Backsliders of the Year: The Progressive Intellectuals of Ireland
The elevation of Archbishop Sean Brady wasn’t a State occasion. But it was ornamented by senior officials of the State.
President Mary McAleese led the Irish contingent to Rome. Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern and Government Secretary Dermot McCarthy also flew out on the government jet. From the North came Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Secretary of State Shaun Woodward.
What were they doing there? What business is it of the State, South or North, who heads up the Irish section of the Catholic Church?
McAleese announced that Brady’s promotion was a “much deserved honour” for a man of “great humility, underpinned by great scholarship”.
“That has to be a remarkable testament to the kind of faith-filled people the Irish are,” she continued, “to the kind of leaders that they have had in the Church, that at this time in our history, a very wonderful and grace-filled space in our history, we have the privilege of having three cardinals.”
This from the President, speaking on behalf of the Irish people!
Replying to the tributes, Brady declared that, “These have been difficult, at times traumatic, years for the Church in Ireland.”
Not as difficult or traumatic as for children subjected to sexual savagery by clerics, I’d have thought.
It’s always the same. Ask these ermined panjandrums about the pain inflicted by their associates on innocents and they’ll invariably reply that the Church has suffered agonies as a result of these events. I wonder why the UDA hasn’t cottoned on to this scam. “If only you knew the pain torturing Catholics has caused us...”
Priests and religious have a “unique and irreplaceable” role in society, continued Brady. And a good thing, too. You wouldn’t want any more of these boyos prowling the corridors at night.
But what’s the point of complaining about Brady, McAleese and Ahern honing their hypocrisy skills on the presumed gullibility of the plain people? It’s what they do. What’s truly dispiriting is the moral inertia of that section of society which regards itself as emancipated from mental slavery.
Brady was first spotted by the Vatican as a lad with leadership qualities when he took over as rector of the Irish College in Rome in 1987, with responsibility for cleaning out an augean mess which had seeped back to Ireland to help create an evil stench. Did an effective job, too, by all accounts. The rise through the ranks has been his reward.
None of the biogs which accompanied cloying accounts of the Rome ceremony had space for mention of this interlude.
And not a note of dissension anywhere.
Even five years ago, there would have been a columnist or two in the Sunday papers, or a DJ with a reputation for outrage to maintain, or a kick-over-the-traces satirist of some sort: there’d have been somebody to speak out against the involvement of the State in this duplicitous celebration of rank obscurantism.
It’s backwards we are going, people.
Disappointment of the Year – Joe Strummer and the Temple of Gloom
Impossible to make a boring film about Joe Strummer? Julien Temple managed it with The Future is Unwritten.
Temple had hours of 16mm footage of Strummer in his rowdy youth, sufficient to make the heart ache for the epoch when the Clash were the glamorous face of socialism. But he made next to nothing of it. The gushing reviews you may have read elsewhere came, presumably, from real or pretend fans who feared that rubbishing the movie might be mistaken for misunderestimating the man.
But it’s the film which shows disrespect. The talking heads are framed by the flames of bonfires, because, it says in the notes, Joe liked bonfires. The conceit is initially distracting, eventually irritating, finally enraging, all the time stupid.
Clocking the celebs claiming a closeness with Strummer is like surveying guests at a party and wondering why. Johnny Depp, what’s he doing here? How come John Cusack was invited? Bono, who let him in?
The narrative stutters shambolically, dawdling to no purpose or rushing pointlessly pell-mell or coming to a halt for interspersed snippets of an embarrassingly bad animated version of Animal Farm.
Afterwards at the Playhouse, Temple was interviewed on-stage, introducing scenes from earlier work. Each time the lights dimmed, another contingent of true heads scurried for the exits as unobtrusively as tip-up seats allowed. By the time we came to some nonsense about Jane Austen, fewer than a third of the audience remained. Fearful to be left the last man sitting, I made no excuses and left.
There are belief-systems in which making a boring movie about Joe Strummer would consign you with Bono to eternal hell-fire.
And a happy new year to you, too.