EASTER BLESSINGS

May we all enjoy a Peaceful and Happy Easter.

REASON RULES?

"There was no real preparation for Brexit.  There is still no realistic preparation for it. The best that can be done now may be to start at the beginning, spend two years, three years, more if necessary finding out and telling people what exactly is the price they and we would pay for doing business with the biggest hosting of trading and military empires the world has ever seen. Rushing into that situation with patriotic cries and waving flags will not do." 

When this remark was made (Blog January 17 th. January 2019) it was a long shot. But like many another strange thing in the present Brexit upheaval, it became less of a long shot because some people insisted on  shifting the target to where they wanted it to be.

Now Mr Donald Tusk, President of the European Council,  is talking about a delay with a rather open end and even Kenneth Clarke has been  murmuring words like... "as long as it takes....", and some British politicians have  even suggested that if they have to take part in European Parliament elections, well, they  might simply have to get elected but not sit or take part in a parliament they believed should not control what they don't want.   Curious, because  they still say they don't understand Irish people, like Sinn Fein, getting elected to Westminster and not  taking their seats because that parliament should not control their policies!  Political upheaval in London  produces some understandings amid the chaos!

The upheaval of people in British streets struggling to control the direction of their government, members of parliament struggling inside the House of Commons to take control of business away from the government, all of it a struggle to define where power should  lie in the British  political system,  so many of the certainties of British political life becoming uncertain - one could say that Mr Rees Mogg should understand this shaking of the foundations of  old institutions:  ancient certainties of the old church have also been shaken to the core in recent times.

Institutions are not forever. Submitting to  change they get extensions of  power on their own terms through the centuries  but even in Buckingham Palace  these days there must be  some  ideas about how stability can lead to stagnation, to demands for more reasonable government in which fresh  energies can emerge from fresh minds.

We could  argue that the next logical step in the development of modern democracy must be to have  every political party in government. Is the British party system past it? What is happening in Britain has been described as a serious crisis: very well then,  in time of war it is normal to create a national government rather than a party one. So, nothing strange about Mrs May and Mr Corbyn coming together  to  solve problems  rather than as rivals to create them - after all, whoever may be responsible for present political  failure or success, everyone is affected by both of them. So why not a national co-operative government in Britain now ? 

In the far future students may well be studying the emergence of such a pattern of government  emerging out of the present British chaos.  And quite likely  if the BBC is still working it will be referring to "the British triumph of creating such a step forward", even while  other nations may be  moving towards it because of reason ! There is no need for empires to crumble into intellectual and material poverty but it most often happens that way. The worst of them have crumbled from within, like the Roman one, while pledging international co-operation, good order and goodwill. From the setting up of the EEC until now London has never been happy with European co-operation except on its own terms. The European Union will not last forever any more than the European empires did. But we could say, "Let nature take its course, letting it develop with reason and then evolve, not with old fashioned ideas of a united states of Europe arming itself  for other wars but with new ideas you have to nourish from within,  rather than let it stagnate with old ideas that did not work even for yourselves".

 

MODERN CRUSADES

Last week BBC TV broadcast a film "Guns and Rosaries" about the life and work of Father Patrick Peyton, an Irish priest who created "Rosary Rallies" that attracted  millions of people to  listen to his  religious message, " The Family That Prays Together Stays Together".

In 1954 Fr. Peyton  came to Belfast where tens of thousands of men, women and children gathered in an open air venue, a cinema and a football ground to hear him. Already he had attracted not only millions of hopeful listeners worldwide but also teams of films stars, technicians, industrialists, investors, newspaper owners to help him spread his religious message.  Film stars of that time, Bing Crosby, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Maureen O Hara , James Cagney and many others  not forgotten even yet, helped in his "Crusade for the Family Rosary".  In  Ireland church  committees were  appointed to arrange  great assemblies of people to hear the message "The Family That Prays Together Stays Together"  and to promise their families  would be like that. The Family Rosary - families on their knees praying together at home  - found many new homes for this simple, repetitive prayer that was now blossoming out from Patrick Peyton's Mayo fireside into families across the world.  

Some Irish bishops, like Dan Mageean in Belfast, welcomed Patrick Peyton and prepared happily for  monumental rallies, others, like John Charles Mc  Quade in Dublin  disapproved of them .

Bishop Mageean appointed committees to organise rallies in  Belfast,  Ballymena  and of course Downpatrick, traditionally said to be St Patrick's very special place; people  marched  with banners and flags, singing all the way to the hosting places.

The rallies were spectacularly successful. Tens of thousands of families made a pledge  to pray  once every day as a united Family who, praying together, would stay together, holding fast against the modern trend towards divorce and the dissolution of Family as  the  bedrock of civilised Christian living.

It was hard to imagine  all this attracting the helpful assistance  of governments and their financiers and perhaps  even being financed by the CIA, none of them being  noted  for special piety.  But it happened.

