Today’s Irish Times has the most thoughtful and best researched article on Sebastian Creane’s murder and on the man who killed him.
http://studiesirishreview.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/a-cruel-darkness/
Sebastian’s family has prepared his funeral. One week ago, he was a very happy young man, enjoying his life and developing his talents.
There were three newspaper reports based on this blog. All of them, naturally, reflected the outlook of the journalists who wrote them. One of them implied strong personal judgement on Sebastian’s killer, but the original comments were about his actions, not about the young man himself.
The priest at the young man’s funeral said he had been overcome by “a cruel darkness”, which is poetic, but, when applied to anybody, relieves us of responsibility and removes sin from a situation. This is the weakness of contemporary Western Christianity: Jesus is not seen as my impassioned Saviour, who calls me to make radical choices, but as somebody who gives me gentle pats on the head, or slaps on the wrist; nothing really is my fault.
We rush to make excuses for every bad action, most recently when commenting on the murder of Baby Peter in England: his mother and her lover had difficult childhoods, so some have said that explains why, over several months, they beat him to death. This is psycho-babble.
Two messages from the same generation of Irish intellectuals have come to this blog: Senator Eoghan Harris rang to express his “strong support,” and Vincent Browne, a veteran pundit, rang “the priest who made those crass remarks.”
http://studiesirishreview.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/a-cruel-darkness/
Sebastian’s family has prepared his funeral. One week ago, he was a very happy young man, enjoying his life and developing his talents.
There were three newspaper reports based on this blog. All of them, naturally, reflected the outlook of the journalists who wrote them. One of them implied strong personal judgement on Sebastian’s killer, but the original comments were about his actions, not about the young man himself.
The priest at the young man’s funeral said he had been overcome by “a cruel darkness”, which is poetic, but, when applied to anybody, relieves us of responsibility and removes sin from a situation. This is the weakness of contemporary Western Christianity: Jesus is not seen as my impassioned Saviour, who calls me to make radical choices, but as somebody who gives me gentle pats on the head, or slaps on the wrist; nothing really is my fault.
We rush to make excuses for every bad action, most recently when commenting on the murder of Baby Peter in England: his mother and her lover had difficult childhoods, so some have said that explains why, over several months, they beat him to death. This is psycho-babble.
Two messages from the same generation of Irish intellectuals have come to this blog: Senator Eoghan Harris rang to express his “strong support,” and Vincent Browne, a veteran pundit, rang “the priest who made those crass remarks.”
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