Speaker 1: You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best
in paranormal talk radio in the UK and around the world.
Scary Era Era is the Irish or Gaelic word for Ireland.
Paranormal means all the things that are impossible to explain
by non natural forces or by science, and Ireland is
steep and lower, ghosts, blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, hunger, desperation
and charm. Oh and the paranormal. Welcome to Scary Era,
Mark Manning, come on in the water's warm and welcome
to Scary We're going to County Fermana on the north
of Ireland, so we are. We're going to talk paranormally
type stuff and even a bit of enlightenment on today
Scary Era. So that's what it sounds like. Beadways, come
to the show. Email any observations you have or experience
as you have had to Paranormal Island at ProtonMail dot com,
car Renormal Island at proton dot com. Please just like
and subscribe on whatever platform you're on. Now like and subscribe.
I thanks, of course, as always goes to Paranormal UK
Radio for hosting me and my blessed show and if
you stick around. This is going to be a pretty
blessed show or a noon like my bit of Latin.
Please yourself. We have this guest on. He was amazing
guy called Kiran Fanning. He'd just written a book which
is still available called Haunted Ireland and he allows us
to draw liberally from it, which we're about to do
courtesy of David McGlynn aka the Squire. We're going to
hear the story of the Coonean Ghost House and the
Poultergeist goings on within. So settle down, take the weight
off your face. The Koonean Ghost House is believed to
be the only house in Ireland in which an exorcism
was carried out by the way. Stick around because later
in the show we'll be talking to a Catholic priest
of forty years about exorcism and other blessed things. But first,
I dare you to listen to what follows with the
lights off, and if you're brave, make sure you've got
a clean pair of underpants, panties, whatever sitting beside you.
Guess you're going to be needing them. Kiddo, it's time
to join the Squire aka David McGlynn and listen up
as he relates a true story, and it is true
about the poulter geist of Coonean House.
Speaker 2: What brought a poltergeist into the little house in the
woods nobody knows, but some people say that a man
had once been killed there. The widow, Bridget Murphy knew
nothing of this when she moved into the house with
her adult son and six young daughters, although if she
had done her research, she might have had second thoughts
about moving in because the building had had many owners,
each of whom had only stayed a short while. Indeed,
the Sherry family she had bought the house from had
only stayed there one night before selling it on. For
a while, the Murphy family were happy there, but the
trouble started one autumn night in nineteen thirteen, when the
children were in bed and Bridget was nodding off by
the fire, She was awoken by footsteps in the loft.
Bridget knew it couldn't be any of the children, because
James was asleep in one bedroom and the girls another. Furthermore,
the loft was used to store hay and could only
be accessed via the stairs from outside. She lit a
candle and went into the loft to investigate, but there
was nobody there. She checked the bedrooms, but her children
were still sleeping. She'd only just sat down by the
fire again when a loud bang made her jump. One
of the girls woke up, screaming, and Bridget rushed in
to comfort her. The banging noise, which seemed to be
coming from the walls, came again and again, waking the
rest of the girls and Bridget's twenty five year old son.
Make it stop, wailed Catherine, the second youngest. The noises
in the walls continued all night and only ceased with
the arrival of the first rays of morning sunlight. They
started again the following night and night after. Exhausted and terrified,
Bridget sought the help of the local priest, Father Peter Smith,
turned up to investigate and asked if he could stay
the night while the family slept. Smith, armed with his
Bible and holy water, stayed awake in the silent darkness.
He waited and waited, and then it came. A sweeping
noise like rustling straw blew into the room, followed by
taps and then loud bangs in the walls. The Murphys
all woke and huddled in terror, with the priest beside
the dying embers of the fire, as the whole house
reverberated with banging, as if a horse was kicking the walls,
Smith held up his Bible and shouted, demon, can you
hear me? The house suddenly fell silent, as if listening.
If you hear me, called out the priest, not nine times.
At first there was nothing, but then loud, distinct knocks
came from within the walls. Everyone counted the knocks in
their heads one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine.
Convinced now that he was dealing with some supernatural force,
Smith asked the same question in Irish and then Latin,
and each time received the same reply, nine knocks. He
asked how many of the people present had been born
in County Monaghan, and again received the correct answer in knocks.
