Should the courts be called on to rule on matters of magic and death? I think not.

The question arises from the case of Thomas McNally of Longford, who is challenging the constitutionality of the Charities Act 2009 which outlaws the sale of Mass-cards not officially authorised by the Catholic Church.
For the benefit of Protestants, it should be explained that a Mass-card betokens a Mass celebrated for the repose of a soul lingering in purgatory. (Purgatory has not been abolished. That’s limbo. Although limbo hasn’t actually been abolished either. I shall return to this important topic.)
Anyway, Mass cards. Eternal bliss for a loved one for the price of 40 fags. Can’t be bad.
Mr. McNally has been shifting cards by the shed-load across the Three Parishes, each signed by Fr Oskar Mkondana of Mangochi, Malawi. Appearing for the State before Mr. Justice John MacMenamin, Donal O’Donnell SC argued that the cards weren’t bona fide because Fr. Mkondana couldn’t deliver on the undertaking, having been banned from saying Mass by Bishop Gabriel Malzaire of Mangochi.
Mr. McNally responded that Fr. Mkondana was merely forbidden to say Mass in public: the Masses said for the souls for whom his cards had being bought were private.
The State called Fr Ed Grimes of the Holy Ghosts, an expert on both missions and Mass-cards, to testify that Fr Mkondana had been suspended from saying Mass full stop.
At the time of writing, Mr. Justice MacMenamin has yet to deliver his verdict. If it would help, he can give me a call. (I knew him years ago, once helped him home after a feed of drink in Grogan’s. Is it contempt of court to mention this? Do I care?)
The thing is, it doesn’t matter a hoot whether Bishop Malzaire has banned Fr. Mkondana outright or only from saying Mass publicly. What matters is the validity of the Mass: that is, the validity of the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the heart of the Mass. Bishops cannot decide such matters.
Bishops can order a priest not to say Mass. But they cannot second-guess God with regard to the sacramental validity of a Mass which, disobediently, he goes on to celebrate. If they want to delegitimate Mkondana’s Masses, they must laicise him – “defrock”, as the vulgar phrase has it. Which they haven’t.
That’s the key question for the Church. The key question for the State – in the first instance for Judge MacMenamin – is whether, given the basis on which the Church has declared Mkondana’s Masses meaningless, the issue is justiciable at all.
No, say I.
You’d think that the Bishops would be up to speed on this sort of thing. But, clearly, they are not. Another sad symptom of religion’s decline.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama a couple of weeks back prompted expressions of disbelief and dismay. Obama has been a mere nine months in office, runs the complaint. Nowhere near enough time to secure credentials as a world-class peacemaker. But this was to miss a major consideration – that Obama is the most qualified US president ever to win the prize.
Woodrow Wilson became Peace laureate in 1919, two years after dragging his country into the pointless and pitiless slaughter of World War One.
The other presidential laureate, in 1906, was Teddy Roosevelt, fresh from the Spanish-American War and the occupation of the Philippines – where, as well as massacre, rape and pillage, the first systematic US use of water-boarding was recorded.
In a Senate speech which resonates down the years, George Hoar of Massachusetts declared of the Philippines adventure: “You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives - the flower of our youth...Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane... You make the American flag the emblem of sacrilege, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture...
“Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate.”
The Nobel Peace Prize thus became thoroughly debased soon after its inauguration in 1901. Recent winners include Henry Kissinger, FW De Klerk and David Trimble. For all that it is occasionally presented to genuine campaigners for peace – Belfast woman Mairead Corrigan in 1976, for example - it is by now such a debased bauble that it may well go next year to a crooner who travels the world sprinkling stardust on death.
Meanwhile, give Obama – and his policies on Afghanistan, Palestine and Iran – enough time and he’ll be better placed to fulfil the requirements of a properly presidential Peace Prizewinner.

The dazed crowd which splurged into the night from the Nerve Centre following the launch party for Sullem Voe’s “All Naked Flames” was still groggy from a scalp-tingling performance by Poetry Chick sidekick Connor Kelly. The Poetry Chicks and Connor Kelly - so sexy your eyes (at least) will water – are among the wonders of the age. Or soon will be.