Category: Culture Matters

A Song Which Every Age Needs To Sing

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters4 Comments

Germaine Greer, for whom I’ve always had a soft spot, maybe a misguided one, once did a television programme on the Psalms. It was a slaughterhouse of a programme. I can’t remember her liking them for anything – neither their poetry, their power, their antiquity nor their mystery. They were evidence for her of man’s creation of a terrible God.

Her reading of the Psalms saw nothing in them other than weapons used by men to wield a terrible power over their fellowmen.  What a pity. But then if you reject God and substitute him with your own fantasy, what have you left? You lose all sense of the unfathomable mystery of his goodness, mercy and fearsome power. You fail utterly to see that the fearsomeness of God is a radically different thing from the fearsomeness of man. Inevitably you end up concentrating on power as a terrible and terrifying thing, conjuring up all the images and memories of the deeds of any or all of the monstrous regiment of human beings who have been corrupted by too much power down through history.

But read God as he is, as the divinity that we can only comprehend as “through a glass darkly”, and our whole reading of the psalms becomes a totally different experience.

Take just the second song of the Psalter as an example, one singled out for special opprobrium by Ms. Greer. Read it as a mythological text and it will certainly confound you. At best it will be a text depicting an epic tribal struggle between ancient peoples. At its worst it will be a call to arms dangerously akin to a contemporary jihad.  But read it as the Word of God, as the Word revealed to us in the total context of Sacred Scripture and Tradition and you have a text which speaks to all ages and speaks overwhelmingly of God as the loving Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name. It certainly reveals an all-powerful God to us. But with power to what end? It reveals a God who has the power to conquer the world – as in “the world, the flesh and the devil” – and power above all to make us sons of God, heirs to the kingdom of heaven. It is a song which every age needs to sing, for in every age – and in our own par excellence – there is the temptation that we are losing that battle.

The Church’s chosen antiphon opening the recitation of this psalm sets the tone of confidence which pervades it: His kingdom is a kingdom of all ages, and all kings shall serve and obey him. The opening line then asks a question which never ceases to be relevant. Why this tumult among nations, among peoples this useless murmuring?  This is followed by the familiar spectacle of folly we see around us every day: They arise, the kings of the earth, princes plot against the Lord and his Anointed.

 

Then comes the harder bit, the bit that gave Germaine so much trouble, the call to action. “Come, let us break their fetters, come let us cast off their yoke”.  He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord is laughing them to scorn. Then he will speak in his anger, his rage will strike them with terror. “It is I who have set up my king on Zion, my holy mountain”.  But what Germaine misses is that this is more than a text of its time, written in history and in the spirit of its time. It is that but it is more than that. It is a text for all time, about all time, and with a meaning that utterly transcends the spirit of its time, the spirit of monarchic conflict between ancient tribes in the Middle East. It is a text about the Messiah, the Saviour of the human race, coming to effect the adoption of all members of that race as children of his Father, God. I will announce the decree of the Lord: the Lord said to me: “You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day. Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations, put the ends of the earth in your possession. With a rod of iron you will break them, shatter them like a potter’s jar”. In truth we break ourselves when we indulge ourselves in all this useless murmuring and plot against the Lord and his Anointed. What, indeed, is all this talk about a “broken society” in modern Ireland, Britain and America, but a fulfillment of these ancient prophesies?

St. Josemaría Escrivá reads this Psalm as a profound expression of God’s paternity, God’s intervention in human history to save us from ourselves. “The kindness of God our Father has given us his Son for a king. When he threatens he becomes tender, when he says he is angry he gives us his love. You are my son: this is addressed to Christ — and to you and me if we decide to become another Christ, Christ himself. Words cannot go so far as the heart, which is moved by God’s goodness. He says to us: You are my son. Not a stranger, not a well‑treated servant, not a friend — that would be a lot already. A son! He gives us free access to treat him as sons, with a son’s piety and I would even say with the boldness and daring of a son whose Father cannot deny him anything.” (Christ Is Passing By, 185)

 

The psalm ends with a warning. If it is a warning which seems to contain a threat, it is one which we must again read in the context of all of Revelation and the history of our Redemption. Now, O kings, understand, take warning, rulers of the earth; Serve the Lord with awe and trembling, pay him with your homage. Lest he be angry and you perish; for suddenly his anger will blaze. Christ did make a whip of cords and did throw the traders out of the temple. But when those traders then turned on him later he went like a lamb to his death. Here is a mystery which we can only be in awe of but which the last line of the psalm gives us the key to: Blessed are they who put their trust in God. Without that trust we will remain in the muddle in which we found Germaine Greer when she attempted to interpret this great Messianic psalm without the help of its Author.

