TWO OF MANY EAMONS

Eamon Casey who died recently was one of Ireland's most famous bishops. Irish bishops have been famous for lots of  things but Eamon became famous for one thing in particular, he fell  in love with a friend who was married  and they had a son .

When he was a student in Maynooth  seminary some of his fellow students prophesied  that he would not  live  long - they thought he would die in a mighty crash  driving his car  furiously fast.  Driving in  those  days if you " went  over forty" either you boasted about it or someone else  complained about it. Someone  suggested  there should be a law requiring a red flag to be carried in front of his car. He did have some crashes but nobody got hurt.  Our  concern about his loving or driving  may make us  forget how  caring, thoughtful, compassionate were so many other things he did. Like  cooperating with Des Wilson (no relation of mine I'm afraid ) to build houses for people in England who didn't have any or heading  Trócaire in Ireland to help get food and a living for people in this world who had neither.

Eamon Casey was ordained in 1951 and so, as Maurice Chevalier might have sung, I remember him well. He went to England as  a lot of Catholic priests did in the fifties and sixties , saw the plight of workers  there  who were  paid for the job but not  provided with decent living  during the job or after it.

There was another Eamon who followed much the same track, Eamon Gaynor who was ordained the same day I was - he joined up with people like the Mc Alpine's fusiliers  Christy Moore sings about and  went along with them as they  shifted camp from one section of English motorway to the next, living like nomads  because that's the way it was. One Eamon was bringing companionship to the labourers , another Eamon providing homes for them  if they could get  a bit of prosperity and peace to live in  them. Brave young men  who thought comfort was for other people.  Falling in love "inappropriately" and driving too fast seem  not to matter all that much when you look back on it.

Institutions are strange. They see what you are good at and get you to do something else instead. Casey was taken from the houses and Gaynor from the motorways back to Ireland to savour the -- what's the word, decitement perhaps --  of  the Irish church struggling to ignore the Second Vatican Council. They made Casey a bishop and Gaynor a curate and there you were. Casey eventually became head of Trócaire which was good, although  one always remembers it was founded when  anti-birthcontrol hysteria  made many religious people wary of organisations like Oxfam. Fortunately Trócaire and similar organisations did magnificently and carried themselves with dignity until the hysteria faded. One of the people responsible for that was Brian Mc Keown , a  Belfastman, one is proud to say.

As for the Eamons of this world and the people they generously befriended, some of them built motorways for our English neighbours, some fought their wars for them, some preached their sermons for them, some built their schools and managed their hospitals for them. One prominent member  of the Catholic church in England and generous admirer of the Irish said to me : One of the best things you Irish people  could do for England is go home and force us to do all this for  ourselves.

One is not always grateful for large mercies though. I don't know exactly  where  the  idealism of Eamon of the Motorways led him eventually but I do know  the other Eamon's  love life made us forget how many houses he and that other Des Wilson got built.

How would it have been if the church administration had brought  one of the Eamons back not to administer church affairs but to help the homeless in Ireland , and told the other Eamon to stay where he was and go on taking care of  the uninsured and lonely Irish who were  left, as it were,  by the side of the road? 

Annoying - the president ?

One answer to President Trump's recent executive  order to tighten control of immigration has come from what may seem unlikely sources. The presidential order called  halt to financial subsidies for town and city  councils who refuse to carry out the President's  severe directions about  removing immigrants. 

So some municipal councils are refusing to obey.

 In the state of Connecticut a city council not only refused to obey but got a standing ovation for refusing. One of its  Republican councillors said , "It's sad that we're voting on this tonight, it's great to see the community come together but it's unfortunate that this is why". The "why" was the need for  this, like other councils, "to make the state's (Connecticut's) largest city a safe haven for undocumented immigrants" .  A small but growing number of USA cities, towns and college campuses  have declared themselves safe sanctuaries for immigrants under this threat from the administration.

This sanctuary movement  is reminiscent of what happened in Europe centuries  ago - immigrants take their folk memories with them wherever they go  - when monasteries -  some of these were as big as small towns in population and wealth - were declared sanctuaries, sanctuaries even for wrongdoers. It is reminiscent also of places of refuge for citizens of the USA who went north for sanctuary in Canada because they refused to fight in Vietnam and other wars whose morality they could not believe in. And there  are towns in America still proudly remembered  as sanctuaries for fleeing slaves.

Like any humane and dignified  initiative the ancient right of sanctuary was abused. They say for instance that when rich European nobility  went to fight in the Christians' eastern  crusades some of them did some foul deeds and on returning home founded  monasteries, partly to become reconciled to the Almighty and partly to ensure  they could live the rest of their  short lives there and die in peace, safe from competitors and enemies.

In  Middletown , Connecticut, a short while ago the Mayor said : "It's been our practice for years not to enforce federal immigration law....". 

The University of Connecticut declared its commitment to protecting undocumented students.

A Hartford Connecticut newspaper   recently reported  their  Mayor saying,   "This is a welcoming , caring, and inclusive town" - he too was reacting against  the Presidential order.

