Reading the Irish Times is like pulling teeth

Today in The Irish Slimes:

"Think, for a moment, of a person in Ireland who needs a tooth removed. Imagine if they had to plan to travel to England: they had to save money, book flights, book a babysitter, locate a dentist, get directions. Then – all on an empty stomach and in a rush after a procedure – they had to bundle themselves, tired and bleeding, onto their non-transferable flight home. No you can’t imagine it because it is ridiculous. It would be ridiculous to put anyone through such nonsense. Yet women in Ireland must live in that ridiculous world.
I am not equating having an abortion with having a tooth out."

Funny how you can write a whole paragraph comparing going to England for an abortion with going to England to have a tooth removed and then have the neck to declare you're not equating having an abortion with having a tooth out. 

And really, you're not, for in your demented world, having a tooth out is much worse as you're losing something you value.

Press Ombudsman - a complete waste of time and money

You may recall the nasty and vicious anti-Catholic diatribe launched by Professor Thomas Crown some weeks ago.  You can read about it and my comments here.

Having complained to the Sunday Independent with no response (they're supposed to reply within two weeks to formal complaints under the Press Code) I complained to the Press Ombudsman.

First they lost the email.  Ok, that can happen.  So I wrote again.  They turned around a response very quickly:

Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 14:46:52 +0000
I refer again to the complaint that you submitted to this Office about an article published in the Sunday Independent on l9 May 2013.

As you know, for a complaint to be considered by this Office it must be accompanied by sufficient evidence of a possible breach of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines (copy attached for ease of reference). In this regard, this Office notes that you feel that the article in question breached Principle 8 of the Code because of your belief that the tone and content of the article was intended to and likely to cause grave offence or stir up hatred against Catholics.

The Preamble to the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines, which is an integral part of the Code, sets out the basic values on which the Code of Practice is based and, in a number of important matters, indicates clearly how these Principles are to be applied. Under the Code, newspapers and magazines are entitled to advocate strongly their own views on topics. They are therefore free to publish articles containing opinions or comments, so long as such opinions or comments do not otherwise present evidence of a breach of the Code. Such articles frequently give offence, but this in itself is not evidence of a breach of the Code.

The column about which you complain was a comment article, and as such enjoys a wide measure of protection under the provision of the Preamble, which states:

“The freedom to publish is vital to the right of the people to be informed. This freedom includes the right of a newspaper to publish what it considers to be news, without fear or favour, and the right to comment on it.”

I am sorry that this Office cannot be of more assistance to you on this occasion.

Yours sincerely

So, essentially, the preamble to the code completely negates the rest of the code.

The most fun you can have as a peeler

This is surely destined to become an iconic press photograph, up there with Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire, and well I can't think of any other examples as it's almost 2am.  Let's have a caption competition in the comment box.

(It's by David Fitzgerald and was in the Belfast Telegraph)

US news station channels Karen Patterson

Day 3 of solitary confinement

In common with half of Belfast my wife and family have headed for Donegal, leaving me all alone.  It is now day three.  The mince steak is finished.  The milk is running out, along with the Sugar Puffs.  I'm down to my last seven jam tarts, some party rings and bag of Raspberry Ruffles.  The standard of television has plummeted so I'm back to The West Wing, Season One.

I am remembering to water the newly planted bed plants, which reminds me, apparently clothes horses are completely invisible to the male.  There might be something in it.

My poor wife telephoned me on day two.  "Have you come across a big bag anywhere?".  I hadn't.  Turns out that, while packing everyone else's bag into the car, she forgot to pack her own.  I wonder is it a ploy to get a whole new wardrobe.  I should freeze the credit cards before it's too late.

Enda Kenny, Schrödinger's Catholic

So now we know the true inspiration for the beloved leader; Enda Kenny is modelling himself on Schrödinger's cat.  He is simultaneously a Catholic and a non-Catholic, in fact the first non-Catholic Taoiseach.  Presumably since he's not a "male Taoiseach", but a Taoiseach who happens to be a male he's also the first non-male Taoiseach. I wonder what toilets he uses in Leinster House.

Terence O'Neill, the last proper Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, once said, "Our faith is meant to enrich our lives - too often our lives impoverish our faith".

St Paul said, in the Mass readings on Saturday:  "We are ambassadors for Christ".

