Ó Dúshláine, Tadhg
(2007)
Breandan O Doibhlin: Pathfinder.
In:
Breandán Ó'Doibhlin.
Coiscéim, Dublin, pp. 1-25.
Abstract
A few things to explain at the outset:
My first difficulty is public speaking in English and to do so with my
Cork city patois in Derry is a bit rich. A second difficulty I had was
with the subject: the notion that a prophet would be recognised in his
own country and while he still alive is unusual by international
standards and mind-boggling in the light of Dr. Johnson's remark
when he said of us that: 'the Irish are a funny race, they rarely speak
well of each other.' In any case this is not a 'This is Your Life'
celebrity occasion, the vulgarity of self-interested promotion does not
surround 6 Doibhlin's message. In other words, he does not have a
cult following, but a readership and a discipleship based on the
democratic Christian principles of free will and choice, not
promotion and fashion. And therefore, it is the message I wish to
examine, rather than the messenger. The message rather than the
messenger, because the notion of admiration, let alone reverence for
teachers and mentors is long since gone. Sports stars and pop stars
are the great celebrities. The wearing of the footballer's jersey
number is not discipleship. It is democracy gone mad, leaving no
room for an elite or an aristocracy of talent or of intellect. At a time
when the educational landscape of this country is succumbing to the
demands of consumerism it is timely and advisable to consider those
concepts which we have inherited, but which are no longer
fashionable, considered even divisive, concepts which have become
dumbed down or neglected in the helter-skelter world of the eternal
present: such concepts as 'tradition', 'culture', 'nationality' and
'humanity', much more than words, which 6 Doibhlin has spent a
lifetime interpreting.
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