Calling All Grumbletonians

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Are you a “grumbletonian”? The word – if you can call it that – looks new but is in fact at least 200 years old. You can check it out in Francis Grose’s 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. It describes, obviously enough, a person who is constantly dissatisfied with life and everything else. We would all rather not be described as such but in the present climate, national or international, it is hard not to succumb to grumbletonianism.

But the trouble with this condition is that it produces a severe partial blindness – we see only the bad and the ugly and miss out on the good. Our current preoccupation with the Great Recession and the political turmoil it has brought in its wake has infected too many of us with this virus. For example, if we were asked to give a summary of the economic developments in the world over the past five or six years what would we come up with? Or if asked to compile the top ten headlines of world news over the same period what would the list look like? It would be replete with economic chaos stories, power-shifts deemed to be of an ominous kind, debt and dropping standards of living. Certainly, there would seem to be very little to cheer about.

But in fact there is a great deal to cheer about. The dramatic changes of the past few years have not all been bad. Indeed, perhaps, the dominant and potentially more permanent change has been very good news indeed. Two fellows of the Brookings Institution in Washington, Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, in a recent article in the Financial Times, have drawn our attention to one very good piece of news. In the years between 2005 and 2010 more people have been lifted out of poverty than has ever been done before in the history of the world, over such a short period.

Poverty has been defined by the United Nations and the World Bank as the condition of those people who are living on less than $1.25 a day. In 2005 that left a total of 1.37 billion people across the world below the poverty line – about one third of them in China and about 208 million in India. The World Bank has not updated its figures since then but the Brookings Institution has now produced a report which updates the picture and the change is, to put it mildly, very encouraging.

Their estimate is that between 2005 and 2010, nearly half a billion people escaped extreme hardship, as the total number of the world’s poor fell to 878 million people. “Never before in history”, Chandry and Gertz maintain, “have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short period. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals established the target of halving the rate of global poverty between 1990 and 2015; this was probably achieved by 2008, some seven years ahead of schedule. Moreover, using forecasts of per capita consumption growth, we predict that by 2015, fewer than 600 million people will remain poor. At that point, the 1990 poverty rate will have been halved and then halved again.”

Now, should we not call that progress?

This decline in poverty is universal. It is happening in all the world’s regions and most of its countries, though at varying speeds. The emerging markets of Asia are recording the greatest successes; the two regional giants, China and India, are likely to account for three-quarters of the global reduction between 2005 and 2015. Over this period, Asia’s share of the world’s poor is anticipated to fall from two-thirds to one-third, while Africa’s share is expected to rise to nearly 60 percent. Yet Africa, too, is making advances; they estimate that in 2008 its poverty rate dropped below the 50 percent mark for the first time. By 2015, African poverty is projected to fall below 40 percent, a feat China did not achieve until the mid-1990s.

“These findings are likely to surprise many, but they shouldn’t,” they conclude. “We know that growth lies at the heart of poverty reduction. As the growth of developing countries took off in the new millennium, epitomized by the rise of emerging markets, a massive drop in poverty was only to be expected.

“With few exceptions, however, those who care about global development have been slow to catch on to this story. We hear far more about the 64 million people held back in poverty because of the Great Recession than we do about the hundreds of millions who escaped impoverishment over the past six years. While there is good reason to focus public attention on the need to support those still stuck below the poverty line, there is also reason to celebrate successes and to ensure that policy debates are grounded in reality.”

If all this is a by-product – in part anyway – of emerging economies unsettling the global status quo, and consequent power-shifts, perhaps we should be happy to set aside our silly and self-centred worries about loss of hegemony and start cheering again. So, let us all ease up on the grumbling. There is some really good news out there .

Right To Be Born Is Centre-stage in Ireland Again

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

The following post appeared on www.MercatorNet.com before Christmas.

The issue of the right to life of the unborn child became centre-stage in Ireland again in December with a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights. The court ruled on a case brought before it alleging the denial of human rights to three women who were unable to have abortions in Ireland because of its constitutional ban on the procedure. The rulings immediately set off a fire-storm of differing interpretations on the ruling and whether or not it obliges the Irish State to abandon its prohibition on abortion. Clearly the Pro-life activists and those wishing to see abortion available in Ireland were lining up for another all-out battle on the issue.

