I don’t think I ever mentioned here, or provided a link to, the excellent article written by John Meagher of the Irish Independent when he interviewed me last October about my journey from belief to unbelief. It was published the date that the RTE documentary From Belief to Unbelief was first broadcast. You can read John’s article for free by clicking here. And you can listen to the documentary for free by clicking here.
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20 seminarians joined in 1980. 17 have since left religious life
April 17th, 2013Success and failure
February 27th, 2013Success and failure are inescapable experiences of being human. They say that all political careers end in failure. Kipling warned us to regard both success and failure as impostors. Beckett told is to fail better the next time. In the Christian myth, the central character, Jesus, is humiliated, shamed and mocked on a cross, crucified as a common criminal, and probably naked: exposed as an abject failure. And the story goes that he cried out: ‘My god, my god, why have you abandoned me?’ Even his god-myth had imploded.
Rather than asking was someone a success or failure, or, more to the point, each human asking asking of ourselves ‘Am I a success or failure?’ it is perhaps wiser to accept that, in any authentic human experience, there will be both success and failure, often interconnected and even simultaneous.
And so as we reflect on personal experiences of failure, we may need to nudge ourselves to perceive perhaps hidden, or forgotten, strands of success. And in the dazzling glow of success, let’s not lose the run of ourselves and omit the undercurrent of failure.
We are human, first and foremost. Humans who succeed AND fail, who fail AND succeed. At a time of failure, pause a while and bring to mind ways in which you have succeeded. And in the heady rush of success, recall that it is transitory and built upon untold failures, each of which has prompted you closer to success.
But do not see yourself as ‘successful’ or ‘a failure’. Be human. Embrace success and failure. See the bigger picture. And, for now, accept the successes and failures of your life and take the next authentic step for you at this moment.
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Taoiseach’s heartfelt apology to Magdalenes
February 20th, 2013I was proud of our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny’s, heartfelt apology to the women shamed by Irish society when the real shame was on us, a society warped for much of the 20th century by the shameful holier-than-thou attitudes and prejudices which were instilled into us by the Church and which, alas, have not entirely vanished.
Watch Kenny’s tearful apology here:
Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s heartfelt apology to Magdelene women
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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
February 18th, 2013I watched Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and attended a Q&A session with its director Alex Gibney at the Lighthouse cinema in Dublin last Friday. The documentary about clerical sex abuse in the USA and Ireland is powerful, well-made and persuasive, as you might expect from the Oscar-winning director. It made the point that, at one stage, every case of clerical child abuse ended up on the desk of Cardinal Ratzinger, the soon-to-retire pope. Given the opprobrium rightly heaped on those very many bishops and religious superiors who did not stop abusing priests from the rape and molestation of children, who did not report such heinous crimes to the police, and who did not inform the parents of children abused of the trauma suffered by their children, I couldn’t understand why the film backed away from taking a closer look at Ratzinger’s failure in this regard too, given that, as the documentary makes clear, every case landed on his desk.
My only other criticism of the film is that it doesn’t challenge the ludicrous belief which is articulated in the film that a priest is ontologically changed at ordination, becoming just less than an angel. It’s that daft belief that mesmerized so many credulous Catholics into not recognizing vile acts against children for what they are: crimes against humanity perpetuated by vile men, facilitated by senior clerics who retain their positions of power and privilege.
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Death of a Garda
January 30th, 2013Life is fragile. Very. And it can be brutal. Or human beings can be. The murder of Garda Adrian Donohoe shocked us: a professional policeman and, as such, a representative of the State, gunned down mercilessly in the line of duty. The murderer reminds us that homo sapiens is a species of animal, capable of beastly and inhumane acts to his fellow man. To summarily rob the wonder of life is the cruelest act, violating the victim and his wife and children, his friends and colleagues, his relatives, and the State he served – by all accounts – so well.
Let us remember Garda Adrian Donohoe at this time of trauma and grief for his loved ones and for the State, and at this sad moment for humanity, and we salute all gardai who put their lives at risk to protect and serve this Republic.
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Father Flannery, the Vatican and the Taliban
January 23rd, 2013Father Tony Flannery was told by the Vatican that he could only resume his priestly ministry if he agreed, amongst other things, that women should never be ordained as priests. In light of the so-called Catholic Schools Week designated for next week 27 January to 3 February, are we to take it that children, especially girls, are required to be taught that they, and any of their gender, can never be priests because they are female? Are ordinary parents, innocently depositing their daughters (and sons) in Catholic schools, happy that unmitigated sexual discrimination under the guise of religious claptrap is being taught to their children? Are people who are capable of thinking for themselves not outraged that nuns, priests and teachers are required to indoctrinate such Stone Age folly in the 21st century? Are ordinary Catholics not outraged at the treatment of Father Flannery by the Vatican? For decades, devout Catholics innocently enrolled their children in Catholic schools not realizing the very real risk of sexual abuse and the cover up of sexual abuse to which they were subjecting their children. How long will it take ordinary Catholics to realize that subjecting their children to the intellectual abuse that comes with being taught such drivel – under pain of excommunication – is every bit as bad as having their children sexually abused?
