Petition for RTÉ to broadcast the National Anthem again

I decided to create a petition on Change.org for the above cause. This is my text:

For decades, Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ used to broadcast the national anthem at the end of the day's television schedule. Many of us will nostalgically recall the montage of picturesque nature imagery that accompanied it in the eighties and nineties.

Today, in our 24-hour society, television stations don't stop broadcasting for the night. But surely it would be a good thing to revive this practice anyway, perhaps around midnight. Human beings need ritual and ceremony but there is very little of this in our daily lives anymore. The national anthem belongs to everybody and fosters national pride, togetherness, and distinctiveness. It's rarely heard today outside big sporting occasions. Ask RTÉ to bring it back!

The petition itself can be found here.

The Visage Volume

You think you can escape social media by not having a social media account? Oh, you poor fool!

Here's a selection of my recent Facebook posts, which I think everybody should have to read. One of them is a meditation on Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" speech that was meant to be the second part of a two-part post some time ago. I never got around to writing it.

A book I was reading got me thinking about Catholicism and other denominations of Christianity.

I grew up in a Catholic family and country and, in all honesty, Catholicism seemed the most rational religion to me even when I was an agnostic. At a certain point of my life I found it impossible to continue as an agnostic and I spent a lot of time investigating religion. I never really took seriously the claims of other faiths to be THE true faith, mostly because of the apostolic succession and the length and breadth of Catholic history, as well as the clarity and confidence of its dogmas.

Here's the thing though; I never really had a taste for Catholic chauvinism or triumphalism. Maybe it's because growing up in Ireland meant Catholicism wasn't in any way exotic or glamorous. But also because I never doubted for a second that there was good in other denominations. It seems blindingly obvious to me that there is holiness to be seen in many Christian denominations. It even seems that God has showered particular gifts on other denominations that he hasn't, to the same degree, on Catholicism. Although I don't doubt heresy and apostasy is always a bad thing, I get the feeling God can work good from evil and bring out "the unsearchable riches of Christ" in a different way in other denominations.

I don't know theologically accurate that is and I'm always open to correction.

Next time someone being introduced to me says: "I'm a hugger", I think I'll reply: "Really? I'm a puncher."

(Just joking. But that's one thing I don't miss from before Covid...)

I've often heard that nobody is interested in other people's dreams. I'm interested in them. I've also heard it said that a bore is someone with a very specific interest who can't help talking about it. I like hearing about obscure interests, too.

What I don't like is "I was proved right" stories. But lots of people delight in telling these. It's funny how nobody talks about the predictions they made that went awry, or the arguments they lost.

I am possibly just jealous because I've never been right about anything, but I don't think that's it entirely.

Isn't it interesting that, in England, the Catholic past is remembered (by some) as "Merrie England", while in Ireland there is no such nostalgia? Many of us are nostalgic for Catholic Ireland, but not for "Merrie Ireland"...

For some years now, I have a practice whereby I memorize poems (and hymns, nursery rhymes etc.) and recite them to myself, every now and again, to keep them fresh. There's 136 on the list right now. It's been on "maintenance" mode for a while, ever since I've been trying to master basic geography.

Anyway, it includes Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" speech. I'm not the biggest Shakespearean and, honestly, I'm not sure why I picked it as I never particularly liked it. But saying it to myself over and over has given me a deeper appreciation, as with many of the pieces.

The obvious first impression of the speech is how undignified and ridiculous it makes mankind seem, as to be expected given the melancholy speaker. At every stage in life man is making a fool of himself, whether over love or honour or self-importance or simple decrepitude.

Even if you were never a soldier, you were probably an obnoxiously opinionated twenty-something putting the world to rights, perhaps a crusader for some cause. Even if you were never a "justice" (judge?), we all reach the pinnacle of whatever authority or standing we have, dispensing wisdom and verdicts. And then we are still as silly as the lovelorn teenager.

But, when I speak the speech to myself, I feel a second reaction, as well as this sense of the absurd-- a sort of tenderness and relief. Yes, we are like this. We are all like this, and none of us are that much better or worse. It's not so bad. Our creatureliness is very endearing, when you look at it from outside. I actually feel a huge weight lift off me when I recite this speech to myself-- the same sort of relief C.S. Lewis described as letting go of the burden of pride. I've been terrified of being ridiculous all my life, and this speech says: "Relax. You ARE ridiculous. So is everybody else."

And it makes me think of my father. I saw him go through all the later stages and heard him describe the earlier ones. I saw him "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". And he remained himself. Underneath all the indignity there is a deeper dignity.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

It's so tiresome that in the Irish media today, the issue is never the issue and there's always some ulterior message to the one being transmitted.