The Strasbourg-based court, which is separate from the EU, adjudicates on human rights issues among all 47 member states of the Council of Europe.

The identities of the women involved are confidential. They have only been known to the public as A, B and C. Two are Irish and one is a Lithuanian who was living in Ireland. After they failed to get an abortion in Ireland they travelled to the Britain for the procedure. The pro abortion campaign then took up their case and processed it through the Irish courts – but to no avail. Their last port of call was the ECHR which has now given its judgement.

They include a woman who received chemotherapy for cancer; a woman who ran the risk of an ectopic pregnancy; and a woman whose children were placed in care as she was unable to cope. Although the court has only found in favour of the first woman, the headlines are proclaiming that the ruling has found that Ireland has failed to properly guarantee the constitutional right to abortion to which a woman is entitled when her life is at risk.

This distinction harks back to an Irish Supreme Court ruling in the 1990s when the Irish Constitution’s prohibition on abortion was overruled by that court in the case of a young girl who had been statutorily raped and became pregnant. This was know as the “X” case, since the girl could not be named. The court, on the basis of an opinion – which many found medically questionable – that the girl was in danger of committing suicide, declared that her right to life took precedence over the life of the unborn child. A miscarriage ended that tragic story but the Court’s ruling left Ireland’s legal position on abortion in very disputed territory. The campaign behind the case of these women was designed to bring all this to a head and open up the possibility for women to have abortions in Ireland.

In this case the Irish Government defended the status quo on Ireland’s abortion laws, maintaining that it was based on “profound moral values deeply embedded in Irish society”. Its legal team argued before the court that the ECHR had consistently recognised the traditions of different countries regarding the rights of unborn children and maintained that this case sought to undermine these principles and align Ireland with countries with more liberal abortion laws.

Nevertheless, the court unanimously ruled that the rights of one of the three women were breached because she had no “effective or accessible procedure” to establish her right to a lawful abortion. The woman’s case was that she had a rare form of cancer and feared it would relapse when she became pregnant. She was unable to find a doctor willing to make a determination as to whether her life would be at risk if she continued to term.

The court concluded that neither the “medical consultation nor litigation options” relied on by the Government constituted an “effective or accessible procedure”. “Consequently, the court concluded that Ireland had breached this applicant’s right to respect for her private life given the failure to implement the existing constitutional right to a lawful abortion in Ireland.” The court ruled that there had been no violation of the rights of the two other women involved in the case – “A” and “B”.

The failure of the campaign to secure a ruling in its favour in all three cases gives some encouragement to the pro-life movement in Ireland – and indeed in Europe. It means that the Court, at its highest level, has not declared abortion as such to be a human right under the term of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ECHR ruling has put the issue back on the political agenda in Ireland and is likely to force all the political parties now heading into a General Election in Spring to adopt clear policies on the matter. They will not like this. Until now, with the exception of the left-wing Labour and green parties – the politicians have shied away from the issue knowing how complex it in fact is. It touches deep matters of conscience which they would rather not have to engage with.

Interestingly enough, this week the Fianna Fail Party, the main party in the present government has reached a historic low in opinion polls – because of its perceived mis-handling of the economy. As the most traditional party it would however, be seen as the natural pro-life party and might well see this issue as a life-line. Were it to take a very pro-life line on legislation – because whatever government comes in will now, it seems, have to frame legislation on this issue. The most recent opinion poll findings show that 70% of the public support constitutional protection for the unborn,13% oppose it and 16% don’t know or have no opinion.

The Irish Minister for Health, Mary Harney, seems to have accepted that the ECHR ruling will oblige the State to legislate to secure the human right which it maintains the Irish Constitution has denied to one of the women. Others dispute this obligation. Ms. Harney has said the Government would reflect on the ruling and take legal advice. She said the Government would have to come forward with proposals to reflect the ruling. Clearly kicking to touch she added, “However, this will take time as it is a highly sensitive and complex area.”

Professor William Binchy of Trinity College Dublin’s Law faculty, after the ECHR announced its decision, said that the ruling “would require detailed analysis over coming days but some clear points emerge immediately. The most important is that the judgment does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion. On the contrary, it fully respects the entitlement of the Irish people to determine legal policy on protecting the lives of unborn children.”