C.S. Lewis said:  "Where the tide flows towards increasing State control, Christianity, with its claims in one way personal and in the other way ecumenical and both ways antithetical to omnicompetent government, must always in fact ( though not for a long time yet in words) be treated as an enemy. Like learning, like the family, like any ancient and liberal profession, like the common law, it gives the individual a standing ground against the State.”

Epistle to Diognetus (2nd/3rd Century): "the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body".

Lumen Gentium (Ch. 4):  "Because of the very economy of salvation the faithful should learn how to distinguish carefully between those rights and duties which are theirs as members of the Church, and those which they have as members of human society. Let them strive to reconcile the two, remembering that in every temporal affair they must be guided by a Christian conscience, since even in secular business there is no human activity which can be withdrawn from God's dominion....Each individual layman must stand before the world as a witness to the resurrection and life of the Lord Jesus and a symbol of the living God."

Enda Kenny:  "I'm a Catholic when it's convenient and non-Catholic when it counts".

The Daily Mail surprises

Those of use who occasionally visit the Daily Mail normally do so to see what rehab Lindsay Lohan's in, what height of shoes Suri Cruise is wearing or how much fake tan Helen Flanagan can spread over her overexposed flesh.

So I was pleasantly surprised to happen upon this very useful article on the situation in Syria and the Near and Middle East in general.

I can't guarantee the accuracy but seems like a better introduction than anything else I've read.

More on Crown the Clown

A few weeks ago I described my outrage at a sordid article by John Crown in the Sunday Independent encouraging hatred against Catholics for daring to have views different from his own.

I made a formal complaint to the Sunday Independent on 20th May and received no response whatsoever.  So today I have made a formal complaint to the Press Ombudsman.

I am not hopeful of a resolution but better to use one cliché than curse the darkness.

If you haven't read Crown's article it's here.  And if you haven't complained to the Sunday Independent please, please make the small effort involved and do so.  The only real way to measure public outrage is by numbers.

The Irish Times tries to implicate Christians in Woolwich killing

Two Muslim extremists hack a young British soldier to death to death on the street in London.

Only The Irish Times could come up with a headline like this:

Man arrested for London decapitation from devoutly Christian family

John Crown in breach of Press Code - complain to the editor of Sunday Independent

The anti-Catholic John Crown

Doctor, Professor, Senator, Newspaper columnist John Crown [Ed: when does he do any work?] had a vicious, nastly, vile article in the Sunday Independent.  You can read it here.  It was the sort of thing written by anti-Catholics in Britain and the United States a hundred years ago.

I read it and fumed and then I wrote a letter of complaint to the editor.  Have a read below and I suggest you do likewise (though please write your own version).  The only way to prove that someone has caused "grave offence" is to be gravely offended and to indicate that in numbers to the editor and subsequently the Press Ombudsman.  Email address is sunday.letters@independent.ie and the Press Code is here.

My letter of complaint below:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/john-crown-a-thoroughly-irish-coup-29278129.html


Dear Editor, I wish to complain about the above article by Professor John Crown in your newspaper on 19 May, 2013. I believe it to be in breach of the Press Code of Practice, Principle 8 – Prejudice, which states that:

Newspapers and magazines shall not publish material intended or likely to cause grave offence or stir up hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, colour, ethnic origin, membership of the travelling community, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, illness or age.

I believe the tone and content of the article was intended to and likely to cause grave offence or stir up hatred against Catholics.

Catholics are called a “cabal of insurrectionists, sympathetic to the agents of a foreign state are….plotting and executing a coup d'etat”. We are “agents of this oligarchic dictatorship” [the Vatican] who “are interfering in our democracy as surely as, but thankfully much less effectively than did the Italians and Germans in aiding the overthrow of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s.”

We are likened to “Gunpowder Plotters” the “recently demilitarised Provos”, the “Contras” and “anti-constitutional Keystone Phalangists”.

We live in a state (the constitution never actually calls it a republic) which guarantees religious freedom, which declares authority comes from God and that public worship is due to Him. We live in a state in which my right to live as a Catholic is protected. Part of being a Catholic is the belief that the head of our church on earth is the Pope. That does not make us foreigners in our own country.

Crown is entitled to his opinion, but under the Press Code of Practice he should express that opinion in a way that is not intended or likely to cause grave offence.

