to be debated and voted on in the Assembly tomorrow. A “Petition of Concern” to block the amendment is circulating at Stormont, which requires 30 Assembly Members signatures. Director of Precious Life, Bernadette Smyth said, “The attempt to block the amendment is an abuse of the democratic process. Sinn Fein are committing political suicide by supporting Marie Stopes – a private institution which exploits vulnerable women by charging them up to £1900 to kill their unborn babies. Sinn Fein’s support for Marie Stopes and abortion is in direct opposition to the views of the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland who say – “abortion – not in our name!” http://www.preciouslife.com/?va=1&vc=1232

Is this a case of a sad but congenital blindness to a reality they cannot comprehend?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

In the final volume of his masterly trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth, Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, writes of how the replies of Jesus to Pilate in his interrogation “must have seemed like madness to the Roman judge. And yet he could not shake off the mysterious impression left by this man, so different from those he had met before who had resisted Roman domination and fought for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel.”

 

It is difficult not to see similar bewilderment lurking in the hearts and minds of the thousands of media functionaries who were milling around St. Peter’s basilica and the Vatican since that historic day, 11 of February, 2013. In the six or seven weeks since then the world’s media vainly – for the most part – tried to grapple with realities which they were fascinated by but which they simply could not comprehend. Just as Pilate was bewildered by the idea that Christ was a king in the sense that he, Pilate, understood kingship, they were looking at a group of men assembling in Rome to elect the ruler of an entity which they only half understood. Essentially they read it all in terms of purely human politics. As a consequence they missed the entire plot.

 

The New York Times of 11 March gave us what might be a textbook example of how the application of political language takes you only so far in this drama, and how, when you reach a certain point, if you persist with it, it simply leads you into a dead end.

 

Laurie Goodstein and Elisabetta Povoledo began their “analysis” piece for the Times by telling us that the cardinals who would enter the papal conclave on Tuesday of that week would walk into the Sistine Chapel in a single file. That would be something deceptive, for “beneath the orderly display, they were split into competing line-ups and power blocs that will determine which man among them emerges as pope.”

 

Cardinal Angelo Scola of Italy was, for example, described by Goodstein and Povoledo, as “a top contender for pope among some in the conclave.” Marlon Brando famously muttered to Rod Steiger, his older brother in On the Waterfront, “I could’a been a contender”, meaning a contender for a boxing title. This was not a boxing match. This was not a title fight, not even a contest in any meaningful sense of the word. This was a meeting in which over a hundred men who have given their lives to the service of Christ and his Church were going to look among themselves for the one whom they deemed, in their hearts and minds, would most faithfully and effectively lead and sustain that Church in the mission which its founder gave them.

 

Nothing of this understanding, nothing, was evident in the 1,500 or so words penned by Goodstein and Povoledo on that Sunday and filed to the Times. From beginning to end they read the drama – and a papal conclave is high drama, no doubt – unfolding before them as power bloc pitted against power bloc in pursuit of the control of a political and administrative structure serving an end which to them was very ill-understood indeed.

 

“The main divide”, they said, “pits the cardinals who work in the Vatican, the Romans, against the reformers, the cardinals who want the next pope to tackle what they see as the Vatican’s corruption, inefficiency and reluctance to share power and information with bishops from around the world.” What had all that to do with the billion and more ordinary people who want to follow the teaching of Christ, receive his sacraments daily and weekly and be helped to make their way through this world to a promised eternal life? Serving these people is the sole and ultimate object of this institution and the raison d’etre of those men walking into the Sistine Chapel on the morning of 12 March.

 

The faithful of the Catholic Church throughout the world, within hours of the white smoke appearing, were at peace once again. Indeed, as the smoke appeared, the cheers from the thousands in the square told us that they were once again in the place they wanted to be and that they knew that God’s ordained instruments had once again chosen a shepherd in his own mould to care for all their needs.

 

When the secularist world’s reading of the history and the reality of the Catholic Church is not naively political, it is driven by the media’s own very unbalanced and self-created image of the reality of the institution, its problems and its crises in the world today.