After a sleepless night, the priest left the house to
report to his superior. Bishop mc kenna of Cloher was
so alarmed by the story that he asked the renowned
exorcist Dean Kyohne to help, but the man refused. Not
wanting to send Father Smith back to the house alone,
the bishop asked another priest, Father Eugene Coyle from mc
guire's Bridge to accompany him. Coyle was skeptical about the
whole thing, but did as he was asked and waited
by the fire for nightfall with Father Smith and the Murphys.
As darkness descended, the sound of snoring came from the bedroom.
Who's in there, asked Coyle. Nobody, said Anne, the eldest daughter.
Speaker 1: We're all here.
Speaker 2: Coyle lit a candle and went with Father Smith into
the empty bedroom, followed by the Murphy's dog. The snoring
seemed to be coming from one of the beds, even
though it was empty. Coyle stepped closer for a better look,
and before his eyes a human shape materialized beneath the sheet.
The dog scampered under one of the beds in terror.
You can talk to a whispered Smith from behind. Father
coil watch now Psmith stepped forward and said, whatever is there?
I would ask you, if you have the power, could
you put the dog out from under the bed. The
color drained from Coyle's face as he watched the shape
squirm and rise, transforming into some sort of animal. It
made a spitting noise which sent the Murphy's colleague bolting
from the room. Coyle now had a question of his own,
where do you come from? When he got no answer,
he asked, are you from Hell? The shape beneath the
sheet hissed angrily and then disappeared. The priests pulled back
the sheet, but there was nothing unusual to be seen. Coil,
in the state of shock, sat on the bed to recuperate.
After a few moments, he felt something move beneath the
sheet under his hand. Later he described it as feeling
like a squirming rat or a wriggling eel. The two
two priests left the house the following morning, shaken by
their encounter. By this stage, there were all sorts of
rumors circulating in the locality about the Murphy family. People
said that James Murphy was practicing the dark arts in
the house and had summoned monsters using a book he
had found in the forest called The Legions of Demon.
Others claimed to have seen a small white pig following
the children in the forest. They presumed the animal was
a demon of some sort, because the Murphys didn't own pigs.
The Murphy girls were shunned in their embroidery class. It
was all very upsetting. Others accused the Murphys of playing
tricks on the priests. Do you think it's all an
elaborate hoax, Coyle asked Smith on their way back to
the house for another night on duty. Smith shook his head,
but maybe we should try to prove that it's not
the children tricking us. What do you mean? Smith came
up with a plan. He invited some of the most
suspicious neighbors around the house and told them to hold
the hands and feet of each of the Murphy children
to prevent them from secretly making knocking sounds. The neighbors obeyed,
but as the light faded, the knocking on the walls
began again and grew in intensity. The neighbors, now convinced
that the children weren't the culprits, glanced at each other
in terror. One of the men let out a painful groan.
What's wrong, asked the neighbor. Someone's after punching me. Another farmer,
a big, strong fellow, felt to the floor. Something pushed me.
The neighbors fled the house, now convinced that the haunting
wasn't a hoax, and adamant that they would never set
foot in that infernal cottage again. The two priests returned
to the cottage fifty times in total, and witnessed all
manner of disturbing things like pots, pans, and plates being
flung across the kitchen, beds being lifted off the floor,
and sheets and pillows being tossed off the beds. A
third priest visited the house sixteen times and experienced the
same things. When he asked the ghosts to whistle, it did,
and it could also tap out tunes like Boyne Water
and the Soldier's Song. Other visitors to the house also
encountered the ghost. A famous horse dealer from England arrived
with a group of men to experience the haunting. He
asked the ghost how many of the men with him
had been born in Ireland. He received the correct reply
in Knox. When he asked how many of the men
were horse dealers, a knocking came from under his own chair.
The only thing that seemed to silence the ghost was
when mass was said in the kitchen. The poltergeist also
reacted badly to holy communion and holy water. A fourth priest,
Robert Hugh Benson, was asked to investigate the haunting, but
mysteriously died before his planned visit. Indeed, the three priests
who had spent time in the house all suffered bad
after a fe of the haunting. One had a nervous breakdown,
another contracted spinal meningitis, and the third suffered from facial paralysis.