Meanwhile about eight thousand people recently assembled at a site in North Dakota to protest at an oil pipeline being made to run more than a thousand miles  through sacred tribal land of native Americans. They protested the President's order that  the pipeline  must proceed, under the care of the Army's engineers. What happens if the people keep resisting to the point of standing in physical opposition, Army or no Army ?

The Franciscan Action Network  said, "Building a pipeline through indigenous people's sacred land is a violation of their religious freedom just the same as if President Trump gave permission to tear down St Patrick's Cathedral in New York to build an oil refinery there ".

In North Dakota it would likely poison the people's water supply into the bargain.

 The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas  called the latest executive order on immigrants  "morally unacceptable" 

So the President testing his political and financial muscle in the present struggle for internal power is not just a matter of annoying the press and the fleeing industrialists. Consciences and city councils are annoyed  as well.

Who said this?

 

Who said the following -   President Trump,  a friend of President Trump or  an opponent of President Trump ?

Our government has been for the past few years under the control of the heads of great allied corporations with special interests. It has not controlled these interests and assigned them their  proper place in the whole system of business; it has submitted  itself to their control. As a result there have grown up vicious systems and schemes of governmental favouritism  far reaching in effect upon the whole fabric of life, touching every inhabitant of the land , laying unfair and impossible handicaps upon competitors, imposing taxes in every direction, stifling everywhere the free spirit of American enterprise.

This tyranny, this  control of the law, of legislation and adjudication by organisations which do not represent the people, by means which are private and selfish, specifically the conduct of our affairs and the shaping of our legislation in the interest of special bodies of capital and those who organise their use --  this  alliance  of political machines with selfish business to do is exploitation of the people by legal and political means.

We have seen many of our governments under these influences cease to be representative governments, cease to be governments representative of the people, and become governments representative of special interests controlled by machines which in their turn are not controlled by the people. The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are the big manufacturers, bankers and heads of the great railroad companies. The masters of the government of the United States are the combined manufacturers and capitalists of the United States...........................

It was not a friend or opponent of President Trump but a President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, who was saying such things  a few years before the financial collapse that climaxed in 1929 and brought the United States commercial civilisation to its knees and frightened the whole world of business and politics.

Now President Trump is promising America prosperity by reducing curbs on capital, bringing industrialists even closer  to the centre of government, making  companies that have fled to foreign countries come back home where eventually they may  bring their lower pay regimes with them, thus facing the possibility of American companies being overtaken by cheaper economies abroad  or producing cheaply at home goods the world is willing or able  to buy now from abroad  - while their  customers in the USA  will pay taxes for imported goods that may get in, meanwhile  strengthening the military in America and Europe so as to make America great again, with industrialists and bankers still as powerful as before but, in theory anyway, more under Presidential control.

US personal Presidential power is being built up through arguments  with those already powerful  in America (while there is still time for it), with  the press, the spying services, vulnerable industrialists, and by contradicting policies which have helped political parties to flourish until they think they cannot do without them, enmity towards Russia for example. Opposition to  Russia  has been  fostered in Europe and America  since WW2  and  governmental policies, military, economic, and European union policies, have been  built on it. Maybe President Trump hopes to  create stability - not peace, but stability - by agreement and manoevering within the United States rather than by military threat abroad.

But the Presidential determination  to build up the military --  does it mean that if he doesn't  need  the military  for foreign wars, it may be  needed  for service on,  as it were,  the Home Front?

Surely not for that kind of Homeland security !

The ideas of  Woodrow Wilson at the start of this blog were quoted  in 1920 to a New York State law court by the Irish trades union organiser James Larkin - who died 70 years ago this year - possibly  Larkin knew more about the realities of American government than the court  knew - or wanted to know.

Russia with Love?

President Donald Trump has caused anger by  suggesting that the USA should have a friendly relationship with Russia. We Oldies  know one important reason why.

We remember 1952. By that year, a mere few years after what we thought was the end of World War Two, the USA , Britain, France and allies had made a plan for Germany:

It was to  re-finance Germany whom they just defeated , re- arm it and make it  into  the financially and militarily strongest nation in a new European Union . As quickly as possible - "No time to lose", said Winston Churchill. And this new Germany would be the strongest unit in the heart of a European bulwark against Russia.  It  would be paid for by, among others, the USA paying "aid", for example Marshall Aid,  and Germans paying  reparations which would take many years  to pay off.

This  plan of the Allies was conceived  only months after  a disastrous war - perhaps even during it -  in which Russia had been  described by Churchill as "our gallant ally " and millions of their people had been killed and made homeless  winning it.  Most people in Europe  were trying to survive day by day and there was little public concern  about  the  Allies' plan in 1952.  

Before,  and perhaps during, the war  Adolf Hitler wanted a treaty with England. He made his intentions clear in his autobiography Mein Kampf, not a treaty with Italy, certainly not  one with France but with England.  Russia was his greatest international  enemy and such a treaty would be a help.   The  Russian communist system made Russia a  target for many other  interests  in  the world as well . After Hitler tried in vain to get a treaty with London or to defeat Russia  the Allies opened their  'second Front' ;  Russian troops drove westwards  and the Allies stopped them  from getting too far west.

