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.

“The most abused Faith on earth”

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith Matters1 Comment

One of Irish television leading public square venues, The Frontline, recently took up the question of whether or not Irish faith communities were under attack from an aggressive secularism. It was, to say the least, a somewhat inconclusive debate. It might have been much better had it been asked to confront Michael Coren, whose latest book, Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity has just been published.  

Coren, English born Canadian journalist and broadcaster, of Jewish antecedents, convert to Catholicism (twice), has just been interviewed by Charles Lewis in the National Post and spells out his view very clearly. In the West generally, he believes, Christians are now

“marginalized, they’re mocked, they’re told their views don’t belong, they’re told to keep their views out of the public square and keep their religion at home. And where it can be quite sinister is at universities where Christian students are told that their ideas are stupid. I’ve even seen it with my children who are in university. Somehow Christianity is not a valid area of thought any longer. You can bring your socialism, your feminism, your homosexuality, your anti-Zionism into the class but if you bring your Christianity that’s not to be taken seriously.”

No Christian carrying a banner for their Faith in the cultural mainstream of the West today would have any difficulty producing evidence to uphold every one of these assertions.  Any Catholic in Ireland today, seriously faithful to the teaching authority of that Church knows full well that they are on the frontline of a battle with a very militant force opposing them on all and more of the issues listed by Coren.

Coren calls Christianity the most abused faith on Earth. “I believe the evidence is overwhelming,” he writes.

 “I believe… that Christianity is the main, central, most common, and most thoroughly and purposefully marginalized, obscured, and publicly and privately mis-represented belief system in the final decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first century.” He rails that the same intellectual class that so quickly condemns anything Christian will do cartwheels to explain away Islamic terrorism.

Lewis put it to Coren in his interview that there is a lot about Christianity that can seem unreal: the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Jesus. Is it any surprise that people sometimes have trouble taking it seriously? To this Coren replies that these are really side-shows in the mocking game and that what they are really mocked for are the moral consequences of their beliefs: that life begins at conception and ends at natural death, that abortion is wrong, that promiscuity is wrong. “We live in a culture where no one wants to hear the word ‘no’” he says.

He lays bare the culture of intolerance facing orthodox Christianity:

“Intelligent people will give other ideologies and other religions a great deal of room to try to understand. When it comes to Christianity they seem to assume that any sense of fairness or sympathy should be thrown out the window. They will say things that are blatantly stupid.

“The idea that because a tiny number of Catholic priests acted in an appalling manner should jaundice everything said by the Roman Catholic Church is also so illogical. You might as well say that no comment by a Canadian should ever be taken seriously because there are some serial killers in Canada.”

On the issue of orthodox Christians’ position on homosexual acts he says they are being told our view on homosexuality is somehow wrong and called homophobic. “They’re going to be called homophobic whatever they do. I think the Catholic Church has spent too much time worrying about the reaction it might get rather than reacting itself.

“If someone calls me a homophobe because I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, then I would rejoice in that. But frankly, with gay friends, I try to avoid the subject. They know I am opposed to gay marriage and they also know I’m fond of them as people and would defend them against personal attack. But let me be clear, anyone who hates gay people is a moral criminal.”

 In the book Coren defends, but also contextualizes, the fact that the abortion question has such a high profile for Christians in the culture wars. In the first place it is because they feel intensely that they’re part of an institution given by God. This institution upholds the sacredness of all human life. Because of that “they feel it more when the most vulnerable are destroyed. And they feel it more intensely than other people. I guess we are obsessed because it is such a tragedy. And if we dare to mention it, the world tells us to be quiet.”

In his book Coren takes on Dan Brown’s ludicrous but astonishingly popular The Da Vinci Code. Why, his interviewer asks, given that by now Brown’s pot-boiler has become somewhat passé?

“Well,” he says, “it has influenced millions of people. They’ve been led by the book to read other books that oppose Christianity. Brown quotes real people and he makes a lot of it seem like non-fiction. I thought it was worth taking on again.” Above all he wanted to make sure that what is in The Da Vinci Code is shown again to be false.