In the end, the Murphys fled the cottage for America,
boarding a ship to New York on the third to
first of July nineteen fifteen. Some said the poltergeys followed them,
continuing to haunt them by knocking and banging on their
cabin walls on the ship to such an extent that
other passengers complained to the captain. Very little is known
about what happened to the Murphy's after that, though it
was said that one of the girls spent the rest
of our life in a mental institution, not paranormal.
Speaker 1: Maung Manning is real. Now that's a scary thort. Now,
dear listener, if you're lucky in life, every so often
you get to talk to somebody truly extraordinary, and my
next guest falls right into that category. His name is
father Michael Collins. You can read about him on Fathermichaelcollins
dot com. Because, as I said, he's truly extraordinary. He
is not only an ordained priest in the Catholic Church
for the last forty years, but an author of several books,
as well as being accomplished in the area of studies
like a philosophy of Greek and Roman and archaeology. He
has taught in several universities, indeed in Rome like the
American University. He tells me he's about to release a
book shortly to mark the soon to be canonization. I
think it's at the end of April of Carlo Acutas,
who was a software wiz, and he was only fifteen
years of age when he died in two thousand and six,
and in that short space of time he managed to
make such an impression that he will be a saint.
But it's of devils and stuff we started our conversation with,
namely exorcism. So get you that cup of coffee or tea,
sit down, relax and eavesdrop on our conversation.
Speaker 3: But going back to your question about exorcism, it's a
thing that a lot of people don't really understand. But
bottom line is everybody understands the difference between good and evil.
What the right, moral, upright and honorable thing to do? Is,
and then what's the cheap and easy way to cheat
people is as well, And so many of us are
tempted as a bit like sugar. We know sugar spat
but we know that it can give us cancer, We
know that it can give us headaches, it can change
our mood, our energy levels, et cetera. And yet we
all have sugar, sugar, sugar, and we know that we
should avoid it. So it's a bit I think that's
the similar for avoiding evil and doing good. Unfortunately, very
few of us managed to do it. But at the
same time, certainly from the Christian and the Jewish and
the Islamic traditions, and indeed, I think you'd probably say
for most religions in the world, the call is to
do good and at the minimum do no harm. Were
where that evil exists. And in the Jewish and Christian traditions,
we've characterized this as an actual personage. Now that's following
in the Christian tradition the words of Jesus, who referred
to the devil virtually as a personage, but it was
still a personage which held rejection of God. According to
the tradition, Satan is an angel who was in the
presence of God, who rebelled and turned against God. But
Jesus was trying to get this idea across of negative
actions to try and do things which are honorable and just.
Speaker 1: I think the problem as well, Father, is that people's
idea of exorcism largely goes back to you know, maybe
how would the Hollywood movies? How different is the real
thing from what we see in films?
Speaker 3: I think it's very very different. I mean, cinema obviously
has to rely on sound, on exaggerated images. It's got
to capture a lot of things within a few seconds.
This film is so expensive to make. So yes, I've
never actually witnessed an exorcism, but I've witnessed and seen
people being prayed over very fine of many times, and
it's just something very normal and relaxed, if you like.
It's praying for somebody perhaps who's sick, praying for somebody
who's troubled, praying for somebody in difficulty. So it's literally
just joining in a fraternal prayer, being present with that person,
and then asking God to listen to our prayers and
to restore the personal to help the person in whatever
way that they would need, and whichever is appropriate for
their beneficial curing.
Speaker 1: And are there certain things, say like games and rituals
or even places that you'd caution people to avoid dabbling in,
you know, just to be safe.
Speaker 3: Not really, no, I think in actual fact I wouldn't
be concerned about people going into areas where, for example,
some people say, oh, don't dabble tarot cards, that don't
dabble with your cult, don't dabble with uchi boards or whatever.
