Another Win for the Culture of Death

The House of Commons in the UK has narrowly voted in favour of "assisted dying" for terminally ill people.

What is there to say about this? The arguments have been well-rehearsed. My friend Angelo Bottone has an excellent article on the inevitable creep of euthanasia laws once they are established. The slippery slope is not only real but demonstrable.

Euthanasia is deeply disturbing. There seems to be a foundational, cross-cultural, cross-ideological consensus that one of the main purposes of society (even its overriding purpose) is keeping people alive. When there is an earthquake or a wildfire or a terrorist situation, expense and effort is no object when it comes to saving lives-- every last life.

Similarly, suicide is universally seen as a bad thing, something to be prevented. We have suicide hotlines, counselling services, suicide watch in prisons, and so forth.

How long will this consensus exist in the shadow of euthanasia? There is only an academic difference between the proposition: "I will help you kill yourself because you want to die", and "I will help you kill yourself because I agree that your life has ceased to have value."

What is the value of life, anyway? Once you start to quantify it, you are in very dangerous territory. It either transcends all such calculations, or it's already on a scale of more and less valuable.

A very dark day. God help us!

Dream Cities

I'm as worried about A.I. as anybody else, but I'll admit I've dabbled with it. Sometimes I've used it to generate pictures for this blog when I can't find anything suitable online.

Another thing I've used it for is to create visualizations of my dream cities.

For a long, long time (I can't remember how long) I've had dreams-- dreams in both a literal and figurative sense-- of marvellous, futuristic cities, cities which satisfy particular deep-seated yearnings of mine.

When the dreams are literal, they're often of the high-rise suburb where I grew up, Ballymun. But Ballymun transformed into something more like a science-fiction film.

My dream cities are never clearly imagined, because I have very little visual imagination or visual recall. But they have a few essential characteristics:

1) They are bustling. I love activity. I love the phrase "the city that never sleeps". I love the title of the Smiths song, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". I love the word "public". Basically these cities are hotel lobbies (or airport concourses, or train stations, or conference centres) on a grand scale-- not quite, but close enough.

2) They are completely interior with no windows-- or, if there must be windows, high windows and/or skylights. The sky and the moon and the stars are beautiful, but...well, I don't know why, but I like indoors to be utterly indoors. I like the concentration of that. I especially like rooms within rooms within rooms.

3) They have balconies, flags, escalators, and fountains. Especially fountain. Is there any more moving symbol of life-- public, collective, intergenerational life-- than a fountain?

4) They have many levels.

The A.I. website I was using doesn't always follow one's instructions to the letter, though.

This one is my favourite and the closest to my ideal. I like mirrorballs, as well!

I'm rather afraid that everyone else will find these visions to be nauseating rather than beautiful! Sure, I can appreciate the poetry of a little village in the middle of nowhere which is in harmony with the sounds, sights, and cycles of nature. But in all honesty, I prefer these!

Would You Like to Read a Horror Story?

It's less than four pages long.

If you would, drop me an email at Maolseachlann@gmail.com.

If you wouldn't, have a nice day. But not too nice.

The Poetry of Long Corridors

Who do you think wrote the following stanza?

All hail, Sublimity! thou lofty one,

For thou dost walk upon the blast, and gird

Thy majesty with terrors, and thy throne
Is on the whirlwind, and thy voice is heard
In thunders and in shakings: thy delight
Is in the secret wood, the blasted heath,
The ruin'd fortress, and the dizzy height,
The grave, the ghastly charnel-house of death,
In vaults, in cloisters, and in gloomy piles,
Long corridors and towers and solitary aisles!

The answer is Lord Alfred Tennyson, and he wrote it by the time he was eighteen. It's a stanza from a longer poem, "On Sublimity".

For some time now, I've been embarked on the ambitious project of reading all of Tennyson's surviving poetry, from his juvenilia onwards. Some of his juvenilia is as good as the mature works of many acclaimed poets-- at least in patches.