So, the next time Radio Telefis Eireann, the BBC or any other broadcaster, takes up the issue of whether or not militant secularism is a reality, perhaps they should get an airline ticket for Michael Coren and bring him on to give us his formidable point of view.

Let this unseemly vendetta end now

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith Matters1 Comment

Let this unseemly vendetta end now. Not our sense of justice, but perhaps our sense of prudence – and certainly our utter frustration – inclines one to say that Cardinal Brady should resign and let the shame for forcing that act on a good and just man fall on the heads of his relentless persecutors.

He should not resign because he is guilty of any serious dereliction of duty but because the ravaging wolves pursuing him have tasted his blood and will not stop until they have torn him to pieces and with him much of what he loves.

He did what he thought was his best at the time. Objectively it wasn’t good enough but there is no evidence that his intentions were anything but good. At worst they were the faltering efforts of a young priest who had made a heroic decision to give his life to the service of God, God’s Church and souls.

Every day this man stands at the foot of the altar and confesses his and – on our behalf – our sins, saying “through my fault, through my fault, through my own most grevious fault”. We have absolutely no reason to doubt his sincerity in uttering those words. What more do they want?

The heroism implicit in his vocation and the sincerity of his intentions, of course, cuts no ice with the motley gang pursuing him, any number of whom have been implicated in far more compromising activities than the Cardinal – 3000 murders in Northern Ireland, hobnobbing with one of the 20th century’s most monstrous regimes scrounging for funds for their own socialist political agenda, and who knows what else. It is enough to make one sick.

St. Peter’s weakness was of a much more devastating kind than any shown by Fr. Brady in and around 1975. Yet Christ did not ask for Peter’s resignation from the office he had given him.

If Cardinal Brady chooses to go now there will be no shame in that for him but history will judge otherwise on those who have pursued him to this end.

Their ulterior motives, their not very hidden agenda of the denigration of the Catholic Church, is clear to many now and will be clearer when history is written. It is not very far removed from the futile agenda of Diocletian et al in the 4th century. What hope is there of a Constantine emerging in our political world today to put an end to this different, but in truth no less brutal persecution? Not much just now.

How do these people get away with it?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

There is a very interesting post in MercatorNet’s Demography is Destiny blog again today. It focuses on a generally uncritical review in The Guardian of a new book by that famous doomsayer from the Sixties, Paul Ehrlich.

Ehrlich was described by many as alarmist in the 1970s but was taken seriously by at least as many more. He now says most of his predictions have proved correct…‘Most of the predictions [in Population Bomb] have proved correct’ The Guardian reports.

Really?  The Daily Telegraph calls that particular bluff in its look at some of his predictions. There, on April 26,Tom Chivers gives us a taste of their accuracy:

“1) “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he said. He predicted four billion deaths, including 65 million Americans.

What actually happened: Since Ehrlich wrote, the population has more than doubled to seven billion – but the amount of food per head has gone up by more than 25 per cent. Of course there are famines, but the death rate has gone down. I don’t think a significant number of Americans have starved.

2) “The train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion.” India was doomed, and should be left to die in a “triage” system that would concentrate resources on those places that can be saved.

What actually happened: The Green Revolution, a series of technological and agrarian advances led by a man called Norman Borlaug, transformed our ability to produce food. These techniques were introduced to India by one Prof Monkombu Swaminathan. “They [Ehrlich, and Paul and William Paddock, authors of Famine: 1975!] said Indians, and others, were like sheep going to the slaughterhouse. They’ll all die,” Swaminathan told Gardner in an interview. But thanks to Borlaug, Swaminathan, and human ingenuity, India is now one of the few countries with a booming economy, and is a net exporter, rather than recipient, of food aid. But if Ehrlich’s and the Paddocks’ advice had been followed, there could have been tens of millions of deaths, says Swaminathan.

3) “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

What actually happened: I’m not hungry. I just ate. Are you hungry? Were you hungry in 2000, especially? Does England exist?”

What is wrong with us? How do these people get away with it?

A truly draconian law in the offing

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith MattersLeave a comment
Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film on the inviolable seal of Confession, “I Confess”.