The plan to re-finance and re-arm Germany took shape. By the early 1950s it was in good shape  but instead of a shooting war there was a Cold War against Russia. From that time until now Russia has been treated  by  "Western" governments  as an enemy  even when communism ceased to be  a power in their land.

NATO was set up "to defend the free world" ,  spending on nuclear and other arms  races increased . Although this planning for what led eventually to our European Union was not clear to  our troubled world at the time when we  believed we had more important things to think about, some people did notice and did think and did write about it. One was Stephen King-Hall, one time commander in the British Navy, sometime Labour or Independent Labour MP, commentator on international affairs, writer of plays and children's books.

We Oldies remember him well, not personally of course but through his writing and broadcasting. In the January 10th 1952 edition of his  National Newsletter, while the  post WW2 planning and plotting was going  on he wrote about what had  happened after the war "ended"  :  

" The months went by and the Western politicians had finally to admit that Western rearmament without Germany was almost a  joke. The  American General Staff had emphasised this from an early date.  Chancellor Adenauer, both on moral and political grounds decided to throw in Germany's lot with the West and to some extent overcame the ohne mich ( 'count me out ') mentality in Germany. Pleven and Schuman in France, opposed by the communists and de Gaullists, cooked up the idea of a European Army as a device to make it easier for French public opinion to swallow the spectacle of Germans in uniform. . ..... Mr Churchill called for this Army in a passionate speech at Strasbourg...."

The European Army did not materialise. What we  got instead though was integration of European armies through training, similar weaponry and other devices. And of course a European Union. And of course a strong Germany leading some bits of the Union to power and wealth.

Difficulties  therefore arise from  Mr Trump's present attitude to Russia . Without Russia as an enemy NATO is in  danger of reduction or disappearance; the arms industries which  play so large a part in the USA and other economies  could be seriously  reduced and the foreign policies of the USA and other countries  could become a shambles. Without an enemy economies like these tend to  collapse.

However,not to worry,  in the meantime new enemies are being  found, Middle East countries,  China, Mexico.......   President Obama's  cultivation of The Middle East as Enemy doctrine proved  disastrous though and  may have to be discarded.

There is of course the building up , by Mr Trump and others, of a literally deadly fear of Islam.  Is that   Mr Trump's  substitute  for Russia as a stimulus to good government?  Is  all that  post WW2 planning  and manipulation   going to go to waste then ?  If so,  it is no wonder the European Union is also annoyed at Mr Trump's  nice attitude to Russia. 

Torture - Again?

The Washington government not only admits torturing prisoners, it praises itself for it.

After the Second World War we Oldies thought we had won some victories for human reason. We thought public opinion was veering away from torturing helpless prisoners.  At that time you could easily mention between sixty and eighty countries in which torture was a normal means of trying to get information.  But we thought  most  governments were becoming ashamed to admit it.  That,  we thought,  was some little progress.  Now we see we were optimistically wrong.

There was plenty of propaganda in favour of torture in our day,  mostly from America.  Torture by physical abuse and  torture by water were legal for so long  in the United States,  appalling death by electrocution was legal and  frequent.  These tortures and giving a prisoner "the Third Degree",  that is,  torturing him or her,  was not only done but was part of the normal narrative  of normal American crime films in normal cinemas where we used to go for our delights.  Torture in American society was normal and known about  by people all over the world who learned about the cruel and inhumane electric chair and the water torture and the Third Degree from people paid to entertain us with those mirrors  of American society.   

What is surprising then is not that any Washington government  favours torture,  or even praises itself for  doing it,  but that people anywhere are surprised at it.  

Whatever the differences may be between  churches and other ethical bodies  they have been, as far as declarations against torture are concerned,  at one in condemning it.  They know as well as anyone  that torture is used with particular malignancy against people who are struggling against or even appear to be struggling against injustice and denial of human and civil rights.  Yet they still,  it seems, have to embrace heads of state who have torture as part of their programme.  So Christians and other ethical bodies  will  have to calculate now what it is going to  cost them if they  refuse to meet or  favour or deal with pro-torture politicians.   Will they be too afraid  of them to refuse them their cloak of respectability?

In the nineteen fifties the French government used torture in its war against the Algerians - but there was a startling sequel  that time.  Two  French   army Generals  Massu and Bollardiere later engaged in a fierce public dispute for and against it.  That dispute awakened many consciences in France and  other parts of the world.   Nothing with  the same significance  occurred in Britain  or the USA, both torturing countries.

Some  universities  are  helping the cause of sophisticated torture.  Universities which  rely  less on their prowess in teaching and intellectual debate and more on money paid by corporations to do research for them are researching just how far human endurance can go without visible and permanent evidence showing  on human body and mind  and,  less important to some governments, how far human endurance can go without publicly damaging  intellect or body so  obviously  as to  disgrace  governments who do it.   A notable help for  vicious governments by institutions  who betray their more honourable colleagues  upon whom we rely to promote  and not hinder the intellectual  evolution  of the human race!