My three favourite poets are W.B. Yeats, Philip Larkin, and Lord Alfred Tennyson. Of those three, I think Tennyson is the least regarded today. Part of the reason is that he's hard to pigeon-hole. He's as classical as he is romantic, as optimistic and he is pessimistic (though shading towards pessimism), as backwards-looking as he is forwards-looking, and so forth.

The stanza above reminds me of some other poems I love very much, including Byron's ode to the ocean (from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) and Keats's "Ode to Melancholy".

I especially like "long corridors and towers and solitary aisles". I love the word "corridor". I think it's a little poem in itself!

Associations

I was sitting in the front pew of the UCD church today, trying to commune with God, when I found myself thinking of associations.

This isn't at all unusual. I think about associations all the time. I'm thinking about them more and more, actually.

I don't have a picture of UCD's church handy so I'm going to swipe one from another website, and hope they don't mind.

You can just about make out the tabernacle there, underneath the Taizé cross and the randomly-patterned stained glass. It's a very simple tabernacle, gold-coloured with a cross on the front. It's much better than the atrocity the church had until recently-- a similar box, but with a chaos of colours on the front as though it had been painted by a toddler.

I actually like Our Lady Seat of Wisdom very much.

As I was saying...looking at the tabernacle, I began to feel certain associations. I seemed to hear the voice of a young-ish, rather bookish woman saying: "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys..."

Actually, I didn't imagine her saying any specific words, but I imagined her quoting the Song of Solomon.

And why? Because that seemed somehow in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, with the aesthetic.

This atmosphere even had a period attached to it. For me, it was the sixties or seventies in Ireland, or even a little later. I think this was about the period a fairly bookish young woman might find the Song of Solomon to be especially beautiful and quotable. She needn't even have been a particularly religious young woman.



This was a time in Ireland when, although liberalism was certainly making inroads, an ordinary young person might be expected to have a certain sentimental attachment to Catholicism. But the poetry of the Song of Solomon would speak to a new respect for sensuality and sexuality.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Catholicism, to me, is associated with a whole range of different aesthetics and associations. Usually very specific associations and aesthetics. It's like there are different aesthetic or atmospheric strains of Catholic devotion. And I like most of them.

Some of these "strains" are attached to particular periods and places, and some aren't. They're very hard to put into words.

For instance, nineteenth century Catholicism has (to me) a very particular flavour, a certain austere intellectualism mixed with a baroque romanticism. Perhaps it all boils down to the personality of John Henry Newman, and the very specific mixture of masculinity and femininity in that complex figure.

Here's another example. Some years ago, they used to have mid-week Eucharistic adoration in the Holy Spirit Church in Ballymun. It was always to the backing of soft devotional music, guitar music with pious ejaculations sung in different languages.

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of internationalism. But I liked the internationalism of this backing music. I was a friendly, non-threatening sort of internationalism. There were "swirly" sounds between the music.

The gleaming gold monstrance harmonised very pleasingly against the warm colours of the church. The whole experience was very soothing. It made the love of God seem very tender and healing.

Another example is the sort of atmosphere invoked (for me) by the groups of statues you sometimes see outside Irish Catholic churches; that is, large white statues, often showing Calvary scenes, usually quite weather-beaten.

Tenderness and softness don't come to mind here. Rather, heroism and purity and sacrifice. Hardness. But it's just as moving and elevating an "atmosphere".

Here's the thing; I find it very difficult to approach God except through the intermediary of one of these atmospheres, one of these aesthetics. It's not for me to say whether this is a good or a bad thing. But, unless convinced otherwise, I'm assuming that it's not a bad thing.

I'm grateful for these associations. They point me to God.

There's a much bigger point arising out of all of this. I suspect that I am not unique or special, and that many (or even most) of our loyalties, beliefs and even our quests come from associations such as these-- whether in religion, politics, working life, love, or any other realm of human activity. How much of our lives are determined by a fragrance, a particular tone of voice, a pattern of light and shadow, that grasped our imaginations at just the right moment?

