Frank Duff joined the civil service in Dublin in 1908, and his most interesting work in his early career there was on the land acts: "a revolution," he said, "infinitely more complex than the conquest of England by the Normans or Ireland by the Danes."
He had another life as a prominent lay Catholic. He supported unmarried women keeping their children, was an opponent of the industrial schools system and an advocate for the homeless. He backed up his positions in the first and third of those issues by opening the Regina Coeli Hostel and the Morning Star Hostel.
Duff, though, is best known as the founder in 1921 of the Legion of Mary, which today has four million members worldwide, and an additional 10 million auxiliary members, dedicated to performing spiritual works of mercy.
Finola Kennedy, his goddaughter (and an active member of the Legion, an organization that actively encouraged women in leadership roles), shines a new light on him with the biography "Frank Duff: A Life Story." The Irish Times reviewer Catriona Crowe, who is head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland, and thus presumably a civil servant herself, praised the book last week as thoroughly researched and well-written, but said "its unquestioning acceptance of Catholic norms is ill founded and severely limits the scope of the potential analytical scope of a study that covers most of the 20th century..."
That seems a tad unfair. First of all, almost every work is underpinned by a worldview of some sort; and secondly, why review a book the woman didn't set out to write?
Crowe continued with what is also the central, and justified, criticism of Duff himself: "She does not examine or challenge the Irish culture of extreme deference to clerical authority..." But what's to examine?
If people and institutions have a disproportionate control over the means of communication -- and they habitually use and abuse it with relish -- then other people will fear them. One could no more talk about Irish democracy in the middle decades of the 20th century without mentioning Dublin's Archbishop John Charles McQuaid than one could write a history of British democracy over the past 35 years without reference to Rupert Murdoch.
Pork, anyone?
Sean P. Duffy personifies much of what is rotten in American politics today. Well, not just him, of course, but his ilk. He was sent to Congress to represent the interests of his Wisconsin district; his main function it would seem, however, is to be a lobbyist for the superrich.
But, wait! It turns out Duffy is looking out for his district, after all. It's true that he is one of those crazy people backing the unworkable balance the budget amendment (it's about that thing that Democratic presidents somehow manage to do, and Republican ones can't because they love the wealthy that much). But he is also funneling Federal cash, and lots of it, back home -- $700 million for a bridge that is going somewhere: over the St. Croix River into the Minnesota backyard of Michele Bachmann. The big God and small government Republican Bachmann supports it, too.
That pair aren't the only tea partiers with their noses in the public trough, the New York Times revealed in recent days, courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act. What is it with these people? They want us to believe that anything businesspeople earn is by dint of their own hard work and ingenuity and risk-taking, and that to tax them amounts virtually to theft and an assault on liberty. Meanwhile the rest of us fund a great deal of the infrastructure, the research and development and all the rest that makes wealth creation possible in the first place.
No doubt, Duffy - who came to public prominence on the reality TV show "The Real World: Boston" - will somehow, with the help of big money and perhaps Murdoch media, square the Tea Party/pork barrel circle come the next election.
