Author Archives: Joe Armstrong

Censoring priests and the Vatican’s breach of UN Declaration of Human Rights

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Does it not bother Catholics that what they hear from their priests and bishops isn’t necessarily what those selfsame clerics actually think or believe themselves? Or that those who mouth the Vatican line might have more akin to parrots than pastors?

Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights enshrines self-expression as a fundamental human right: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’

Does it bother you that well-known and unknown Irish Roman Catholic priests, are, as we speak, denied that fundamental human right by the Vatican?

If it is true that books have been bought and pulped on the instruction of the Vatican, does that not unnerve anyone? Can anyone think of other regimes that burned books and suppressed ideas?

The trite argument that priests signed up to a body of belief and that they can’t pick and choose is simplistic and silly. For instance, the tradition of a married priesthood has a longer tradition within the Roman Catholic Church than that of compulsory celibacy. The ‘you-can’t-pick-and-choose’ brigade might remember that when they cling limpet-like to the Vatican’s current stance.

Does anyone really want their priests to be unthinking indoctrinated automatons who have abandoned their intelligence and critical faculties to become mindless minions of the Vatican?

There are those who argue that priests who can’t swallow the Vatican’s current dictates should simply leave. Simply? What of a man who has spent his entire adult life as a priest? A man who is entirely financially dependent upon the Church, without whose priesthood he has no job, no professional identity and no wife or children to go home to?

Besides, why should thinking Catholic priests allow the current Vatican clique to usurp onto themselves the mantle of Catholicism? The Vatican manifestly breaches the Church’s own teaching on conscience. Thomas Aquinas was clear that one must always follow one’s conscience even when it means disobeying the pope. The current repressive, censoring, anti-free speech, anti-discussion Vatican regime has little in common with the openness engendered by Pope John XXIII or the vision of the the Second Vatican Council.

Given that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, are we to stand idly by while the Vatican violates that basic human right through its censoring and silencing of fellow Irish citizens?

Hitler, Stalin and Mao burned books and silenced dissent. Chilly company, Benedict.

Dear Cardinal Brady

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Dear Cardinal Brady,

Resign. Your position is untenable, unconscionable, incredible.  It is self-evident to any adult of common sense, but evidently less so to an episcopal canon lawyer.

If a person in a golf club became aware of the dangers posed to named children by a member of a golf club, do you honestly think it sufficient for any responsible adult merely to report the incident to the president of the golf club and not also tell the police and the parents of the endangered children? And then you lamely, limply, blame the president of the golf club for not curtailing the rape of children by the golf club member!

To say nothing of your involvement in a confidentiality agreement with an abused victim.

Your moral failure is remarkable, your lack of accountability extraordinary, your ‘reasoning’ as you defend the indefensible and cling to your power and position gob-smacking beyond words.  Shame on you.

And this shame will follow you to, and beyond, the grave into the annals of history; and will grow with every hour that you cling to your bankrupt episcopal authority.

Joe Armstrong

 

Mouth on Fire’s Samuel Beckett at the Focus

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First, let me declare an interest. When I was Chair of Irish PEN, Cathal Quinn, Artistic Director of Mouth on Fire, dedicated the opening night of last autumn’s show Tyranny in Beckett to PEN’s annual International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Second, I’m working on developing a play on blasphemy with Mouth on Fire, consistent with Mouth on Fire’s track record of staging human rights plays, such as Beckett’s Catastrophe.

Before Vanishing, Mouth on Fire’s latest celebration at the Focus Theatre, is a performance of four Beckett plays in English, Ohio Impromptu, Footfalls, That Time and Come & Go. The fourth play is also performed in Irish, in the  world premiere of Gabriel Rosenstock’s translation Teacht is Imeacht.

Nick Devlin and Colm O’Brien gave a haunting, resolute and striking (literally) performance of Ohio Impromptu. I wondered how Colm’s knuckles could bear the intermittent forceful, astutely-timed knocking on the table, marking beats in the narrative, beautifully articulated by Nick’s gut-level portrayal of one of the most personal characters in the Beckett canon. The staging and lighting were superb, the two characters seated at a dimly-lit table on an otherwise blacked-out stage, a three-dimensional live Vermeer, without the colour. Black and white, gaunt and heart-rending, it relentlessly laid bare human loneliness.

