LETTERS

Irish Know About Bush

I APPLAUD Frances Miller’s letter “No Arms for Bush” in the March 31-April 6 issue on the Irish people’s plans to protest George W. Bush’s visit to Ireland in June.

My Irish friends everywhere – from Dublin to Belfast, from Cork and Kerry to Donegal and Derry – are furious with Bush’s visit. On the phone they are telling me that they not only have the right to peaceful protest, but they have the duty not to allow Bush to use the visit to bolster his bid for re-election.

Having traveled throughout Ireland and Europe during the past 25 years, I find my Irish and European friends to be much more politically knowledgeable than my fellow Americans, many of whom have been brainwashed by the corporate owned media. 

For example, my Irish friends can see very clearly that in the past three years under Bush, we have lost 3 million jobs, the greatest job loss since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. 

They see that Bush’s trillions of dollars in tax cuts, which crassly and massively benefit the wealthiest 10% of Americans, simultaneously squandered the largest surplus and created the largest deficit ever ($455 billion this year, a projected $525 billion next year).

Most important, my Irish friends observed how Bush led the U.S. into its first pre-emptive war, paving his way with lies and bogus intelligence. Daily we witness the growing chaos and carnage of Bush’s illegal war in Iraq – which Pope John Paul II has called a “crime against humanity” – where our loyal, patriotic, working class soldiers die while Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton reaps $2 billion each month in oil profits, and Bush’s Carlyle Group corporation Bechtel plunders $850 million per month.

The neocons in the Bush administration wanted access to the second largest oil reserves in the world, a demonstration of our military might, and a permanent base from which to operate. They were prepared to tell any lie necessary to accomplish their goals, and their unilateralism and arrogance have alienated our country from our allies and the rest of the world.

Further, my Irish friends understand that under Bush our environmental laws have been gutted (e.g., the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc.), all at the behest of his corporate donors. 

Finally, my Irish friends know that under Bush, the Patriot Act has invaded our privacy and decimated our civil liberties. Some $15 billion in veterans’ benefits were cut by the Republican Congress in May 2003. Osama bin Laden is still free, Americans are losing their homes at a record pace, the airline industry is in a shambles, and unemployment remains high.

The above facts are self-evident. My Irish friends can see that Bush’s record of failure after failure during the past three years will rank him as one of the worst presidents in American history. 

The question remains – will the American voters next November be intelligent enough to recognize the same?

James V. Burke
Sayreville, New Jersey

Alcohol Sacrilege

AN “Ireland’s Eye” piece in the April 7-13 issue reported flatulent rantings by a Fermoy district judge against the use of alcohol in connection with a sacramental celebration. 

Musha, a good thing for our Blessed Lord that he was not hauled before his Lordship after Cana.

Tom Mahoney
Buffalo Grove, Illinois

The Irish Texans

REGARDING Niall O’Dowd’s piece on the Alamo in the April 7-13 issue, it is perhaps typical of George W. Bush’s inattention to detail that, when asked to name his favorite Irish Americans for St. Patrick’s Day, he named Sam Houston and Davy Crockett.

They were great men whose families briefly lived in Ireland but are rightfully claimed by the Scots. In Houston’s case, his great-grandfather, whose soldier father was part of the Plantation, was born in Northern Ireland, married in Scotland and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1730s.

There were plenty of native Irish in the settlement of Texas under Spanish rule and in the Texican period. Irish were the predominant original European settlers in the area between what is now Corpus Christi, Victoria and San Antonio in South Texas. 

According to The Irish Texans, by John Brendan Flannery (University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1980), at least 12 of the defenders of the Alamo were Irish-born and another 14 bore Irish surnames.

My own favorite Irish Texan was Dick Dowling, a Galway-born bartender in Houston who was commander of the Davis Guards, an artillery group comprising 42 Irish dockworkers from Houston and Galveston who were assigned to the defense of Sabine Pass, south of Beaumont, during the Civil War. 

The inexperienced Irish were only posted there as decoys, and were actually under orders to spike their six cannons to make them useless and withdraw if the federal flotilla attacked. But Dowling disregarded the order when the 20 federal ships advanced with 5,000 Union troops on September 7, 1863. 

The 43 Irishmen mounted a devastating fusillade for 45 minutes that disabled two gunboats and forced the rest to sail back to New Orleans, stopping the Union invasion of the Texas mainland.

Jim Cullen
Austin, Texas

Research Help

I AM conducting research about Irish and Irish American community life in New York City between 1920 and 1960. I am particularly interested in Irish Protestant communities and their church and Orange Lodge activities.

If any readers have letters, memoirs, publications or any materials related to this period, or would like to participate in an interview about this period, contact Linda Dowling Almeida at lindaalmeida@hotmail.com , or send the material to 41 Watchung Plaza #94, Montclair, New Jersey 07042.

Linda Dowling Almeida
New York, New York

Black and White Catholicism

WHOEVER wrote the editorial “John Kerry, Bad Catholic?” in the April 14-20 issue needs a 101 class on Catholicism.

I would have thought that even a moron – or, if you prefer, an amadán – would know that you must be in the state of sanctifying grace to receive Holy Communion worthily.

Kerry makes no bones about the fact that he is fully in favor of infanticide, so it’s equally obvious that he’s in the state of mortal sin. Therefore, he cannot receive Holy Communion.

Because he is a public figure and his crime is public, he must be publicly forbidden to receive. In other words, a priest is morally bound to protect the sacred host from sacrilege.

Rather than parading a terrifying ignorance of basic Catholicism, the editor would be well advised about a topic that she knows something about, and for God sake, don’t let her turn her hand to history. The comments in the editorial speak volumes about the left wing Irish Voice. Methinks the editor has been spending too much time reading the Village Voice – or is it a case of birds of a feather flock together?

Finally, let me answer the liberal editor’s other questions – those who practice birth control cannot receive Holy Communion. If their opposition is public, they will be publicly banned from Communion.

Also, divorced and remarried Catholics are living in adultery and cannot receive Holy Communion. If this is a public affair they can be banned from receiving.

As you can see, for pure-bred Catholics, things really are black and white.

Eddie Greenan
Yonkers, New York