short blogs at the moment due to arm still in sling and painful. lockdown is getting to us all but necessary. Roll on better and safer times and love to all those who are fearful or in trouble.
Yesterday we lost a valued member of the Ulster Television family when Allen McMurtry passed away in the Royal Victoria Hospital. He fought diabetes and dialysis for a long time, he was brave to the end. It is recognised by everyone who worked with him that Allen was a superb television engineer and a man to go to if you wanted answers. He was a delight to talk to and patient with his explanations. He was a folk singer known as Fluter and with his group, Miles Scott (back row) Allen, middle, with Leslie Bingham and Gerry O’Kane, played all over the north and in later years Allen enjoyed gigs around Donegal especially in Ardara. With his dear wife Kay he was one of the originals in every way. So difficult at this time because we can’t even support Kay the way we wish to, not even pay our respects at his funeral but we will sometime all get together with Kay and family and celebrate his life.
I want to include this message from Houston Marshall who reads The Blog every week and is a special friend who is going through tough times at the moment, so love to you Houstie keep safe.
UNSUNG HEROES
One section of our society I never hear getting any praise yet are doing remarkable work are Retail Workers. Second only to NHS staff these people are working tirelessly to make sure we can have food and yet they are being taken for granted. Even worse I have been reading and hearing that they are constantly being verbally and physically abused. It is not their fault that there is no food on the shelves. Infact its because of them that we have been able to buy food and essential supplies. They are all working extra hard to try and keep the shops going. They have the same problems and worries as all of us and yet they are having to be put with verbal abuse, being hit and spit at and are being threatened. They do this without personal protection clothing, are standing up close to us because they cant do their job maintaining the required 6 foot distance from us . They are all doing everything to try and make sure we are all getting at least some food and yet most of us can hardly say thank you !
Please show these people some respect. Without them we would not have basic essentials or food.
THANK YOU all retail staff. Houston Marshall.
DECLAN HENRY’S LATEST BOOK CAUSES WAVES
Ten years ago during a writer’s weekend in The Burren a young man sat and talked with me about his desire to become a writer and it was obvious when we met that Declan Henry had a dedication about his work and now, in 2020, he has published his seventh book which has been described as explosive.
Forbidden Fruit: Life & Catholicism in Contemporary Ireland is a disturbing examination of the Irish Catholic Church which he claims is crumbling but it is not a spiteful attack on the church rather he pulls aside a curtain to look into the situation. “The clerical abuse scandals of the 90s sparked this irreparable demise which continues to disintegrate at an alarming rate.” To back this Declan has interviewed 30 priests about their faith and their attitudes especially towards homosexuality. Born in Co. Sligo in the early 80s and now living in England, Declan’s life was moulded by Catholicism but as he says, lives have changed radically in the past 30 years with everything becoming fluid.
“For example secularism, clerical sex abuse scandals and disagreement with church teaching which seems out of touch especially on issues like homosexuality, divorce, remarriage and same sex marriages. Although up to a million people in Ireland still go to Mass every week, most churches are only a third full, the main attendees are middle aged and elderly people who remain trapped by the old indoctrination, fear-based teachings, fearful of dying in sin and not going to heaven. Young people have grown up with negative media reporting about paedophile priests and the horrors of clerical child abuse resulting in them turning away from the institutional church.”
Putting It In Context
Declan points out that 88 percent of all child abuse, whether physical, emotion or sexual is committed within families. Ireland, he maintains, is historically a violent society, abuse and violence are not unrelated and that sexual oppression and frustration led to unspoken acts of evil. Concentrating on the priesthood, he spoke to many about their faith, dealing with life in a secular society, their own doubts and misgivings and they have been remarkably honest with the author.
He discusses the possibility of women priests, interviews a married priest and talks in depth about the pressures they experience.
Father Brendan lives in Dublin and is in his early sixties. His parish has seen twenty gang fuelled murders in the last decade and he presided over many funeral Masses when the killer was known to be present.
An openly gay priest in another Dublin parish came out to his congregation during the time of the same sex referendum in 2015; he told people that he would be voting ‘yes’ because he was gay himself. He made it clear, in case anybody had any confusion in the aftermath of the clerical sex abuse scandals, that he had no interest in children and he was given widespread support within his congregation. “However the bishop summoned him for a meeting to be reprimanded like a naughty school child!”
Father John was adamant that the church wouldn’t differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual priests because all that mattered was that the priest remain celibate. Father Chris on the other hand was quite clear that he doesn’t like the idea of homosexuals being in the priesthood. “I cited the high statistics to him which suggest many Catholic priests are gay but after shaking his head, he responded by saying he doesn’t believe them.” Declan adds: “The former Pope Benedict said in his 2008 Christmas message that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. During his pontificate the Vatican called homosexuality ‘a deviation, an irregularity, a wound’. However during my research I discovered a piece of wisdom from him written long before he became pope. While it is deeply theological in tone its irony will not be lost on the LGBT community when he discusses how a person has to encounter love before they encounter morality before he asks the question. ‘Why or what is an individual to like if he does not like himself?’ Is this not a question that every gay priest who battles internalised homophobia should be asking themselves?”
Declan met several liberal priests who hold the view in their ministry that every person is equal in the eyes of God.
Father Kevin Expressed This Succinctly
‘It doesn’t matter if somebody is homosexual because God still loves them. If they are in a sexual relationship God still loves them. If they try to stop God still loves them. What if they can’t stop? God still loves them.’
In his chapter Paedophile Priests, Declan Henry suggests that clerical sex abuse is far less widespread than the headlines suggest, however he writes, over a 20 year period over a thousand Irish priest have been accused of sexual offences against children. “Nearly a hundred of these have been convicted and imprisoned for paedophilic acts with young boys and adolescents. Brendan Smyth was the first clerical abuse scandal to come to public prominence in the 1990s eventually revealing that over a period of 40 years the Belfast born priest had abused up to 200 children. I have personally seen through my social work career the horrific long term emotional damage that sexual abuses causes to individuals. In a metaphorical sense, something dies in the person’s heart and shuts them down.”
But he ends on a note of hope “What has happened to the Irish Church has happened and cannot be undone. There is no turning back. Rather we should look towards the future with enthusiasm and belief that the Irish Church can rebirth itself into something new and profoundly magnificent. I believe the best is yet to come and I am grateful that I am still young enough to see it become a reality one day.
Details of Declan’s books at www.declanhenry.co.uk
One day last week I took a walk in the garden, three tiny lesser celandines, two cooing doves necking on the roof, two buzzards soaring in the sky, no traffic noise, no strimmers, no voices, no airplane trails, a single robin chatting to itself. It was just lovely but how I wished for normality again.
LIKE THE CARTOON SAYS – THAT’S ALL FOLKS! MAY YOU HAVE A SAFE WEEK, KEEP IN TOUCH WITH FAMILY ON THE PHONE OR VIA SOCIAL MEDIA – A VALUABLE ASSET AT THE MOMENT. PLAN AHEAD, A PARTY, WHO YOU’LL INVITE, WHAT YOU’LL EAT, SONGS TO SING AND JOKES TO BE TOLD. MAKE A LIST IF YOU FEEL UP TO IT. WHERE POSSIBLE WE MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO. THIS TOO WILL COME TO PASS. GOD BLESS.
