Carthusian thoughts

The Cross Stands Steady Whilst the World Turns

When His Eminence Franc Cardinal Rodé was appointed Archbishop of Lubljana on March 5, 1997, he chose as his episcopal motto “Stati inu obstati”. This is a phrase in Old Slovene taken from the Catechism of Primož Trubar. It translates as “To Exist and Persevere”, or, “To Stand and Withstand”. (It is inscribed on the Slovenian 1 euro coin.) Clearly, it is in some way related to the Carthusian motto. And, indeed, His Eminence has written a book with that Carthusian title.

 

The Herald (Glasgow) again stifles debate

You didn't read this in yesterday's Herald; and I doubt it will be in today's:

Dear Sir

 

Siobhan Reardon (Letters, October 9) states that the UK government “has numerous obligations to fulfil regarding abortion” and then waffles on attempting to link them to something she calls “gender discrimination”. Under International Law the UK has no obligations in relation to abortion on demand, request if you like. And neither does any other country. Could Ms Reardon point to any of the many and various treaty obligations the UK holds in consequence of its membership of the UN which impose such an obligation? No, because the UN, despite the best (but I regard as worst) efforts of NGOs such as Amnesty does not recognise any right to abortion. Any abortion, for any reason, at any time, under any circumstances. NGOs and compliant UN committees kid on that they do and threaten dire consequences for any — invariably poor, developing — country in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean or Latin America who won’t go along with them. And they get off with it because the General Secretary and his immediate underlings let them. I wonder why?

 

Perhaps there are obligations arising out of the UK being a State Party signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, then? No, with a limited caveat.

 

The European Court of Human Rights through its various rulings has explicitly declared that abortion is not a right under the Convention. I am not a lawyer, let alone a legal tutor, but it may be helpful for readers to know that in Silva Monteiro Martins Ribeiro v. Portugal, the Court ruled that here is no right to have an abortion and that therefore the prohibition per se of abortion by a State does not violate the Convention (No 16471/02, Dec., 26 October 2004). Nor is there a right to practice abortion, see Jean Jacques Amy v. Belgium (No 11684/85, Com., Dec. 5 October 1988). However, it must be conceded that in the case of the first two applicants in A., B., and C. v. Ireland (No 25579/05, 16 December 2010) the Court ruled that States signatory can allow abortion taking into account other, competing, rights guaranteed by the Convention, for example if it is held that the life and the health of the pregnant woman are threatened. In other words, the jurisprudence of the Court countenances toleration of abortion in presence of a sufficient, proportionate motivating principle relating to a right protected by the Convention. The Court, it must be said, was not responsible for Enda Kenny’s government’s hysterical overreaction to this ruling. It was NOT required to introduce an abortion free for all.

 

In short, under International Law there is no such thing as that which Ms Reardon peddles as “reproductive rights”. Gender theory/ideology we will leave for another day.

 

Yours etc

 

Hugh 

Hello Again: Vatican Diplomacy

I have been locked out of my Blogger account for several weeks now — I gather I'm far from being alone — but a computer literate nephew has got me back in.

But you find me not as I left you. It's Sober in October in memory of my darling niece, Paula, who died from cancer three years ago, on September 23, 2011.

Saturday, October 11: An apology.

I had intended to add a dedication to my niece Paula and then write a bit about the recent meeting of the Middle East war zone Nuncios in Rome but, distracted, I accidentally posted the thing after inserting the photograph below and closed the tab and then couldn't get back into the Blog — from which, as I said above, I have been blocked for some weeks. After several hours of intemperate language this evening, I am back. But since it is now past midnight and I am tired and sober, I'm off to bed. Sober? Me? Vice-President of the Scottish Catholic Drouth Society sober on a Friday night?

Well that is what I was going to say about Paula. A couple of weeks ago somebody mentioned this Go Sober in October thingy for Macmillan Nurses and it just so happened that it was just days after the third anniversary of Paula's death. It just occurred to me that the thought of her uncle Hughie trying to stay sober for a whole month would have had her in stitches. So, I thought, why not?

If any passers-by would like to sponsor me they can do so online at:

https://www.gosober.org.uk/profile/hughmcloughlin

PS: Did you know that Coca Cola dissolves the cement that is supposed to keep your wallie teeth in place? To my great embarrassment, I found that to be the case on Tuesday afternoon in the Gates Bar, Bellshill (they had run out of Ginger Beer; which had never happened before!).