I'd actually say on the country, The road to uprightness,
the road to perfection, the road to happiness is in fact,
just following your conscience rather than anything else, and doing
as best you can so that you live by the
old golden rule, which is to do no harm to
anybody and do unto others as you'd like them to
do to you. So that's the concept, and therefore there
are so many things that we need to do. For example,
when you've got the opportunity to defraud somebody and you're
tempted to defraud them, and in particular if you think
could be for all them without them noticing and maybe
getting you into trouble, well you just don't do that
because it's not the right thing. I remember my father's
funny enough. When I was probably about fourteen or fifteen one,
they were having a couple of tea in the kitchen
and we're chatting about various things, and he said to me,
never take a brown envelope. And I was thinking that's
a very funny thing, but I was too young to
understand until he explained it to me.
Speaker 1: And for those of you outside of Ireland, a brown
envelope was a euphemism for a bribe.
Speaker 3: He was an architect and in his day there was
a lot of brown envelopes being exchanged around Dublin between
politicians and builders.
Speaker 1: And architects very much.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of that, and we're going back
to the seventies and eighties. And he said, you know, Michael,
never do something that you'd be ashamed of by the
time evening rise. I always thought to myself, that's a
kind of a you know, quite a challenge. But the
old I've gotten, the longer I've lived, I've realized that
it's true. We're often tempted to do things which in
the heat of the moment, when I'd say, oh, I'll
get away with that, or I'll do that, or maybe
it's not going to harm anybody in particular, but in
actual fact, as you know it does, it harms both
you as arms the person that you're harming.
Speaker 1: Like, what's the most common misunderstanding people have about demonic
activity or spiritual oppression?
Speaker 3: I think probably, Again, I'm not an expert, but my
guess is going to be that the devil is a
semi comical figure with a tail and a trident in
his hands and a red cape, and is wandering around
like an anti superman trying to get people into trouble.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that, I
would say. I see it much more in terms of
the choice of the conscience, the choice of the individual
who can live out their lives as best they can,
doing good avoiding evil. That having been said, within all
of us, we all have different personalities, and many of
us have what we could perhaps call personality traits and failings,
and therefore we're not able despite our best efforts or
our best well, yeah, our best efforts. Really despite that,
we're not able to do the right thing, and we
fall into waysides and we end up wasting the talents
which we have and wasting so much energy and achieving
very little. We're sailed by so many things that just
bombard us, and it's so difficult to resist that. I
remember seeing wonderful movie about twenty years ago. It cannot
called The Great Silence, the Suffering Well with You to
set in a Carthusian monastery.
Speaker 1: No, it's the only bed of rings with me is
when I'm in trouble with my wife.
Speaker 3: No, no, this is a different one.
Speaker 1: Okay, I get a big silence.
Speaker 3: No, exactly what you mean. Now, this is a wonderful movie.
It was made by celebrated filmmakers. His name I can't remember,
but he wrote to a monastery. He wrote to the
abbot of a monastery in Switzerland, and he said, you know,
I'd love to come over one time and do a
short movie, perhaps an hour or so documentary about your lifestyle,
because you live in virtual silence apart from an hour
or two in the day when you get together and
you have common recreation. But the rest of the day
you spent in prayer and silence and given your meals
to take in listening to readings from the Bible or
holy books. And it sounds fascinating, but I think what
he also meant was the funds rather extreme. So after
thirteen years he got a reply from the abbess who said,
thank you for your letter, which I received some years ago,
and I'm certainly going to give it more consideration. So
another few years went by and I think this man
had written back and said, oh, that's wonderful, thank you,
because he'd virtually forgotten about and giving up. So eventually
a few years later that broke back and said, as
I mentioned to my last letter, I was thinking about,
and I'm happy for you to come. So the guy
went up into this charterhouse, this beautiful old monastery way
up in the hills, I think it was Switzerland or
the south of France, and just have a blank at
the moment where it was. But the deal was he
could only bring in a handheld camera, and alright, already
the two thousands digital tape was available and very high quality.
But he agreed to the terms that he'd come in
and he wouldn't cause any disturbance. So he just walks
around the monastery and I think the film meant something
about two and a half hours, and I'm sure some
listeners will remember seeing the movie in the IFI, or
you can even get one DVD now, But there's almost
complete silence apart from a little bit of singing in
gurgoyne chant in Latin music which would date back more
than a thousand years, and that's it. And people were
fascinated with that movie because it opened the window into
a world of which they were completely unywhere and these
men and indeed their women, in these enclosed confidence who
embrace the life of silence. They're so content, contemplative, peaceful,
tranquil at what they're doing, just concentrating on the beauty
of the world all around them. And even in a
cold cell and it's the middle of winter and the
snow outside, even still these monks are very quietly, each
sitting in their own cell pray, then going down to
the Chapel four common prayer and there's something like that.
