CLERICAL ERRORS
Nineteenth century Ireland produced many energetic, eccentric clergymen. They fought with landlords, bishops, politicians, the people, often among themselves. The West of Ireland harboured some of the most turbulent of them, due in no small way to the fact that the unashamedly nationalist Archbishop John MacHale reigned glorious in Tuam a great part of the century.
However, Tuan had no monopoly of this particular clerical species. Among the most eccentric of all was one Fr. Doyle from the diocese of Ferns. Fr. Doyle's energies were unabated, and he went on to add to his reputation by championing the `Plan of Campaign' and the Land League, playing a militant part in the Land War. Having been a wholehearted public supporter of Parnell, he turned on him with characteristically merciless vigour when the news of the divorce case broke; and he remained embroiled in one controversy after another until his death in 1903 at the age of 86.
We catch one late glimpse of him still at the top of his rhetorical form, in 1897, when he launched a two-column thunderbolt in The People against an unfortunate Doctor in Enniscorthy who had commended cycling as a healthy exercise for women. Bicycles, in Fr. Doyle's view, were almost as bad as landlords:The heroes of Clontarf, who swept the Danes into the sea, never saw a bicycle, neither did the magnificent men who held the bridge at Athlone. ...Where were your wheels when an almost unarmed peasantry, under Father John Murphy, annihilated the brutal North Cork on Oulart Hill? When under the gallant John Kelly, they swept the myrmidons of English tyranny like chaff before them over the bridge of New Ross...There is not a woman in Ireland who does not feel in her conscience that the use of the cycle is unbecoming, indelicate and dangerous for females.
AS I WAS SAYING...
Honesty was always valued highly, in theory at any rate! So many other virtues and values are contingent upon it: trust, faithfulness, truthfulness, and, above all others, today's 'core value', transparency! I guess that even the more cynical were surprised at the level of corruption exposed by the recent judicial tribunals. This was institutional corruption on a grand scale, and the State was obliged to respond vigorously.
So transparency, to some extent at least, is now mandatory for all state institutions. Schools, universities, hospitals, government departments, are now obliged to supply information which in former days was deemed to be the property of the particular institution in question. The rigorous application of the recent Freedom of Information Act has ensured this. But will this, in the long run, prove to be counter-productive? For instance, how honest will I be within an institution (a Board of Examiners, for example) about an individual if I know that what I say about him will eventually be released to him? I guess many people would find that knowledge to be an inhibiting factor!
On February 17, 1673, the desperately ill French actor and dramatist Jean Baptiste Moliere followed faithfully the conventions of his profession, `The Show Must Go On': he insisted on going on stage so as not to let the rest of the company down. When the play was over he had to be carried home, where he died shortly afterwards.
Relations between the Church and the theatre in France were at a low ebb at that time. In fact it was customary for a dying actor solemnly to abjure his profession so as to obtain burial in consecrated ground. Moliere's sudden death prevented this formality and appeals to the archbishop of Paris were fruitless. Moliere's widow sought the aid of Louis XIV, then reigning gloriously. Louis enquired of the ecclesiastical authorities how deep consecrated ground may run. Back came the answer: "Fourteen feet."
"Very good," said Louis. "Let Moliere's grave be dug in the churchyard sixteen feet deep and then it cannot be said that he is buried in consecrated ground, nor need it scandalise the clergy." A French solution to a French problem, we must presume.
This little parable has some obvious Irish parallel. The Sun King wasn't the last politician to offer a neat solution to a notoriously complex human problem. Many heated, divisive debates have been conducted in Ireland over the last decade or two. Charges of hypocrisy were lightly but loudly made. And, from a particular standpoint, that charge is a reasonable and valid one. In one referendum, for example, the people were asked to constitutionally debar as evil at home what they were urged to endorse as a service abroad. That surely is hypocrisy, a judicious turning of the blind eye to what is really happening. And today, when the chat shows have replaced the confessional, when people are clogging the airwaves with their nauseous honesty, hypocrisy is regarded as the greatest sin of all.
Honesty is not only desirable; it is essential if society is to remain even moderately functional. Yet one can sympathise with the writer who defined hypocrisy in the following terms: 'It is the tribute that human weakness pays to human ideals.'