Apparently my site is attracting perverts

Emmelie de Forest, singer of the winning song at Eurovision 2013

The internet is a funny thing.  Was just checking my stats for readers over the weekend.  Normally my top two countries for readers are Ireland and the United Kingom.  Suddenly it's Malaysia and people in Indonesia, Pakistans, and Serbia.  It looks a little bit like the scoreboard from Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest. 

Entry Pageviews


Malaysia 315

United States 304

Colombia 284

Indonesia 227

Pakistan 197

India 190

Brazil 151

Philippines 122

United Kingdom 114

Serbia 88

Further digging would suggest that perverts looking for something sleazy are coming upon my site [Ed: careful now].  I hope they stay and get some benefit.

RTE and its lapdog, the BAI

Decisions of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland were published recently, most of them against RTE concerning its biased and imbalanced reporting on abortion.

As is hardly surprising, in all cases the BAI failed to uphold any of the complaints.

The margin of editorial appreciation granted to RTE is quite extraordinary.  They are allowed to determine the "news value" of basic information.

A classic example was today's coverage of the the Irish Medical Organisation Annual General Meeting which rejected three motions to support abortion.  Any reasonable person would think that in the context of the massive coverage of the Savita Halappanavar death, the Government's plans to introduce abortion legislation, the recent Oireachtas hearings - that RTE would regard a decision by the medical profession to reject three proposals to support abortion - along X case lines, for rape and incest, and for foetal deformity - as massively newsworthy.  You would have expected it to be the lead story.  Instead of which it was, what, the 4th or 5th story. And not even a stand alone story, but buried in another IMO story about the allowance paid the president of the IMO.  The little bit of coverage they gave focused on the disagreement in the IMO, not on the vote.  Their main coverage was off the pro-abortion doctor who moved the motions which were rejected.  And then they threw in a pro-life doctor talking about the Nazis!

And if you complain to the BAI - well RTE will say they covered the story perfectly adequately and the BAI will agree.

Bob Collins, former director general of RTÉ, is the chairman of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI).

Three graces

Check out these beautiful paintings of Popes Benedict, John Paul II and John Paul I.

They're by the Vatican's newest official court artist, Natalia Tsarkova, an ebullient Russian woman with a pet owl. An Orthodox believer in the heart of Rome, Natalia Tsarkova paints her classical-style portraits in a flat filled with Vatican memorabilia by the walls of the Holy See.

Lost in Oblivion and The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Reading the last book in a very good five part series by Anthony Horowitz.  It's Oblivion, part of the Power of Five series.  Have read the first four books in a very short time - love finding good series that are all already written and published - and where the series isn't monumentally long - please, no Discworld or Wheel of Time.

Anthony Horowitz is a good writer of childen's books - creator of the Alex Rider series.  And far removed from children's fiction he writes for Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.

The Power of Five books are very apocalyptic.  Set in the world as we know it, only with the addition of the super evil Old Ones (not to be confused with the sort of Auld Wans we find in Ireland) and five children with extraordinary powers.  The narrative moves at a cracking pace.  Recommended reading from about ten upwards.

For Mother's Day - yes, my yankee friends, it was this Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday, not the second Sunday in May - the kids bought my wife, inter alia, a DVD of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which we watched this evening.  I enjoyed it a lot.  Those who know me will know it's my sort of film - teenage angst, with characters who talk a lot in full paragraphs.  The profound thought from the movie is:

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

which made me think of Sunday's gospel, the Prodigal Son and the difficultly people can have in accepting the love of God in their lives.  We miss the love and grace that He offers because we think we don't deserve it.  Of course we don't deserve it - that's not the point with God.  If we got what we deserved it wouldn't be God.

Certainly wouldn't be Emma Watson either I suspect.

"I'm looking here because the light's much brighter here."

On a dark night, a drunk was found by a friendly neighbour wandering around looking at the ground under a street light. When asked what he was doing, the drunk replied, "I dropped my house keys and I'm looking for them."


The neighbour joined the hunt, but after an intensive search the keys remained lost. The helper stopped looking, turned to the drunk and said, "Your keys ought to be easy to find, right here under the street light, but they're not here. Can you remember more precisely where you were standing when you dropped them?"

"Yup." said the drunk as he pointed to a dark area in front of a nearby house, "I sure can. I was over there in my front yard."

