Bothered By The God Botherers

I was standing outside the cathedral the other day, waiting for a coffin and wondering what was taking them so long, as you do, when this woman confronts me: “You’ll roast in hell.”
 
Maintaining composure, I responded matter-of-factly that, “There’s no such place as hell.”
“That’s your arrogance,” she shot back. She was joined by a man with that certain smile. “God loves you, you know.”
I made to shuffle sideways to exit their ambit, but by now the woman had her claws dug into my arm. “You won’t listen to God’s truth. You deserve what’s coming to you.”
They had heard me say on local radio that I’d given up the religion when I was about 14 because it made no sense.
Is it only me, I wondered as I finally shook her off and managed to flee, or are there others out there regularly accosted with threats of damnation and protestations of love?
I am thinking of lurking at churches even when I’m not at a funeral to ambush worshippers – “You’re wasting your time on stupidity”, I will explain. “Your life is meaningless, stunted and sad. You’ll sob on your deathbed for lost opportunities”.
Or maybe not. I am not sure I could carry off the arrogance. Unlike every altar-egoist I have ever encountered.

Watching the Euros on RTÉ has confirmed my belief that the refusal of the Irish management to experiment with the line-up will blight our future until someone has the nerve to tell some of the old stalwarts that their day is done.
But the men in charge seem unable to contemplate a shake-up. Tournament after tournament, the same predictable faces shuffle into view and adopt the same formation. Giles on the left, Brady in the middle, Dunphy on the right, O’Herlihy on the sideline, encouraging them to keep going. These days, they tend to run out of puff half way through.
One of the reasons they continue to be selected is that, irrespective of performance, the fans keep singing their praises.
Here’s a suggestion – why doesn’t RTÉ put out the Aprés Match analysis of the panel’s performance immediately following the final whistle but before the pundits kick off? Wouldn’t it be more of a laugh?

That chap John Waters – who wrote in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago that Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is 100% sound but that he wouldn’t care to discuss it even with his best friend, “Not because I have problems with the doctrine but because such matters are impossible to discuss in the language we use for politics, shopping and sex” – used to be a member of this parish. The embarrassment. Oh, the embarrassment.
 
The cash register bells have been ringing out merrily since the Royal Jubilee celebrations that we are not allowed to say a word against lest we encourage bigoted begrudgery.
Now I learn that the jubilations have turned cash-flow at Kate Middleton’s parents’ company Party Pieces into a torrent. So much so that they have just splashed out £4.7 million on a seven-bedroom manor in a leafy region of Berkshire. They say they had to move from their £1.7 million previous home because it is now “too visible”. Me, too. You can see our house from the street.
 
I hope there is truth in the story of the fellow who came back to his car to find it reduced to a write-off and a note under the remaining wiper reading: “I have just crashed into your car. There are people watching me. They think I am writing down my insurance details.”
 
Amnesty International played a vital role over many years upholding human rights in Burma. Its sponsorship of the Dublin welcome for Aung San Suu Kyi was appropriate. As the woman herself said, the world listens when Amnesty speaks. It is regrettable, then, that Amnesty’s report on civilian deaths from Nato bombing in Libya has been virtually ignored.
If “Libya: The forgotten victims of NATO strikes” gained any coverage in Ireland, I missed it. It is based on a study by Amnesty researchers in January and February of a sample of the targets of Nato bombing, and documents 55 cases of the killing of civilians in Tripoli, Zitan, Majer, Sirte and Brega.
A number of the strikes were on private homes, “even though there is no evidence that they had been used for military purposes.”
The bombing was supposedly carried out under mandate of a UN resolution passed on March 17 last year. In fact, the resolution mandated no such thing. Russia and China refused to back the move for fear that, as with Iraq from 2003 onwards, the Nato powers would ignore the terms of the “humanitarian” mandate and bomb rings round them, invade the country, whatever their strategy called for. And so it turned out.
To say this is not to deny the tyranny of the Gadaffi regime. It is to suggest that a degree of scepticism would be appropriate now when considering the news from Syria.
A pdf of the Amnesty report is available via amnesty.org.
 
I see Sinéad O’Connor was instructed to keep her lips buttoned at the Aung San Suu Kyi welcome, lest she say something out of turn. But where would the world be without people who speak out of turn? Sinéad remains a necessary woman.