One would like to think that in  high places,  in cabinet rooms,  in church headquarters,  places where decisions  are made about  whether to meet and honour  government leaders who favour  torture the answer will be No.  The great No of responsible people  is a great hope.  A great fear though  is that it may not even be discussed.  They may talk about  our special relationship,  about  our many jobs,  about   international trade,  about   the bottom line.  We can understand their problem:  If you defy the  Emperors the Emperors may close your worship and counting houses and even forbid your Faithful to migrate;  that after all is what ghettos are for and it has happened before.

This is not a bland world we live in.  And reality is not bland.  

So will Morality have  the  courage to  say , "Well, let them. We outlived the Borgias didn't we?".

Mein Kampf revisited

To understand what is happening now in the USA we should read two books, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and any book charting the rise and fall of Ian Paisley.

This is not to say that these two men are like Hitler or that Hitler is like either of them. It is to say simply that these should be read so as to understand the process by which people are persuaded to vote for or approve their own downfall. Those of us who are oldest remember the nineteen thirties  and those who are young can read about it. Mein Kampf is Adolf Hitler's account of his ideas and intentions  that led to his rise to power. What is happening in the USA now is similar: the scapegoating of whole peoples - in this case the Mexicans, the Muslims-  attacks on the press, the building up of the military not  for foreign wars you can't win but for internal use - border guards, internal order, the fostering of popular hatred of what is called " the establishment"  which is proclaimed to have  betrayed the people for its own  profit (the French and Germans  between the two world wars were angry about their establishment having done the same thing ), the replacement of respect for establishment by what is named populism, the building up a cult of  personality leadership,  the insistence that the future holds immense dangers  from which only one man can save the people, America will be great again, America First.

This has been accompanied now by one more disgraceful happening. Many religious people, including Roman Catholics, seem to have voted for Donald Trump because whatever else he may do he is  better than Hilary Clinton on abortion. Once again Catholics have allowed themselves to be persuaded that their Catholicism can be  judged by their attitude to one issue. We did it in the nineteen thirties with Franco, Catholics in France  did it because they believed in the new world order Hitler was promising. One Issue Catholicism is one factor in the potential disaster that is America today.  Add to this that while we know  torture is done and approved by governments , now we have it authoritatively stated that the USA officially approves of torture because it produces results for the state.

The United Nations was, is and will be a useless instrument to hold in check those who want power at all costs, just as the League of Nations was in the old days. If the Washington regime decides that the Trump wall is not enough and invades Mexico, who will defend México's right to live ?

As the United States of America willingly and even happily shudders , look at the banners and the dancing , we see creeping along one item after another which together threaten the dissolution of the American Union. No Union is forever. The Third Reich was to last for a thousand years, it lasted less than fifty, the European empires dissolved , the Soviet Union  broke up. All were based on the demand for  power at any cost.  Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt.

America  First will be Great Again, Britannia Rule the Waves - not a statement of fact that it rules the waves but an imperialist populist demand to do so, "Britannia, Rule the Waves".

One voice may give hope - Pope Francis sees the awful writing on that Trump wall.

The American situation is dangerous and now is the time to say so, not when it is too late - which will be soon. 

Back Burner Again?

In the  present burning  crisis in N Ireland politics we may forget that in  N Ireland  inefficiency was purposely  built into the political, economic, cultural and other systems. So if in N.Ireland inefficiency occurs this is not because of a failure of  systems,  it is a sign that the systems are working admirably according to plan. Hence the present situation where every day is an Ash Wednesday and   great profits are made. 

When N Ireland was created as a separate political unit some unionists , possibly a small number, really wanted to give people a fair deal. Anyway let us  take for granted they did.  However, when plans were being made to govern this political unit the planners had one and a half million people from  whom to find the intellectual ability  to do it. It was a small number, but had potential enough  to give it a try, provided the planners recognised and maximised  the potential of the one and a half million. But they dealt with this reservoir of decision making talent by a kind of salami process.

First they eliminated nearly one third of the population , Catholics, from the significant decision making process.  This left two thirds of the intellectual pool. From the remaining two thirds they then eliminated the women from significant decision making. From the one third of the intellectual potential left they  chose those who belonged to the  masons and similar  orders and that reduced the intellectual pool further. From this , what one might unkindly refer to as the rump of the intellectual pool,  those who served in armed forces were  given preference over the rest, while  of course there could be reduction here also  if any of these had  to be eliminated on, as it were, the first count.

It was by this salami process slice by slice that the future rulers, including those who wanted to do the job properly and honourably  thought they might find  the intellectual vigour to run N Ireland efficiently .

Nowadays it is difficult to continue this salami system and so there is  a yet  untested pool of intellectual ability ready to emerge and indeed is emerging but not rapidly enough to meet the needs of the people. It is difficult because the  political unit was carefully  carved out so as to be governable  only by  by a single unchangeable  party, and emergency  patches have to be changed every few years or months.

