It’s great when I can highlight positive items in the media – I hope I do it often enough.
The long-running Nationwide (RTÉ One) is a great source of positivity, and religious themes are regularly featured, with a strong emphasis on community. Last Monday’s episode marked the 200th anniversary of the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin and I learned a lot about the history and ongoing role of this iconic place of worship. It was never intended to be Dublin’s main cathedral – just a provisional one built when the penal laws were being phased out in the early 19th Century. Originally, it was to be on the GPO site, and in the 1930’s a plan to have a new cathedral in Merrion Square didn’t come to anything. I remember a relatively recent controversy over whether St Andrew’s in Westland Row should become the cathedral, but now there’s a proposal for the Marlborough St ‘Pro’ to become the permanent cathedral and Westland Row to become a ‘minor basilica’.
I never knew there was such an amount of space under the pro-Cathedral. Administrator Fr Kieran McDermott introduced us to the crypt, where the coffin of Desmond O’Connell, the most recently deceased prelate, is on modest display. In surprisingly low-key fashion, the coffins of previous archbishops are stacked on racks. In other sections there are deceased members of the merchant or business class, and then some of the ordinary citizens of Dublin – nearly a thousand bodies in all.
We saw Pope Francis visiting in 2015, at his request – it wasn’t part of the original itinerary. Fr McDermott outlined the “hugely challenging” social issues in the area with “broken humanity” and anti-social behaviour “fuelled by the drug trade”. Facilities Manager, ex-army man Robbie Byrne, outlined the practical security challenges of the city-centre location. He told of the robbing of shrines and an attack on the eagle-topped lectern. The cathedral’s Palestrina Choir, under the direction of Blánaid Murphy puts in hours of practice – these young boys sure have a “depth of dedication” as they rehearse weekly for the 11 am Sunday Mass.
I’m not a great fan of Piers Morgan, but sometimes he does tell it straight. Piers Morgan Uncensored (Channel 5, Fridays) comes with a warning that’s half tongue-in-cheek and half Channel 5 covering itself – we are to expect “personal views and opinions … bold claims, brash takes and sizzling hot debates”! Last week’s show had a shouty debate about the implications of the election as Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” (the latter a very dirty word in the USA). predictably, President Trump labelled him a Communist (even dirtier) and declared that we’ve had trouble with Communism for thousands of years – that left me puzzled for sure. On that show Morgan certainly had a variety of commentators, from left and right, which is welcome, but as frequently happens it became overly fractious.
Hope in the Media (Radio Maria, Wednesday) was entirely the opposite of fractious and shouty as Donal O’Sullivan-Latchford and Fr Eamonn McCarthy chewed the proverbial cud in relation to all things media. There was praise for Newstalk show Alive and Kicking which dealt with the importance of debate, for BBC’s Radio 4 Sunday Programme dealing with the challenges of religion in politics, of recent Songs of Praise episodes dealing with Catholic themes and another BBC programme outlining studies that showed the human advantages of being kind to others. The show could benefit from a tighter focus on just media issues and from adding some guest interviewees.
I suspect both programmes will have lot to discuss in their latest editions. In the latter show BBC issues were hinted at, and on Sunday Morning (Times Radio) presenter Adam Boulton touched on some of these as criticism mounted. The controversies included the misleading editing of a Trump speech, bias about the Israel-Gaza conflict especially in the BBC Arabic service and the finding, by the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit, against newsreader Martine Croxall for a disapproving facial expression at what the autocue seemed to be serving up to her – she altered ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’.
Then the bombshell broke last Sunday night. Adam Boulton was back, this time on Sky News, commenting on the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness. He thought they had done ‘the honourable thing’ to protect the BBC.
Heads have rolled and a boil has been lanced.
