Irish Examiner view: Pope's death is a watershed moment for Catholics
There have been authentically emotional reactions to the death of Pope Francis around the world, and Ireland has been no exception. File picture: Andrew Medichini/AP
Generous tributes have been paid to the late Pope Francis in recent days, reflecting the regard in which he was held. There have been authentically emotional reactions to his death around the world, and Ireland has been no exception, with many recalling his visit to these shores in 2018.
The passing of a pope has always been a watershed moment for Catholics: Those of a certain vintage may recall the shock of Pope John Paul II’s election, when the Polish native became the first pope from behind the Iron Curtain.
That event was so long ago that younger readers may need to have the Iron Curtain explained to them, never mind anything else, but the fact that the then Karol Wojtyła became pope was truly seismic.
His subsequent visit to Ireland in 1979 is often cited as the high-water mark for Catholicism in this country, with vast crowds turning out to see him all over the country.
It is interesting to juxtapose those few days almost 50 years ago with just one story in the news this week, a survey which has shown that the majority of primary teachers believe that schools should not prepare children for Confirmation.
When 1,000 teachers were polled for their views on religion in schools, 57% said preparing children for the sacraments should not be the school’s responsibility.
Just 4% of the teachers thought it should be a school’s responsibility.
Some 47% believed the family should be responsible, 30% said it should be the parish’s responsibility, and 18% said it should be the responsibility of both parents and parish.
There is an inherent tension here in that almost 90% of schools in Ireland remain under Catholic patronage.
Reconciling a religious ethos which is espoused by school management with an increasingly secular and diverse society is obviously a challenge, but the findings of this teacher poll ask serious questions of that educational infrastructure.
It is past time for the State to take an active leadership role in this sector.
US president Donald Trump’s closeness to various tech billionaires has been a feature of his second term in office, with the term “broligarch” in common usage about individuals such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Palantir’s Peter Thiel.
However, none of them are as close to the president as Elon Musk. The owner of Tesla, X, and Starlink backed Trump publicly in last November’s presidential election and contributed millions of dollars in funding to Trump’s campaign.
Musk was duly rewarded with a role in the new Trump administration when he was put in charge of a newly created advisory body, the department for government efficiency (Doge), and charged with cutting unnecessary government jobs in the US to make that country’s civil service more efficient.
Whether he has succeeded is a matter of opinion, but Doge has certainly disrupted US government services. To take one example, earlier this month office closures, sackings, website crashes, service cuts, and policy changes at the social security administration in America — which pays out $1.6tn (€1.4tn) in benefits annually — caused so much chaos that workers at the agency said it was in a “death spiral”.
Ironically, that chaos has been mirrored by events at Musk’s Tesla business. This week, Tesla reported a 20% drop in car sales for the first three months of the year when compared with the same period last year.
Profits fell by over 70%. Shares in the company had shed approximately 37% of their value this year as of Tuesday.
It is no surprise to learn that Musk has announced that he will be cutting back on his commitments to Doge from next month to focus on his businesses. In another time, the contradiction on show here would be front-page news in and of itself: The person charged with making the government more cost-effective and efficient is to leave that job because his own company is losing so much money.
It is telling that such an obvious contradiction is hardly remarked upon in the world created by Trump.
The death was announced this week of Michael O’Brien, the former mayor of Clonmel. Readers may not immediately recognise Mr O’Brien’s name, but anyone who saw RTÉ’s Questions and Answers programme in May 2009 — when Mr O’Brien featured in the audience — never forgot him.
That programme was aired following the publication of the Ryan report into clerical abuse, and Mr O’Brien outlined in graphic detail his experiences of being abused as a child in St Joseph’s Industrial School in Tipperary.
He did not spare the transport minister of that time, Noel Dempsey — who was on the programme’s panel — about the way the commission to inquire into child abuse had treated survivors of the industrial schools, pointing out that an allegedly non-adversarial process had in fact involved Mr O’Brien being accused of lying.
Future taoiseach Leo Varadkar was also on the programme, and Mr O’Brien asked him to tell his party leader to stop making a political football of the abuse issue.
Mr O’Brien’s testimony was electrifying in its raw honesty.
He put a face to a relatively abstract concept for many — clerical child abuse — and, in doing so, he did the country a considerable service. He deserved huge credit for his bravery and honesty, and he should be remembered as a true hero.
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