For example, two articles I read in the Irish Times today. One was an article congratulating the Irish government on standing up for sovereignty and neutrality, in the diplomatic sparring with Russia. As though the Irish Times or any of the Irish media have anything but contempt for national sovereignty and neutrality. They have been undermining both for decades. In this instance they are just slogans to be used as the West's globalist ambitions press eastward.
Another was an article complaining about Spotify and how it denies musicians their right to be paid. Maybe the Irish Times DOES care about this-- at some level-- but who could believe that this is really anything but outrage at Spotify playing host to Joe Rogan, who questions their orthodoxies?

It's nauseating.

One of the reasons I am such a defender of the particular is because I feel the particular elevates the universal. I am currently re-reading the Oxford Book of Friendship. It is very interesting, and pleasing, to see how the concept of friendship has been celebrated and discussed through so many ages, in so many cultures; the book contains excerpts from the ancient world right up to the modern age, and across cultures.

The stronger the particular is, the stronger is the universal. Think how much it says of Shakespeare that he is translated into so many languages and loved by so many different peoples. But imagine we had the monoculture many people seem to want, one worldwide culture with one language. What would be special about universality then? Everything would be universal, and there would be no distinction or thrill to it. People talk about eliminating boundaries and barriers as if it is the most exciting thing in the world; but when they are gone, you lose all the excitement of ever transcending them again.

I continue to believe church attendance rates matter. Cultural Christianity matters. It has a knock-on effect on other things, like religious freedom and public policy.

I'm baffled and dismayed by Christians who seem to be indifferent to it, who seem to think it would be better to have a tiny "remnant" of orthodox Christians-- and it's always THEIR interpretation of orthodoxy, or their favourite YouTuber's interpretation of orthodoxy-- rather than accept any perceived or real imperfections. Who write off vast swathes of professing Christians as "not really Christian, anyway".

There is of course the opposite extreme-- a preoccupation with Christianity as a social force, with the will-o-the-wisp of reviving Christendom. (I've met this entirely among Catholics myself, but it may have its variant in other denominations.) Surprisingly, I've noticed that both views can actually co-exist in the same person.

Am I wrong? I might be wrong. This is my view.

Surely it is always better than someone has a relationship with Christ than not?

It's funny that early morning is probably the most solid, public, tangible part of the day-- everyone going to work, the morning headlines, cleaners doing their stuff, the mind generally at its freshest and brightest, the "broad light of day" illuminating everything-- but only a few hours ago everybody was hallucinating, lost in private dreamworlds.

My favourite U.S. state name is "Vermont". I don't know why I like it so much.

It sounds like "Vermouth". I don't know if I've ever had a vermouth but I like the scene in Groundhog Day where Rita asks for: "Sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist, please". Well, several scenes.

It makes me think of Fry's Chocolate Cream, a chocolate bar which has a kind of minty fondant centre. Maybe because "mont" sounds like "mint, although that doesn't adequately explain the association.

Also, the song title "Moonlight in Vermont" gives it romantic associations.

Ronald Knox on the Papacy

Ronald Knox was an Anglican priest and scholar who converted to Catholicism in 1917. In later years, he translated the Bible into English-- directly from St. Jerome's Vulgate. He was a friend of G.K. Chesterton, and indeed preached Chesterton's funeral homily.

His account of his conversion, A Spiritual Aeneid, is a book I've just finished reading for the third time. I was struck by his account of how important the role of the Papacy was in his thinking, as he moved towards Catholicism. I think it's worth sharing today, when it has become common among conservatives (as it was common among liberals until very recently) to whittle the Pope's role down to a bare minimum. Italics are Knox's own.

"Strange as it may seem, I had always assumed at the back of my mind that when my handbooks talked about "Arian" and "Catholic" bishops they knew what they were talking about; it never occurred to me that Arians also regarded themselves as Catholics and wanted to know why they should be thought otherwise. "Ah! but", says my Church historian, "the Church came to think otherwise, and thus they found themselves de-Catholicized in the long run. But what Church? Why did those who anathemized Nestorious come to be regarded as "Catholics" rather than those who still accept his doctrines? I had used this argument against the Greek Orthodox Church when it broke away from unity, but it had never occurred to me before that what we mean when we talk of the Catholic party is the party in which the bishop from Rome was, and nothing else; that the handbooks had simply taken over the word without thinking or arguing about it, as it explained itself; but it didn't.

"If you ask "Who are the Orthodox?" you will be told "The people who hold the Orthodox Faith". If you ask them how they know it is the Orthodox Faith they say: "Because it is held by the Orthodox Church". And the Nestorians will say exactly the same of themselves-- and who is to choose between them? Each say they have the consensus fidelium behind them, and if you ask who the fideles were you are referred back to the very formula which the consensus fidelium was to prove. But if you ask a Catholic: "What is the Catholic Faith?", and are told it is held by the Catholic Church: if you persevere, and ask what is the Catholic Church, you are no longer met with the irritatingly circular definition; you are told it is the Church that is in communion with the bishop of Rome.