Melissa Nolan, co-founder of Mouth on Fire, gave an extraordinary performance of the 40-year-old daughter caring for her mother, played in her gorgeous speaking tones by Abbey Theatre and RTE actor Geraldine Plunkett, who is at no point seen during Footfalls, her resonant discourse issuing from a far and blacked-out corner of the stark, dark stage. Costume designer Elizabeth Tierney chose a highly effective dress for Melissa’s character May, with the sound of the hem dragging along the stage floor accentuating the desolation of an adult child who has never lived her own life. Melissa played the part with truth, rawness and sensibility. She wept, carrying the audience with her in a stark and poignant realization of May’s transient life not lived. Melissa is master of the pause, as she asks, without bitterness or complaint, if she can respond to the next of the many needs of her aging mother – pause –  ‘again’.

The staging of That Time worked dramatically. Everything is black and unseen. Then, startling the audience, a light appears on the face of a old man with madly wild hair so high up off the stage and close to the ceiling that one wonders how this disembodied face got up there or stays up there. Played superbly by Marcus Lamb, wearing a spectacular gravity-defying wig by Val Sherlock, the face tells the whole story, evincing pain, recollection, internal rancour and debate. Marcus masterfully held our attention, a study in mime, unspeaking except for the occasional well-timed existential groan, to the accompaniment of a fast-paced taped  flow of consciousness monologue. And then, at the end, after all the words and inner anguish are spent, comes that delightful and unexpected beaming smile!

Jennifer Laverty, Melissa Nolan and Geraldine Plunkett deftly played the trio in Come & Go and its Irish version, performed immediately afterwards, Teacht is Imeacht. The energy of the play is lighter, its comedy more evident, there is colour in the heavily-painted lipstick and attire, yet at its heart are unspoken-about, secret, whispered  female illnesses and, of course, mortality. The Irish version was easy to follow, and as well-played and articulated as the English. Both versions were delightful. Costumes by Yvette Gilbert were aptly chosen, reinforcing the play’s patterns of action, repeated inter-reaction and mirrored dialogue.

Especial commendation to Becky Gardiner for her lighting and stage design throughout, but especially for That Time which pushed the possibilities of theatre to its limit. Directed by Cathal Quinn and produced by Melissa Nolan, Before Vanishing finishes at the Focus Theatre on Saturday 21 April.

Bookings: www.eventbrite.ie Tickets: €12, €10 and €8.

Before vanishing…Samual Beckett by Mouth on Fire

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Please consider funding the following project, even if only for a fiver:

http://www.fundit.ie/project/before-vanishing—

Click here for details

After the critical success of ‘Silence and Darkness’ at Focus Theatre last April and ‘Tyranny in Beckett’ last November at Smock Alley Theatre, Mouth on Fire, who specialise in performing the shorter works of Samuel Beckett, will now perform four more of his plays at Focus Theatre, Pembroke Place, Dublin, April 10th – 21st @ 8pm.

The title Before Vanishing… taken from Footfalls, was chosen to link all four plays. It conveys that all these characters are departing – either from this life or from where they currently reside – and this is the last you will ever see of them.

Ohio Impromptu, Footfalls, That Time and Come and Go, PLUS the WORLD PREMIERE of TEACHT IS IMEACHT, the Irish version of Come and Go, translated especially for Mouth on Fire by the world renowned Gabriel Rosenstock.

Gabriel Rosenstock, highly regarded poet in his own right and translator of luminaries like other Nobel laureates Yeats and Heaney states that he is ‘very happy to be involved in this project’.

This is the very first time Come and Go has been translated into or performed in the Irish Language (only Waiting for Godot has ever been performed in Irish) and thus it opens up a whole new audience for Beckett, which fits perfectly with Mouth on Fire’s stated aim to make Beckett more accessible to everyone.

Another first is that Geraldine Plunkett (star of Glenroe) will be sharing the same stage as her son Marcus Lamb (who played Eamon Ceannt in the IFTA Award Winning Documentary Seachtar na Casca and will be seen shortly in TG4’s The Galway Races along with Irish feature film Life’s a Breeze with Fionnula O Flanagan, directed by Lance Daly).

Other performers are Melissa Nolan (Mouth on Fire’s Co-Founder), Jennifer Laverty, Colm O’Brien and Nick Devlin, whom have all a wealth of theatre and screen experience.

Directed by Cathal Quinn (coached Stephen Rea with his accent in the IFTA Award Winning Drama Single Handed and Glenn Close and Janet McTeer with their accents in their Oscar nominated performances in Albert Nobbs), Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Mouth on Fire.