At the very heart of freedom is freedom of religion – and at the very heart of religious freedom is freedom of conscience.

The Irish Government has just published a piece of draft legislation which places a time bomb in this very heart, and if the legislation is enacted it will blow a people’s freedom to smithereens.

Is that first assertion too much? No. Every freedom which has been won for mankind, by mankind, over millennia of our history shows that where freedom was truly won it was won essentially in the context of a freedom of religion and the right to freedom and integrity of personal conscience. Freedoms won by forces hostile to religion – the freedoms won by the French Revolution, the freedoms won by the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution – have invariably ended in tyranny and have never succeeded in establishing authentic freedom until they have recognised the need for freedom of religion and conscience.

In contrast with the tyrannies which emanated from those struggles for freedom you have the greatest freedom of all, that won by Christians through centuries of persecution by the slave-owning and humanly deluded powers of the ancient world. In more modern times you have the great freedom won by the enslaved races of the 18th and 19th centuries, a struggle driven above all by a Christian consciousness of injustice. Accepted, history is more nuanced than this, but nevertheless the core truth is undeniable. Without recognition of the inviolability of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, the pursuit of freedom will be fatally flawed and will promise only tyranny.

The Irish government, seeking to deal with the problem of protecting children from abuse by adults, has now gone down this very path. In its proposed legislation it not only ignores freedom of religion and conscience but directly denies it head-on. It is promising to penalise and imprison any Catholic priest who does not report to the relevant secular authorities a sinful act for which a penitent sinner seeks the forgiveness of God as promised to him, as he believes, by the teaching of Jesus Christ. This is not stated explicitly in the draft but will be the inevitable outcome if the legislation is enacted.

Ominously the Irish Times reports today, “The Department of Justice was unable to confirm last night whether priests will be legally obliged to report serious offences against children to gardaí (police) that are disclosed during Confession.” That is a lame and disingenuous kicking to touch. This issue has been in focus for several months now and a number of government ministers have gone on record saying that the so-called sacred seal of confession no longer stands as a legal entity. Justice Minister Alan Shatter confirmed the mandatory reporting requirement would apply to priests hearing confession. Some priests have already proclaimed their defiance in defence of the freedom of conscience of those who come to them as penitents.

In this proposed legislation the State has effectively invaded a sacred realm of the religion of Christians and has countermanded that power which Christian believers understand to have been given by Christ when he said, “whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain they are retained.”  What the State does not recognise in this whole matter is that while the same act may be both a sin and a crime, these two things have to be resolved in separate ways and in separate fora. A Catholic person accused, convicted and condemned to death for murder, innocent or not, may go to Confession before his execution. The priest who hears that confession might, by revealing all he had been told by the penitent, redeem that person’s reputation. Even to achieve that justice, he may not do so. The two realms are absolutely separate and the priest’s silence about what was confessed must also be absolute.

By invading this realm of conscience in this way the Irish State has now taken away the freedom of a sinner to get the absolution promised by God because it has radically changed the terms and conditions for that absolution – that is, the secrecy given to the act of confession by the wisdom and teaching of the Catholic Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as that sinner’s religious faith leads him to believe.

Let there be no doubt about it. This is a draconian law, posturing as a necessary law under the shadow of the crimes of child abuse with which Irish society, among others, has been plagued for over 40 or 50 years. It is also a bad law, penally hostile to the practice of the religious faith of the majority of the citizens of Ireland. The fact that a draconian executive is not running the country – although some might dispute that – is irrelevant. For nearly 300 years the Roman Empire had penal laws against Christians in place. For most of that time Christians were free to practice their religion but periodically the executive power of the time deemed that they were bad citizens by practising their faith and moved murderously against them. The pattern has been repeated many times throughout history whenever and wherever laws of this type came into being. Ireland beware.