Paula, right, with her mum, May, who died in 2010 at 10 am Sunday morning Mass in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral, Motherwell, on the day before Paula was supposed to go into hospital for extensive surgery.

WWI: In Memoriam; Prof Tom Kettle and The Green Fields of France

The War to End Wars didn’t!

To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God

(Professor Lt Tom Kettle, 1880-1916)

IN wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother’s prime,

In that desired, delayed, incredible time,

You’ll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear heart that was your baby throne,

To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme

And reason: some will call the thing sublime,

And some decry it in a knowing tone.

So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

Thomas Michael Kettle (1880-1916) Irish nationalist poet, politician and soldier was born in Co. Dublin the son of one of the founders of the Land-League, Andrew J Kettle (1833-1916), and his wife Margaret McCourt. Tom was the seventh of 12 children. Andrew Kettle was a member of the Tenant Right League (founded by Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas) in the 1850s and became a constitutional Irish Home Ruler in 1866 following the publication of Isaac Butt’s “Plea for the Celtic Race”. Later as a close associate of Michael Davitt — the “One Armed Fenian” who renounced his Irish Republican Brotherhood oath, took a seat in the House of Commons at Westminster and totally renounced violence as a means of advancing Irish Home Rule —was instrumental in persuading Charles Stewart Parnell to support the land agitation of the late 1870s. Kettle chaired the first meeting of the Land League in October of 1879. He was elected Secretary and Parnell was elected Presdient. Kettle was later imprisoned for his leading the opposition to the Coercion Laws.

Tom attended, as did his brothers, O’Connell School, Richmond Street, Dublin run by the Christian Brothers. A gifted pupil, he then went on to the Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare. A prominent debater, with a greatly admired razor sharp wit, he excelled in both sports (especially athletics, cricket and cycling) and studies (especially English and French).

Going up to University College Dublin in 1897 much was expected of him. And he did not disappoint, although disappointingly his studies were interrupted by ill-health. A contemporary of Francis Sheehy- Skeffington, Oliver St John Gogarty and James Joyce, he became “auditor” of the Literary and Historical Society. This is a position essentially equivalent to Convener of Debates at a Scottish university — I held this position at Glasgow University Union in the early 1970s and my friend, Mgr Patrick Burke, held it at Saint Andrews in the 1980s — or President of Oxford, Cambridge or Durham University Unions.

Graduating BA in Mental and Moral Science (don’t ask, I don’t know!) in 1902, he then studied Law and was admitted to the Honorable (sic) Society of King’s Inns in 1903 before being called to the Bar in 1905. Of course, his interest in debating and politics did not falter and in 1904 he founded the Cui Bono Club within UCD as a debating forum for recent graduates and became editor of the College newspaper. In that same year he also co-founded and was elected President of the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League. Offered a parliamentary seat by John Redmond, he declined becoming editor of a weekly, “The Nationalist”, instead. However, in 1906 he became a Member of the Imperial Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for East Tyrone at a bye-election caused by the death of Patrick Doogan.He remained an MP until the second election in 1910, in December, when he did not defend his seat due to pressure of other work.

In 1908 he had been appointed Professor of National Economics at his alma mater, UCD, now part of the new University of Ireland. He quickly became one of the most popular members of the faculty and was in geat demand as both lecturer and public speaker. In the year following, 1909, he married Mary Sheehy. Mary was a sister of the suffragette and member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union, Hanna (christened Johanna Mary) Sheehy who after marriage became Sheehy-Skeffington. Another sister, Kathleen, married Joseph O’Brien and became mother of the apostate nationalist Conor Cruise O’Brien (known hereabouts as Conor Full o’B*****it).

In the 1913 lockout he supported the strikers and helped form the peace committee to negotiate a just settlement. Having supported the Home Rule Bill of 1912 and seen the Unionists' successful attempts to wreck it, in 1913 he also joined the Irish Volunteers. In Europe in 1914 to try to raise arms (he spoke fluent French and German) he witnessed the outbreak of war and, because of the atrocities he had witnessed committed by the Germans against civilians in France and Belgium, abandoning his original mission became war correspondent for London’s Daily News.

In “The Ways of War: Why Ireland Fought”, he wrote (@p72): “The outbreak of war caught me in Belgium, where I was running arms for the Irish Volunteers, and on the 6th of August 1914, I wrote from Brussels in the Daily News that it was a war of ‘civilisation against barbarians’. I assisted for many weeks in the agony of the valiant Belgian nation.”

