A Quick Scan

It has been a hectic weekend!  And it looks like a very hectic week, so if I disappear without trace from the blog, don't be surprised!  I'll do my best to get a few rants in over the week.

But there have been a number of developments in various areas over the last few days.  First of all we beat Italy in the Rugby World Cup down under, so Ireland is through to the quarter finals!!   That's good news for us here in Ireland - we like our rugby!

I see the Austrian priests who are revolting against the Church and her teaching, have been reminded that they do not represent the views of ordinary Catholics.   How true this is.  When our self-styled progressives get on their high horses and demand what they call reform, which is in reality a reinventing of Christian teaching, they think they speak for the people.  In reality they don't - they speak for themselves and perhaps a small constituency within the Church. 

This is also true of the ACP in Ireland. As they too revolt against the Church and the Holy Father, they think they represent the majority of Irish priests.  They don't.  They represent a small group of disaffected liberals who are still caught up in a distorted understanding of the Second Vatican Council, one which has failed and has now been cast aside for the authentic teachings of the Council. 

In reality, back in the Sixties, a number of priests, religious and laity did not like what was coming out of the Council, so they issued their own doctrines and statements, offered these to the media and the waiting world as the teachings and decisions Council, and then when the truth came out, they called those presenting the truth as reactionaries who were trying to dismantle the reforms of the Council.  It was all about spin, and these guys and gals started spinning stories and the Church has been trying to deal with their web of deceit which has caught countless Catholics since the Sixties.  Weak and confused hierarchies and Rome's naivety, and at times incompetence, with regard to the media, made space for this web to grow. 

But things are getting back on track, thank God, though Rome and local ordinaries, still need to come to grips with the secular media.  An interesting observation from a friend of mine who is a journalist.  He attended the monster meeting of ACP in Portlaoise last year and counted the number of priests there; the figure given was somewhere between 400 and 500.  He said he counted 250 and most of them seemed to be of a certain generation.

I see Ryan Tubridy is making an ass of himself again.  In his show on Friday night he had the seven presidential candidates on talking about their campaigns and culminating in a debate.  Tubridy laid into Dana and quizzed her on the Church's position on the Seal of the Confession.  He treated her very badly and soon found that Dana is not the pushover our secular media like to think she is - this lady has teeth!  She rightly asked him why he was putting her into a box as the "Catholic candidate".  He tried to get back at her.  Later in the show Dana was the one who elicited a round of applause from the audience, which Tubridy resented and asked the audience to stop. 

It seems to me RTE and the media's tactic is clear with regard to Dana.  It can be summed up as follows:

Dana is the Catholic candidate

Catholic Church evil and bad, abuses children

A vote for Dana is a vote for the evil and bad Catholic Church which abuses children

          Don't vote for Dana

or, we might express it in another way (if he read this, my former logic professor will be tearing his hair out):

Dana is a Christian singer

Christian singers are stupid

Therefore Dana is stupid

          Don't vote for Dana    QED

Now we might also consider the following syllogism (I can see my degree in philosophy coming up for review!):

Dana is capable, warm, intelligent, patriotic, fair and grounded

A good President of Ireland must be capable, warm, intelligent, patriotic, fair and grounded

Therefore Dana would be a good President of Ireland

Like RTE and the other media outlets, I am not taking sides nor pushing any candidates - indeed like those venerable institutions I would never think of being partisan when it comes to politics, just reflecting....

Meanwhile more scandals are being unearthed about David Norris.  Interestingly the print media are carrying the stories, but RTE is doing its best to ignore them.  There seems to be a pattern emerging here - RTE may be pushing its own candidate.

To end, it seems good old Irish hypocrisy is alive and well on the political front.  In The Irish Catholic this weekend is a letter from an M. O'Brien in Castletroy, Co. Limerick, who tells us that Fine Gael were outside the Catholic church there on their annual Church Gate Collection.  This person was rightly angry - after all Enda Kenny said about the Church they have the nerve to turn up and look for our money.  I also believe one Fine Gael TD said that they would be canvasing outside the churches for their presidential candidate.  Ah yes, and you know we Catholics are worse fools if we let them.  As I told you before I had to run political candidates from Church property during the last election.  Seems I may have to do so again.