Professor Binchy, an internationally renowned lawyer and author, has always been highly critical of the judgement in the “X” case referred to above. “The evidence over the past 18 years contradicts the medical assumptions of the X case decision. It is crucial to note that the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence. In the years since the ruling, the evidence has steadily built up confirming the opposite of what the judges had assumed – women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide than women who continue with their pregnancy.”

As he sees it the Irish people must now make a choice. He says that if they were to choose to endorse the Supreme Court decision in X, – which is what the pro-abortion campaign will look for from the politicians – “this would involve legalising abortion contrary to existing medical practice and the best evidence of medical research. If on the other hand, the Irish people choose to endorse the current medical practice, they will be ensuring the continuation of Ireland’s world renowned safety record for mothers and babies during pregnancy.

“Any revisiting of the X case decision would need to take on board the evidence from these new studies that abortion involves significant risks for some women. Based on the current state of medical evidence alone, it would be irresponsible simply to introduce legislation along the lines of the X ruling as it would put at risk the mother’s life as well as taking the baby’s.

“The suggestion that because of this country’s pro-life ethos pregnant women are denied necessary medical treatments is simply not true. In fact, Ireland is a world leader in safety for pregnant mothers. The latest UN report on the safety of mothers during pregnancy found, of all 172 countries for which estimates are given, Ireland leads the world when it comes to safety for pregnant women.

“By all means, let us debate the abortion issue openly, honestly and with all the facts in front of us. But equally, we cannot shy away from the implications of what legal abortion would involve and the brutal reality of abortion, legal up to birth, in countries like Britain.

“What’s at stake in this debate is the value of life, and the sad experience is that once laws permitting abortion are introduced, they diminish the society’s respect for the inherent value of every human life, born or unborn. What we need now is a calm, respectful national discussion, in which the latest medical and scientific evidence is fully considered leading to a solution at a Constitutional level, which will ensure the full protection of all human beings, mothers and unborn children, on the basis of respect for their equal dignity and worth.”

Dare We Hope?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Once again we are being given some reason for hope when we look across the Atlantic. Or are we? We might be wrong on two counts. It is sometimes thought that what happens there will begin to take effect here in a matter of eight or ten years after. On that basis, if we see a shift in the US in the understanding of marriage, family, sexual behaviour, and a lot of other things besides, can we expect  that it might follow here? We are probably right on that one. We might be more doubtful as to whether those changes are a basis for hope or fear.

Ross Doubthat, New York Times columnist, commented recently (NYT December 6) on the findings of a survey by the US National Marriage Project. The NMP is trying to measure what it sees as “the decline of the two-parent family” among what it calls the ‘moderately educated middle’ — the 58 percent of Americans with high school diplomas and often some college education, but no four-year degree.

“This decline is depressing, but it isn’t surprising”, Doubthat argues. “We’ve known for a while that America has a marriage gap: college graduates divorce infrequently and bear few children out of wedlock, while in the rest of the country unwed parenthood and family breakdown are becoming a new normal. This gap has been one of the paradoxes of the culture war: highly educated Americans live like Ozzie and Harriet despite being cultural liberals, while middle America hews to traditional values but has trouble living up to them.

“But the Marriage Project’s data suggest that this paradox is fading. It’s no longer clear that middle America does hold more conservative views on marriage and family, or that educated Americans are still more likely to be secular and socially liberal.

“That division held a generation ago, but now it’s diminishing. In the 1970s, for instance, college-educated Americans overwhelmingly supported liberal divorce laws, while the rest of the country was ambivalent. Likewise, college graduates were much less likely than high school graduates to say that premarital sex was “always wrong.” Flash forward to the 2000s, though, and college graduates have grown more socially conservative on both fronts (50 percent now favor making divorces harder to get, up from 34 percent in the age of key parties), while the least educated Americans have become more permissive.

“There has been a similar change in religious practice. In the 1970s, college- educated Americans were slightly less likely to attend church than high school graduates. Today, piety increasingly correlates with education: college graduates are America’s most faithful churchgoers, while religious observance has dropped precipitously among the less-educated.”

So how does that add up to any kind of hope for parts of the world that may have a habit of following the mores of the US after a time? In an Irish context perhaps it means that the liberal elite which we have been accustomed to call “the Dublin Four set” may be about to change. But it also may be an indication that the Faith and Reason dynamic may well be working as we are always told it can and should work. When people begin to think seriously about their human situation, their values, their society – and education is about helping us to do that – then the reasonableness of their Faith becomes apparent to them and good sense in the end prevails.

