Greg Daly

Quite. Churchill should uniquely be kept and all other notes should have wildlife on them, as though to suggest that Churchills are also furry creatures that live in burrows and woodlands.

I always think the Shepard illustrations for that absolutely miraculous. They look as though they’re sketched at speed from life, as though he was peeking around a tree and lashing down what he saw. Which obviously was not the case!

I really think US military officers should be resigning their commissions at this point. Well, I think lots of things, but this is definitely on the list.

Dear Lord.

AI (allegedly informed) answers for who was UCD SU president back in the day: Tabitha Wood or Jim Kemp for 1993-1994, Padraig Francis for 1994-95, and @gednashtd.bsky.social for 1995-96. Actual answers: Liam Kelly for 1993-94, Aisling Ní Bhriain for 1994-95, and Loughlin Deegan for 1995-96.

Maybe. I think Kev O’Neill could have managed it in Marshall Law.

Man looking meaningfully into the distance while wearing an Aran jumper coloured to look like an Irish flag.

An abomination of a dinner, where slabs of fatty corned beef, chopped up potatoes, sone carrots, and some watery looking cabbage leaves are presented as an authentic celebratory Irish meal. Nobody should eat this if there is an alternative available.

Gearing up to celebrate the greatest and most influential of Britons by wearing a terrible jumper and eating a ludicrous meal.

Oh no.

Even aside from the Pope’s warnings and the environmental damage caused by AI, I think we should be able to steer clear of stuff like this:

I’m kind of glad I have no idea what this refers to.

It’s a common theme, linking them together, coming off a story that was going around in the 1240s that they’d met in 1215 or so: franciscanstudies.com/wp-content/u... It’s not risibly false, like the story of Dominic and the Rosary. As for the Mercedarians, I don’t know if I’d ever heard of them.

There’s a fair bit of truth in this. Religious orders can have a habit of prioritising the history, culture, members, property, and specific interests of their own orders over the needs and mission of the Church as a whole. They’re useful, but they have serious shortcomings.

They’re still remarkably funny even now, revisiting them as an adult - and as my (American) wife has noted, they’re exceptionally well observed, in that you can tell they’re written by a teacher who knew the realities of teaching, teachers, and small boys.

Oh, to be in Maynooth this evening…

Oh, to be in Maynooth this evening…

That’s great to know: I’d always thought it looked promising. Thank you.

Is this one good?

De Valera was a smart man. Eisenhower was no fool. Even Chaim Herzog could get it right on occasion. It’s worth paying attention to our forebears. They got plenty wrong, but they were often right where we go wrong.

This “perpetual law” ruled that anyone who killed a child *or witnessed the killing without trying to prevent it* would have to pay large fines and do extensive penance for every child who had been killed. Warfare which killed children was, it seems, recognised as fundamentally immoral. 3/3

Now, I’m not saying this worked, but for all that people talk about just war *theory*, it’s notable that the kings and chief clerics of Ireland - as well as the Gaels and some Picts of what would become Scotland - assembled in Birr to agree that some things were not acceptable in war. /2

Christian attempts to regulate violence have historically tended to be incremental, meeting and societies where they were and pushing them to do better. Strikingly, the first law to attempt this seems to have been the Irish Cáin Adomnáin of 697, protecting women, children, and clergy. /1

February was a big month for reading - I used weekends, evenings, mornings, lunches, and commutes to bizarrely good effect. The Chesterton one, I should say, is a reread, which is often where books really come into their own. It’s his first essay collection and has a couple of his very best essays.

This is where I used to go for Confession when I was with the Dominicans. I liked the church, though it was usually quite empty. Even aside from declining practice, inner-city churches in Cork and Dublin have really suffered through demographic change in the “real capital” and the actual capital.

I wish these clowns would reject that specifically twentieth-century achievement called “the internet”, log off, and go and do the following productive things: pray, help poor and other vulnerable people, read books, think, work, learn other languages, and chat with other people who do such things.

Gosh. Congratulations!

Aristotle, Politics ‘... and further, it is part (of the nature of tyranny) to strive to see to it that nothing is kept hidden of that which any subject says or does, but that everywhere he will be spied upon ... Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars.” Third leaflet, White Rose

The bishops are in no sense saying that only birthright citizenship is moral, or that other routes to citizenship are immoral, merely that it is fine, utterly in line with Church teaching, and that depriving innocent people of their citizenship is wicked and destructive. 4/4

Crucially, they’re not saying that only birthright citizenship is consistent with Church teaching, merely that it is. And the second thing is that removal of people’s citizen status would be detrimental to the vindication of their human dignity and contrary to Church teaching. /3

In a nutshell, the bishops are saying two things here from the point of view of Church teaching. The first is that birthright citizenship is a good thing, consistent with Church teaching in a range of ways that enable the vindication of human dignity. /2

Unsurprisingly, among those attacking this are people claiming the bishops are misrepresenting Church teaching by claiming birthright citizenship is mandatory, when it’s the attackers who are misrepresenting the bishops: this amicus doesn’t say that, but says something quite different. /1