The Eagle, The Tiger and Covid : New book by Fr Neal Carlin and Carl Bradley on a changing Ireland

‘The Eagle, the Tiger and Covid – Imaging God recalling Ireland’ is by Carl Bradley and Fr Neal Carlin, who founded the Columba Community and together established St Anthony’s Retreat Centre near Bridgend, Whiteoaks Rehabilitation Centre, the IOSAS Centre organic gardens and the Celtic Prayer Garden near Muff/ Ballyarnett.

It tells a story of a seventy-eight-year-old retired journalist on a personal journey. Sean’s search brings him to an Indian reservation in South Dakota, USA.

It is a journey that allows him time to relax and see new things. He gets to reflect on a life well led, but with something more to happen.

His story begins as part of a small farming family in relative poverty in the forties and fifties located on the border area between his native Donegal and Derry City, a few miles away. His journey entails problems with alcohol, discrimination and a delayed or postponed education. He has reason to suspect his mature student status was indeed a good asset.

As a journalist, he reported on the troubles in Northern Ireland. He seems to know more than the average journalist but is seldom forthcoming about his sources. He simply lived through those times on a daily basis.

Later he became a correspondent with the Times while travelling to the Middle East and Bosnia.

Now he has time to stand back and look at the causes of war and conflict both locally and globally.

He looks at the poor and millions of innocent victims due to misuse of power; due to black and white thinking where pride and ego prevent compromise, win-win solutions in favour of zero-sum war and genocide.

He gets to think again about the human condition, about the greed and speed he witnessed at home when poor got poorer while rich got richer.

He wondered why suicides increased, as did addictions and homelessness during the prosperous Celtic Tiger era in Ireland.

The book looks at how, his time out, like Covid time for all of us, surely could be a time to re-evaluate priorities.

It asks: Is life all about growing in Power, Possessions and Achievements and letting the Ego fool us into believing we are in control? Or do we learn from humbly serving people, those who follow the vocation to serve the sick, the needy neighbour, the elderly and vulnerable.

We will only care for the environment and all creation when we respect the most vulnerable from womb to tomb, Sean comes to surmise as he gets to meditate more and considers the small but alternative Christian society he meets in the USA and later back home in Ireland.

The backdrop to the entire book is his rediscovery of the model of Basic Christian Community.

This form of church more easily avoids the dangers inherent in a system that seems to constantly put its own image before the humble admission of grave abuse and suffering some of its clergy have caused people and other priests alike.

The entire governance system of the small Basic Christian Community allows for greater transparency.

At the Indian reservation in South Dakota, he witnessed the sharing of goods and services he had read about in the Acts of the Apostles.

He experienced the freedom of the children of God in the way people worshipped and cared for young and old, sick, and healthy.

He knows from his country’s history the facts about the Golden Age of Ireland (5th to 12th century) and the model of church it promoted which entailed a monastic rule but with powerful social gospel and evangelical dimensions.

Sean discovered a community like the above at home where he and his family began to pray and enjoy helping youth in particular find faith and life.

“This amazing book will stretch your imagination. It will challenge your values and broaden your heart,” writes Fr. Brian Grogan S.J.

**Copies of the book are available at Iosas Centre, Derryvane, Muff, County Donegal. Telephone:0035374 9384866. The price of the book is E10/£10 plus postage and packaging.