The BBC programme "Guns and Rosaries"  helps to fill  in the outline of what people in Belfast in later years began to suspect.  The Rosary Rallies were too vast and too popular not to be of great interest to government agencies, financiers and politicians who were fascinated by the efficiency with which Patrick Peyton attracted millions to his cause and dollars to match. He  believed  the simple traditional family prayer that helped Irish people to endure hunger and cruelty  would help  the modern world to endure, possibly even lessen, some of the abuses of the modern world, starting with America - if he could persuade millions of good people in  millions of good families to help him, and if he could get the celebrities whom  the people loved to help him too.

Powerful people who noticed his success, however, were fighting their own crusade at the time, "against godless communism".  Patrick Peyton's religious  mission was born at a time when  sentiment  was  replacing spirituality in both  popular and official religion, sentiment more comfortable in the cinema than in the hardship of many religious households, when Christian religious action and concern  were  being directed away from the present evils of present miserable systematic poverty, more and more towards the future defeat of the possibly future evils of possibly " godless communism",  when Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald were still on cinema screens as Fathers O'Malley and Fitzgibbon showing how personal religious sweetness and light could overcome even the hardest of capitalistic hearts when personal holiness mattered and social change did not.  In Europe and the USA after WW2  great political and financial interests seemed reasonably under control  but even there and certainly in other parts of the world new and worrying religious and social thoughts were emerging, most of all  in Latin America where even important members of the Catholic church had rediscovered that religion was for  setting people free of repression, not for enclosing them in oppressive economic cages.  Liberation Theology in the decades after WW2 was becoming dangerous doctrine.

The CIA was one of many organisations intent on dealing with dangerous social doctrines. It offered finance to  the crusading work of Patrick Peyton. The family hearth after all was the very heart at which "godless communism" was striking; the Bay of Pigs was not the only kind of answer to this, or the assassination of one  archbishop, or the freezing out of another. Indeed these might prove no answers at all. So rumour was that the CIA had become a subscriber to the Fr. Peyton Rosary Crusade funds.

Rumours  of what was happening to, or with, the Peyton Crusade in other parts of the world  stirred up little interest in Belfast. During  the next decades we had other matters to think about, not yet realising how  globalisation meant we are all involved now  in everything, everywhere.  But we also had to think of what our religious belief and action - or religious doubt and inaction- really meant in our rapidly changing world and about what political and economic campaigns  religious people  were being pulled into. Anyway, the threat of Belfast being overwhelmed by "godless communism" was remote.  The communist newspaper in the shop where I got mine was bought by three people, one was the Secretary of the local  Party, another was me and I forget who the third one was. Betty Sinclair maybe or Andy Barr  who, as far as I knew were too busy trying to get people decent houses and jobs to be over- concerned about the CIA and its crusade.

 "Guns and Rosaries" strengthens the rumours, it does not prove a case against Patrick Peyton. But it prompts questions about  leadership, about how our religious ideas come into fashion or go out of it. The pre-Christian lawyer Cicero used to ask, as first step in solving cases, "Cui bono?, who gets the advantage from all this "? 

Good question.  Does it matter why John Paul  was elected Pope  and  created a campaign against "godless communism" in his native Poland? Or why an Archbishop of Buenos Aires became Pope, or Archbishop Fulton Sheen in the nineteen fifties created a mission for Latin America supported by  funds from his TV success in the USA at a  time  when  the USA had its own unsolved problems of poverty and injustice? Or if a Rosary Crusade became funded by, among other interested parties, The Central Intelligence Agency ?

Or that Archbishop  Romero was shot dead at Mass in  San Salvador?

Questions worth coming back to sometime.......after Brexit maybe ?....... Cui bono ?...........

RE-UNITED IRELAND

Public discussion  about re-uniting Ireland has become more open and more positive than at any time since the British government imposed a border in the country. By one of those ironies of history that should make politicians more cautious the border that seemed to solve London's problems in the nineteen twenties is creating its biggest problem now. And doing away with the artificial border in Ireland is clearly the most rational way to solve London's Euopean problem and give Ireland a bit of peace.

In the discussion about re-union an Irish politician said with obvious irritation - and aiming at a political rival - it would be wrong to demand reunification without planning what shape it should take. But for hundreds of years that is exactly what we in Ireland have been doing, working out the shape and structures of Ireland in the future. Even a British king, George the Fifth, said he hoped that one day the Irish people would come together and he had a plan -  Ireland united within the British empire;  the Empire became the Commonwealth,  India (Victoria's "Jewel in  her crown" ) has become a major independent competitor in world trade, other nations are anxious to do the same and Ireland has thrown in its lot with fellow Europeans on that road and not with the  remains of the king's empire.