(...)

"If you took a Gallican view of the Church, and wanted the Papacy to be a constitutional monarchy, your church became a philosopher's dream instead of a living reality; in ordinary real life, you must have the Pope as he is, or no Pope at all."

Some Day for One Day

Regular readers (God bless their souls) will know that I'm very interested in days-- those units of time in which we live. I write about this here and here, and elsewhere.

Anyway, today is some day for one day, as I say in my title.

First off, it's Candlemas, or the Feast of Presentation. Today is the day hardcore Christmas fans will reluctantly take their Christmas trees down.

Here's a post I wrote about Candlemas a few years ago.

It's also Groundhog Day...again...and that must mean I re-post my (now ten year-old) post on why I love Groundhog Day above every other film ever made.

(I have an article on the film appearing in the Valentine's Day edition of Ireland's Own...although, sadly, it's only five hundred words long. I could write five thousand!)

I've seen it pointed out on social media that today is 2/2/22, which is noteworthy.

I mistakenly thought today was the first day of Chinese New Year. I see now it was actually yesterday. But apparently the festival continues past the first day. I don't know if I have any Chinese readers, but if I do...happy Year of the Tiger!

Today is also the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Ulysses-- although, apparently, only two copies of it were actually published that day. This corresponds to the amount of people who ever actually enjoyed the book-- James Joyce and Ezra Pound.

I posted this on Facebook in commemoration of this dubious centenary:

Today is the hundredth anniversary of the publication of by James Joyce.

Funnily enough, this time last year (as my Facebook memories show) I was wrestling with this text for, I eventually decided, the last time.

W.B. Yeats, a far greater talent and more serious thinker than Joyce, never finished the book either. That says a lot.

Joyce was undoubtedly talented-- A Portrait of the Artist and The Dead are brilliant-- but I finally came to the conclusion that Ulysses was a piece of charlatanry and not worthy of an adult's attention.

 

 

A book that can't even be understood on the most primary level without constant references to footnotes and companions is not worth reading. Whenever you actually ask people who profess to enjoy Ulysses what they enjoy about it, the answers are always vague and involve a few clichéd references like "ineluctable modality of the visible". I don't even see what's so very clever or profound about that.

My father, whose judgement I respect and even follow on most things, was an outspoken admirer of the book. I can't understand that, since he was usually allergic to all forms of literary modernism. I honestly wonder if it was simply municipal pride at work.

And, of course, Ulysses was also a cosmopolitan's swipe against the Gaelic Revival, Irish nationalism, Catholic piety, and other wholesome things. Well, we see where cosmopolitanism led... That on its own would not be enough to make me dismiss the book, but it does give me an added dislike of it.

It's a stupid book that had a terrible effect on literature and society. Hopefully after a hundred years its cultus will begin to wane, although it's far too fertile a field for PhDs and critical analysis for me to be optimistic.

Suck, it Joyceans!

So as not to end on a negative note, here is Bill Murray's moving speech from Groundhog Day:

When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

And, to round it off, here is "Days" by The Kinks-- taken from The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, one of the few conservative rock albums ever written. My cousin Billy (RIP) chose this song to be played at his own memorial service (along with "Fortunate Child" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and a "Psalm to Life" by Longfellow).

Thoughts on the Feast-Day of the Conversion of St. Paul

Today is the Feast Day of the Conversion of St. Paul. I've just been to lunch-time Mass in UCD. The priest, in his homily, said that God could make the most extraordinary changes in our life. He said that God didn't cancel St. Paul's previous personality, simply took his previously existing gifts and put them to His service.

Since I've started writing this blog post, I've realized that I actually wrote it already, two years ago. At least, I wrote a blog post on the same feast where I said much of what I intended to say here. So I'm just going to paste that in.

The only thing I really had to add is that I realize Groundhog Day, my favourite film of all time, is also the story of a conversion, albeit not a conversion to Christianity. (I've been writing an article about it, so it's been on my mind.)

Here's what I said this time three years ago:

As I've mentioned before, "the road to Damascus" is one of my favourite phrases in the whole world. It's up there with "softly falling snow", "the cold light of day", "down Memory Lane", and other phrases in which I can lose myself.

I'm also very interested in conversion. Some years ago an editor from a publishing house contacted me, suggesting we work on a book proposal for his editorial board. He was particularly taken with this post, on my idea of a man, and suggested fleshing it out to book length.