Hiding from the truth

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

MercatorNet.com’s blog, Conjugality, is pro-marriage. It exists because, in its effect, the drive to redefine marriage to enable it to encompass civil unions between same-sex couples will destroy marriage. It will simply drain it of the meaning it has in nature itself.  This argument is simply not being faced up to. The tactic of the opponents of a piece of legislation being processed in North Carolina in the United States in the next couple of weeks – and the media generally in its opposition to those who defend the nature of marriage – is to paint them into an anti-gay box and throw as much mud at them as they can. They are ignoring the need to maintain truth in language itself – indeed this is but another wound they are inflicting on human kind.

Let us leave aside the question of the rights or wrongs of the use and abuse of sexuality and simply work this controversey out in the context of all the things which the institution of marriage has been about since the first conjugal union of man and woman took place, of what its essence is. Perhaps then we may see some light in the suffocating darkness created by these multiple smoke screens which surround us.

On Tuesday, April 24, Frances Kelly asked in her Home Griddle blog, “Why does media call pro-gender measure ‘anti-gay’?” This was all in the context of media treatment of the legislation being processed in North Carolina.

“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.”  Amendment 1, North Carolina. Kelly wrote:

When it votes on Amendment One in two weeks, North Carolina will decide whether or not to uphold gender integration in marriage.  This pro-gender bill would ensure gender-diversity in families.  Rather than intentionally depriving children of either their mother or father, this measure would ensure that children have both.

However, opponents call this pro-gender language “anti-gay.”  For example, the Washington Post’s Amy Gardner called Amendment 1 “one of the toughest anti-gay measures in the country.”

Why is pro-gender language called anti-gay?

Isn’t it more accurate to consider pro-gay measures as anti-gender?

The answer to that question is, “Yes, of course it it.” The answer to the former? Because smoke screens hide us from the truth.

Bishop threatened with prosecution for preaching Catholic doctrine

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment
Meeting of the International Federation of Catholic Doctors Associations

While gay and lesbian groups try to prosecute a Spanish bishop after he gave a sermon repeating the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexual behaviour,  and his subsequent endorsement of psychological treatment to help people to deal with same-sex attraction, an international group of Catholic doctors has come out in his support.

Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla of Alcala de Henares has been attacked in the liberal press after remarks made in a Good Friday sermon in which he condemned sexual practices he believes to be harmful – in line with Catholic moral teaching.

The International Federation of Catholic Doctors Associations (F.I.A.M.C.) in an April 17 statement (reported in CBCP News) voiced support for the bishop and defended his criticism of the destructive behaviours which he described within the local gay community.  The federation supported his remarks as a valid insight.

“Catholic doctors”, the statement said, “profoundly respect persons with homosexual traits,” but “do not support the practice of homosexuality.”

The bishop’s address provided a wide-ranging  critique of sexual behaviour in modern society and he lamented how some with same-sex attraction are encouraged to  “corrupt and prostitute themselves or go to gay night clubs” in order to “validate” their struggle.

The Federation pointed out the broader issues addressed by the bishop – such as the scourge of sex trafficking in Europe and controversial sex-education programs aimed at young children.

“Catholic doctors,” the statement said, “profoundly lament the failure of modern states and of public international institution to combat ‘sexual tourism,’ involving adults or children,”

They also joined the bishop in denouncing “the contents of some textbooks,” especially those used in Spain’s recently axed Education for Citizenry course, which encouraged children “to ‘explore’ all areas of sexuality.”

“We are right in every way to consider these lessons perverse,” the doctors said, “And Bishop Reig is right in every way to condemn these and other abuses of the human being.”

Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Plà’s Good Friday sermon was on “the death of the soul as a result of sin.”

Referring to various kinds of sinful behavior, including adultery, theft, and failure to pay wages to workers, Reig Plà added homosexual behavior to the list as well. With regard to each example of sin, the bishop spoke of the act itself, and the resulting destruction of the soul.

After expressions of outrage regarding the bishop’s statement, which reflects the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church on sexual deviance, Reig Plà gave an interview to the Internet news service Religion en Libertad (Religion in Liberty), in which he explained his statement in more detail, and added that homosexual tendencies can be cured through therapy.

In contemporary society, we are confronted with “a program of calculated ‘deconstruction’ that is tolerated in every setting (in education from the earliest stages of childhood, in part of the media, in work and leisure, etc.) which additionally includes the promotion and protection of a great number of evil laws and some powerful lobbying groups that determine what is politically correct, and therefore, socially acceptable,” said the bishop.

