Letters

Gaelic Dead and Buried

I WAS reminded last week just how indigestible the indigenous language of the Irish really is when one of the local papers my thoughts appear in was concerned over my use of the words Gardai and Gaol (to the uninitiated that translates to police and jail respectively).

Believe me, I told them, the pronunciation is much worse than the spelling. When the Irish colleen that I got excommunicated from the Catholic Church for cohabiting with a Protestant tells me to shut the door in Gaelic, it could easily be interpreted as a declaration of war or an invitation to a circumcision. 

The language should be dead and buried, but the Irish, due to their hatred of everything English, erred in keeping it alive, sentencing several generations to an inferior education. 

Imagine if we decreed that all curriculums starting tomorrow be taught in Farsi. The Irish did just that in the late forties and fifties. Learning the catechism in the guttural language didn’t leave much time for algebra. 

It wasn’t a total loss, however. There was, and may still be, a law on the books that said the accused could demand his trial be conducted in Gaelic. The great Irish playwright and alcoholic Brendan Behan who was fluent in Gaelic stayed out of gaol frequently by invoking this law. 

So what’s the point of all this? Stay the course, George. I’m too old to learn to write in Farsi, Korean or Bahasa Indonesian, let alone how to do it without being verbose. 

Jerry Hoosier 

Cypress, California

Tribute to the Miners

BEING a native of the anthracite coalmining area around Scranton, Pennsylvania, I was drawn to the article “Clear Divide as Election Nears” (September 22-28). The brief reference to the “Molly Maguires, a 19th century underground movement (no pun intended, I’m sure) of Irish miners...” and the hanging of 10 of them, merits fleshing out.

All 10 Irish American miners were hanged on June 21, 1877, “Pennsylvania’s Day of the Rope.” Four were executed in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) and six in Pottsville. All 10 died between 10:45 a.m. and 1:48 p.m. that day.

The 10 miners were accused of membership in the Molly Maguires. All were convicted of planning and carrying out the murders of a number of mining officials and Coal and Iron Police. No Irish Catholics were among the 62 jurors impaneled in Mauch Chunk. Ten more Irish-American miners were executed over the next 18 months on the same charges.

In addition to Pennsylvania’s Day of the Rope in the southern anthracite coal field, the summer of 1877 proved deadly for miners in the northern anthracite coal field when 16 coal miners and iron workers were killed and 38 wounded by a group of private citizens in Scranton.

The worst violence in any of the four anthracite coal fields — the Lattimer Massacre — took place on September 10, 1897, in the Lattimer Patch north of Hazleton. A peaceful march by 300 unarmed striking miners, mostly Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians and Italians, resulted in the deaths of 19 miners and the wounding of 39.

Coal miners suffered at the hands of ruthless mine operators and greedy coal barons. Irish American and other Catholic miners also faced fierce ethnic and religious animosities.

Scranton, and the rest of Pennsylvania, owes much to its Irish American miners and longtime labor militants like the legendary Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, widow of a miner.

James V. Dolson

Springfield, Virginia

Don’t Be So Nasty

WHY is it that a week cannot go by without “Page 2” and its editor Debbie McGoldrick launching an attack on an Irish celebrity? Whatever happened to patting someone on the back for making a name for themselves, and backing your fellow countrymen? 

Fair enough, you don’t like Westlife or Boyzone . . . or anyone in the public eye for that matter. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of these celebs either, but enough is enough.

For someone who hates these people so much, you sure as hell donate enough of your time writing about them and filling space in your newspaper with their sordid tales. In the issue of September 29-October 5, you ripped into Brian and Kerry McFadden, referring to them as “vulgar” and “tacky.”

However, you forgot to mention that these “detestable” do some great work for Irish children’s charities. Just recently, Kerry McFadden handed over her check from I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here, which amounted to EUR 467,000, to 14 children’s charities in Ireland. In my eyes, and I’m sure in the public’s eye, that doesn’t constitute someone as being vulgar or tacky. 

They say that critics are those who have failed in the public eye, and in this instance your sheer spite for these people is quite alarming, which makes me believe this is the case.

Maybe if you put your efforts into more charity work like the McFaddens, and less into writing spiteful articles, you might be more interesting to read (and not just vulgar).

Bernadette Maguire

Bronx, New York

Let Freedom Ring

I AM a long time subscriber to the Irish Voice. I enjoy the paper and look forward to its delivery each week. 

I have never seen so many letters or comments, pro and con, regarding the letter Robert O’Sullivan wrote in the September 1-7 issue. All of these letters and comments show what a great country we live in. 

We have the freedom to write a letter to express our opinion. We take a lot of our freedom for granted. In some places in this world you are not permitted to write a letter. 

It seems Raymond McGowan’s letter “Defending the Great U.S.” in the September 29-October 5 issue was written after reading my mind. It could not have been said any better. 

We all should take a closer look at our freedoms and be thankful we have them. God Bless America.

Jack Driscoll

Buffalo, New York

Church State Separation

SEPARATION of church and state narrows as judgment day looms above Election Day.

In Haverstraw, the local Knights of Columbus Council’s recent newsletter delivered an ultimatum — members not in full agreement with the Catholic Church on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage are told to get out of the KofC.

Strongly worded messages on how Catholics deal with the abortion issue when voting in November are contained in recent New York State Right to Life Committee newsletters, in the July-August Digest, which is the national newspaper of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and also in the newspaper Catholic New York.

Prior to his life-threatening heart problems, former President Bill Clinton gave a 25-minute speech on Sunday, August 29 at a “packed” non-Catholic Church in Manhattan. The New York Post reported that Clinton’s talk was a “searing attack” on both President Bush and the Republican Party.

For his part, President Bush, repeating his opposition to abortion, received a standing ovation when he was a guest during the August 3 Knights of Columbus national convention. Meanwhile, various Catholic publications are reminding voters that separation of church and state is not included in, and is not part of the U.S. Constitution.

Amen.

Frank Leonard

Haverstraw, New York

Captain Egan’s Politics

I LOVED the article “Egan Warns Irish Mag Over ‘Kerry Bias” in the September 29-October 5 issue of the Irish Voice about former U.S. ambassador to Ireland Richard Egan. The photo of Egan with the story reflected his politics perfectly.

For some odd reason, the photo made me think of Captain Bligh in the original Clark Gable film Mutiny on the Bounty. He and Bligh have a lot in common.

Paul Chandler

Jersey City, New Jersey