 

The next pontiff, Goodstein and Povoledo said, “must unite an increasingly globalized church paralyzed by scandal and mismanagement under the spotlight in a fast-moving media age (my italics). And among the cardinals, they said, there is no obvious single successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who rattled the church by resigning last month at age 85”. Obvious to whom? The short and decisive conclave showed precisely the contrary. The cardinals, after their days of prayerful conversation and reflection walked into the Sistine Chapel with much more unity of intent and purpose than the watching world imagined.

 

But who really thinks the Catholic Church is paralysed? No one who looks at the phenomenal growth of the Church in different parts of the world could say it is paralyzed. It may be challenged to keep up with this; it is being challenged by the decline of the faith in the old world  – a decline brought about primarily by the growth of materialism, indifference and the lure of hedonism and only very marginally by the weakness its members see in each other.

 

Of course the lure of hedonism has infected servants of the Church. Of course there has been scandal, but there has always been scandal. Two thousand years ago followers of Christ were told “How terrible it will be for the world due to its temptations to sin! Temptations to sin are bound to happen, but how terrible it will be for that person who causes someone to sin!” Holier than thou media is one of the phenomena of our time, and while the abandon with which sinners are stoned from the media’s so-called high moral ground today is occasionally halted by exposures like those at the BBC in the Saville affair, the stones keep raining down.

 

The Church, for its part, has never wavered in its teaching on what is and what is not sinful. It knows all too well that it is populated by sinners but it also knows that its God-given task is to help those sinners to repentance and forgiveness in Christ’s name. It forgives repentant sinners but remains constant on what is sinful, despite pressure from many quarters through modern media to move with the spirit of the age and abandon the Way, the Truth and the Life of which it is the mystical incarnation.

 

The Church certainly has to find new ways of more effectively managing the challenges it faces but it is far from paralysed. As for the Church being rattled by Pope Benedict’s abdication, that is about as far from the truth as you could get. The pilgrims, 200,000 of them, who came to his final audience in St. Peter’s Square on 27 February were not rattled – and they represented millions more. Surprised, no doubt; puzzled perhaps, for a short time; but ultimately profoundly grateful for a magnificent example of humility and wisdom which in the end could only be interpreted as coming from one source, his prayer and the grace of him whose vicar he has been.

 

And that is the missing link in all the volumes of deliberations we have been absorbing from the world’s media in the days and weeks since 11 February – as the world in its very limited wisdom tries to work out the “madness” of the Wisdom of Catholic Church.

Perhaps we might hope for some change in all this now following the new Holy Father’s words of encouragement to 5000 journalists on the Saturday following his election?  Pope Francis was nothing if not positive when he offered

“A particularly heart-felt thanks… to those who have been able to observe and present these events in the Church’s history while keeping in mind the most just perspective in which they must be read, that of faith. Historical events almost always require a complex reading that, at times, can also include the dimension of faith.

 “Ecclesial events are certainly not more complicated than political or economic ones. But they have one particularly fundamental characteristic: they answer to a logic that is not mainly that of, so to speak, worldly categories, and this is precisely why it is not easy to interpret and communicate them to a wide and varied audience. In fact, the Church, although it is certainly also a human, historical institution with all that that entails, does not have a political nature but is essentially spiritual: it is the people of God, the holy people of God who walk toward the encounter with Jesus Christ. Only by putting oneself in this perspective can one fully explain how the Catholic Church works.”

  “Christ is the Church’s Shepherd, but His presence in history moves through human freedom. Among these, one is chosen to serve as his Vicar, Successor of the Apostle Peter, but Christ is the centre, the fundamental reference, the heart of the Church! Without Him, neither Peter nor the Church would exist or have a reason for being. As Benedict XVI repeated often, Christ is present and leads His Church. In everything that has happened, the protagonist is, ultimately, the Holy Spirit. He has inspired Benedict XVI’s decision for the good of the Church; He has guided the cardinals in their prayers and in their election. Dear friends, it is important to take due account of this interpretive horizon, this hermeneutic, to bring the heart of the events of these days into focus.”

 Might we hope that those words would be printed out and pinned up over his or her desk by every journalist planning to write authoritatively about the Church in future? Without the perspective given in that message they will continue to write little better than worthless nonsense.

Pro-aborton fifth column strikes again?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

What a strange report by LORNA SIGGINS in today’s Irish Times.