“Based on these factors, many children, adolescents, and adults are increasingly invited to question their sexual identity, and eventually they are urged to ‘verify and prove’ their ‘sexual preferences’, and some fall into the trap,” he added.

“Those of us priests who know about the private lives of people, listening to and helping those faithful who request it, know that the consequences for many people are suffering and destruction, colloquially speaking a ‘hell’ in their lives.”  You will find a fuller report on the controversy on LfeSiteNews.

A need for more joined-up-thinking from Martin Sheen

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Martin Sheen begs a lot of questions in his recent statements explaining his support for changes to marriage legislation to allow gay people to call their unions marriage. Apart from dubious definitions of “the Church” he professes allegiance to and its relationship with God, there is far too much vagueness in his concept of conscience to enable us to take seriously what he is trying to say to us. Where did he get his conscience, we would like to ask?

But the main point he seems to miss about the marriage issue is that it is fundamentally a political one, one about how we organise our society in the interests of the common good. Above all it is about what kind of social environment we are creating for the children who will be procreated through the union of men and women who join together in nature’s own natural bond – marriage.

Before Martin says anything else on this subject it might be very helpful for us all if he were to have a look at the book just produced by Michael Cook and MercatorNet, “Same-Sex Marriage: Dangers, Difficulties, Deceptions”. This book, full of incisive observations and powerful arguments, will make any reasonable person think twice about opening the Pandora’s Box of miseries which same sex marriage is going to inflict on society. For many people this question is tied up with conscience and religious belief, but before that it has an awful lot to do with rational thinking and common sense.

Fair enough, Sheen was asked, as LifeSiteNews reports, about the apparent conflict between his Catholic identity and his stance on marriage by the Wilshire & Washington blog, following his performance in a play that raised $2 million for a gay rights lobby group. Sheen played the role of one of the plaintiffs in the play “8,” a dramatic rendition of the Proposition 8 trials written by Dustin Lance Black, who also wrote the screenplay for the 2008 gay advocacy movie, Milk.

“My religion’s highest standard is conscience. Nothing can get between your conscience and God, not even the Church.” Sheen said, as quoted by the blog. How, we wonder again, does he think God chose to help him form that delicate flower, conscience?

Although known to support generally liberal views – he was a strong advocate for Barack Obama’s presidential run – Sheen has voiced opposition in the past to some leftist cultural positions, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Just last year, he spoke of his opposition to abortion, revealing that his wife was nearly killed by abortion after she was conceived in rape and describing how he supported unplanned pregnancies in his own family.

Martin Sheen’s moral judgement hits the nail on the head on some very important issues. However, one wonders about the logic and joined-up-thinking behind his political judgement. A bit more homework might be in order and then he might reach a different conclusion on this vexed issues.

(This article was posted to MercatorNet’s Conjugality blog earlier today)

The enemy within

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments

Throughout the thirties, Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, supported the appeasement of Hitler, like a good number of other prominent people in Britain. Furthermore, however, Rothermere was an admirer of Hitler and after the Munich Pact, the high watermark of appeasement  in 1938, he sent a telegram to the Fuhrer which is shocking to read now.

MY DEAR FUHRER EVERYONE IN ENGLAND IS PROFOUNDLY MOVED BY THE BLOODLESS SOLUTION OF THE CZECHOSLOVAKIAN PROBLEM STOP PEOPLE NOT SO MUCH CONCERNED WITH TERRITORIAL READJUSTMENT AS WITH DREAD OF ANOTHER WAR WITH ITS ACCOMPANYING BLOODBATH STOP FREDERICK THE GREAT WAS A GREAT POPULAR FIGURE IN ENGLAND MAY NOT ADOLF THE GREAT BECOME AN EQUALLY POPULAR FIGURE STOP I SALUTE YOUR EXCELLENCYS STAR WHICH RISES HIGHER AND HIGHER.