Wolfe Tone, "father of Irish republicanism" could think comfortably of a king as head of an Irish state -  in his day kings were believed to have divine credentials for ruling people. He and other republicans could hardly have foreseen that  the great French Revolution would produce Napoleon and make an Emperor of him or that the American revolution  could ever produce an emperor-like leader not from divinely assisted blue blood but from market place and vaudeville. In Ireland people appreciated kings - although they tended usually to favour small ones and to fight for centuries against big ones; for many centuries a nation without a king or queen seemed somehow not quite right. But once people got away from the notion that kings and queens were sacred essentials for good government, exciting ideas emerged. Many people stopped looking for good people to govern them and demanded they should govern themselves instead.

From the nineteen sixties onward Irish people put forward various ideas about the shape of a future  re-united Ireland. Time came when even in the north-east you could do this without being arrested and interned without trial.

It is interesting then to think about the various suggestions put forward by people in those days and during the decades following. These included :

Continuing (or restoring) Stormont government as London had set it up;

 United Ireland with one central government;

Independent Ulster ( six counties separate from the rest of Ireland);

Federal Ireland, with four provinces ( Ulster of nine counties) with central government not necessarily resident in Dublin ; each province having a  measure of self government ;

Federal Ireland of two units but one central government;

Full integration of six counties of Ulster with Britain (which would remove the title Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the north eastern counties would become, as Mrs Thatcher might have said, even more British than Finchley.  It is said however that when Mrs Thatcher was canvassing for election in her young days she said Yes to re-uniting Ireland to get votes.

All these and  other "solutions" to what was called "the Irish problem"- although, like the border and the backstop now it was not an Irish but a London problem - were discussed by Irish people even in politically difficult  times.

So when voices from London, Dublin, New York, the Vatican and all over cried out to us to sit round the table and discuss our future, most people were more than willing to do so.

When however discussion times came - and there were more than one through the years - the natural question was, "Now, here we are ready to discuss, so what's on the agenda , what do we discuss ?

Can we discuss a United Ireland ? No you can't. 

Federal Ireland? No

Independent Ulster ? No,

Restoring Stormont as it was ? No.

As Mrs Thatcher put it so cleverly: Out, Out, Out, to every suggestion. The only thatcher in  Ireland who thought tearing the roof from off  our heads was a good idea.

So the question was put : What can we discuss then?

The answer was, You can discuss government from Westminster with a greater measure of devolution in Belfast.

And the most interesting thing about that was: Nobody in Ireland had suggested it. The only item for discussion was a London solution the Irish had not asked for !

Just as nobody in Ireland wanted the border in the nineteen twenties. Including Edward Carson.

We don't have a problem of  demanding a re-united Ireland without planning ahead for it. We have be planning ahead for it for centuries. Our problem is that people with bigger fingers on bigger triggers are always telling us what we can discuss and what we cannot.

Footnote: John Mc Keague , leader of the Red Hand Commandos, said " A united Ireland will probably come; but when it does we ( he was referring to  the unionist  community) want to go into it as a free people - even if we are free only from 12 midnight to 5 past, we must go in  as a free people."

He was familiar with the thinking of Desmond Boal and both of them were more open to ideas than many people  thought they were.  So were a lot of others.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

NEW NATIONALISTS?

Two Irish political parties, SDLP and Fianna Fáil , are planning to combine. The shape of this combining  will become clearer in a few days time; it could be a merger, an agreement to support each other in elections, a sharing of resources, a coalition, more perhaps.

One of the parties, the SDLP , Social Democrat and Labour, grew out of the old Nationalist Party and was founded in 1970. The old Nationalist Party was powerless - when  Ireland's northeast was organised as the last part of Ireland under London control it was made powerless. Constituency boundaries and voting were arranged to make the Ulster Unionists unbeatable,  assuring them of an unchangeable majority of seats in local government and parliament. Seats in both were often uncontested in elections because it was not worthwhile to contest them.

When the northeast was carved out to make it politically unchangeable Nationalists tried at first to have nothing to do with it, then they  took their seats  when elected  and tried to create some  elements of democratic interaction between themselves and the unbeatable Unionists. Eventually, under  pressure from some of their  influential constituents, high clergy for example, they even consented to  become an official Opposition, an opposition that could never be in government. A  Nationalist leader, T.J. Campbell, wrote in his memoirs  (Fifty Years of Ulster, published 1941) that in his experience his party was able to bring about only one piece of legislation. It was  for the Protection of Wild Birds. It could never put forward  successfully any measure for the protection of his party's democratic  constituents.

The two parties, Unionist and Nationalist, managed however to create a small system within a system :  Nationalist representatives in City Hall or local council would identify " decent Unionists" - of whom there were more than could show their decency in public - and ask them to vote for some measure that would not be politically incorrect, for instance new amenities in a mostly Nationalist area of Belfast. In return Unionists would approach Nationalists to add their votes in councils for some politically harmless measure that might not get the enthusiastic support of fellow Unionists.

In the mid-sixties,  however, an important revolution happened : nationalists turned away from asking  favours and took to demanding rights. 