We may attribute the loss of Faith and Reason among the less educated as partly the effect of the constant barrage of socially liberal propaganda contained in all sections of the mass media – press, radio, television, pop music, cinema. The first generation which passes into the better educated echelons will probably carry this effect with them. But the second generation, contemplating and thinking seriously about the disasters around them created by their parents’ ill-thought out liberalism, may be engaging in a process of full-scale re-evaluation. The Irish ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, someone who would typify the “Dublin Four set”, surprised everyone a few years ago when she talked about this set beginning to re-evaluate their lives and “tip-toing quietly back to Church”. This may be a big part of the effect that Doubthat is reflecting on in the US.  Let us dare to hope.

Keith Richards’ other church

Philip Harvey, writing this week in the online magazine, Eureka Street, told us that Keith Richards – a Rolling Stone, in case you have landed from Mars – has written about the importance and value of libraries. ‘When you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully — the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser. As a child, you get to feel all these books are yours.’ This was in a book published back in 1995.

Harvey then talks about the Richards’ words at the promotion of his new autobiography, Life (Little, Brown, 2010). “The launch was not in some sleazy nightclub or glamorous rock dive, but at the New York Public Library.

“Richards spoke eloquently, revealing that he had originally aspired to be a librarian. He said that the library is the only place around where he willingly obeys the rules. This infers that he is an old-fashioned visitor, used to libraries that have not been turned into chat cafes.

“He declared that when he walks into a library he is always made truly aware of civilisation, of something that we are part of and that is at the same time greater than we are. This from a man who once led a side project band called The New Barbarians.

“At primary school in the 1960s I was inevitably caught up in the major dispute of the times and have never changed my position that the Beatles are greater than the Rolling Stones. I am not the only one who thinks their last great record was Some Girls (1978), with its magnificent soul masterpiece ‘Miss You’.

“Their subsequent career reminds me of those old bluesmen who keep playing the music they love best until the end of time, even if there’s nothing very new going on. But this is unimportant, compared with the dignity, honesty and humility in fact in which Richards relates his indulgent but harrowing life.

“ We still expect Richards to chain smoke, knock back Jack Daniels like it’s water, and never sleep. But Life reveals he hasn’t had heroin for 30 years. The mainstays of his existence seem to be the love of his family, the creation of his music, and libraries.

“Books were his refuge before he discovered blues music. Growing up in austerity England, Richards had no library at home, so values the retreat he has built for himself late in life. ‘It’s my sanctuary,’ he writes. ‘Reading keeps me in one spot. After a life on the road, reading anchors me.’”

Ireland: from the bottom, everything is up

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments

by Michael Kirke | posted on MercatorNet.com on Monday, 22 November 2010

How much the current Irish banking and public finances debacle is going to contribute to a pan-European or even global conflagration remains to be seen. Whether or not the Irish troubles are going to engulf Portugal, Spain and God knows who else in a financial tsunami is a matter for the prophets of doom – and there are plenty of them around – to work out.

The worry is that this crisis may end up being a much greater catastrophe on a global level that it is for Ireland itself. We can only hope that the measures which have now been put in place, the funding from the IMF and the oversight that goes with it, will be sufficient to dampen the shockwaves.

The scale of what has happened is greater than any single event since Ireland secured her political separation from Great Britain nearly 100 years ago. The consequences of these events may change the political landscape of the Irish Republic in a way which many have longed for for decades while the historically burdened system has remained as doggedly in place as her beautiful mountain ranges in Connemara or Killarney. As Dermot Desmond, one of Ireland’s leading financiers, one who has come through this debacle with his reputation unscathed and his wealth intact, said recently, “The era of Civil War politics, passed on as a family business across generations, must be laid to rest.”

But while we may describe the events of the past three years as a debacle, it is wrong to describe them as a catastrophe. Real catastrophes cause permanent and irreparable damage and destruction. There is no doubt but that fortunes have been lost – for the most part by the foolish. There is no doubt there will be a degree of hardship for innocent bystanders. But in the longer term these are all things from which we can recover.

In the lead-up to the final capitulation of the Irish Government to the inevitable on Sunday night – its request for international assistance, with strings attached – a great deal of attention has been paid to the so-called shame and humiliation of a proud nation which won its independence at such a high cost.

