—–Original Message—–
From: Donal Kennedy <donalmkennedy@aol.com>
To: lettersed <lettersed@irishtimes.com>
Sent: Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:06
Subject: SIgns of the very cross
It seems to me as a reader of your paper that I’m bombarded by the signs of the very cross.
Though most citizen taxpayers. and probably readers of your paper, consider themselves Catholics, or if asked to qualify that description -“Irish Catholics” they come in for a lot of stick from your professional as well as your amateur correspondents.
They don’t even have to cite religious criteria in discussion without being blackguarded by Una Mullally, for instance.
Your paper, which welcomed the accession to power of Adolf Hitler, and lamented the fact that Lord Carson was born forty years too early, as he might otherwise have been a Mussolini or a Hitler, bristles with “liberal” anger in the name of “freedom of Conscience” at any manifestation of conscience in the citizens.
Parents who choose to send a child to a school dedicated to Christ the King are championed by Kitty Holland (Dec 11) when they complain that their choice to have the child excluded from Christian instruction is honoured by the school. The father, Devin Doyle, complains that the child “feels excluded.” Apparently they order these things differently in France, where within living memory, hundreds of Muslim citizens of that Republic were murdered by the Paris police and their bodies thrown in the Seine, on the orders of a Prefect of Police who had previously arranged the deportation of 1,600 Jewish citizens to Nazi murder-camps.
What a contrived, counterfeit grievance! In a country where the Catholic majority were fined when they didn’t attend Protestant services, and where tithes were levied for the upkeep of Protestant institutions, we have bellyaching cranks objecting to the Angelus Bell on RTE. No matter that Protestants as well as Catholics recognise the Biblical authenticity of the Angelus prayers.
Living in London I delight hearing, amongst other sounds, Anglican Church bells and Anglican choirs and English Christmas carols, as I believe do my neighbours of every creed and none. I know also that the late Karl Marx, a Vestryman of St Pancras, used take his daughters to Catholic Churches and Chapels to enjoy the music.
I suppose he would have thereby incurred the displeasure of your very cross secular kill-joys.
Yours faithfully
Donal Kennedy
It is my experience that hose who proclaim themselves to be liberal are the most intolerant.
Tolerance is very much a one way street,
Did the Irish Times really welcome Adolf Hitler’s accession to power ??
Agree with Dan above, the brand of ‘liberalism’ exhibited through social media is akin to fascism, if you don;t agree with the leftist extremism of the loudmouth/fingered minority, you must not express your Constitutional right to express your opinion.
Yes. The Irish Times welcomed Hitler’s accession to power. It didn’t endorse his anti-semitism but described Hitler as Europe’s bulwark against Muscovite terror. The NAZI murder of Communists and Socialists was excused on the grounds that you “can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. In an essay on the politics of W B Yeats Conor Cruise O’Brien cited
the Editorial. Recently I read a quotation of it which quoted the omelette reference.
When Hitler came to power the Communist HQ in Berlin was raided and Party members totrured there. The NAZIs invited MI5 and MI6 agents there and gave them lists of Communist
Party members, some of whom had moved to Britain. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, who wa
a British national had lived in Germany and MI5 kept a file on him all his life. The London
Review of books had a long article on this a few months ago.
By the way Mark, I’m not an anti-leftist and have socialist and communists among my most trusted friends.