Then your mind is totally concentrated on God. Now, for
most of us, i'd say ninety nine point nine percent,
that's so extreme that we wouldn't be able for that
esthetic way of life. But what I think most of
us need is to have a little time in our
day that we can be completely silent and tune in
with the divine. And just to give you an example,
there are spots all over the country where this is possible.
I'm sure you're aware of glenstol Obb in Limerick Country, Limerick.
Speaker 1: Do you know, just as you were talking to me,
I was saying to myself, I've got to ask them
about that, because I tell you what I used to
do father, and I still do occasionally. I get up here.
I'm a voiceover guy for my living right and I
have a studio outside the house, and I'd often come
in early in the morning and i'd log into their
website because they've got a web they've got a webcam,
and i'd listen to the matins. Is that what are called?
And it's beautiful and I look at them and I
kind of envy that simplicity and yet intensity. If that
doesn't sound like a contradiction, probably does.
Speaker 3: And the contradiction, yeah, I know exactly what means that
kind of intense concentration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And again it goes back to what you were saying,
you know, about the devil inside essentially as opposed to
kind of a third party. I think there's a divide itself,
the negative.
Speaker 3: Plato talks about that. You're you're right, I didn't Plato
talks about the appetite to do the right thing, and
then the urges, which are our appetites, which draw us
off invariably to do the wrong thing. They've gone back
to the sugar analogy. So much of our energy is
taken either devy sugar or avoiding diviron sugar. But we
don't have time to do the healthy things which build
up our body. But mentioning that monastery of Glenstop, one
of the fundamental things of all Benedictine monasteries, in all
religious houses, is that anybody who knocks on the door
is to be welcomed. And Saint Benedict, who wrote his
rule or his way of living fifteen hundred years ago,
he said, he said in the chapter and Hospitality said,
anybody who presents themselves at the door must be welcomed
as Christ himself visiting. So it doesn't matter who you are,
whether you're Christian, whether you're whatever, any religion or none,
You've got to be welcomed. And they always have a
guest room and etc. So every monastery will have an
area which is a guest house. Now, Denstall was very
lucky about twenty years ago because an American lady visited
she was Presbyterian. She didn't know much about the Catholic Church,
but she happened to be in Ireland on a visit
called into glen Stall. She met some of the monks,
became friendly with them. Then within maybe two years or so,
she gave them a very large sum of money. She
is very wealthy from our background in America, and she
gave them a very large sum of money to build
a new guest house so that they could no longer
just have three guests in their little guest house, because
they've donely three bedrooms and it's now about twelve bedrooms.
And she herself actually converted to become a Catholic sometime
after that. But the curious thing is, I've been going
there for forty years. Anytime I tried to get in,
nowadays it's always full. So all these places, the more
at the world is alluring and distracting, et cetera, more
people want to go away, and the monasteries offer a
wonderful place of hospitality first of all. And then you're
just left to your own devices. If you want to
talk to monks, maybe discuss issues or concerns, or tease
out the elements of your faith. Which you are interested in.
They're there to facilitate that, and you can do that
either in a one to one basis, or you can
maybe sometimes join some of the retreats which they organize.
And I go on a retreat to a beautiful French
monastery every year, which is absolutely beautiful, and in France
it's called Solem and it's very famous. I mentioned we're
going chant. It's very famous for it's beautiful Latin music,
most of which goes back a thousand or a thousand,
four hundred years, and it's beautiful to step into a tradition.
It's like stepping into a river and the waters are cool,
but they're still flowing around you, so you feel this
is a lived in place. There's been monks here or
hundreds hundreds, one hundreds of years, one generation after the other,
and as one generation dies, you and novices present themselves
at the door of the monastery to join. And that's
the way it's been. And curiously, religious life in France,
for example, which in large parts the population had lost
interest in their Christian faith. So many of these monasteries
are very well attended and quite full, you could say,
because they have a certain amount of people who've decided
this is a way of life for me. I love
this tranquility. I love the routine as you mentioned, getting
up for mappens early in the morning, getting the day underway,
their prayer, they have common work, then they have a
little rec creation, then they have their meals and rest time.