There has been something of a grand delusion about Ireland’s vaunted sovereignty. Cries of woe uttered by Brendan O’Neill or Mick Hume in Spiked over the past few days — bewailing the arrival of the men in black from the IMF and the ECB — was media romanticism. For most Irish, talk about the nameless, faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats taking control of a freedom-loving little island on the western European seaboard is nonsense.

The plain people of Ireland saw the matter in a much more practical light. A group of incompetent politicians who had been badly served by their own nameless, faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats have had to surrender a measure of their control to a (hopefully) competent team of bureaucrats who will be no more nameless or faceless than those they will now have reporting to them.

Pride has been hurt but the Irish will “get over it and get on with it.” They are a resilient people. They are not afraid of emigration. They have been doing it for two centuries and are used to it. There are 80 million of them around the world. This reality is part of what gained Ireland its second place after Singapore in the globalisation world rankings a handful of years ago. Independence is a delusion. Mutual dependence is what has come clearly into focus as a result of all these events.

An illustration of Ireland’s and Britain’s mutual dependence was brought into focus in the Westminster Parliament last week when Chancellor George Osborne revealed that Ireland is the biggest market for British exports. Ann Marie Hourihane pointed out in The Irish Times: “[I]n 2009 Ireland bought a total of £23,767 million in British goods and services. That was £15,918 million in goods and £7,849 million in services. More than Brazil, Russia, India and China. However, if you add Hong Kong’s figures to those of mainland China you get a total £24,370 million British goods imported there, so Ireland’s figure is marginally below that.”

British embassy statistics revealed details last summer about the extent of Irish participation and investment in the British economy – the number of Irish directors of British companies, for example – which reveal a very different picture from one of proud and splendid isolation. As Hourihane commented, “They provide George Osborne with a good reason for offering us a big loan and they provide us with a very good reason for grabbing George Osborne and holding on tight.”

“It is not just true,” she added, “that Ireland consumes Britain’s food, its fashion, its football and the fun and rudeness of its tabloid culture, its golf, its opera productions, its West End shows, its Formula One, Downton Abbey and Masterchef – we are part of it.”

Dermot Desmond has remarked that Ireland’s success since the foundation of the State is often best observed from outside rather than from within. In an address in Dublin he pointed out that “We are an island nation with real spirit which has time and again fought against and dealt with enormous economic challenges. Today is no different and to appreciate those challenges we should examine the facts of the current situation and not the emotion. Today Ireland exports total €84 billion compared to 1990 when our exports were €18 billion. The growth in technology and other knowledge-based sectors has driven the success of Ireland.”

He recognised that the boom we have just experienced created an unsustainable bubble in property but holds that “the fundamentals of our position in 20 years have been undeniably transformed. Debt to GNP in 1987 was almost 125 per cent and it took almost one-third of the tax take to pay for the interest alone. Mistakes may be painful to bear witness to, but they are incredibly valuable if learned from.”

Another pundit, Agnes Aylward, recalled something from history which she saw as very pertinent to the situation facing Ireland today. Over 150 years ago, Thomas Francis Meagher first publicly unveiled the flag which would subsequently become the Irish Tricolour. Within a year of doing so he was tried and sentenced to death for his part in the failed Young Ireland rising of July 1848. That sentence was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life in Van Diemen’s Land, modern-day Tasmania.

Before his deportation, he wrote to a friend about the future. It was the darkest of times in Ireland, which was just emerging from a famine which had taken the lives of millions. But he wrote: “Yet I do not, could not despair of her regeneration. Nations do not die in a day. Their lives are reckoned by generations, and they encompass centuries. Their vitality is inextinguishable… Greece has so outlived her ruins and her woes. Italy has so outlived her degeneracy and her despotisms. Thus too, shall Ireland survive all her sufferings, her errors and disasters, and rear one day an ‘Arch of Triumph’ high above the wreck and wilderness of the past. This is my sincere faith.”

Ireland did so and the Irish have no doubt but that the darkness they are experiencing now will give way to a much brighter future.

Don’t expect a retread of the lurid “…Da Vinci Code”

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

“There Be Dragons” is not intended to be the cinematic equivalent of a “poster” or “user’s manual” for Opus Dei, Joffe said. But viewers also should not expect a retread of the lurid conspiracy theories propagated by “The Da Vinci Code” and its film adaptation.