Returning to Dublin, he joined Redmond’s National Volunteers. Repeatedly refused a commission into any Irish regiment because of his health status, at last he was commissioned into the 9th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, part of the 16th (Irish) Division. Conditions in the trenches seriously affected his health and he was returned to Dublin for recuperation. Before leaving once more for the front on July 16, 1916, almost in despair at the brutal, merciless treatment of the leaders of the Easter Uprising, he said that they would be remembered as heroes while men like himself would be despised as traitors. And so it came to pass.

On September 9, 1916, at Guinchy, during the Battle of the Somme, leading his company of men, Lientenant Professor Tom Kettle died, victim of a sniper’s bullet to the upper chest “above a protective steel waistcoat”. Following behind,18 years old Lt Emmet Dalton, the “boy hero of Guinchy”, “was horrified to see him fall… (and) paused to press a crucifix into his hand… Kettle was obviously dying.”  Fr Felix Burke, Catholic Chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, wrote: “We all looked up to him as a towering genius and as a storehouse of information.”

Kettle had written to his brother: “I am calm and happy… but desperately anxious to live.” He was planning a book on the 16th (Irish) Division and looked forward after the war to dedicating himself to work in the interests of “perpetual peace.” The writer Tim Cross said that Kettle had a vision of “Ireland at parity with Britain as a free European nation” and quotes him as saying: “My only counsel to Ireland is that in order to become deeply Irish, she must become European.”

This deeply thinking, deeply religious Irish Catholic intellectual had got there long before that group of young intellectual Italians who, as students, had gathered around Don Battista Montini (the future Pope Paul VI) when he was Chaplain to the student section of Italian Catholic Action in the late 1920s and early 1930s (his formal title was Chaplain to the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students, FUCI), and even after he had been forced out, and were instrumental in creating the European Christian Democracy movement along with their German and French co-religionists. These were men such as Alcide De Gasperi and Aldo Moro (President of FUCI in the late 193os) whose vision was the European Union, but not as we know it, as a bureaucratic nightmare.

What a loss to Ireland. What a loss to Europe. What a loss to the Church.

Although it only appeared belatedly and begrudgingly and has never been formally unveiled by the Irish government, a memorial to Kettle by Francis W. Doyle-Jones stands in St. Stephen’s Green in  Dublin. It quotes the last four lines from the sonnet he penned to his daughter shortly before his death (To My Daughter Betty, see above):

“Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.”

Session in the Forge Bar Dromore

This is a typical weekend evening in my friend Oliver West's local pub in Dromore, Co Tyrone. I must get over to see him soon!,

Holy Mass with the imposition of the Pallium

The Sunday Times ducks the issue

On Sunday, June 29, The Sunday Times published a Letter to the Editor from one Neil Barber who asserts that he represents "The Secular Society". Mr Barber attempted to disparage both Archbishop Cushley and religious faith. My reply to him was not published by The Sunday Times and so I post it here.

Dear Sir

The tenor and, indeed, the language used by Neil Barber (“Faith in its place”, Letters last week) are all to reminiscent of something I read recently.

“When they attempt by other means — writings, encyclicals etc —  to assume rights which belong to the State, we will push them back into their proper spiritual activity.” Thus spake Adolf Hitler as quoted by EC Helmreich in “The German Churches under Hitler” (at page 280) (Detriot, 1979).

What does Barber mean by “minority religious beliefs”? True, the Church of Scotland has on paper more members than the Catholic Church in Scotland. But it is also probably true that there are more Catholic bums on pews of a Sunday. So the Catholic Church in Scotland is far from being a “minority” in terms of numbers.

Is he trying to suggest that the Catholic Church’s objections to so-called “same sex marriage”, gay adoption, abortion on demand and the other matters that we consider to be anti-life and/or anti-family are in a minority? In 2000 a life-long friend said to me at the height of the Section 2a (Clause 28) controversy: “I never thought I’d ever see the day that I would ever agree with everything your Fr Winning said.” My friend was also a life-long fervent member of the Orange Lodge and many of his fellow Orangemen and other Presbyterians were similarly minded. Ours wasn’t a minority viewpoint then and it isn’t now. Despite the campaign of distortions, half-truths and outright lies waged by the gay lobby and so enthusiastically promoted in the mainstream media.

And Barber is wrong. Schools are not State institutions. They are run by the local authorities for and on behalf of parents. And those parents have rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. I would refer him to Protocol No.1, March 20, 1952, Article (2): “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

Mgr Cushley has made no attempt to force anybody to do anything. But he might persuade them to. And why not

Yours etc