Emma O'Brien's Soundslide

Rachael Power's St Patrick's Day Soundslide

A Long Overdue Apology

One may think that the letter from the pope reflects positively on the church but I see it differently. Religiosity and Spirituality have been in steady decline over the past century with the emergence of scientific knowledge. People's level of faith has shown a rapid decrease in the past two decades which makes me wonder about the arrival of Pope Benedict's letter. Why was this apology not delivered many years ago when the abuse was made known to Cardinals and higher officials in the church?

The way I see it this apology in no way justifies what happened and because of the delayed actions of the church, many more innocent people have been the victims of abuse. It seems that this apology is a plea for survival of the church knowing that many of its followers have walked out. Personally I was brought up with a very Christian background with religious values instilled in my childhood but as I grew older and became aware of the clerical child abuse in the church I turned away and lost my faith. Now I don't know what to believe and those weekly Sunday masses have become something I attend now and then to keep my dad happy.

There is little religious significance in mass for many people anymore and numbers are dropping continuously. Many officials of the church covered up abuse scandals signing secrecy oaths. This is nearly as bad as carrying out the act themselves. To think that the priests who weren't abusing were covering up for those who were is revolting and it allowed for sick individuals like Brendan Smyth to abuse numerous victims. Cardinal Brady was aware that this evil man was re-offending time after time and he allowed it to carry on. He said himself he would resign if he was made aware of abuse and did nothing about it. Why hasn't he resigned?

The worst thing of all is that certain members of the clergy hold a view that there was no law stating that clergy members were permitted to report to authorities. So do they think it's justifiable not to act on something that they know is wrong because the law didn't specifically say "if you know of abuse, report it to the authorities", and since when did the church adhere to the law. They were the law in Ireland for a very long reign of terror up until recently. This apology just doesn't cut it for me. It is too late. I think the church did nothing because they thought they didn't have to but now that they have lost their power in modern society they fear for the existence of Christianity or at least its present form.

It is too late for an apology and maybe for the best. Religion will still persist, just not in its previous twisted form and I think there is still hope for all those abused who still search for meaning. Maybe they can find answers in science or in new religious movements. Maybe the Vatican need to do a little more than apologise. Perhaps it is time for a Vatican III.

SOS

Irish journalism's failings are becoming more obvious

Originally posted at tomfelle.com

A FEW days ago I happened to bump into a former colleague who had left journalism to enter the public relations industry.

Over a coffee, we discussed several issues - the good old days, the not so good old days, the latest insider gossip, how our respective career paths had diverged, and what the future held for both of us. We also, perhaps not surprisingly, discussed at length our own former industry, the newspaper industry, specifically Irish journalism, and shared our views on what we thought was wrong with it currently.

I climbed on to my soapbox and told him that I continue to believe that newspapers have no God given right to exist. Many have gone the way of the dodo, and some Irish papers may well soon follow unless they wake up to a number of realities, including changing reader habits, the need to be much more creative about the way news is covered and what constitutes news, the need to build a brand across platforms and carry audiences from the web to print and visa versa, all in all the explosive power of the Internet and new media. Journalists also need to face up to commercial realities.

In response he said he was shocked at how easy it was for him to get a press release into a newspaper, and how easy it was to massage news in a certain direction, to the benefit of his clients. The phrase “Apple A, Apple C, Apple V” may mean nothing to most ordinary readers, but in journalistic parlance it is shorthand for lazy journalism, copying and pasting from a press release into a news story. The practice, he said, was so widespread that very often only marginal changes are made to press releases, which are topped and tailed, a byline added, and placed straight on to news pages and passed off as verified fact. He wasn’t complaining, he makes a living from it, but even he sounded shocked at how little independent questioning by journalists there is of fairly obvious spin. 

The reasons are many: less journalists working longer hours, lower standards, little or no investment in investigative reporting, all caused, in the main, by the recession and the collapse of property advertising. Ironically, it was the newspaper industry which in part fuelled the house prise inflation fiasco, and its journalists are rightly accused of not investigating or independently reporting on the property industry. The counter argument is that the public weren’t interested and those who did were roundly shouted down (Sunday Business Post deputy editor Richard Curran, through his RTE investigation ‘Futureshock’ was one of the few journalists to question the sustainability of house price inflation and warned of an impending crash in 2007, but the program was subject to a barrage of attacks and criticism).