By September 4, 1939, all had changed and Rothermere’s Daily Mail proclaimed “We now fight against the blackest tyranny that has ever held men in bondage.” But it was too late. The appeasers had landed the world into the second of the twentieth century’s  mega-bloodbaths.

Hindsight is one of the more facile and useless of man’s natural gifts. Foresight is one of the most useful,  but also one of the most difficult to attain. A great many people claim it but History is a ruthless agent when it comes to sorting out the sheep from the goats.

Just now there seems to be a small publishing industry developing around those who are prophesying a dire future for western civilization – and the future of its number one protecting power , the United States of America.

Among recent books looking at our future prospects are The World America Made, by Robert Kagan,  Eclipse: Living In The Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, by Arvind Subramanian, After America: Get Ready For Armageddon, by Mark Steyn, and Becoming China’s Bitch and Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now, by Peter D Kiernan.

These were all usefully reviewed by Gideon Rachman in The Financial Times last month. Add to that the latest by Patrick Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? This was reviewed in the current issue of The American Spectator by Matthew Kenefick,  a Church historian and a Research Fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute.

Buchanan does not assert that the country will not survive, Kennefick tells us, but rather argues that it will no longer be the country that the Founding Fathers envisioned.

If the United States does not alter its current trajectory, Kennefick hopes that the book will survive to be read centuries from now by some future Gibbon as a prophetic cri de coeur unhappily ignored in its time.

“Perhaps”, he speculates, “ that writer will ask how a republic blessed with a continent of great natural resources, a Constitution unique in human history, and a populace blessed with the Christian faith could have committed suicide. However, Buchanan reminds us: ‘Demography is Destiny.’ In the United States since 1973 more than 50 million future citizens have been aborted, the contraceptive mentality has brought the middle-class population below replacement level for the first time in our history, the top money-making entertainment industry is Internet pornography, and the easing of divorce laws has encouraged adultery and split up families with devastating impact on millions of children. Now, in perhaps the final step, traditional marriage between one man and one woman is gradually becoming merely one more option.

“The number one health problem in our country in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Depression is not hunger, but obesity. The real question is whether America is worth saving. One thing for sure, it is no longer ‘Exceptional.’ Consider what is left of Europe for a sobering view of our future. The only hope for our country is a moral and spiritual revival. Are we up for the challenge? The next decade should give us the answer.

“That’s why ultimately we should look in the mirror for the cause of our decline. In the immortal words of Pogo: ‘We have met the enemy and he is us.’”

But if Pogo’s problem was the physical pollution of the environment this is as noting as compared with the pollution of our very spirit – and the enemy here is still ourselves and our reluctance to face the truth about ourselves.

All these books have a different take on the predicament of the West after the first decade of the 21st century. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic, but they all ask us to wake up. They all recognise that something is broken and needs to be fixed. The appeasing instinct of Lord Rothemere, if we indulge in it, will be as lethal to us now as it was then. Sleeping it all off in the interests of a quiet life is not an option. The time-bombs which Buchanan lists are already ticking away and unless they are defused soon their destructive force will end it all for us – perhaps this time not with a bang, but with a whimper. Indeed time-bomb is the wrong metaphor. The metaphor for all this in our age is an all-consuming bacterium invading our bodies and our souls. Quick, where are the anti-biotics?

Helping clear the air about Rick Santorum and Opus Dei

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Currently Rick Santorum, US presidential hopeful in the race for the GOP nomination, seems to be having much more attention paid to his religious views than to his political views. Some are presenting him as a dangerous regressive who wants to abolish the whole principle of the separation of Church and State in the US constitution. Whether he is or is not is a debatable subject in its own right.

A side-show of that debate, however, is the question of the candidate’s relationship with the Catholic organisation, Opus Dei. That issue was usefulelly explored on US radio station NPR this week. Here are two clips from that broadcast which throw some clearer light on that topic than you are likely to find in the New York Times, the Washington Post – and certainly clearer than you will find in the general blogosphere. The first is Opus Dei member, John Coverdale, putting the record straight. The second is John Allen, author of a book on Opus Dei and religious affairs journalist, giving an outsiders common sense overview of the issue.