NOTEBOOK
Greedy bankers beware
SHE HAS gained prominence for being “the nun who predicted the credit crunch” with her book in 2006 which said that “whole economies can be destabilised” by irrespon- sible market trading. Now, Dr Catherine Cowley, a former banker who teaches at Heythrop College, a Jesuit-run college of the University of London, has pro- duced a hard-hitting programme for BBC Radio 4. The Greed Imperative, which will be broadcast tomorrow (23 May), has Sr Cowley challenging a number of financiers. In one interview, former trader Barbara
Stcherbatcheff, who wrote Confessions of a City
Girl, said bankers were not to blame because there was no regulation in place to stop reck- less behaviour. Sr Catherine asked her: “Isn’t that a bit like blaming the police because I mugged you?”
The nun, who wrote The Value of Money: ethics and the world of finance and was inter-
viewed in The Tablet in Easter 2009, says that Ms Stcherbatcheff’s attitude is “commonplace” in the City and was “an abdication of personal responsibility”.
She concludes the programme by stating that “greed is not the same as profit” and that “ethics”, “professional ethos” and “spiritual reality” must be taken into the workplace.
Thief’s prayer
THE FRENCH police don’t list the Lord’s Prayer among their anti-crime strategies but they might want to ask Fr Frédéric Bastidon for some advice about its effects. The parish priest in Vergèze, south of Nîmes in south-eastern France, used the “Our Father” when a masked gunman recently broke into his rectory demanding money. “Everybody knows priests don’t have
money,” Fr Bastidon calmly told journalists after the incident. “He didn’t come just to rob me, he wanted to talk.” So the priest invited the intruder out to the rectory garden for a heart-to-heart discussion. It turned into a kind of confession as the man related the problems that had driven him to stage the hold-up. “After a while, we said the Our Father
together,” Fr Bastidon said, “and then he said he wanted to leave.” He took off his balaclava and turned to scale the wall he’d come over, but the priest showed him the way to the door. The priest asked him to hand over his gun, but the man refused. Fr Bastidon didn’t want to press charges against the man, who clearly needed psy- chological help, but decided he had to alert the police because the thief had not handed over his gun. They knew exactly who he was, thanks to his record of 18 previous petty-crime convictions, and quickly found the 33-year- old man and arrested him.
18 | THE TABLET | 22 May 2010
Debt of gratitude
THE FORMER Foreign Secretary David Miliband has spoken with admiration of the Catholics who sheltered his father’s family as they escaped the Nazi persecution of the Jews in German-occupied Belgium. Now it has emerged that Mr Miliband’s mother and her relatives were sheltered by nuns during their escape from Poland. David Miliband and his younger brother, Ed, have been in the spotlight after both announced that they are standing in the contest to become Labour leader.
According to The Sunday Telegraph,
Law v. order
LAST SUNDAY in Limerick city the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal shed their grey habits in favour of soccer jerseys, when they took on the Limerick Garda (police) in a thrilling charity match. Known locally as “the Monks of Moyross”, the friars arrived from the Bronx, New York, in 2007. Testament to their successful inte- gration into the deprived suburb was the appearance of a number of local celebrities in the team alongside the six friars, includ- ing former Dunfermline Athletic striker Bobby Ryan, former Limerick hurling cap- tain Ciarán Carey and ex-Shelbourne player Dave Rogers. Local MP and former Defence Minister Willie O’Dea acted as assistant manager to the friars. In his pre-match pep talk he told them he had “given every member of the media from Cork to Donegal my commitment that my team was going to win”. And win they did: the friars scored five goals to the Garda’s three. The proceeds went to Irish Cancer Research and the Special Olympics.
Performance of a lifetime
IT’S LONGbeen hoped that the Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle would sing for the Pope during his visit to the UK in September and it now seems that it may actually hap- pen. The singer has been pencilled in to appear before the crowd of 150,000 when the Pope celebrates an open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. “SuBo”, as the tabloids dubbed the singer, who is a parishioner of Sts John Cantius and Nicholas, Broxburn, in West Lothian, recently met Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, at his residence, and per- formed “Ave Maria” for him in his private chapel. The cardinal said that “it was hoped” that Miss Boyle would sing for the Pope.
Marion Miliband, née Kozak, was hidden from the Nazis by nuns, although she will not give further details of where and when this took place. The only official version of events, written
by Michael Newman, a friend of Ralph Miliband, David and Ed’s late father, states: “For the rest of the war Marion, Hadassa [her sister] and their mother had been in constant danger and owed their lives to several brave people, Jewish and non-Jewish, many of whom were themselves killed.” David Miliband has visited the farm in southern Belgium where his father’s family was sheltered and asked the farmer why he had taken such a risk. The farmer simply replied: “One must.”
On the front line
THEY PLAY an unsung yet vital role, but Fr Daren Brown has given an insight into the work of an army chaplain. Fr Brown, who has just started his second six-month tour of duty with troops in Afghanistan, expects to be celebrating Mass on the front line. The 42-year-old padre is chaplain to the
Queen’s Royal Lancers whose duties include forward operations and reconnaissance. “I will be sharing the same dangers as the soldiers,” said the former civil engineer from Tollerton, Nottingham, before he left. “I have a dual role, going out to visit my own soldiers from the Queen’s Royal Lancers and also going out to offer Mass and all the sacraments to Catholics wherever they are.” One challenge will be finding a safe loca- tion for his service. “A little space, a little quiet room, if that’s possible on a forward operating base. I’ll have a white altar cloth, a little cross and I’ll make it as much of a church as possible,” he said. Only his purple stole, worn over Kevlar body armour, distinguishes him from his fellow sol- diers. He said that the soldiers “love it” when he joins them on patrol. “It’s a great spiritual help to them, I’m convinced it is, having experi- enced it. They do feel a great deal of comfort having a padre along.”
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