“I think Dan Brown (the author of “The Da Vinci Code”) misused Opus Dei … in a rather unpardonable way,” Joffe said. “I hope, in some ways, this movie will set the balance straight, but that’s not the objective of the movie. I just think it’s maybe a byproduct.”

Go to http://www.thesoutherncross.org/headline3.asp for more of this interview with Roland Joffe.

“There Be Dragons” – make this go viral…

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Roland Joffe’s new film, There Be Dragons, due for worldwide release in the Spring, has moved its promotion machine up a few gears. See the updated website and spread the news if you can. It all offers an intriguing insight into how movies are promoted in advance of release. And, to say the least, the movie looks very promising. http://www.therebedragonsfilm.com  .

Art Serving Peace and Humanity in the Heart of Jenin

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters3 Comments

Journalists, film-makers and people from the media education establishment in Britain and Ireland were reminded at the 13th Cleraun Media Conference in Dublin in mid-October (19th-21st) that journalists in their work should never “lose sight of the primary importance of people – their value and their dignity”. The advice came from Ms. Kate Shanahan of the Dublin Institute of Technology’s journalism school. Ms. Shanahan is a former producer with Irish television who began her career in print journalism with one of Ireland’s national newspapers.

Ms. Shanahan’s words of advice were exemplified in the work of German film-maker Marcus Vetter whose award-winning documentary, Das Herz von Jenin – The Heart of Jenin – was shown at the conference.  The film was introduced by Marcus Vetter himself and was followed by an in depth discussion on the history of its making and the events it recorded.

The Heart of Jenin is a film set against the background of one of the world’s most protracted and bitter human and political tragedies – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The film shows how a group of people embroiled in this conflict were able to rise above it by virtue of the exercise of a single but enormously powerful act of human generosity.

It tells the story of how Ismael Khatib, a Palestinian father of a young boy fatally injured by an Israeli bullet during an incursion of the military into the West Bank town of Jenin, decides to donate the organs of Ahmed, his dying son, to enable several other children to live. Seven young people were the beneficiaries of this act, some Arabs, others Jewish. Of these seven, five have survived and are now living normal lives in their own communities.

The climax of the story comes when two years after his heroic act, Ishmael visits some of the families and the children to whom his son’s organs have given new life. One visit in particular, the most difficult of all, stands out both as an example of the triumph of humanity over hatred and prejudice and as a symbol of the peace and reconciliation which people dream of for the Middle East.

One of the beneficiaries of Ishmael and Ahmed’s donation was the little daughter of David Levinson, an American-born orthodox Jew. In the early part of the film we see David – in news footage from the time – waiting in the hospital as the word has come that a donor has been found whose heart might be suitable for his daughter. David is asked some questions about his view should the donor turn out to be an Arab. This, he expresses quite clearly, would not be what he would want.

The story then moves on two years and we know that David’s little daughter is alive and well and living a normal life. David knows that the person who has given his daughter and family this great gift is a Palestinian Arab, someone whom he has up until that time considered his mortal enemy. He is now about to meet him in his own home and the camera of Marcus Vetter is there to record the meeting.

There is no doubt but that the encounter begins with tension. David is awkward. Ishmael is also awkward. David then expresses his regret at his insensitive remarks of two years earlier. There is an uneasy but real reconciliation. Then David calls in the little girl and she walks over to Ishmael, he holds out his hand and she playfully hits it. Then there is a gentle embrace and with this the whole atmosphere of the meeting seems to change. Further conversation takes place, David eventually gives a parting gift to Ishmael and says what a pity it is that they had not met before. They part, expressing a hope that they will meet again.

The message of the encounter is understated. Nevertheless it is loud and clear for all to see and hear. The whole is a wonderfully moving document in witness to the power and effect of simple human goodness and generosity.

Nor does the story end there. It is still unfolding. In the aftermath of these events, the Ahmed Khatib Centre For Peace was established for the children of Jenin. Ishmael now devotes his time working in this centre with the children of this war-torn and impoverished city. Neither did the film-maker’s story end there. In the relative peace of the region, prior to the outbreak of the two intifadas of the past 20 years, Jenin was a city in love with Cinema. It had a multitude of picture houses scattered through its narrow streets. The violence brought an end to that and when Marcus Vetter went there to film Heart of Jenin there was not one left standing. He and his friends decided that the people of the city should not only have an opportunity to see their account of this inspiring story but see much else besides. They have now founded the Cinema Jenin Project, rebuilding one of the town’s old cinemas and establishing around it a film-school. Young film-makers and students of film in Europe are now involving themselves in the project to help the young inhabitants of Jenin to learn more about the art of film-making –  and in the process, perhaps, let their art also be a means of promoting peace, human dignity and respect for life.