-Dick Lyng.
ON TARGET
It's a question that has long preyed on the minds of women in the changing rooms of clothes shops. Until now, they have had to seek the answer from others, including men, who might not always be relied upon to tell the truth. But at last, technology is poised to provide much-needed clarity on a vexed issue. Shoppers may soon have the benefit of scientific opinion on whether their bums look big in this.
Ironically, the breakthrough has come thanks to military research. The company concerned, QinetiQ, was working on target identification and range-finding for the British Ministry of Defence when it discovered that its imaging techniques could have applications in fashion, an area where the search for co-ordinates is also vital.
Deployed in the theatre of operations that is the changing room, QinetiQ's "body-mapping" system would lock onto its target, capturing visual data from more than 1,000 individual points, before delivering a verdict on whether a given fashion item is a hit, a miss, or a bad case of collateral damage on the person in question.
The breakthrough comes at a time of unacceptably high numbers of civilian casualties caused by the current fashion for hipsters. As a glance at any street scene shows, the gulf between self-image and reality has been harshly exposed by low-cut waistlines. With the trend even extending to the display of "builder's cleavage", this is not the only gulf being exposed. The company is now talking to the retail sector about the idea, and hopes it could be operational within 18 months.
Frank McNally, Irish Times
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As it will be in the future,
it was at the birth of man-
There are only four things certain
since Social Progress began-
That the Dog returns to his vomit
and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger
goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished,
and the brave new world begins
when all men are paid for existing
and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us,
as surely as Fire will burn,
the Gods of the Copybook Headings
with terror and slaughter return!
-R. Kipling
VALERIE GOULDING
As Valerie Hamilton Monckton, the 20-year-old daughter of a Tory minister, Viscount Monckton, she came to Ireland in 1939 for the Fairyhouse Races and met Sir Basil Goulding. They married quietly in the Downings, Co Donegal, three months later, but she never settled down to a life of conventional domesticity. A decisive and kind woman with a strong sense of duty, she needed a cause.
For several years in the 1940s she worked as a kitchen help at Marrowbone Lane health clinic. She met the late Kathleen O'Rourke, a fitness instructor who was giving what might now be called aerobic classes for young housewives in Bewley's cafe, Grafton Street. They set up the Dublin Remedial Clinic to provide aftercare for polio victims. The first patients were carried up three flights of stairs to Kathleen O'Rourke's flat in Upper Pembroke Street. Today the clinic caters for almost 3,000 children and 500 adults from all over the country.
With the disc jockey, Jimmy Savile, she introduced the sponsored walk to Ireland and persuaded celebrities such as Princess Grace of Monaco, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby to help the cause by coming to Dublin.
Born on September 12th, 1918, in Kent, and educated at Downe House College, Berkshire, she later studied in Paris, followed by a tour of Europe and Africa. Instead of studying medicine, she became secretary to her father, who was acting as legal adviser to King Edward VIII. When war broke out she joined the War Office and was a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service when she first came to Ireland. The family returned to Ireland in 1946 and settled at Dargle Cottage, near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow.
The poverty of Dublin in the 1940s shocked her. In the slums she saw malnutrition, unemployment, abysmal social conditions. Tuberculosis was rife. She founded the first clinic providing an aftercare, remedial and rehabilitation service for those with polio, of which there were epidemics in 1948 and 1950.
By 1954 a large house had been acquired in Goatstown, where a hydrotherapy pool and a training workshop were later added. This also became too small, and in 1968 the Central Remedial Clinic moved to Clontarf. Today it is a national centre for treatment of children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy and arthrogryposis. It includes a school. She said of the clinic's work: "Our biggest victory perhaps has been teaching the able-bodied not to condescend to the handicapped. They should condescend to us. They have to show courage 24 hours a day."
In the 1980s, Lady Goulding visited Lebanon, leading a working group to help handicapped children. She advised on the building of a national sports and social centre for the handicapped in Jordan. In 1962, she converted to Catholicism. She was forced financially in 1984 to sell Dargle Cottage home. It seemed to underline a feeling that Valerie Goulding had sacrificed much for her work. Few had worked so tirelessly or given so generously for any cause. She was an outstanding, exemplary Christian. She died on July 21st, 2003.
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