Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

The news that some publicans want to open their dens of iniquity on Good Friday is disturbing. I suppose I do belong to Ireland’s biggest religious sector – the lapsed Catholics, but I am still very much a Christian. For me Good Friday is the day that  commemorates Jesus Christ’s sufferings to redeem mankind. In Irish culture Good Friday has always been a day of solemnity. This is true not only in Ireland but throughout the world. Was it not on Good Friday that Dante left his beloved Florence as an exile?

Of course Good Friday has long had a special place amongst dipsomaniacs in border areas who looked forward to it so that they could go up North to get tanked up. But today what’s stopping anyone going to the offie the day before and getting a few cans and bottles?

The fact that the move for Good Friday booze comes from the saintly city of Limerick is so worrying. Limerick has long been seen as an icon of true Catholicism in the vast swirling ocean of secular humanism. Limerick city’s commitment to the true Catholic faith was so amply demonstrated when its citizens, stirred up by a Redemptorist priest, drove out the city’s Jews. Let us remember the words of outrage expressed by a man following acts of desecration in a Limerick city graveyard. “Ya wouldn’t see this in darkest Africa, where there is no God.” But what would the late Bishop Jeremiah Newman, who kept the Four Courts Press humming away publishing the seemingly never-ending torrent of his literary rant and cant, and who only ever accepted the best food and drink, have said about it? No doubt. “Ah isn’t that great. I’ll be able to pop out for a quick one after the ceremonies instead of having to hide a bottle in my library.”