Since  the sixties London has devised one pattern of government after another and all have failed because  the system was devised to be governed only by one unchangeable party .  You cannot do it any more than you can  make a wood pellet stove work by putting  paper and stones in it - it will flare for a while but  cost you lots of money after even a million attempts. During all the talks about political change no solution was allowed on the table except the one demanded by London , that is, rule from London with London-permitted devolution. No section of people in all Ireland had asked for that  solution. Unitary united Ireland, federal Ireland of two sections, united federal  Ireland with four sections, integration with Britain, Independent Ulster, return of Ye Olde Stormont, a resounding No was given to all of these , a resounding No for which Thatcher was blamed but  most probably quietly agreed to by Dublin just before Thatcher's  Fosterish OUTOUTOUT.

Let us  hope that this time neither Dublin nor London will be allowed to  put rational discussion  of all Ireland united -  within or without the EU-  to be put  again on, as it were,  another  back burner.

CLERICAL CELIBACY

A LETTER TO THE IRISH NEWS BELFAST     18.  May 2016

Allison Morrison  writes (in Celibacy in Priesthood a Matter of Public Interest) that it is time for real debate on celibacy in the Catholic Church. Wouldn’t it be a good idea then for the Irish News , which, as she says, has behaved sympathetically on recent occasions, to sponsor and arrange such a public discussion ? Newspapers do things like that. One of the matters raised would certainly be that the vast majority of people who give up the prospect of marriage and a family of their own are not priests or members of religious orders . They are people who do it  to look after  other people, family members or others  who are in need of their care. It would be most unkind to say of these good people that theirs is an unnatural life. They are supernaturally generous people. 

What could be argued  in such a public discussion though  is whether imposing  celibacy on such good people would be unnatural. That  is a different question and of course the right one.

SOMETIMNES LETTERS GET THROUGH

Here are two  letters, the first sent to The Irish Times, Dublin , the second  to The Irish News, Belfast.

The Irish Times did not print  this one :

Sir,

Some years ago I accompanied Father Alex Reid in conversation with Dr Garret Fitzgerald. During this conversation I suggested that the next logical development in democratic representation should be that all parties are included in government. Dr Fitzgerald reacted vehemently to this ,  said No, No, the only acceptable form of government is a majority party in govermemt plus an Opposition. And that, unhappily, was that, until of course in Belfast a power sharing administration was set up not because it was a logical development of politics but in order to get some  means of avoiding worse.  

Now the old, borrowed  and possibly outdated model of government, biggest party in power,and an Opposition, having caused injustice and conflict in Belfast, is  threatening  continual war and possible dissolution for the USA  and creating alarm and despondency  in Dublin.

Nobody goes out on voting day to vote his or her  party or candidate into Opposition or exclusion. Therefore the next logical step is to give the electorate what the electorate wants – how many times have we heard  that in recent weeks ? - and what it wants is inclusion in government.

The old model of government seems to be played out. Is it not time for a radical, democratic and intellectually sound model to be put in its place?

It would of course require major , and for some people perhaps frightening, changes. But why should  a fully representative  government not be put in place now for a fixed term , able and willing to address, as well as day to day matters,  the Constitutional question of replacing the tired old political party model with  something new which would test and strengthen those politicians who really want discussion, honourable compromise and exchange , bringing   into play the often dormant intellectual potential of many politicians  and  sending party whips off gardening ?

The Irish News did print this one :

Sir,

The old second-hand   and possibly outdated model of government ( biggest party takes  power, the rest in  opposition )  having caused injustice and conflict in  Belfast  and  now threatening  continual war and worse  for the USA  has recently been creating alarm and despondency  in Dublin.  It’s not working.

The old  model of government with opposition seems to be played out. Is it not time for a radical, democratic and intellectually sound model to be put in its place? Nobody goes out on voting day to vote his or her  party or candidate into Opposition or exclusion. Therefore the next logical step in democratic representation is to give the electorate what the electors want  and what the electors  want is inclusion in government. Let’s all have it then.

Of course that  involves major , and for some people perhaps frightening, changes. But why , by way of good example from politicians who are now wrangling in Dublin, should  a fully representative  government not be put in place there  for a fixed term , able and willing to address, as well as day to day matters,  the Constitutional question of replacing the tired old political party model with  something new which would test and strengthen those politicians who really want discussion, honourable compromise and exchange , bringing   into play the often dormant intellectual potential of many politicians  and  sending party whips off gardening ?

BACKWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

2015 coming into 2016 ………we wish each other a Happy Christmas, Happy Festive Season, Happy Holiday, whatever way we say it, it means the same, sharing our good will and good wishes with  all our Neighbours and our Neighbours are everybody……

We have an unending stream of good will and good wishes but there are  many governments and mighty people  who muddy our stream, who almost succeed in making hypocrites of us because we have let them off with so much humbug, lying, eviction and killing, as they  wish their victims salvation even as the swords  fall and the bombs explode……..  