The Silly Season

I probably shouldn't blog when I'm in a bad mood, but I'm irritated by an article in the Catholic Herald which is an example of a tendency I really dislike in Catholic writing. I won't mention the author, but you can read it at the link below. The headline is "Paul McCartney's Catholic Pulse":

https://thecatholicherald.com/paul-mccartneys-catholic-pulse/

McCartney's music, don't you know, has been shaped by his Catholic background:

You can hear it if you listen closely—not in grand declarations, but in the tremble beneath the chord changes. Catholicism doesn’t shout; it seeps. And in McCartney’s work, it’s everywhere. It’s in the longing, the ache, the dignity of sorrow that feels too ancient to be accidental. The Beatles may have been the soundtrack of a cultural revolution, but underneath the haircuts and heresies was something older, quieter, heavier. Something liturgical. Even when the lyrics weren’t explicitly religious, the emotional architecture often was: guilt, grace, reverence, loss, redemption. Take “Let It Be.” Most hear a gentle plea for peace, a soft balm in the chaos of the times. But listen again. That “Mother Mary” isn’t just his mum. It’s the Blessed Virgin, cloaked in the ambiguity McCartney has always favored. Raised on Hail Marys, candle smoke, and the slow solemnity of Sunday Mass, McCartney didn’t need to spell it out. Catholicism teaches you that not everything sacred has to be brazenly broadcast—it can be whispered, veiled, encoded in melody.

Well, really. Couldn't you say that about any music that you happen to like?

Paul McCartney must be one of the most interviewed people in the history of the human race. If his Catholic background was important to him, he would have said so by now. It's clearly not important to him.

As for the "Mother Mary" reference in "Let It Be"...McCartney is an affable fellow and has always been happy to have this interpreted in a religious way, if anybody wants to do so. But he's said quite explicitly that it refers to a vision of his mother.

This kind of thing is reminiscent of the Greek father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who insists that every word is ultimately derived from Greek. It's endearing in that case, but in a published article one expects a more serious argument.

It wouldn't be worth mentioning if it was an isolated case. But there are a lot of articles like this.

(For a group of Liverpudlians of Irish extraction, what's remarkable about the Beatles is how little their Catholic or Irish upbringing seems to have influenced them. George Harrison's last album featured a song mocking the Church.)

The Pope and Nationalism

In his Pentecost sermon, Pope Leo had some words of criticism for "political nationalism": "Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for 'safety' zones that separate us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mentality that, tragically, we now see manifesting itself even in political nationalisms".

What does any of this mean? Is exclusion always a bad thing? Is it "exclusionary" that only believing Catholics in a state of grace can receive Holy Communion? Is it "exclusionary" that only men can be ordained? Is it "exclusionary" that Catholic marriage only exists between a man and a woman?

Is it "exclusionary" that national sentiment is directed towards our countrymen and women, rather than the rest of the world? Doesn't everybody in the world have their own nation, whether or not that nation has its own state?

What is nationalism? There are plenty of definitions out there, but to me it's simply belief in the institution of the nation and a desire for this institution to survive. This doesn't seem controversial or radical to me.

It seems especially odd that recent Popes have been so hostile to nationalism, when nationalists are generally supportive of social conservatism, religion, and the sanctity of life. Globalists, on the other hand, usually oppose all these things.

I'm particularly baffled by the Holy Father's use of the word "now": "The exclusionary mentality that, tragically, we now see manifesting itself in political nationalisms."

Is it really the case, as so many commentators (including Pope Leo) seem to assume, that the wave of populist nationalism passing through the developed world is something new? Is it not, rather, a delayed reaction to the thing that is really new: the project of globalism, which includes demographic change on a scale never seen before? I don't think the populations of Europe and the Americas have suddenly become nationalist. I think they always were (at least in a latent way) but they have only now woken up to the project of their ruling elites.

These are well-rehearsed arguments on this blog. I apologise to regular readers who may be bored by them. But they come to mind again in the light of Pope Leo's words.