The big Five-O

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AS the big Five-O looms and gets closer and closer – the half-century – I cannot believe the computation of years. How could it be? Eighteen years living at home, a student until my late twenties, five years’ teaching, seventeen years working as a writer,  journalist and editor. Meeting my wife, the love of my life; fathering our children – the eldest now as tall (or could he be taller?) as me. The house built, the books written, the trees planted. The jobs done: Irish Times columnist, managing editor for Ireland of a publishers, chair of Irish PEN. The high points, the low points; the joys and the sorrows.

Our life tasks change. Time is more precious. Love alone makes sense of it all.

I’ve finished my memoir. Hardest thing I’ve ever written. And it was like a different person writing it, looking back at a younger self. I’ve the distance of age now to laugh at the young man’s follies and delusions. But it was so difficult going back there, revisiting insights, transitions, decisions delayed, decisions taken. Fear and risk at play in me.

Looking back, I saw the patterns, the traps, the seeming security and the terror of taking a risk confident only in my raw gut and trusting it, and outgrowing the need for others to agree or confirm or verify.

I’m writing a play. And I’ve written a short story.

What would I do if I’d only a year to live? Or a month? Or one day? I know I’d spend some of it writing.

Now

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A friend of mine has ‘NOW’ written in large letters on the face of his watch. What time is it? It’s now. What year is it? It’s now. When will I be happy? Now. When will I choose my thoughts? Now.

It’s all we have. Just this moment. The past is gone. The future never comes. There is just this moment.

I’ve finished my book. After a very long time. Finally. Sure, there may be some tweaks to be done to it. It’s the hardest job of work I’ve ever had to do – harder than a degree. OK, not as hard are leaving religious life – that was the hardest thing I ever did. But professionally, it’s the most arduous journey I’ve taken. I’m very proud of the result; and a little scared too.

I’ve just finished reading Charles Dickens: a life by Claire Tomalin. It’s a brilliant book: I loved it and highly recommend it, especially to writers.

I’m delighted that President Michael D. Higgins will be presenting the Irish PEN Award to Joseph O’Connor in February.

As the new year begins, I’ve been cycling quite a bit. I did an hour and three-quarters today – not sure how far I travelled as the mileometer needs to be re-calibrated after I inserted a new battery. The day before yesterday it provided dodgy readings.

I’m doing a detox during January after the excesses of the Christmas. There’s a time for feasting and a time for fasting – well, detoxing.

If anyone out there wants a copy of the book I did a few years ago on how to stop smoking, they can get a copy at www.writeway2stopsmoking.com.

Let’s all have a happy new year. Enjoy each moment. Live in the now. Let’s all be thankful for all we have and for all we are – now!

 

Tears of Joy at inauguration of President Michael D. Higgins

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I wept several times watching the inauguration of the new premier citizen of Ireland, President Michael D. Higgins. It was so moving. How great that he had a humanist there, Michael D’s initiative. I wept watching him greeting the children, wept as he gave his inaugural address, wept because life isn’t all about money and economics and bank bonds and bailouts. I loved Michael D’s  focus on inclusiveness and creativity and humanity. I loved that he has spoken out in favour of human rights all his life and, as RTE’s John Bowman remarked during the television commentary, the new President was more often outside the US embassy, standing up for human rights, than inside it. I love Michael D’s individuality, his independence of mind. He is a man of integrity and truthfulness. He arranged a wonderfully inclusive ceremony. And I loved that gorgeous rendition of ‘The Deer’s Cry’ by Shaun Davey, sung so beautifully by his wife Rita Connolly.

Outgrowing religion

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I used to be a seminarian but now I have outgrown religion and, although I’m pushing 50 years of age, I’m still trying to unlearn the nonsense I picked up having been raised in a Catholic family, gone to a Catholic school, been born into what was in all but name a theocratic State, and having spent nine years of my life in a seminary.

I’m interested in education and especially in the need to teach children to think for themselves. This is impossible within any school which seeks to ‘inculcate’ (i.e., indoctrinate) faith. By definition, they are not teaching children to think for themselves. They are presenting the party-line and hoping it will stick.