…..to think that we have allowed them to soil Christmas by singing  about it when Christmas for them is at best a reluctant pause from  spoiling our dreams and lives …..the drones , probably the most cowardly weapons ever invented…..millions of people made hopeless , wet,  hungry,  stretching long lines with the sound of Jingle Bells in their ears and the hymns of people sad at the homelessness of Christ and complacent  about the homelessness of  millions of refugees present and to come ---…..  ghosts of Christmas Present, the Ghosts of Christmas Past,  Ghosts of Christmas inevitably  to come………why do we let them do it ?

Come Easter and we will celebrate ….celebrate …..the great trek of the ancient Israelites to their promised land and wonder about  what their descendants  are doing with it…..

….. a sad  woman or a sad man will stand in our court listening to people swearing by Almighty God that they will tell the truth about what other  sad poor ones  did….. what a good thing it would be  to make governments and  powerful people stand and swear by Almighty God that they will never allow such people to be either sad  or penniless again…….

Hopes, we are great people for hoping and without our hoping the world would be even more dismal than the war-makers are making it…………they who cannot think even of the great miracle of  Space  without making war in it , Star Wars  if you please, Space the Magnificent is without meaning unless they make  a battlefield of it,   Heaven held  no  satisfaction for them so they invented  a War of the Angels……..can evolution  mean that human beings will eventually shed their warrior brains just like they shed their tails…………..?

Let’s wish each other a Happy Christmas ………..knowing that our humblest wish will do more good to the world than all the  richest missiles of the President and his allies……..who so clearly are thinking  in pseudo-biblical terms  of Armageddon and  the final battle between good and evil ………in which they must win because it is they and not us , or even God, who decide who is evil and who is ……who is…..well, who  is the opposite of evil, for they seem not to have discovered  yet what is actually good……

May human beauty and all of Nature’s other beauties prevail…….even through 2016 and beyond………………

PEACE OR WAR - YOU CHOOSE.......

The recent terrible killings in Paris should not have happened, need not have happened, must not happen again  - millons of horrified people must have thought that. We would be hard-hearted and cruel  if we didn’t.

Perhaps then the cruelties  may  have  awakened or strengthened our determination to oppose war  more  strongly than ever?

But opposing war is deadly  difficult.

Unnecessary wars have produced chaos and destruction , millions of people dead, physically  and spiritually maimed, millions homeless, and yet  the  war cries are going out  stronger than ever : “We will hunt down …we will pursue  to the outer reaches of the planet ….we are at war with terrorism….we will increase our bombing missions….we will wipe  out …….” , the language is as old as humankind and as deadly.  In the midst of  real sorrow for the dead and miserable  came the sounds of verbal war dances  from  governments and politicians determined  to wrench the progress  of our evolution back into primitive warrior mode lest  we might be in  danger of  evolving into  rational beings who solve problems by thinking and talking rather than  by clubbing each other to death. Even the ones who celebrate Christmas with  songs of peace  joined  the ones who celebrate “the festive season” with cries of profit,  happily returning  war for  war, death for  death, eye for eye , tooth for tooth while even the loudest of cries for mercy,  peace and dignity were drowned out by the quiet hum of their drones.   

And so ,  children  will go  on being trained to hold weapons from the age of three, joyfully  undoing their parcels of toy guns under the Christmas tree.

After the massacres  there were still some few voices daring to ask   the real reasons for them :   did European and American governments really believe they could forever  wage war comfortably on an enemy  a thousand miles away whom they would not even dignify by looking at them while they killed them? One more despairing, tattered decency thrown to the wind.

Having successfully reversed whatever success we had in outlawing terror by torture, governments have now made  torture and terror respectable again; they have thrown the principle of “innocent until proved guilty” to the winds ; they have exiled politics from the forum and dug it deep into the market place where those who pay win ; most of  the decencies  we gained or thought we gained after the second world war have not just disappeared but have been stolen from us by people who wanted too much for themselves at whatever cost but  whom we trusted. The atrocities in Paris and so many other places should not have happened, and neither should the wanton wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Lebanon and a host of other places. Those wars  happened because so many people really believed they could steal  at a distance and  kill at a distance while the  fellow citizens of  those they killed and cheated would be unable to hit back.

But people do  hit back, even if they have no greater weapon than  a brick to hurl though a tormentor’s window. The  arrogant invasions which were  carefully designed – as their  perpetrators clearly said – to create awe and wonder and terror  are being answered by people who had no terror weapons then  but have them now.

Whether we are on the way, as some people say, to world war three it is impossible to say. We may be , unless  perhaps there is  still some rationality lurking somewhere among the richly greedy  of this world.  

We need to stop them  whether there is or not.

“Dis paides oi gerontes …” (Menander of Greece).

As leader of the British Labour Party Mr Jeremy Corbyn will have a difficult job but it will be one of those curious jobs that, whether he wins or loses, he  can  come out of it with more dignity than any number of winners. We have seen the steady dismantling of almost everything we thought we had won since the end of the second world war. Torture now  made respectable by governments, in America and Britain for instance, who are saying openly and almost without opposition that torture is all right if it produces results. It produces horrible results but one of the things we have lost is that comforting pretence governments used to make of being appalled by such violence. Now they admit they are not.