Father Flannery is a man of good conscience. He represents a regrettably dying breed of priests who were willing to think for themselves and speak their mind rather than being moronic uncritical mouthpieces for the Inquisition. Yes, the Inquisition is alive and well, the thought police, repressing freedom of thought and freedom of expression, and threatening dire consequences for those who don’t submit.
St Peter – insofar as we know anything about him – never said a single word about women being prohibited from ‘ordination’ to the ‘priesthood’. Nor, for that matter, did he ever say a single word about contraception or homosexuality. The man whom the Vatican claims as its first pope wouldn’t have a clue what Rome is on about today, and I expect he’d be staggered at the suggestion that anyone should be ‘excommunicated’ or prohibited from exercising his priesthood because of his belief that women should not be excluded from the priesthood. So, Father Flannery, if they do dismiss you, it says a whack more about them and their thought control and fossilized thinking than it says about you.
St Thomas Aquinas said better to disobey the Pope than not to follow your conscience. The Inquisition within the Catholic Church, no less than the Taliban and Islamist terrorists, cannot be allowed to win. Love casts out fear, and the Inquisition can thrive only on threat and fear. I salute you, Father Flannery.
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Someone
January 17th, 2013I recently caught on RTE Radio One an interview with Irish poet Dennis O’Driscoll. I’d never heard his work before and the interview finished with a recitation of his extraordinary poem ‘Someone‘. It’s a remarkable poem, stunning, dramatic, arresting. It grabs you deceptively with its ordinary everyday words and revolutionizes one’s viewpoint on the ordinary, helping us to realize the great fragile transitory and fleeting magnificence of life. Like a funnel, we rethink our habitual awareness of the everyday, the things we take for granted – an erection, eating buttered toast, saluting the neighbours, listening to the weather forecast – and the poem transforms our awareness of the banal. Someone today is doing all those ordinary things for the last time. And becoming aware of that transforms our consciousness to live each moment – this moment – to the full.
Someone who is going about his ordinary business today is doing so for the very last time. Much of the genius of the poem is that that one word – Someone – is imbued with new meaning and that single word evokes the whole poem and its simple yet profound wisdom.
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It’s a wonderful life
December 26th, 2012I began watching ‘It’s a wonderful life’ each Christmas a few years ago. It gets to me every time. This year, I cried seven times during it – maybe because of recent high profile suicides. It’s a magnificent celebration of the wonder of life, to be grasped even in the midst of trials and terrors. Although an unbeliever – and possibly even more so on that account – the carefully crafted frame of the story, begun from the perspective of imagined celestial beings that look on us from an alternative viewpoint, and the opening line that the hero isn’t ‘sick’ but, ‘worse than that – he’s discouraged’ sets the tone and vantage point of the psycho-spiritual purpose of the movie: our need for hope against discouragement.
The person on the brink of suicide might find it difficult to bring to mind the positive things they have done in life, and yet that is the tack taken by the ‘angel’ who, charmingly, wants to earn his wings. And so, at the hero’s moment of despair, he is led to people and places familiar to him and he realized that he has not been all bad. Far from it. Yes, he shouted at his kids and crashed his car and money went missing from his workplace during his watch and yes he faced jail and public shaming yet, after his journey with his ‘guardian angel’ he realizes that that is not the sum total of his life. He has done good. And life is to be embraced and rejoiced in, even in the midst of trial and tribulation.
Today, the Meath Hunt gathered in Kells, county Meath, Ireland. It lashed rain but it was a magnificent event: colourful, powerful, energetic, exciting. Riders on their steeds quaffed hot mulled wine while their hounds got friendly with the crowd. I petted two fine hounds and then, after the bugle blew, I and my daughter headed off following them, along with scores of other cars. Kells was a vortex of excitement and smiles, as tourists and locals and horsey people and blow-ins like me savoured the atmosphere. And I felt just like George Bailey, hero of It’s a Wonderful Life, appreciating the moment and thrill of it all.
Before any of us were born, the world spun on its axis and the world knew nought of our non-existence. After our short span is done, the earth will go on spinning without us. Right now, we are alive! Life is wonderful. Relish it, savour it, live each moment to the full.
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