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Each second Wednesday evening Cliff Baxter says he has an excuse to sneak down to his local Irish pub to have a Guinness. The excuse he gives his wife is that he's going down to pick up a copy of the Irish Echo. Bronwyn's seen through the ruse for years as she actually works at the newspaper as a proofreader and could bring a copy of the paper home for him. She winks at him each time he comes out with the excuse knowing full well what his real reason for nicking down the pub is. Here's what he found in the paper this week…

Perusing this week's Irish Echo I realized the importance of keeping pace with events in the Ould Sod and not sticking with fixed visions of the Emerald Isle with which we have such strong links as Catholics.

Some of these visions stem from stories and songs handed down through generations, whether it is the romance of Ned Kelly, or Sydney's Vinegar Hill Uprising, Peter Lalor at Eureka Stockade or the yarns handed down from great grandma or grandfather.

There's what I might call The Clancy Brothers Syndrome, the notion of an unchanging, heroic Ireland, of manly boys steadfast against the English, of foaming glasses of porter and rollicking humour, craic faster than the speed of light and melodies to enchant the soul.

It is true that an Irish conversation can include something that happened in 1602 as if it were the day before yesterday, but it is also true that "the Irish" have survived because of their ability to be flexible, to travel and embrace changed circumstances.

Aussie Catholics stuck in an Around the Boree Log or Ten Little Steps and Stairs ("John O'Brien") vision of Ireland should buy an Echo right now.

Let's dip into the Echo and see some stories from today's Ireland.

First Black Mayor in Ireland…

For example, did you know that Ireland has his first black mayor? He's Rotimi Adebari, born in Nigeria. I wonder if you asked him how it feels to be black and Irish if he'd be just as witty as the native Irish and say, "Like a Guinness!"

More than a quarter of all black people born in the Republic (28 per cent) were born in the state. A third of them are Catholic, and one in six are Muslim.

There are also 52 Asian or Asian Irish resident in the Republic, more than a quarter of them Catholic, and around 22 per cent Muslim.

Many of us have abandoned our vision of an Ireland of beggars and buskers, replacing it with the economic Celtic Tiger, the Land of the Microchip displacing the Land of the Minstrel Boy.

Sorry, but the boom did little to help Ireland's real poor, raising rents and making them more excluded.

Now from the Echo comes the news that there's an expected downturn in the Irish economy. Ireland's economic watchdog, the Financial Regulator, has warned that banks and customers should get their house in order. It says households are going to come under increasing pressure debt levels soar and interest rate hikes hit hard people struggling to make repayments. Remind you of anywhere?

Ireland and Australia have much in common not only culturally but also legally.

Address by Justice Michael Kirby on Irish and Australia legal systems…

The Echo carries a report of an address by Mr Justice Michael Kirby of the Australian High Court to the annual conference of the Law Reform Commission. He said: "In Australia, and to some extent in Ireland, we have embraced and copied English law, despite the differences in the societies in which it then had to operate. "Both Ireland and Australia have, at the heart of their legal systems, a paradoxical feature that made law reform essential, although for a long time we each failed to see this or denied it when confronted with its actuality. He said legislators in both countries invoked English law which Britain at the height of its empire believed expressed universal values deemed suitable everywhere.

"The Irish Republic showed that this was not a universal belief and dissent soon spread elsewhere," said Mr Justice Kirby.

"Only now do we see how these approaches sometimes led to unthinking attitudes towards law, to complacency about the way imported law sometimes fell unjustly on local people, and how we ignored for so long the denial of basic respect for the differences in the culture and values of different lands."

Changing the birthday of Saint Patrick…

Tens of thousands of people are making their way up Ireland's holy mountain, Croagh Patrick.

One of them was airlifted out with a suspected heart attack.

The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, urged the pilgrims and whole country to slow down their pace of life.

"The world in which we live has set an impossible pace," he said/

"We have rushed the earth in an age when the seasons are struggling for their own identity. The lands are ravished for greed and even some crops are now genetically modified for quicker profit."

The Archbishop called on the country to retreat from the high speed of life.

What would St Patrick say about all of this?

The Echo tells me that worldwide celebrations for St Patrick's Day could face disruption after the Catholic Church decided to move the Irish patron saint's feast day.

The newspaper says bishops were left with sore heads after they discovered the traditional March 17 festivities will clash next year with the second day of Holy Week.

After much deliberation Rome gave Irish bishops the green light to shift the celebrations back to March 15, which falls on a Saturday.

Where that leaves Aussie Paddies I do not know.

DISCLOSURE: Catholica Australia has a commercial arrangement with The Irish Echo
for the cross promotion of our publications to our respective readerships

Cliff Baxter is a highly awarded journalist with a lifetime experience gained on the principal Australian secular newspapers, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Catholic Weekly.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this article in our forum.

Cliff Baxter can be contacted at: Cliff Baxter <cliffbaxter@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Clifford Baxter

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