Those who now saw the old Nationalist Party as worthy but powerless  created a  new party combining Social Democracy and Labour. It was a loose-fitting title for a loose fitting political programme but in the circumstances it worked. The civil rights campaigns had brought new strength to demands for good government. And meanwhile another revolution was pending, a widespread reawakening  of the political idea of, " We are not looking for suitable people to govern us, we are looking for how to govern ourselves". Sinn Fein summed up that thought in the title of their  Party which challenged both Unionist and Nationalist.  As Sinn Fein gained strength the SDLP lost it. 

For some time now  a weakened SDLP in the northeast has been approached by Fianna Fáil,  from the other side of the border,  to create a merger, a sharing of resources or whatever the two parties agree to.  This might  perhaps help  the SDLP to survive and help Fianna Fáil to become an all Ireland party.

Both parties have their doubters internally. Bringing two  political groups together  can cause internal weakness in both of them rather than strength for both of them together, so they have to depend on this new alignment to compensate and to fulfil the needs of both. Which is quite a lot to ask. 

Other things to ask - for  future electors to ask - what  are the needs of these two parties on their way to becoming successful partners?  Are they likely to use their combined strength to preserve  old ideas or to create  fresh ones? Are they going  to strengthen  confrontational politics  so as to eliminate other parties rather than find common cause with them in building a shared democracy  for all Ireland ?

Working for a shared democracy in Ireland is for now.

After that there will be plenty to agree and differ about.

But first things first.

The year the SDLP came into being, 1970, the Alliance Party also came. Early attempts to change the politics of  N.E. Ireland under leaders like Terence Ó Neill still left the Ulster Unionist Party refusing membership to Catholics who wanted to test the sincerity of such changes. Two prominent ones  applied for admission to the Party and were refused.

During the nineteen sixties however Young Unionists  ( the title they had) became prominent and as far as they seemed able opposed this exclusiveness. In time the Alliance Party came into being  and was basically a unionist party in which Catholics would  be welcomed and feel so. Some prominent Protestant clergy as well as prominent Catholic non-clergy were involved in the New Ulster Movement that led  up to the formation of Alliance. The New Ulster Movement included, prominently, those whom the Ulster unionists had rejected.

All of which is part of a strange and interesting  Irish  political evolution we  Oldies remember.  Churchill's foolish remark about the permanence of Fermanagh's dreary steeples and other people's insistence on saying everything always was and always will be a simple carve-up between orange and green, a backstop colourful but inaccurate, may have overlooked what many of  our fellow citizens were really up to all those years ago. Maybe overlooking what they are really up to now?

PADRAIC FIACC

Padraic Fiacc , Joe O Connor, has left us.

After his 94 years seeing life for what it is, like treading on grass littered with broken glass and shredded bricks, hope, fresh amazement dissolving into sorrowful disappointment, rising again because the spirit is stronger than the hardest of worlds, not needing a sweet smelling lawn from which to leap to where the spirit is at home  ......................

A friend, he  came to visit us and we talked about life and death, about poetry and about why we should be afraid of poets............

He did us the honour of writing a poem about it afterwards :

 "Ducking flying glass from the workers cleaning

Up afterwards, I take to the middle of Royal Avenue

On my way in gold rimmed Polaroids to give

A poetry reading in Ballymurphy : clutching at

Ragged editions of my own poems , like clutching at

strands of grass to keep you up from falling

with crashing debris  down the mountainy ware

- houses and hotels !  .........................."

Rest peacefully, Joe , and remember your friends..............

BREXIT

The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union was based on some ideas that were far from safe. For instance, that Britain could "go it alone", depending upon trade agreements it could make or renew one by one in the future , depending also on an "ourselves alone" policy on everything , freely making and unmaking its own laws on justice, foreign policy, trading and much else.

Forgetting that Britain was never self-sufficient.  

It built up its great industries, power and wealth not from  its own natural resources but by using the natural resources of other nations whom it attacked and controlled. When an English monarch first  licensed and gave military support to pirates the pirates changed status to "privateers",  that is, piracy was nationalised and became a protected and successful English national industry. Historic out-sourcing by government.

Empire building nations including the British fought each other for control of the slave and piracy, opium and other trades, making them into national industries.

Two things about that : the need to be self-sufficient, to provide for a nation's needs and development from its own resources, was not necessary,  military conquest provided resources that really belonging to other people.  As long as this was happening Britain , like other empire builders, did not have the need, or even the possibility or desire of being self-sufficient. And in any case the nationalising of slavery and piracy and the seizing of resources was to provide wealth for only some of the population at home. Many of the rest lived in poverty.  

Another idea was that if Britain left you, the loss is yours, or if you left Britain, the loss was yours. People believed the Empire's foreign resources were worth fighting for, waiting for , hoping for, even if only a minority got the benefit. The English author Charles Dickens, recognising the poverty and misery of so many English people seemed to believe the remedy lay in a flourishing middle class becoming kindly and helping the poor.