“Expert highlights legislative vacuum faced by obstetricians”, the headline tells us. We wonder what exactly she is highlighting and how revealing her apparently alarming observations might be. All we are told, however, is this:

 A leading US expert on treating high-risk pregnancies has said that the legislative vacuum in which Irish obstetricians have to work is “an enormous problem”.

 Prof Mary E D’Alton of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York said the lack of legal clarity here on circumstances for terminating pregnancies was “very unsatisfactory”.

 Basically that is the end of the story. We are given no further details as to how this “enormous problem” manifests itself. In the rest of the story she seems to be congratulating Ireland on doing such a good job in the field of maternal care.

I would love to see the copy submitted to the news-desk by Ms. Siggins. Perhaps I’m wrong, but my suspicion is that the cabal of pro-abortion subeditors in the Irish Times got to work again to plug their own line for abortion legislation in Ireland. I wonder is Professor D’Alton (above) a willing or unwilling instrument in their campaign?

Is this what they call free speech?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

In response to Mickey Harte’s expression of his views on the current Northern Ireland abortion debate, the Belfast Telegraph reports that South Belfast MLA Anna Lo issued a message urging Mr Harte to stick to the day job.

“He has expertise in GAA and I have a lot of respect for him. But really I think he should keep to his own field,” she said. “He should stick to GAA.”
Shameless!

Folly and deceit in hot pursuit of abortion on demand

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

The folly and the duplicity behind the drive of the Irish pro-abortion machine is well and truly exposed in an article by a lawyer and psychiatrist in today’s Irish Times, so much so that one just wants to cry out to them, “why don’t you just come clean and tell us that your demand for legislation to allow abortion on the grounds of threatened suicide is because this is the surest way to get abortion on demand.” This is what is very clear from Enda Hayden’s article and if the other Enda (Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister) cannot see the trap he is being walked into by his socialist deputy, Eamon Gilmore, then he is either very stupid or pretending to be stupid.

Hayden states, after reviewing all the professional expertise on the matter, that “even following comprehensive assessment and reassessment by highly experienced and competent psychiatrists, it is not possible to confirm, on balance of probabilities, that threats of suicide due to an unwanted pregnancy will lead to completed suicide. Any perceived real and substantial threat to the life of the pregnant mother, by suicide, is not a permanent state, but rather a crisis that will resolve and is amenable to intervention.”

Furthermore, an added fallacious element in the pro-abortionists campaign is expose by Hayden when he observes that the clinical realities he explores in his article do not lend themselves to restrictions imposed by any statute providing for threat of suicide as a ground for abortion. For example, he points out, if threat of suicide in pregnancy were to be accepted as posing a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother, why should any time limit apply in respect of abortion if the spirit of such statutory provision is to save the life of the mother?

“If a time limit were to be imposed on provision of abortion in such circumstances, how would this accord due recognition to the time required for comprehensive multifactorial assessment including assessment of response to treatment interventions? Should statutory provision for assessment of response to treatment be dispensed with in order to expedite and simplify matters?

“Assuming statutory provision for a second opinion by a suitably qualified professional in respect of the suicidality assessment process, what implications might this have for compliance with time limits, assuming such were to be provided for by statute? In the event of a “psychiatric emergency”, would the opinion of just one medical practitioner that abortion is immediately necessary to save the life of the mother suffice in order to procure an abortion?

“What is the legal capacity of a pregnant mother to provide informed consent to an abortion in situations where she is emotionally overwhelmed to the extent that her judgment is impaired, and how is this addressed and over what time period? This is not a theoretical question but a common clinical reality for psychiatrists treating patients with a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder, a diagnosis particularly associated with risk of crises during pregnancy. The absence of informed consent is fertile ground for litigation.”

All of which goes to place a huge question-mark over the work of the so-called “expert” group on which the Irish State is now basing its legislation. That group, if it had been expert in any way, would have analysed all these things and would have questioned the entirely spurious Irish Supreme Court judgement on the “X” case which set this suicide threat up as an unquestioned medical principle – without any medical evidence to back it up.

But the truth is – and this would probably be exposed if any media organisation interested in the truth took the trouble to query its deliberations under freedom of information legislation – that this expert group was a tool of a government and its Health Service Executive which wanted, by hook or by crook, to get legislation for abortion on demand on Ireland’s statute books, ignoring its own formal terms of reference to ensure that it gave its masters the results they wanted.