Having been abused myself as a child by a Christian Brother in school, I find Cardinal Brady’s remaining in his post unconscionable, given that he failed to act like an adult and report abuse to the civil authorities and that he hides behind it not being his call. Of course it was his call. He is, and was at the time, an adult. But then again, an adult who believes that Mary was a virgin before, during and after the conception of Jesus, which, let’s face it, isn’t exactly an adult belief to maintain. However whacko the ‘before’ bit, how exactly can a baby be born without breaking his mother’s hymen? And yet that is what, as a Cardinal of his Church, he is obliged to believe. It being a dogma of his Church, one gathers he believes it too.

I am appalled at the emotional abuse of children in Catholic schools, or any faith school for that matter. Rather than teaching children that today is all we have, they peddle lies to children. They inculcate fear and obedience in nonsensical beliefs. They insist on the ‘right’ of indoctrinating children because they know that most adults of sound mind would never for a second believe the gibberish they teach.

I’m angry as hell about the Church, to be honest. Their dogmas are loopy. Why are they afforded such ‘respect’? Historically, they controlled what people could think and say. They usurped rationality. They burned people who didn’t fit in. They laid down, and still lay down, heavy burdens on those they claim to serve. As a recent poster I saw said: ‘Jesus, protect us from your followers.’

If I die without this said my life has been in vain, so let me say it. I do not believe in ‘god’. Today is all we have. Live this day to the full. I abhor that the civil authorities permit people of religious faith to indoctrinate young minds. In time to come, and I hope sooner rather than later, it will be considered a crime to fool children into the lie of any religious doctrine. When I think of the years I wasted, nine years in a seminary, trying to believe the incredible. And the nonsense that somehow those who didn’t believe were morally inferior. Absolute hogwash! I remember meeting a girl at university whom I used to know in a prayer group. She, good for her, had moved on. She no longer believed and it was manifestly obvious that she was in ever fibre of her being a person of conscience and moral courage. Her presence and goodness alone challenged me. Pity my lesson took so many more years before the penny dropped.

And when I think about the ghastly attempts to live celibacy during nine years in the seminary and how unnatural it was. And when I think about the so-called virtue of obedience when the real virtue is in obeying yourself. And when I think about the lie of religious poverty when, in fact, few millionaires enjoyed the financial security of being a priest or member of a religious order and the real poverty was the risk of leaving the congregation and having to find my way in the world. When I think of all that and then see little children today being indoctrinated into a heap of lies as I once was, yes, I get mad as hell.

Children: do not listen to your so-called ‘betters’ if they are trying to fool you to believe in a religious myth. They are not better than you. Most of them don’t really believe the bilge they try to ‘inculcate’/indoctrinate into you. And if they really do believe what they peddle, then protect yourself. Find someone of sound mind to support you. Someone who will tell you not to worry about going to Hell: it doesn’t exist. And not to waste your time praying before a box thinking that the creator of the universe is in it. Don’t let them fool you. Do not let them mangle your thinking with their potty views.

Religious people are quick to shout ‘blasphemy’ because they want to control you. They do not want to expose just how unutterably ridiculous their beliefs are, and how bankrupt their thinking is. They seek to control what people say because they don’t want it exposed in black and white for all the world to see. They are, par excellence, like the naked emperor who for so long has basked in the adulation of a controlled crowd and how dare anyone, young or old, yell that they are naked: unutterably nude, without a stitch of truth.

 

Music

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What is it about music that takes us places? It operates on us, eases us, connects. It works at the level of mood, transforming us, lifting us, telling us we’re not alone. It touches feelings, assures us of continuity. Reminds us of people, gets us right back there. It captures us. It’s a reservoir of memory, feeling, time. The predictability of a melody maybe assures us, or fools us, of the comfort of the familiar. Dillon reigns supreme. Van Morrison is way up there too. U2. And the Beatles. And classical music.

Now, the open moment

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Today is all we’ve got, folks. This minute. This second, in fact. Breathe in. Exhale. Attend to your breath. Still alive then, eh? It beats the alternative. A life can change in an hour. Stand ready. Prepare. Choose to do what you want to do. Life is too fleeting to do anything else, even when the pressure may be on from whatever quarter. This moment. Live it. Now. What time is it? Don’t look at your watch. The time is now. Only now. This day. This moment. Grasp your chance. Don’t let it slip away. In this moment, what do you want to do? I want to write. To express. To manifest myself. To be me. For too many years of my life I lived by other people’s dogmas. I lived by other people’s thoughts. I accepted other people’s judgements, as if they were mine. But they were not. I’m unlearning all that, daily. Pushing 50, I still discover how to think for myself, to choose alone. To be me.