A chairde —
What with Samhain
(which is not pronounced “Sam Hane”) coming up and the Forces of Darkness about
to assume their half-year reign, you can tell that the Christmas season of
love, peace, and joy are almost upon us.
And if you think that’s paradoxical, the only way we’ve been able to
tell here inside the Washington, DC, Beltway that the government has been shut
down is the level of complaints about the government being shut down. And those rampaging WWII veterans charging up
to their memorial.
Frankly, we don’t
have too much Irish news this quarter.
Part of it is due to the fact that no one is sending in news items. The other part is that I’ve been too busy
with other things (such as year-end closings for clients, filing tax returns,
starting a new season with the two singing groups I’m in (and cursing the other
first tenors who don’t show up for practice . . .). All in all, the economic malaise seems to be
afflicting people’s psychology as well.
Be that as it may,
there are a few interesting things happening.
Beannachtai!
Michael
Disclaimers
Opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of
individual authors and may not reflect those of other SIG members or the SIG as
a whole. Nothing in this newsletter
should be taken as an official position of Mensa. Mensa as a whole has no opinions.
You have received this newsletter because you either signed
up for it on the website of the Irish
SIG of American Mensa, or it was forwarded to you. If you signed up for the monthly newsletter,
quarterly publications flyer and occasional announcements but no longer wish to
receive them, you may unsubscribe by clicking the link at the end of this
newsletter. If they were forwarded to
you, please notify the person who forwarded them that you do not wish to
receive the newsletter, quarterly publications flyer or occasional
announcements from the Irish SIG.
Permission is hereby given to reproduce material from this
newsletter with proper attribution and credit for personal, educational,
non-profit, and not-for-profit use.
Material in this newsletter remains the property of the contributing
authors. Please assume that the author has retained copyright even if we omit
the “©” notice. Unsigned pieces are usually the work of the Coordinator, and
remain his property. You may print out copies of the newsletter for your
personal use, for free distribution, or for educational purposes as long as
proper attribution is given, and there are no alterations (except to correct
obvious typographical errors).
Submissions are welcome, but read the guidelines in the “About”
section on the website before sending anything.
We will not publish “adult” material, and we interpret that very broadly. There is no payment for published material.
Contents
Announcements
Organization,
Publication and Membership Information
Letters
News and Reports
Articles
The Fourth Page
Announcements
As a newsletter, we rely on you to tell us what’s going
on. If you have an announcement for an
upcoming event, please let us know. Just
keep in mind that we try to publish on the 17th of every month, so
get your announcements in at least a few days before that. Otherwise, consider sending it in as a report
or a news item for the subsequent month.
• The Usual Nagging
Announcement. We still have a number
of subscribers who are probably wondering why they’re not getting the
newsletter. It’s because they haven’t
verified their subscriptions by clicking on the link in the e-mail Google sent
to their specified e-mail address. If
you subscribed but have not received the newsletter (which means you’re
visiting the blog and are reading this there), it’s an easy matter to correct. Enter your e-mail address again, and Google
will send you another verification e-mail.
• John Murphy is now Business Development Executive at
Connect Ireland.
• The Center for Economic and Social Justice has republished
a Just Third Way Edition of Fulton J. Sheen’s 1940 classic, Freedom Under God, more below.
Organization, Publication and
Membership Information
What We Are
Litir Scéala an tSIG
Gaelach is the newsletter of the Irish Special Interest Group of American
Mensa, Ltd. More information about the
SIG and this newsletter may be accessed by clicking
on this link.
Resources
We are preparing to put together a list of
resources and organizations that might be useful to our members. Due to the global scope of our readership, we
are trying to limit the list to organizations that extend beyond a purely local
constituency. This is a matter of simple
logistics, due to the immense number of organizations out there. If you’re looking for a local group to get
involved with — and we encourage that — do an internet search. You may be both amazed and pleased at what
you will find. We expect to list
resources as we rebuild our membership, but right now . . . oh, you know the
rest.
Who We Are
No new members this month, etc. (That’s ET cetera, NOT
“eck” the way so many people want to pronounce it.) We have an increasing number of visitors and
casual readers, — no, really — but that’s not going to get the SIG reactivated
officially, however gratifying it may be personally. We’re thinking of having a “feeler” sent in
to the Bulletin. When we get around to it, of course. . . .
Anyway, here’s this month’s membership report:
5 Members of
Mensa
2 Other
1 Institutional
Member
26 Newsletter
Subscribers
34 Total
Circulation, although four of them have not “validated” their subscription
(This does not include forwarded newsletters or visitors to the website who
have not signed up for the newsletter — over 1,000 to date.)