Nowadays we are watching the development of huge trading and military groups in competition with each other and threatening each other, among them the USA, China, Russia. Whether these nations or groups of nations are morally or politically  good, bad, democratic or whatever, to cut loose from any of them or enter into competition with them is something to think  long and hard about.

The European Union is a vast trading bloc too.  Did London really expect it would be possible without hard thinking, planning and much preparation to create new trading agreements when so many powerful rivals are waiting in the wings ? Agreements on its own terms like in the good old days when Britain ruled the waves sailing on hulls of free Irish oak ? Relying  perhaps on the goodwill and resources of the old empire whose countries  were now changed from obedient subjects to profit-making traders on their own account?  To create trading arrangements in a world where you had to think twice and more before sending in the military ? President Trump is putting in place a programme of  war  for trade and  trade for war.  You  don't get into that game without a lot of preparation, a lot of internal domestic resources and a lot of allies.

There was no real preparation for Brexit.  There is still no realistic preparation for it. The best that can be done now may be to start at the beginning, spend two years, three years, more if necessary finding out and telling people what exactly is the price they and we would pay for doing business with the biggest hosting of trading and military empires the world has ever seen. Rushing into that situation with patriotic cries and waving flags will not do.  

Many years ago wise people said that if London lost control of Ireland that would signal the collapse of the Empire. They were right. Then they said that if London lost control of the north-east of Ireland that would signal the breakup of the United Kingdom. Were they right about that too? For the first time in the past hundred years British politicians are using the word " secession" in relation to Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland. London and those who put their faith in it seem not to realise what is happening even to England. When empires fall the world realises for the first time how weak the centre of an empire really is when left to its own devices  - and how the very devices created to save an empire may one day prove the empire's undoing. Devices for instance like artificial borders in the Middle East .

Or in Ireland.       

IRISH TRAVELLERS

New Year -  time  for looking both backward  forward, wondering if what happened last year will make the coming year better or worse. 

For instance, in  the Irish presidential election  last year one of the contestants seemed to have little chance of election, he had only a few points in the opinion polls, but from that  humble beginning he ended up getting  nearly 25 percent of the votes cast . So what happened to bring him such  increased popularity? During his campaign he made remarks about Irish Travelling People that seemed likely to reduce his chances but they  had the opposite effect. He was reported to have said, "Travellers are basically people  camping on other people's land" and that they did not pay their share of taxes.  

For many people these remarks were unwelcome and damaging -  in recent years there have been significant  efforts to assert the dignity of  Travelling People as an Irish ethnic minority, equal citizens entitled to all the courtesies that deserves.  Support for this has been  increasing but there is  opposition and resentment as well. Mr Casey's sudden rise to nearly  25%  showed that an unexpectedly large  number of people in Ireland  were serious enough , and numerous enough, to challenge the slowly emerging  favourable change  in public opinion about our Travelling People .  This comes at a time when people  in other European countries  are showing increasing anxiety and anger about  migrants coming in from other countries ;  Ireland has in a sense  migrants within -  moving from place to place in Ireland to live according to their own traditions in their own country. In Ireland  they are part of the nation , not "foreigners" ,  so any European trend against "foreigners" does not  apply.   

One of our artists, Liam Andrews , was fascinated by the Irish Travelling People whom he recognised as keepers of an Irish and international cultural tradition. The relationship between "settled" people and the Travellers in Ireland though has a lot of problems that need  sensitivity and imagination similar to his, and social resources as well.

Problems like this increase as people become more and more organised into, and around,  land ownership, so what happens when people whose culture arises  not  from land ownership but from land use and  when the services they provide to others require that they move from place to place to provide them? It is not an Irish but an international historical situation that has not been solved because we allowed land ownership to win over land as a shared inheritance for our peoples.

"Reservations"  caused so much hurt in America and Australia that we  think , How could they treat people that way?  Then we realise nervously how in Ireland we have reservations too , small reservations, asking people who are essentially Travellers to become "settled " like the rest of us.  Maybe we don't realise how some social - and economic - changes we consider "natural to progress" have been so hurtful  for some of us.

The Casey incident  may suggest that a lot of us in Ireland are willing to base our politics on  selective  rather than shared citizenship. We Old Folk saw such ideas swell up and develop in Europe in our day. Minorities were converted into enemies in their own countries. 

We found out the hard way how bad that was. In Germany, Ireland.......... or anywhere else.  So  in 2019 will we see land ownership and  enlightened land sharing moving  together in Ireland ? It could prove difficult in the present political climate in Europe but Ireland could perhaps lead the way in an  imaginative, creative  Irish solution to an Irish - and international - problem.  A new political party to  restrict the rights and dignity of Irish Traveller citizens is, however, a sad possibility.

