The hassle in the castle

Lilac’s out and laburnum blooms. First wasps are buzzing, and swallows have arrived, beaky-squealing into the eaves. Hey nonny no, bring flowers of the May and around the pole we go. For summer is a-coming in and winter it is gone.

It’s time to have some tribal fun. I mean, some real gnarled knotty fun. Like a party for a pooper, say... a 1950s theme party.

It’s hard to believe that we’re in the 21st century when you read of the huffs and puffs associated with the reception in Dublin Castle for the Roman Catholic Cardinal Connell. Apparently he was offended that Celia Larkin’s name was also on the invite, on the grounds that she isn’t married to Bertie Ahern.

Well!! It’s bad enough to have far right extremists like Rory O’Hanlon warning that the new hat was seeing red at Celia’s inclusion on the card. But it was even worse to find senior Protestant clergy accusing the Taoiseach and his consort of discourtesy. Hell’s bells! Who’s discourteous?!? Who threw the party for the red hat?! And the guest had the gall to lecture one and all on marriage and the like. Is this an ingrate I see before me??!!

To many, this looked like a calculated insult to the democratic system, to the elected leader of the Government, and to the tax payers who elect that Government and pay for it, and whose taxes funded the reception for Citizen Connell. We had our shoes damped!

This was a throwback to Ireland’s Own John Charles McQuaid, the notorious despot who ruled the Roman church in Ireland at the time when some of the worst abuses were being perpetrated by its black-clad storm-troopers.

It reminded our elders of evil times. When a priest who sexually abused children would be moved somewhere else rather than thrown to the police or the dogs. When anyone who deviated was driven from the country. Or from his or her job. Or home. Whatever. The days when we were part of the Roman Empire. When we were poor and many knew no better.

But those days have passed. Ahern underlined that much when he looked journalists straight in the eye and said it had all gone swimmingly and that Ms Larkin’s name would continue to be included on invitations. Good on ya. It’s good to see the survival of some republican (in the French sense, perhaps) sensibility.

Life has changed. Journos reporting on the reception said that few guests were aged less than 50. Some old males pointed fingers at Celia - were overheard calling her a brazen hussy, according to a voice on RTE. A brazen hussy! Gawd help us!!!

I mean, it’s pathetic. It’s a cliché. It’s judgemental, it’s uncharitable, it’s unchristian. These are not people who practice what they preach. Let he who is without sin ..

But it’s also sinister. As so often before, given half a chance, these people blame the woman. No, worse, they demonise her. Jezebel. And the like. Dreadful, pathetic dinosaurs, gasping for breath as the tide of history washes over them.

Look, all is changed. The wife of the Japanese Emperor is expecting a baby conceived in a test-tube. And they think it’s a girl. So they have to change heaven and earth to guard the succession. And they will. Doctors have now worked out how to clone humans. Think of your mobile and what it can do. We’ll have digital tv soon – you’ll be able to choose from hundreds of possibilities. And one child in three is not born into a married family.

Face it, the idea that there’s one consensual way, one coherent set of values, is no longer valid.

It may be that there’s no way to tell the priests this. They may not be able to follow. That there’s a reason why there’s more and more wacky religions and quackeries. The old ones have no relevance or meaning any more.

It may be that we lose a thing or two as a result. But we gain a lot. And some of what we lose should be lost anyway. Like the monkey on our back.

Well. Of course there are little warm spots still. And some are on the northern side of the border. On both sides, as it were. Some old certainties are still clung to. With vigour.

Which is, I suppose, why three unfortunate Ozzie students were attacked and savagely beaten by mob of Catholic dingoes, too stupid to understand that an Ozzie accent isn’t a Protestant accent, and too thick to realise that it shouldn’t matter anyway.

And sure, in another time or another place it might have been a Protestant mob and from time to time, it has been. But this is the kind of shit that hits the fan when people live in the past.

Meanwhile, in the badlands of Wicklow, real evil lurked. The other week, Larry Murphy was jailed for 15 years on each of six charges of kidnapping, raping and attempting to murder a Carlow businesswoman.

You read it all. He attacked her, tied her up and carried her in the boot of his car for 23 miles. A dreadful ordeal. We can empathise, but we can never ever really feel it. He raped her four times and had started to strangle her when he was interrupted by two men out ‘lamping’ who rescued her. One recognised Murphy and the rest is history.

It’s just one of the most awful stories. And it raises so many thoughts about all the other women who disappeared in Wicklow.

And that’s the point, I suppose, about the very trivial spat in the castle. There is real evil in the world. There’s racism, there’s corruption, there’s violence, there’s terror, there’s drug dealing, there’s robbery. Those quivering ivory-bony fingers would be better served pointing at these true affronts than puffing minty-breathy at Bertie and Celia, who are just going about their business and their pleasure and their lives in the same way as hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens.

Now I know. They’re wrong. And my hell would be to be in their heaven.

The Hog