Letters
No letters this quarter.
Received, that is. We’ve sent
quite a few out, though. Possibly
because most of the quarter was summertime, people may have been too busy to
write.
News and Reports
Members of the Irish SIG don’t usually belong only to the
SIG, but to other groups with an Irish orientation as well. This is all to the good — the more society
becomes more social, the better
chance we have of influencing our institutions in a positive way and carrying
out “acts of social justice” aimed at improving the common good for
everybody. We want to encourage your
community participation and then report on local events in which SIG members
took part.
• Just yesterday I received a mock-up of the cover for my
next book, So Much Generosity, a
collection of essays about the fiction of Cardinal Wiseman, Cardinal Newman,
and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. With
any luck, the book will be available in November on Amazon and Barnes and
Noble.
• A short time ago, we received a report that the noted
“Apostle of Common Sense,” G. K. Chesterton (who, with R. H. Benson and F. J.
Sheen lectured to the Irish of Notre Dame) was “going to be made a saint.” After correcting that misstatement, we got to
work and developed a blog series that begins today on the Just Third Way blog, http://just3rdway.blogspot.com,
explaining why we think that, for all Chesterton may be worthy, his latter day
followers have done their utmost to queer the deal.
• Father Edward Krause, C.S.C., Ph.D., son of Notre Dame’s
famed Athletic Director, “Moose” Krause, has returned to Notre Dame and is in
residence at Holy Cross House. We spoke
with him briefly a couple of weeks ago, and he happened to mention that Father
Theodore Hesburgh is rooming right across the hall from him, and he frequently
has lunch with him.
Articles
Feature Article: “Long Lost” Book
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Rediscovered
Arlington, Virginia, Monday,
September 2, 2013. In 1940, on
the eve of the United States entry into World War II, the late Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) published Freedom
Under God. The all-volunteer interfaith Center for Economic and Social
Justice (CESJ) has republished a new, annotated version of this neglected
classic under its “Economic Justice Media” imprint, complete with an in-depth
foreword written especially for this edition, as well as a bibliography and
index not included in the first edition.
While Freedom Under God
addresses the loss of true freedom throughout the world, Sheen’s special
concern was freedom of religion. This is under increasing attack today.
Individual life as well as marriage and the family are also in grave danger as
the State continues to expand its power to fill the vacuum left by the growing
powerlessness of ordinary people.
Then-Monsignor Sheen traced the rise of totalitarian State power in the
first half of the 20th century to the fact that fewer and fewer
people in America and throughout the world owned capital — what Sheen called
“creative wealth.” As Sheen argued, only widespread private property in capital
has the capacity to restore the foundation of true freedom.
In conformity with the precepts of the natural law on which Sheen
relied to develop his thought, CESJ adds that genuine economic reform must also
comply with the three principles of economic justice: Participative Justice,
Distributive Justice, and Harmonic Justice. Lawyer-economist Louis O. Kelso and
Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler first described these principles in
Chapter 5 of their bestselling The
Capitalist Manifesto (1958).
Sheen’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Thanks to the near-global
acceptance of Keynesian economics, the wage-welfare system within a
State-controlled, inflationary, debt-ridden economy is the unquestioned model
for economic development throughout the world.
The world needs the wisdom of Fulton Sheen now more than ever. The
republication of Freedom Under God
helps introduce the work of this pivotal thinker to a new generation of readers
and students.
Fulton J. Sheen’s Freedom Under
God, ISBN 978-0-944997-11-6, cover price $20.00, is available on-line from
Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and by special order from selected other
bookstores. Quantity discounts are available for schools, churches, and civic
groups.
The Fourth Page
The Geraldines of
Ireland, XIV: The Traitor Earl
James
FitzJohn FitzGerald, the thirteenth earl, had the unusual distinction of
going against the whims of Henry VIII on two occasions, while retaining his
head and dying peacefully in his bed. Desmond XIII was renowned among the
people as a good administrator and keeper of the peace. When he died, it was
said that, "…the loss of this man is woeful to his country, for there was
no need to watch cattle or close doors from Duncaoin in Kerry to the
green-bordered meeting of the three waters on the confines of the province of
Leinster.
The ghastly
crimes of this "Traitor Earl" were terrible indeed, at least in the
eyes of the English. In 1541, His Majesty Henry VIII, son of the usurping Henry
VII and self-proclaimed king of Ireland, proposed to Desmond XIII that his son,
Gerald FitzJames FitzGerald (Desmond XIV), be sent to the court of St. James (i.e., the English court at Westminster)
to be raised and trained as a companion to Prince Edward, later to reign
briefly as Edward VI. This was considered to be a very enviable offer to
anyone, much less to an Irish earl.