And death as a solution to problems, that idea has flourished while public declarations of respect for life fade further and further out of our public conscience.

Jeremy Corbyn says  nuclear weapons do not solve problems and therefore we should stop having them.  If governments believe death solves problems then presumably they think the more deaths the better to solve each particular problem. The only solution to nuclear mass destruction is to stop producing nuclear weapons and get rid of those we have. We humans never created a weapon yet that we did not use, ever since we discovered how to put a sharp edge on a stone. So we have to tell governments, As long as you have them you’ll use them, so stop collecting them.

People used to fall out about such things – famously, Bruce Kent in London fell out with his Archbishop, Cardinal Hume. Bruce who had been in  the British Navy did  not want nuclear weapons at any price, while Hume , one time member of St Benedict’s peaceful religious order, approved of them as, he said , a deterrent. A deterrent to wipe out whole populations. Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn will start people arguing about that again.

The Churches were and still are split on this, as on most other issues of public safety and dignity, so effective leadership is desperately needed there –  but churches tend to join in our disputes rather  than heal them.

What Pope Francis said recently in America was interesting. Interesting because he dared to address  the very problems political assemblies over there are presenting to mankind – continuous war as government policy, war as a business, destruction of the environment as a way of making not money but more money, creating  hunger for profit, reducing respect for life and for what sustains it.

That the Pope addressed these things knowing that he was putting a needle into the heart of the lion was refreshing for  us Ancients who realise that just because an institution is two thousand years old  that does not mean it will dispense two thousand years of wisdom.  We Ancients  though can  hope that a pope even as Ancient as Francis has a lot of wise things to say to new generations who think  old fellows are just children twice over ,”dis paides oi gerontes”.  People who listen to John Kerry , President Obama and other powerful people may well reflect that the Pope may not have any battalions behind him  but he has  millions of people behind him and the multitudes  people saw on  the streets of America gave  them a demonstration of how large their number may be. With as many people as that going in one direction governments cannot afford to be seen going in the other.

Government and people in the USA obviously want the Pope to be on their side. One way to achieve that is for them to get on his side on these issues of life and death.   Sooner or later the millions on the streets will send the message: governments come and governments go, but the human will to be free, secure  and full of dignity will last – literally – for ever.

And if they think the multitudes in the streets and in the hills don’t matter, they  may be reminded that it was the multitudes, the people, the people of God who were given  the Christ message of justice, dignity  and life in the first place. So Pope Francis seems to know where to find it now.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In the nineteen thirties the Pope did not wear a crown, he wore three.

The most interesting thing  is not that he wore three crowns but that he wore any crown at all.

The Catholic Church looked on itself as a monarchy, that was its official view of itself. Easy to understand: in those days monarchy was looked upon  as the most noble form of government although sometimes, even in Julius Caesar’s time,  there were lively discussions and even fights  about whether monarchy was even safe and whether  perhaps  republican  power-sharing might  be better. But monarchy spoke to monarchy and that helped when monarchies were in fashion. 

In the nineteen thirties the pope was carried on a special chair on the shoulders of special people. That and the papal tiara signalled  not only spiritual power but worldly power as well – it was not many decades beforehand   that people including Irish soldiers had  fought a war to help the reigning pope to keep his papal states which Garibaldi wanted to take off him. 

In the nineteen sixties things changed and by now the three crowns are gone  and  the pope is going around in, what is it, a Fiat?   He is also paying at the counter for his breakfast – gone is the convention of royalty not having to carry money;  as he  waves to the crowds he can if he wants to glance at his wrist watch to see what time it is - gone is the convention that royalty don’t have to bother about such things. And the everyday garb of a pope looks remarkably like that of the missionary  priest in North Africa we read about the other day. Gentle small changes.

A pope nowadays behaves in public  more like the  president of a modern republic than a king. People don’t have to bow and scrape, walk away backwards, have to wait until spoken to before saying anything. The difference between a picture of the Pope in the nineteen thirties and one of the Pope now can be quite startling to us Ancients.  Is it simply  a recognition that in the modern world republics rather than monarchies  will appeal to more people?  After all, the word republic is based on the word for people, the word monarch  is based  on the word for just one person ruling them. Republic, public-rule by the people , monarchy mono-rule by one of the people.

That is not to say that the Catholic  church is becoming republican in sentiment ,  governance or religion. That should be surprising, because one of its beliefs is  that all its members are at some time touched by the Holy Spirit of God  and in that case you would think it should be the most active, best equipped democracy – or republic  if we like the word – in the world.

Of course it is changing. The change from a triple-crowned  leader carried in splendour  to a white-clad breakfaster in a respectable Roman hostel is the outward sign of a new and intriguing inward grace. Like all signs it is on the outside telling you what to expect inside.

What is changed inside is hopeful for some , upsetting for others, intriguing for most of us.

