Should Ireland have Day of Mourning? (Pt 2)

We were surprised that there wasn't more uptake on this question yesterday when we (amongst others) threw it out there - but this morning there's a stampede underway. To recap, we (and many others) were wondering as we scrambled to find schedules for Mass because we hadn't been in a decade, will Ireland have an official Day of Mourning?

Bertie, unsurprisingly, tried to chart a middle course, mouthing some gobbledygook about "doing all" and "fulfilling" and whatever, with flags half-staff all week and a minute's silence, but no shutdown of the country where 20pc go to Church and another 50 percent spend the day in the boozer.

Bertie's quote, via the Examiner:

“We won’t have a national day of mourning as such, but between now and the funeral, we will fully participate in all [events], and we would ask people to fully comply not just for one day, but for each day, with the flags at half mast, and to be involved in the church services,” Mr Ahern said at a press conference at Government Buildings yesterday.

Cue mass-scale whataboutery, as they'd say on Slugger.

Eurovision song contest winner from sometime in the last century Dana Rosemary Scallon, the answer to a question nobody asked, turned up on Morning Ireland to demand the Government declare a Day of Morning. If Commie Cuba is having 3 days of mourning, Poland 6 days, Italy 3 days, Brazil 7 days, well why can't Holy Catholic Ireland have a wee day to reflect on the great man?

[As a cruel aside, according to anagramgenius twists her name to 'Man! Ample-ass lady crooner!' But RTE reports that she's lost loads of weight for her upcoming wedding, so well done.]

Calls were running into RTE 90pc in favour, and TV3's Ireland AM this morning had a phone poll with a 98pc result in favour of having a National Day of Mourning.

After Liveline is swamped with nothing but aul dears saying how terrible it is that Ireland can't spare a few minutes for John Paul, insta-saint, who did so much for this country (?), because of the Celtic Tiger, simpering Joe "I was on the altar with the Pope in 79 you know. Did you know that? Really I was. Had a big beard then; me ma was horrified seeing me on da telly. But, you know, I don't like to talk about it much or trade on it, I'm too modest" Duffy will exhort them to ever-greater heights of sentimentalism.

On RTE and Indymedia, already there is the September 11 whataboutery. As in - we had a National Day of Mourning for the fucking Yanks because they held an economic gun to our heads; sure didn't they threaten to pull all the jobs from Ireland and close us down if we didn't kiss their arse?

Prediction: by 5pm there will be a 'clarification' from Bertie. We'd say 50/50 odds he gives in.

What's interesting about this isn't the designation itself, it's that it has already - in just a few hours - become the first of many proxy battles that will come in the next month over what kind of country Ireland is.

Fintan O'Toole spelled out yesterday on the Sunday Show with Tom McGurk how he hopes the passing of JP2 will be a last gasp of the ancien regime in Ireland and mark the end of the Church's 'temporal power'.

We don't know the Archbishop's mind, but we'd say it's likely that Dr Diarmuid Martin, Dublin's archbishop and a canny politician himself, is watching closely the sentiment and seeing all the young faces who crowded Ireland's churches over the weekend. He, too, may have a preference on whether there should be a Day of Mourning.

We think he's too canny to express that publicly, however - because that would be an overt interference in matters of State. And he knows that no other Pope's death warranted a Day of Mourning here in modern times. But surely he's hoping that the stampede of sentiment carries the day here.

It certainly is in Rome, where already the Vatican is referring to him as Pope John Paul the Great, 'the Great' only affixed to the names of Popes Leo and Gregory, in the millennia before last; and there is talk of a fast-track to sainthood. In Clarendon Stret's St Teresa's church yesterday, the priest wrapped by telling the congregation that they should feel free to pray "to" as well as "for" John Paul II.

So however this works out, observers will be looking at the decision as a watershed moment in the history of the Irish state's relationship with the Church.

But we would really hate for Dana to get credit. Seriously.