Contrary to
expectations, however, Desmond XIII refused the honor. He argued that his
eight-year-old son would learn all he would need to know about courts and
affairs of state at home in Ireland. He would probably also learn more about
being an Irishman in Ireland, rather than have an English veneer imposed on his
Norman-Irishness, resulting in an uncomfortable hybrid at home in neither
world.
For some
reason, this refusal by Desmond XIII did not whip Henry into his usual
blood-frenzy, and Henry's insanity had not progressed to the point where he
would, as became his habit in the closing years of his reign, begin killing
indiscriminately. The power of Desmond may also have had something to do with
the fact that Henry did not take revenge for the rejection of the king's favor.
That was to
change a few years later, however. FitzGerald entered into negotiations with
H.H. Pope Paul III concerning the sovereignty of Munster. Available sources
don't give any specifics, merely giving the impression that this was one more
attempt on the part of the Norman-Irish families to set up an independent
principality—which it may very well have been. This activity gained Desmond
XIII the name, "Traitor Earl," being so-named in official
correspondence.
Henry's justice
was in motion against FitzGerald, however, when the Earl had the good sense to
die suddenly in his seat of Askeaton. His son Gerald was designated his heir,
and the king's justice was denied its victim. It is not clear why Desmond XIII
named his second son Gerald his heir, instead of his first son, Thomas Rufus,
unless it was a partial return to the ancient Irish custom of selecting the
most qualified candidate from a generation rather than simply the first born.
Under the old clan system, all qualified candidates of the proper generation
and bloodline would be exhibited before the people, and the people (the
free-born clansmen, anyway—it is not clear whether women had the vote) would
elect their choice for chief.
To ensure that
the selected candidate was physically perfect as well as otherwise qualified to
reign, he would be exhibited naked for examination so that everyone could
certify as to his lack of imperfections. When the Normans first came to
Ireland, Geraldus Cambrensis reported on a variation of this custom, which he
probably did not understand or which he misinterpreted. Apparently there was a
hold-over of a pagan custom in Ulster, whereby the king-elect went through a
symbolic marriage with Epona, the Horse-goddess. This sort of anachronism
usually acquired, like the still-surviving custom of the "puck goat,"
a thin Christian veneer, but a fault-hunter like Cambrensis would not have been
inclined to inquire too closely into the particulars of a vague report from far
away. Instead, adding a few salacious details and a lot of imagination, he
wrote,
There is in the northern and
farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunill, a certain people which is
accustomed to appoint its king with a rite altogether outlandish and
abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in
one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who
is to be inaugurated, not as a chief, but as a beast, not as a king, cut as an
outlaw, has bestial intercourse with her before all, professing himself to be a
beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, but up in pieces, and boiled
in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits
in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat
of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in
which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his
mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out,
his kingship and dominion have been conferred.
It was
considered quite extraordinary when Red Hugh, prince of Tyrconnail, was
accepted by the people as king, even though he had lost some toes and part of
his foot to frostbite during his heroic second escape attempt from Dublin
Castle. Apparently, however, the virtues of the O'Donnell were strong enough
and obvious enough to override even immemorial custom.
In any event,
the Norman-Irish probably did not generally adopt the coronation customs of the
native Irish. This ran counter to the usual practice of adopting everything
Irish in preference to the presumably more civilized English practices brought
over by the invaders. Of course, Geraldus Cambrensis sets this down to the
attractiveness of vice over virtue (among which vice he includes such depraved
practices as democratic elections, a pastoral way of life, and wearing Irish in
preference to English clothing). The chronicler states,
…so natural through long usage
have bad habits become; to such an extent are habits influenced by one's
associates, and he who touches pitch will be defiled by it; that foreigners
coming to this country almost inevitably are contaminated by this, as it were,
inborn vice of the country—a vice that is most contagious.
This place finds people already
accursed or makes them so. For since the road to pleasure is downhill, and
nature tends to imitate vice, who has any hesitation about going on the road to
perdition, when he is persuaded and convinced by so many examples of
sacrilegious men, so many evidences of evil deeds, such frequent transgression
of oaths, such complete lack of respect for the Faith, and is continually being
invited to do similar things by a precept that inculcates evil?
It makes one wonder why, if Ireland was so accursed and had
such a detrimental effect on those who were born or came to live there, the
Normans and English would be so anxious to take possession of it.
#30#