The neighbour was taken aback. He looked intensely at the drunk and asked, "If you dropped your keys over there, why are you looking here?"

The drunk looked back at his neighbour and replied, "I'm looking here because the light's much brighter here."   I've been thinking about his story during the last few weeks as I listen to and read secular commentators and liberal Catholics telling the Church what it needs to do, what the next Pope must be like, how he really needs to move the Church into the real world, embrace homosexuality and contraception and abortion and priestesses.  Well if you're looking for that sort of Pope, you're looking in the wrong place.   If you haven't seen it do go and watch this short (couple of minutes) clip of outspoken atheist Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) defending Catholic orthodoxy on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight  (Hat-tip New Advent).  It's brilliant.  Morgan is the classic modern liberal Catholic - he was all set to trash the Pope who had just announced he'd be retiring.  Morgan thought Penn, the atheist would be well up for it.  What did Penn do?  He thrashed Morgan.  Told him if you're a Catholic you believe what the Pope teaches, nicely defined ex cathedra infallibility and then when Morgan went on a little rant about how Jesus never said anything about condoms and homosexuality and women priests Penn slapped him down and told him he was Martin Luther  who wanted his own private interpretation of scripture instead of the Church's.

Vile Rag slates Auld Bag and Drag Slag who nag Royal WAG

The virtually unreadable (IMHO) Hilary Mantel has had a go at the beloved Princess William - or, as she claims, those who created her.

The Daily Mail is unhappy - well the A.N. Wilson half of the story is unhappy - the recently censored by the Observer, transexualaphobe Julie Burchill takes a more supportive line.

All good fun of course because Kate isn't a real person who is likely to be hurt by nasty comments made about her, is she?

Doctor Who invented natural family planning or how I was momentarily confused by the Zenit Headline

The Zenit story is here.

October Baby and The Magdalene Sisters

Off to see October Baby at the St Genesius Film Club this evening (7pm at the Knights of Columbanus, Ely Place, Dublin 2 - all welcome, donations only).  It's about a girl who's adopted discovering she survived an abortion and her journey to find her mother.  I hope it's more than pro-life propoganda.  Because for propoganda to work it has to have some genuine artistic worth, well maybe that's overstating it.  It doesn't have to be good, but it has to be watchable, interesting.

Like for example (don't shoot me here), The Magdalene Sisters.  It's a tremendous piece of propoganda because it's a powerful film, well acted, strong characters and a plot that really moves you along.  And as we now know from the Mc Aleese Report, almost totally untrue.  But it has so established itself in people's minds that we think of it when we think Magdalene laundries - the beatings, births, sexual humiliation, money grabbing etc.  When we want a picture for our blogs we use one from the film. 

The Irish Times had  a very weak article yesterday "Are Factual Inaccuracies in Movies Justified in Highlighting Issues?"  Of course for the Irish Times the answer in this case is yes. 

Campaigners believe the role such movies played in highlighting the issue justified any artistic embellishment, and this view is shared by Louise Lowe, director of the award-winning play Laundry, who says The Magdalene Sisters “served an important function at the time”.


We're not talking about the standard changes to biographies that film producers take for cinematic effect, where several incidents are combined, or even several characters merged.  If the only result of The Magdalene Sisters had been sympathy and concern for the women who endured harsh conditions, including being deprived of their freedoms, then perhaps it would be justified.  But one of the main results of the film is hatred of the Catholic Church and in particular the religious sisters who ran the laundries.  For the Irish Times that's an added bonus.  You can still this in the reviews -
Film 4:  "A damning indictment of the Catholic Church that lingers in the mind long after if ends. Angry, compassionate but never hysterical, this a true cinematic achievement."; 
Time Out:  "You may never look at a nun the same way again."


The interesting words from that quote are that the film "served an important function at the time".  Funnily enough the same line used by defenders of the laundries themselves.

For more - go read the ever excellent if atheist Brendan O'Neill at the Daily Telegraph - "Catholic-bashers have embellished the truth about abuse in Catholic institutions. It's time to put the record straight"

Because they're worth it

More great photos here, Sony World Photography Awards

Why Patsy McGarry is unbearable

Have a read of his report of the Pope's final public Mass at St Peter's.

His final paragraph.  He just can't stop himself.