Moving On

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith MattersLeave a comment

We have got to move on from here. The Church in the 16th century took the bull of corruption and abuse by the horns and moved on to the Catholic Reformation. It must do the same now. Another tranche of documents – 10,000 pages of them – are in the headlines in the US this week, detailing more records of abuse. Mind you not all 10,000 pages will be disturbing. Some of them record complaints about the long hair-styles or Elvis-style sideburns of some of the clergy of the time. But some of them are indeed disturbing. This time they come from the files of the diocese of San Diego, California. Good. Read then, beat our breasts sincerely and contritely – but then move to do what we should have been doing when these ugly heinous crimes were being committed. We are not doing a service to anyone, least of all the victims of abuse, by just continuing to beat our breasts. If the corruption within the Church in the early modern age was the occasion of driving good men out of the Church, the corruptions of our own age have had no less drastic consequences. It is time to address these consequences.

Moving on is not the same as forgetting. We must never forget what has happened – we cannot, in fact, ever forget it. It is and always will be part of us. It is part of our fallen condition, the effects of which we have all inherited.

We were reminded of this by Pope Benedict in his address at Oscott College in Birmingham in September. “As we reflect on the human frailty that these tragic events so starkly reveal, we are reminded that, if we are to be effective Christian leaders, we must live lives of the utmost integrity, humility and holiness. He then quoted an Anglican priest to express his hope for the future: ‘O that God would grant the clergy to feel their weakness as sinful men, and the people to sympathize with them and love them and pray for their increase in all good gifts of grace’” Those words were the prayer of the Rev. John Henry Newman, now Blessed John Henry Newman, delivered in a sermon on 22 March 1829.

The Pope made no bones about the impact of the scandal on the moral credibility of Church leaders. “I have spoken on many occasions of the deep wounds that such behaviour causes, in the victims first and foremost, but also in the relationships of trust that should exist between priests and people, between priests and their bishops, and between the Church authorities and the public.”  But he went on to acknowledge the new awareness “of the extent of child abuse in society, its devastating effects, and the need to provide proper victim support should serve as an incentive to share the lessons you have learned with the wider community”. He did not make the obvious point that clerical abuse was but the tip of the iceberg of child abuse. He sees no point in that kind of defence but those looking on should be ready to concede it, if they are at all interested in fairness. What he did propose was much more positive: “Indeed, what better way could there be of making reparation for these sins than by reaching out, in a humble spirit of compassion, towards children who continue to suffer abuse elsewhere? Our duty of care towards the young demands nothing less.” At the heart of the response must be, he said, “Integrity, humility and holiness”.

Looking forward, with the supernatural vision that is the hallmark of his office, he said that his prayer would be that among the graces of his visit to Britain “will be a renewed dedication on the part of Christian leaders to the prophetic vocation they have received, and a new appreciation on the part of the people for the great gift of the ordained ministry. Prayer for vocations will then arise spontaneously, and we may be confident that the Lord will respond by sending labourers to bring in the plentiful harvest.”  

Finally, as if to underline that essential platform of the spiritual and supernatural on which that harvesting work can only be based, he spoke to them of the Eucharist – in the context of the imminent publication of the new translation of the Roman Missal for the English-speaking world. “I encourage you now to seize the opportunity that the new translation offers for in-depth catechesis on the Eucharist and renewed devotion in the manner of its celebration. ‘The more lively the Eucharistic faith of the people of God, the deeper is its sharing in ecclesial life in steadfast commitment to the mission entrusted by Christ to his disciples’ (Sacramentum Caritatis, 6).

Then, in final words of encouragement the Pope seemed to echo back to that age when the failures and corruption of churchmen five centuries ago drove good men into a revolt which still divides Christendom. He spoke about the generosity needed for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, that apostolic instrument by which members of the Anglican Communion might be reunited with their fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. “This should be seen as a prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between Anglicans and Catholics. It helps us to set our sights on the ultimate goal of all ecumenical activity: the restoration of full ecclesial communion in the context of which the mutual exchange of gifts from our respective spiritual patrimonies serves as an enrichment to us all. Let us continue to pray and work unceasingly in order to hasten the joyful day when that goal can be accomplished.” Now that is moving on.