When for example an archbishop when pressed on the radio to say whether hell exists or not says, hesitatingly, Well, hell is possible………When an  expert in Theology remarks cautiously that after the death of Jesus Christ his followers then “experienced his presence among them in a new way”… When there appears first a new tolerance and then a new acceptance of people who in the past might have been told they were no longer wanted in the church …. it is clear that the sign outside means the changes inside could be worth having a closer look at.  Real changes  in behaviour ? Real changes in teaching ? Real changes in belief ?  Some say it  means the Pope is giving a new lead;  some say it means the Pope is rapidly catching up with us.

Changes can refresh , irritate, alienate. They may cause conflict and sourness. But it helps our sense of dignity if important institutions, governments, political parties, churches, do not either take us by surprise or take us for granted. If they change their minds or find  a fresh  explanation for   what they believe, do or think others should do or think , let them say so and respect our dignity by telling us the reasons why. One mark of the intellectually self-confident is their willingness to change their minds; a mark of their respect for our dignity is to tell us they are doing it. 

Long ago during the great Catholic revolt now known as the Protestant Reformation  people might go  to church  this Sunday and find the message from the pulpit strangely different from the message last Sunday; even longer ago when the Christians in Ireland took over from the druids a king in Tara named Diarmait Mac Cearbaill ( one of the Ó Neills by the way) performed his pagan rituals in Tara and still presented  land to the Christians to build the Monastery of Clonmacnoise. In Ireland we are reasonably good at understanding even the most startling of changes.

It’s a matter of experience really

PLACE OF REFUGE

In deciding who shall take care of refugees  flooding into Europe there has been remarkably little talk about those primarily responsible, namely, those who created the present state of continuous war from which so many of the people are  fleeing.  .  Surely the first responsibility should lie there.

If so, this  leaves all  members of the European Union with  a problem ; we may not have caused the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many other places but we did give our consent to them. Now we all have to pay the price of what we consented to.

Those who create war know there will be  refugees fleeing from it; they do not create war in the naïve belief that it will be nice and clean and people will  go back home when it is over. War is about displacing governments and people.

European governments, and the American government still to an extent, could in the past direct  wars  fought on someone else’s territory, they need not even see refugees. 

Now all that is different and the results of our wars – our wars  because  apart from a minority we either consented to them  or condoned them – have arrived on our European doorsteps.

The image of a small boy dead aroused  both horror and generosity, but we had had the cold knowledge of what was happening  to people like him for years before that  heartbreak happened and  governments, media,  universities  looked on  as cold as an item in yesterdays newspapers.

Then discussion revolved around what could be done  to limit the damage rather than to recognise the causes of it and  prevent it happening again. 

Whether we like it or not we are “the West”. So it  is immaterial whether we personally approve of NATO or not, it is immaterial whether we approve the renewal of a cold war with Russia, it is immaterial if  the government that manages our affairs and our wealth  spends  more than enough on  nuclear and other weapons and less than enough on nursing care , it is immaterial because we can do nothing  either to prevent  one or help another. Eventually of course we will be required to undo  resulting damage but we shall be given  little part in preventing it. 

And there lies one of the many tragedies of governments  to whom we give our consent, or whose actions we condone : what should  create  the greatest benefit for the most people becomes a means of channelling the greatest benefit towards the few who are powerful enough to  corral it for their own advantage.  And so war becomes  not a painful necessity but a business like any other.

Many refugees are coming from countries whose borders were drawn up without respect for already existing tribal and other boundaries and to meet  the demands  of   European governments who had  the power to do it. That has caused  problems  ever since.  In Northern Ireland we can understand that.  Northern Ireland is a  political unit  drawn up with great deliberation so that for all time it could be governed only  by a single unchangeable political party. At the time, the first decades of the twentieth century, this was  not considered unusual. Internationally it was tragically usual.

Our own experience – and history – should  certainly help us to be  generous in   relieving the distress of refugees  especially if we insist  that governments  admit the real reasons for it.

But those who want to reject a great flow of people into European countries say it will mean that rates of pay will fall, because immigrants will be willing to work for little because they have to live. It is also very attractive for governments to welcome an inflow of people from abroad who are well or highly qualified in medicine, law, teaching , engineering and much else.  If immigrants are filtered through because of their relative value to the host countries’ economy what will become of the rest ? This is one of the questions that could become more prominent soon .

There was always a tradition of immigrant workers into European countries.  Countries  enjoyed the benefit of an influx of workers when their  economy needed it, and they could tell them to go home when they were no longer wanted. Because of this it was possible for a country  to boast  it had a  low unemployment rate. It did, partly because once the migrant workers had fulfilled their purpose they went home. Meanwhile  working conditions and lack of dignified living conditions gave  many immigrants a very poor life . It was hoped that the European Union would remedy some of this, there would be free movement of labour and goods but decent living conditions.  But now international aggression in which Europe is involved, whether Europeans like it or nor, is  creating  immigrants of a quite new kind some of whom will fare better than others, often for domestic political and economic reasons .

Those who are concerned about human rights and dignity will be watching to see whether generosity and intelli