BELIEVERS, UNBELIEVERS AND MONKEYING ABOUT by Donal Kennedy

“Then I saw her face/Now I’m a Believer” sang the Monkees many years ago. I’ve been thinking about some of the people I would trust most and many of them do not believe in a deity or an afterlife, Heaven or Hell. They are not out for the main chance, in this world or the next. They are straight in their words and deeds. But there are some  appear to take great comfort in their atheism as they manifestly don’t believe that it’s a sin to tell a lie. And, Boy, do they monkey about in their columns!
 Now I am both a believer in. the Deity and a craven coward and would be afraid to tell more than a little white lie lest I spend eternity with Titus Oates, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook or risk spending it with Margaret Thatcher and Humphrey Atkins and their media assistants.
When  I say I’m a Believer, I don’t claim to be any holier than the average Fenian Sinner. I’m sufficiently learned in the Scriptures to quote St Paul’s injunction – “When you eat, drink or whatever else you do, do it for the Greater Glory of God.”.
The IRISH PRESS, which we got six days a week in my youth carried the. dedication  under  its title- “Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann ”  copying that of the Four Masters, the Franciscan  Annalists, who had promoted the honour of Ireland next after the honour of God. Come to think of it we occasionally took The Irish Independent, whose one time owner, William Martin Murphy, had a memorial erected outside a Church in Phibsboro, to the honour of the Four Masters. It seems I mentioned Murphy in the BLOG ‘Of Priests  We Have Such A Charmin’ Variety in June 2016.
 Every pupil taught by the Society of Jesus is required to head his written work A.M.D.G. for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam meaning ” For The Greater Glory of God”.  I understand that the forger Richard Piggott, paid by THE TIMES of London, wanted the money to pay school fees for a son or sons studying at Clongowes Wood College, where no doubt every piece of their work was headed A.M.D.G. I doubt Richard PIggott himself headed his pieces that way. And I hope the philosopher who tells us that Daniel O’Connell never shot a man, (in the Rite and Reason columns of The Irish Times) doesn’t add blasphemy to  his porky pies.
Incidentally, what became of the school fees that were Piggot’s wages of sin? Were they returned to THE THUNDERER or kept to fund a bursary for budding media charlatans?

One Response to BELIEVERS, UNBELIEVERS AND MONKEYING ABOUT by Donal Kennedy

  1. Brian Patterson May 29, 2017 at 12:03 am #

    There is no more futile exercise than arguing over the existence or non-existence of a deity. You will convince no-go, not even yourself.