 

 

OUR NEW YEAR

 

 

May 2019 be a Blessed and Happy Year for everyone

May we help it turn out that way  

Recognising that to be happy and blessed is a birth right

 

for all of us to enjoy .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

May we all have a very happy Christmas. 

May we make Christmas  very Happy and Everything very Happy.  Always.

Easier said than done, but it's worth having a good try at it. Hoping we get there more often than not.

Some Christians  don't like  Christmas  being called Xmas and being wished a Merry Xmas. But the X is still shorthand  for Christ and " mas" is still shorthand for religious worship , so  Xmas is short for Christ's Mass, so where's the difference?  And in the very old days "merry"  probably meant  happier than usual, not riotously so. In the beautiful Zinneman film  A Man For All Seasons  about the life and death of Thomas More, murdered by Henry the Eighth , Thomas says to his grieving wife and family, "We shall meet merrily in heaven".   Thomas, sober, serious, severe and law-abiding Thomas, certainly did not have carousing in mind but quiet, thoughtful , shared happiness  to come. After all, he was about to be executed. So Merry  can just mean Happy Christmas, only better.  

Christians were always good at religious shorthand. In their early - persecuted - days when they wanted  to tell each other who they were and where they were they  drew or carved  a fish on the wall.  Or on a tomb. Or anywhere. Sacred graffiti : "You'll find a Christian down there at the sign of the Fish".  Signs on walls meant a lot more to  people who did not read as much as we do now, and we easily  forget what their graffiti  meant. Calling a pub "The Kings Head" may have meant  it was run by a  rebellious innkeeper, reminding people of King Charles the beheaded ;    calling it  "The Crown and Garter" an innkeeper  may have been envious of a monarch leading a  riotous  life and getting  away with it.

But a Fish as a Christian religious symbol ?  Irish people depict  the Salmon as a symbol of wisdom, so why not ? Some people  still use secret  codes and handshakes and gestures when they meet you  -- " getting to know you is important but getting to know if it's worth my while getting to know you is important too , are you one of us?".  In some places paper money  had  a hammer and sickle imprinted on it, some had  a square and compass, probably short for,  " There's more where this comes from if you're one of us......." ?

Christians  fleeing persecution in their bad times could say, "Stop a minute,  there's a house with a fish carved on the wall, like to know who it is....might be , well, one of us". 

In  Christian churches we can still notice a book or a window with  a line design on it that looks like the shape of a fish. Which of course it is, a sacred symbol announcing adherence, belief, welcome to  of Christians to and from each other. Many churches have at least one somewhere. The line drawing is saying  in code,  "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour", an important  message  for ancient Christians  wandering  in a strange land or under persecution. And a message for modern Christians living  comfortably  but forgetting what the secret symbol said. The secret was in the letters of the word IXTHUS, their Greek word for a Fish , its letters carried  the secret, sacred meaning : 

I  for "Jesus", X for  "Christ ",   TH  "of God ",   U for "Son" , S for "Saviour". That's as near as we can get to matching their everyday  lettering with ours.

The capital letter  X , then, short for Christ , just as in  "Xmas",  has a long and honourable history for Christians.

So -- Happy Christmas, or  Merry Christmas or Merry Xmas,or  Happy Festive Season from and to everyone . As they might say in the King's Head or the Salmon Leap or at The Sign of the Fish ,  whatever you're having yourself......

 

 

 

 

FILM AGAINST WAR?

It was a good thought   by a TV company recently to screen the film Oh What a Lovely War in November  - when our dignified remembrance of the dead can so easily be made into  an undignified celebration of war. Oh What a Lovely War is a mockery of the  way the first world war was prepared for and managed. Is it really an anti-war film though, as we may think it is?

One of the earliest and probably most famous  "anti war" film was All Quiet on the Western Front, a German film of 1930 ,  La Grande Illusion appeared  in 1937, world war 2 came in 1939. Oh What a Lovely  War in 1969 and many other films were screened through the years commemorating  personal , family and communal tragedy suffered in  government wars for profit and in peoples'   revolutions. 

 

Have they helped to stop or prevent war ?  Some of them have provoked horror, anger, some have provoked ridicule and laughter at the stupidity of generals - but  are they really protests about war itself, that is, really anti-war films ? Or are they  protests at  and mockery of wars that are unnecessarily cruel and wasteful of lives and money, that is,  "not run efficiently ?  Are they suggesting  that if  war is run efficiently, not by vainglorious  generals and politicians but by coolly rational technicians they would be, perhaps, all right ?

One of the most harrowing war  films was Paths of Glory made in 1957, a story of French soldiers executed for cowardice when the real fault was the foolishness and vanity of their war leaders. It was an invitation to think about what war organisers do even to their own soldiers. What they do to their own veterans we could see in my young days in ex-soldiers , some missing a limb,  selling matches or  drawing chalk pictures on the pavements of  Belfast streets .