Gene Kerrigan, writing in today’s Sunday Independent, makes compelling arguments about the failure of journalists, and the profession, to call it like it is, and fight PR spin. I’m lucky enough to teach some of the brightest, hungriest and most enthusiastic young trainee reporters in the country at the University of Limerick. The former Irish Independent executive editor Philip Molloy once told them they were the “future of Irish Journalism”. As part of their course they are taught to hold power to account, to ask the tough questions, uncover the facts, and report them in the public interest. Because if they don’t, no one will. 

If Kerrigan is right, then it seems those basic ideals have been forgotten by most of the Irish news media.

One Saturday night at Mass..and Pope Benedict XVI's letter

I sat in Mass tonight and listened with interest to the homily. Some of you may be thinking, why is she blogging about a homily at Mass? But those of you who have heard the news recently would know that all priests were reading out the letter from Pope Benedict XVI at weekend Masses, in which the Pope expressed his sadness and declared his apologies to those affected by clerical sex abuse. Pope Benedict XVI made a lot of important points throughout this letter, including how he is pleading with those who were abused not to give up hope, but that he fully accepts that what happened is unacceptable.

A lot of things went through my head as I listened to my local priest reading the summarised version of the letter (those who had a keener interest in delving more into this letter had to access it through the local diocesan website). Firstly, I would have to applaud Pope Benedict in publishing this particular letter, as it shows that this has affected those internationally, not just in Ireland. However, I also feel that just because this letter has been published doesn’t mean that everything is now perfect again. This letter may bring some form of justice to those who have been affected and abused, but what difference does it make? It won’t undo the past; it won’t change the devastating events that took place.

Worryingly, what my local priest said towards the end of the homily angered me a lot. “Out of the 360 priests who have served in our area in the last 50 years, only five have been convicted.” Only five? That’s five too many. That’s five people’s lives ruined, and maybe more. That’s five people who will never be the same again, thanks to the disgraceful antics that have occurred over the past few decades. Their lives are ruined, thanks to the vicious abuse that they had to endure from these clerical abusers. So how can this priest say that there were only five convicted of clerical abuse?

Fair enough, all priests are not sex abusers, and I know that. I understand that they are all tarnished with the same brush, and that must be hard, but what can they expect? A priest is somebody that a person should be able to trust, not somebody who could change your life – for worse, not for better. When I first heard of all of the clerical abuse scandals, I was shocked and frankly disgusted by what had happened. For this to happen in our country is simply not good enough. I have always been of a strong Christian belief, and I suppose I still am. However, what has happened over the last few decades has made me really question my beliefs. I simply don’t know what to think about the Catholic Church anymore. How can I believe that everything is perfect? Because the stark reality is that it is not, and will not be for some time.

One must wonder what the future holds for the Catholic Church, but to be honest, it looks nothing but grim.

Here is the link for the letter from the Pope..it makes interesting reading..
http://www.corkandross.org/2010_papal_letter.jsp
SW

Review of the LG KS 360 Mobile Phone

The LG KS360 mobile phone appealed to me from the second it grabbed my attention. With its QWERTY keyboard built to make texting easier and faster, it certainly was a phone which intrigued me. Launched in 2008, it was a good seller, with enticing features such as 2mp camera, touch screen dialling and Bluetooth. It also has quite a large screen, and it holds memory cards. However, I was one of those who bought this particular phone, and sadly it didn’t reach the heights at which I had hoped it would. I felt that there were more negatives than positives with this phone. There is quite a low internal memory (15MB), there is no headphone socket and the QWERTY keyboard becomes quite irritating.