It would be helpful if Pope Leo were to release an encyclical or other document on the place of the nation in the modern world, and particularly on how the plurality of human cultures are to be protected without the nation and nationalism. Until then, with all due respect to the Supreme Pontiff, I remain a nationalist-- a cultural nationalist primarily, but a political nationalist as well.

Another Thought on Fascination

 I was writing about fascination recently. I wrote:

This whole business of fascination is, inevitably, fascinating in itself. Human beings are remarkable creatures. One would assume we have the same basic bundle of desires and objectives, each of which would ultimately boil down to some animalistic imperative. But in fact, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we are inveterate poets". It seems to me that what draws us to any activity, pursuit, or allegiance is usually that our imagination has been seized in some way. And everybody's imagination seems to react in a very individual way. So perhaps it's rather futile to attempt to communicate a fascination.

I've been reading the first volume of a multi-volume biography of John F. Kennedy by Nigel Hamilton, Reckless Youth. The passage below caught my attention. It's a quotation from a friend of Kennedy, who wrote an article about the sinking of Kennedy's boat during WWII, an event which won Kennedy hero status: "What appealed to me about the Kennedy story was his night in the water, his account of floating in the current, being brought back to the same point from which he'd drifted off. It was the same kind of theme that fascinated me always about human survival... It was really that aspect that interested me, rather than his heroics. The aspect of fate that threw him back into a current and brought him back again. His account of it is very strange. A nightmarish thing altogether."

I once wrote a whole blog post on the genesis of artistic works (read it here), where I wrote:

I've often suspected that the real motivation for any work of art is a burning desire to share some image, atmosphere or moment which is intensely personal and specific. Let me put it this way; a woman might write an eight-hundred page novel which contains all sorts of deep observations on human nature, on memory, on language, on any number of other universal themes-- but the real essence of the novel is not any of these, but a short description of a mother brushing her daughter's hair before a mirror, while snow falls outside. This is what the lady yearned to express, to give life to; everything else was really just to keep the readers and the critics happy. All the philosophising can be analysed to death; this is irreducible and living.

This suspicion, in fact, is given support by many of the accounts I've read of the origin of creative works. Dracula grew out of the image of Jonathan Harker being surrounded by the three female vampires in Castle Dracula, until they are beaten back by Dracula himself. The Chronicles of Narnia all grew out of the image of a faun carrying parcels in a snowy wood. The Stand by Stephen King (a book of 1424 pages in its uncut version) grew out of a phrase King heard in a sermon on the radio: "Once in every generation the plague will fall among them." 

Even the way in which an author (or anybody else) is fascinated by something is incredibly specific. Take this often-quoted excerpt from an interview Samuel Becket gave: "I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine. I wish I would remember the Latin. It is even finer in Latin than in English. ‘Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.’ That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters." Beckett insisted his interest in the phrase (which he used in his work) was not theological, although it's well-known that he liked to be enigmatic.

My own experience is that even supposedly simple tastes, such as eating, can be affected by the imagination. Apparently Winston Churchill once told a waiter: "Take away this pudding. It has no theme." I can understand that.

I'm interested in this phenomenon for its own sake. But I also think it has a relevance for politics, society, history, religion, and pretty much every other field of life.

Happy Pentecost

Pentecost is one of my favourite moments in the Bible and one of my favourite mysteries of the Rosary. (My other favourites are the Presentation and the Transfiguration.)

I like the "shock and awe" of Pentecost, the presence of powerful imagery: a mighty wind and tongues of fire.

Despite much searching, and despite its popularity with painters through the ages, I've never been able to find a depiction of Pentecost that satisfies me. Every single depiction is too understated for my liking. Surely any attempt to portray Pentecost visually should be a case of "go big or go home". (Also, the "mighty wind" is generally left out. Obviously, you can't directly portray wind, but you should be able to imply it with a little imagination.)

So I'm going to be a terrible, terrible person and use an A.I.-generated image for this post. I'm not happy with that one, either, even though it took several efforts to find one that was even nearly suitable.