Simon Rose in his monumental Classic Film Guide (1995) mentions some  of the  "anti-war", or perhaps "war-critical" films censored or banned by powerful people who did not consider their message, however limited,  suitable for human consumption : La Grande Illusion was banned in Germany, Paths of Glory banned in France, All Quiet on the Western Front  banned in Poland and France, Battleship Potemkin was banned in England.  This last one was made in 1925, the year I was born, I  still look at it from time to time. Powerful people were  afraid  that showing it would encourage revolution at home after what happened in Russia - LLoyd George took a more effective line in England by conceding some after-war social changes to people instead of just banning or beating those who asked for them or  revealed the revolutionary consequences of bad government . 

Film  was recognised very early in its evolution as a new, exciting means of propaganda ,  good or bad.  Film became accused of promoting immorality, morality, war, peace , upper- class emptiness, middles-class ordinariness, various heroisms, cowardices and whatnot, never being an upholder or opponent of any of these in particular. Film is about propaganda - in the proper meaning of the word,  propaganda being  what somebody  wants to propagate, sow seeds about , help to flourish, increase, spread, sowing  either good seed or bad weed.  The Vatican has a department of Propaganda,  spreading and promoting its Faith, other  governments have departments of Propaganda with one title or another, promoting their culture and politics.  Film as propaganda for or against all of them arrived very soon after the first projected  pictures stared to move on the wall, its propaganda value recognised.  

Some films were good as propaganda, some not, some were good in their own artistic right some not.

 Odd Man Out (1947) was a propaganda film set in Belfast, beautifully done, an exhibition piece in black and white, still a delight to watch , a romantic James Mason struggling to stay alive after a revolutionary robbery ; The Third Man (1949) was about  good  American and British governments against bad peddlers of fake medicine in post war Vienna . The Informer  (1935)was a tragedy of personal greed and  what people do when it threatens  their  people's revolution.       

Watching  films like Paths of Glory or Oh What a Lovely War  soldiers who have suffered under military personnel of higher rank can have a welcome  laugh at a pompous non-commissioned officer,  a presumptuous commissioned officer, a too good sounding chaplain on film, but that does not mean they or the film have  a revulsion against war either as a career for themselves  or  as a profitable business for somebody else . A  real anti-war film has to be  a rational and direct attack on those who make war for profit,  make war armaments for business ,  push fellow citizens, even  their own children, towards  war from  infancy. And this is a difficult story to tell in a world that insists that The Most Deaths Solve The Biggest Problems and where financiers are more welcome than pacifists.

It is a lot to ask  commercial cinema to make effective anti-war  films, given their need  not only for finance but  for happy endings.   So the most hopeful and effective anti-war films  will probably be short, unflinchingly directed at the heart of the matter and inspired by a deep personal conviction on the part of those who risk making them .

In his book At Play in the Lions' Den , A Biography and Memoir of Dan Berrigan Jim Forest reminds us that  Dan's play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine -  factual, dangerous and real anti-war theatre - became the basis of a real anti-war film. The film was produced by Gregory Peck who  lost tens of thousands of dollars making it:

"The play became a movie produced by Gregory Peck , a project in which he took particular pride.... it's a film, he told me , that has so far paid back very few of the pennies that went into making it , but I predict it will be remembered long after I'm gone as one of the genuinely important films of its time".  (At Play in the Lions' Den , A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan by Jim Forest , Orbis Books 2017) 

That film  reflected  unselfish financing , was acceptably short , unflinchingly directed at the heart of the problem of war-for-profit  and inspired by a deep personal conviction on the part of those who risked making it.  They say it lost about a hundred thousand dollars.

PACIFISTS

In the month of November we gracefully remember our departed friends.

We also commemorate our many wars.

We can celebrate also in this month the heroes who gave the best time of their lives to convince the world that while wars may involve heroes they are themselves destructive,  a sad and always terrible disaster, whatever their end product.

Here are names of fellow citizens of our world - one for every day of November plus a few more - who tried to prevent war, tried to stop war and its terrible suffering , tried to convince us that in our present state of human evolution survival by destruction is unworthy and always a sign of many failures whatever the outcome.

These fellow citizens of a world that deserves peace endured the pain that pacifism brings. Some of them came to visit us in West Belfast and Derry  (their names are marked here by an asterix *)  and during our recent war time often enriched our many conversations, about the real meaning of war and the real meaning of peace, about a world  really serious about real peace,

 The meaning of Pacifist as understood here : One who aims towards and works for the abolition of war, one who, if war starts, tries to do all possible to lessen its cruelties and to stop it, one who works towards convincing governments and people to get rid of war for any reason and to create a way of life that respects our right to life, our  peaceful enjoyment of  life and the means of enhancing life for everyone.