For the first few days, I constantly used the phone, and at the start, I didn’t realise anything wrong with it. However, as time went on, I began increasingly frustrated with the QWERTY keyboard, which slid to the side when used to text. When I bought this phone, I thought that this feature was interesting and different; one in which I felt I could get used to. Alas, I was wrong. After a few weeks, I realised that I had become quite fed up with this phone, but could not justify buying a new model of phone, as there was nothing physically wrong with the phone...at the time!

As time progressed, my patience wore thinner and thinner with this phone. Letters seemed to jump spaces while I text, and the phone switched itself off fairly regularly over a short period of time. It was sent away, and I expected it to be in perfect working order after this. However, this unfortunately was not the case. After a month or so, it began to switch off unnecessarily yet again. I am now pretty certain that my patience will not last much longer with this phone, as it certainly hasn’t lived up to the expectation that I had wished it had.

To conclude, the LG KS 360 does have some good, enticing features, but to be honest I would highly recommend customers to not buy this phone. Believe me, the fascination of using a QWERTY keyboard to text will wear off quite rapidly!

For more info, check out a more detailed review at this link, which coincidently disagrees with my opinions. It’s worth a glance!

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/lg/lgks360/lgks360reviews/105137/lg_ks360_review.html

Pictures are courtesy of Google Images

SW

Celebrating abroad

St Patrick’s Day came and went, and for most it was spent with family and friends enjoying the craic and having a few drinks.


Not, of course, for our esteemed politicians. A mass exodus from the Dail took place in the days before March 17, when our top ministers and our junior ministers left the country to “promote” Ireland abroad.

These junkets (politicians prefer to use vocabulary such as “fact-finding missions” and “marketing drives”) have been an annual event for years, but came under scrutiny this year due to the disastrous state of our economy. An Taoiseach Brian Cowen responded to criticism when announcing the itinerary for his ministers saying the focus would be firmly on creating jobs and that costs would be kept to a minimum.

So, they planned to keep costs to a minimum. But were the trips necessary in the first place? These trips have been taking place on March 17 for years, and the same mantra has always been issued: “it’s about creating jobs.” If it was all about creating jobs in the past, then why do we find ourselves with mass unemployment? Why can’t we attract new businesses to our country? What were our ministers doing on all these trips in the past if the new jobs they spoke about still haven’t reached us?

This year, Brian Cowen was of course in Washington for his exclusive meeting with President Obama. In the picture above, he looks like the cat that’s got the cream, seated in front of the White House fireplace, with the most powerful man and woman in the world. Michael Martin was also in the American capital. Mary Coughlan visited Germany, Dermot Ahern went to France, Noel Dempsey to Atlanta, Brendan Smith to Italy, Eamon Ryan took in India and Singapore, Batt O’Keeffe visited Japan & Korea, Eamon O’Cuiv saw Poland & Austria and Mary Hanafin ventured to Philadelphia. For a full list see here.

Our controversial Health Minister, obviously confused with how long it takes to fly to New Zealand, left for her visit almost two weeks before March 17. Presumably with all the visits she says she has been making and all the meetings which have supposedly been held, we can look forward to an influx of tourists from New Zealand to boost our ailing tourism industry, and enjoy the benefits all the New Zealand businesses will bring to us when they set up all around the country.

Just in case any part of the world was left unconquered by the government on St Patrick’s Day, our junior ministers (most of us would struggle to even name or recognise two or three) made visits to the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Dubai, Australia, China, Vietnam and Russia. Our good friend Peter Power made his way to South Africa.

The publicity that Ireland got this week is the envy of every other country in the world. Our ministers have met some of the most powerful political and business leaders in the world. Our country has featured on news bulletins, talk shows and just about every other type of programme on almost every TV channel in every country. Google redesigned their home page in our honour for the day. The streets of some of the world’s biggest cities were shut for parades. It must be unbearably frustrating for other countries to see the preferential treatment which we are lucky to get. So have our minister’s capitalised on this?
With supposedly such a strong focus on tourism, creating jobs and trying to recover our country from near extermination, perhaps our politicians have worked extra hard this year. With all the meetings and functions which it’s claimed have been held in these countries, surely we need not have any worries about the future of our economy…

Wishful thinking. KF