Saints of the Yellow Fever

In the summer of 1878, in Memphis in Tennessee,
There walked through the streets of the city a demon no eyes could see.
It brought with it desolation; full five thousand lives were cut short.
In the guise of the Yellow Fever, King Death held a gruesome court.

Nobody knew where it came from, and nothing could hold it back.
Its shadow fell further than Memphis, this plague they called “Yellow Jack”.
It ravaged through New Orleans, St. Louis, and Vicksburg, too
And twice ten thousand pitiful souls it swiftly, painfully slew.

Whoever could leave the cities had left, whoever could flee had fled,
And only the poor were left behind, to tremble among the dead.
And yet, in this Valley of Darkness, one fellowship chose to toil:
All valiant priests of the Catholic faith, and many from Erin’s Isle.

O’Brien and Fahey and Kelly, McGarvey and Mooney and Ryan,
All names of the Christian soldiers who fell on this dread battle-line.
When one had died of the deadly plague, another would take his place.
The Saints of the Yellow Fever, the infantry of God’s grace.

When all had abandoned the dying, God’s ministers still came near
To give them the precious Viaticum, their last confessions to hear,
To take from the arms of dead mothers the poor infant left all alone,
To hold a last drink to burning lips, to witness a dying groan.

In the city of Chattanooga they still speak of Patrick Ryan
From Nenagh in Tipperary, a young priest as brave a lion.
His tomb lies in the Basilica. The valiant path that he trod
Has won him the love of its people, the title of Servant of God.

So hail to the martyrs of Memphis, their brothers wherever they fell,
A beacon to burn for the ages, a breathtaking story to tell.
McGarvey and Mooney and Kelly, names bright with an unfading gloss.
The saints of the Yellow Fever, who fell at the foot of the Cross.

All of the details in this "ballad" can be found in the book Heroes and Heroines of Memphis by Father D.A. Quinn, which is freely available to read on the Internet Archive.

You can read about Fr. Patrick Ryan in many places, including my article in the Summer Special of Ireland's Own, which is in the shops as I write this.

I've long had the plan of writing a series of poems and ballads glorifying Irish Catholic history. My aspiration is for these poems to get into general circulation. So if you like this "ballad", please feel free to share it on social media or anywhere else.

Blog Thoughts

Once again I find myself pondering the point of my blog. It's been going now since 2011, so I intend to keep it going indefinitely. But I often find myself what direction I should take it in-- if any particular direction.

When I started it, I had the idea that it would be fairly newsy, essentially a series of responses to attacks on the Catholic Church in the Irish media. That idea didn't last very long.

I sometimes wonder whether it should be more "substantial"-- for instance, book reviews, movie reviews, commentary on current issues, articles on aspects of Irish Catholic history, that kind of thing. This would involve a fair amount of disciplined research.

I suppose the most recurrent theme in my blog is "fascination". I constantly seem to be trying to communicate some fascination or other, often a rather elusive one. Those are the posts that mean the most to me, but I don't know how much they appeal to other people. Communicating fascination might be more the province of poetry-- but it's hard to get anyone to read poetry.

This whole business of fascination is, inevitably, fascinating in itself. Human beings are remarkable creatures. One would assume we have the same basic bundle of desires and objectives, each of which would ultimately boil down to some animalistic imperative. But in fact, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we are inveterate poets". It seems to me that what draws us to any activity, pursuit, or allegiance is usually that our imagination has been seized in some way. And everybody's imagination seems to react in a very individual way. So perhaps it's rather futile to attempt to communicate a fascination.

I must admit I was rather disappointed that my "Irishness in Everyday Life" didn't get more of a response. I even asked various Facebook friends who are still on Facebook to share it. It seemed to me like the kind of thing that might spark a wider discussion.

Are blogs passé? I can remember back when they were almost comically modern.

The funny thing about my blog is that virtually nobody I know in "real life" actually reads it. On the other hand, as more and more people are speaking out against the ruling ideology in Ireland, I'm quite proud I have proof that I was opposing it for a long time, when it was neither profitable nor popular.