 

         Dorothy Day                                  1897-1980     American.  FOUNDER OF CATHOLIC WORKER  

                                                                                                               MOVEMENT WITH PETER MAURIN.                                                                                                          

Barbara Deming                            1917 - 1984     American                 

Francis  Sheehy-Skeffington       1878-1916       Irish                 

Hanna Sheehy -Skeffington        1877-1946       Irish                  

Martin Luther King                       1929-1968      American         

*Dan Berrigan                               1921-2002      American                  

Philip Berrigan                              1923-2002      American           

*Mother  Teresa                           1910-1997      Albanian         

                                                                                   FOUNDER  OF MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY                                                                                                                                                           

Dietrich Bonhoeffer                     1906-1945       Polish

Mahatma Gandhi                         1869-1948        Indian                  

Martin Niemoller                         1892 -1984       German            

Fr Franz  Stock                              1904-1948         German                  

*Willa Bickham                           Contemporary  American      FOUNDER OF VIVA HOUSE  BALTIMORE                      

*Brendan Walsh                         Contemporary   American      FOUNDER OF VIVA HOUSE  BALTIMORE  

Nelson Mandela                         1918-2013           African              

Thomas Merton                          1915-1968            French             

*Bruce Kent                                 Contemporary    English              Founder of  Pax Christi.     

*Pax Christi                                 1945 on.                                           Catholic Peace organisation

Franz Jagerstatter                     1907-1943           Austrian             

Gordon Zhan.                              1918-2007           American          

*Brian Kavanagh.                       Contemporary        Irish                     

*Ciaran Mc Keown                     Contemporary        Irish                      

Helder Camara                            1910-1999           Brazilian              

Fr Georges Pire                            1910-1969          Belgian                  

*Fellowship of Reconciliation     1914 on                                              

Society of the Brethren              1708 on                                               

Conscientious  Objectors            297 A.D.  on                                             

*Mennonites                                 from Menno Simons (1496 - 1561)     

*Society of Friends                       1650 

*Steve Pittam                                   Contemporary English

*Jane Pittam                                     Contemporary English                                                      

Simone Weil                                   1909-1943        French                   

Hephzibah Menuhin (Hauser)     1920-1981        American                       

Rosa Parks                                       1913-2005        American                         

Peter  Maurin                                 1877-1949        French    FOUNDER OF CATHOLIC WORKER 

*Will Warren                                  1906-1990        English    SOCIETY OF FRIENDS WORKER IN DERRY

                                                                                                        1971-1977                                                                                     

*Alfred Mc Clung Lee                    1906-1992        USA                                           

*Betty Mc Clung Lee                     1908-1999         USA                                    

*Herman Verbeek                          Contemporary   Belgian     Member of the European Parliament.

Don Lorenzo Milani                        Died 1967           Italian       PARISH PRIEST , EDUCATOR  

*John Dear                                       Contemporary   American 

Gene Sharp                                      1928-2018           American

Robert Ellsberg                                b.1955                  American

Don Lorenzo Milani                        1923 - 1967          Italian           Founded schools with radical and, in their time, revolutionary programmes  for young  people and adults. Brought to court by military chaplains who had said, "Conscientious objectors are cowards...",  accusing him of slandering army chaplains.

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INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL PACIFISTS WELCOMED TO WEST BELFAST.

*Dan Berrigan Jesuit priest, read his Catonsville Nine for us in a makeshift community hall at the top of the Whiterock Road ;

*Mother Teresa  visited  us in West Belfast at the suggestion of a Methodist Minister in London, making an arrangement with church authorities for her Sisters to set up house in Springhill, an arrangement church officials later cancelled forcing them to go away again.

*Alfred Mc Clung Lee wrote a book in 1983 "Terrorism in Northern Ireland"   one of the few books exploring the real meaning of citizens' revolt against bad government in N.Ireland and elsewhere.

*Willa  Bickham and Brendan Walsh are colleagues and frequent  visitors with us in West Belfast.

*Bruce Kent and his colleagues marched to 10 Downing Street protesting against British government activities in N. Ireland. He resigned from his senior church position rather than accept the Catholic  church's acceptance of government nuclear arming for  " deterrence".   Pax Christi, a Catholic organisation he founded for world peace recognised the  work for peace in West Belfast.

*Ciaran Mc Keown, a student of peace and Pacifism since before the nineteen seventies in Belfast and  wrote about them . His father was headmaster of St Thomas' School Whiterock  Road.

* The Society of Friends have an honourable record of quiet service to people in conflict and provided help and comfort to prisoners and their relatives. They cooperated with residents and associations in West Belfast in the most difficult of recent years.

* Herman Verbeek visited , corresponded with and met us in West Belfast, discussed possible changes towards cooperation and peace in the Churches.

* John Dear stayed with us for a time and worked in cooperation with  Springhill Community House in the Centre for Human Rights.   

* Steve and Jane Pittam of the Society of Friends worked with us in West Belfast for many years and are still happily among our many visiting Friends.