Monthly Archives: January 2013

(Above:  Edge, Paul McGuinness and nine-year-old Siofra Marum from Portlaoise at the announcement of a new two-year research partnership entitled ‘Developing Diversity in Music Education in Ireland’ yesterday.)

U2 have given away the profits from their Irish concerts to charity, the band’s manager Paul McGuinness has revealed.

The band donated €5 million from their three Croke Park concerts in 2009 to Music Generation, a charity that provides funding for structured music education across the country.

Their three Croke Park concerts in 2005 would probably have generated similar revenues, while the band also played two concerts at Slane Castle in 2001.

Mr McGuinness said it had been the band’s practice “going way, way back” to give the profits away but it “was discreetly done in the past”.

Hmm.

U2 gave profits from Irish gigs to charity (Ronan McGreevy, Irish Times)

(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)


There has been some sympathy expressed for Redemptorist priest Father Tony Flannery (above) in light of the Vatican’s attempt to silence him over his support of women’s ordination and Church teaching on sexuality.

A voice of enlightenment from the priesthood supporting teh wimmin and teh gays, you say?

What does he have to say about clerical abuse victims?

The common assumption today is that the experience of sexual abuse does almost irreparable damage to a child, which will impact on their whole life. It would appear to be classified as the worst form of abuse. But can we be sure of that?How does one measure the damage done to a child by one form of neglect or abuse more than another?

Oh.

Does it strike anybody that it is a bit strange that we are devoting so much time, money and energy to inquiring into the abuse of children half a century ago when there is so much that is unsavoury in the lives of children today?

Ah.

The other obvious anomaly, beginning to be highlighted by some commentators, is that all the inquiries are into the behaviour of Catholic Church institutions and people, even though their abuse, dreadful as it was, is only a tiny fraction of all the abuse of children that happened in the past.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Rite and Reason and Reality. Tony Flannery C.S.S.R. Redemptorist (Marie-Thérèse O’Loughlin, Goldenbridge39)

(NYT)