I didn't like that idea. In my work in a university library, I've recently found myself handling a lot of books about masculinity, and (even worse) "masculinities". They're the new thing, and they make me cringe a little. (The men's conference I posted about recently was my little joke. I think I underplayed the joke as everybody seems to have taken me seriously.) A blog post about masculinity is one thing. A whole book is a horrible thought. Feminism and women's studies are bad enough. Masculinism and men's studies are to be strenuously resisted! (Which is no criticism of those groups which exist to counter man-bashing in the media, universities and legal system.)

Anyway, that's all a digression. I suggested to him instead that we submit a proposal for a book on conversion, and I did a huge amount of work on the proposal. But, alas, they didn't think it would sell. (Maybe better, in the long run. This was a 'progressive' Catholic publisher, which would have been quite a mismatch.)

There is something mysterious about conversion, even when it comes to secular matters. The image of St. Paul dazzled by the light is an appropriate one. There always seems something irreducible about any conversion, something that can't be covered by any explanation, something that even the convert can't fully understand or articulate. One day, perhaps, I will write that book. In the meantime, I pray to St. Paul for many more conversions!

Where's my Hovercraft?

John Waters (the Irish commentator, not the American director) sometimes seems a bit mad nowadays, but I still look at his "John Waters Unchained" email with interest. In a recent one he makes a point that has often occurred to me:

"In his 2011 book The Great Stagnation— How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, Tyler Cowen describes an America streaking ahead up to the end of the nineteenth century (free land and a host of technological breakthroughs like electricity, motor cars, air travel, railroads, harvesters, fertilisers, phonographs, telephones, household appliances, typewriters, tape-recorders, television and indoor plumbing) and then starting to slow down. ‘Today,’ he declares, ‘apart from the seemingly magical Internet, life in broad material terms isn’t so different from what it was in 1953. We still drive care, use refrigerators and turn on the light switch.’

"It’s true [says John Waters]. When I was a schoolboy, we would get asked to write essays from time to time with the title, ‘Life in 2000 AD’, in which we would invent fantastic scenarios in which we, or our descendants, would swish around in hovercraft, live on food pills and spend our holidays on Mars. Yet, apart from the strange devices we hold up to our ears, anyone who died around 1960 would not, on returning for a (very!) brief haunting visit, find our modern homes or streetscapes all that puzzling."

Me again. I don't know what moral to draw from this, if any. I'm rather grateful for it because I prefer continuity to change. But the difference between 1960 and today seems much smaller than the difference between 1900 and 1960. G.K. Chesterton wrote that, once telephones had been invented, all other communications technology seemed just a variation on the same thing.

I remember in the early nineties, virtual reality was meant to be the next leap forward but that still hasn't really happened. I suppose "touchless technology" is making a big difference-- certainly transforming libraries-- but still a long way from hovercraft and teleporters. I was even surprised at one library conference to hear that libraries are facing challenges when it comes to VIRTUAL memory, which I had presumed was effectively infinite.

The Old Ads Are the Best...

Probably not, actually, but I did spend a nostalgic evening recently looking at advertisements that took me back to my childhood, or teens. I know I've mentioned most of them before.

I wonder how many of these I watched, or heard, while I was playing with plastic soldiers or building blocks? Sadly, the television was our hearth. But it was better than being hearthless.

Nothing brings you back like ads, because they belong so totally to the moment. They're repeated often enough to sink into your memory, but then you never hear them again for years and decades. So it's not like songs from the era which you might have heard dozens of time since.

This 1986 ad for Bórd na Móna, a state company that sells peat briquettes, is probably my all-time favourite ad. It makes me dream of a path Ireland could have taken; modern and prosperous, but still traditional and romantic.

When this 1990 ad  for Tennant's beer was shown in Ireland, the words "my land" were substituted for "Caledonia". It's a neat little story, and it's rare that you see patriotism (in the literal sense "love of country") portrayed in advertisements. 

This ad (for Drifter chocolate bars, also from 1990) is funny and sweet. The character it portrays was probably hugely anachronistic even then. Despite it lingering in my memory for thirty years, I don't think I've ever had a Drifter bar.

Apparently the "cave-man" ads for Britvic fruit juice terrified me when I was young. I think I can kind of remember it. Here's one (the only one I can find) from 1983. It's hard to see what spooked me now. I remember them being visually a lot darker.

This 1984 ad about the dangers of domestic dogs savaging sheep (really) shows that Ireland was still an agricultural country back then. What kid would forget this one?

As the person who uploaded it says in the video description, everybody seems to remember this ad for the Electricity Supply Board from the 1980s.

The hardest thing to grasp about the past is that it happened one minute at a time, that it was as "thick" as the present. It's hard to realize that when we read history, but sometimes I find it hard to realize it even with my own memories. How often must I have seen each of these, for them to be so branded in my mind?