So those four parts that they gell very well. So therefore,
going back to your original question about exoricism, exorcism is
really an intent at an operation is an operation to
try and help a patient who is sick. So exorcism
is simply recognizing that somebody has a spiritual disase or
disease within them and this has to be you know,
it has to be addressed, and sometimes it can be
dressed very quietly and talk to the person and a
bit like a psychologist or a psychiatrist would deal with
their clients or patients, and then the patient would respond
by trying to modify their way of living. That's it's
the same type of thing. So as I say, what
you're talking about Hollywood and fire and brimstone and all
that type of stuff, that's not how it happens at all.
Very often it's just going to be a very quiet
dialogue and asking the person how they feel. So the
idea of having as it was in the Old and
New Testament, with Satan responding and shouting and screaming, that's
I think. Yeah, Hollywood is exactly the word you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think you know, historically their workcases kind
of like that. I suppose you know.
Speaker 3: I'm not denying that. I'm I'm sure there and they
probably still are. There could be, but that probably is.
First of all, that could be the interaction that a
religious hab would have with a person who is virtually
their whole personality has been taken over by by evil.
And I think that can happen, There's absolutely no doubt.
But I mean, look at adolescence. I haven't seen it yet,
but that's the talk of the talent. And funny enough,
I've just written a short book on a young English boy.
While he's barely English, is actually born in London, but
at the age of three months as parents brought him
back to Italy, where he grew up to the age
of fifteen. He was by all accounts saw his family.
Contemporaries say he was a very good person. He went
to Mass every day, prayed the Rosary. He helped in
Mother Teresa's missionary house in Milan, and he helped the
caption suit kitchen, and yet at the age of fifteen
he was struck down with leukemia and was dead eleven
days later. So he's actually going to be canonized by
the Pope at the end of April, on the Sunday,
the twenty seventh of April. And he is an example
of somebody who was a good person and yet also
was struck down. But people respond to his goodness and
they're fascinated by the integrity of his life. And a
funny enough, I was on a radio program recently and
somebody was talking about sanctity and what is the saint?
And I think it's, after all, just an ordinary Christian
who's trying to live out an ordinary life and achieve holiness,
and holiness has simply been wholly integrated in yourself so
that you're not, you know, a checker and hide character.
So it's a kind of a journey Christian life. Of course,
in all life is just a journey. So it's a
journey of integration, putting aside things which distract us, which
do nothing to help our personalities grow. But in fact
stunt us and dissipate our energy, and then that wholeness
which allows us concentrate and have this lovely vision of God.
And this a young boy whose name was Carlo Akutis,
had a lovely expression. He said, some people sit in
the sun to get at tom but if we sit
before God in the tabernacle, in the Christian tabernacle, we
are bathed in the life of Christ. There's a lovely image.
And he also then reflected in the world and he said,
you know, I passed the football stadiums, and there's cinemas,
and there's queues of young people going into concerts and
all these types of things. But I go into a
church and it's almost empty. So what's gone wrong here?
And again this is what we're talking about. I'm not
saying that the devil is out printing tickets or ticket Master,
but it's probably true that many of us spend our
money frivolously. And it's always been us. We spend our
money frivolously when we could do something really worthwhile with
not just our money, but what with our talents, with
the time, with our energy.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about you saying, going into a church isn't
it amazing that I go into one up the road
here in Buddhistan every so often? And what is that when.
Speaker 3: Most of what we understand in the world we don't
really understand, you know, I don't understand the physics of
how the world keeps together. And yet I know a
lot of friends who are interested in maths and physics
and science, and they have relatively well, they'd have a
lot better ideas.
Speaker 1: I think with that.
Speaker 3: But then sometimes you can just intue it and you
don't need to know an awful lot. And funny, I
was sort of talk at the Oxford Literary Festival a
few days ago, given by a chap called Alistair McGrath,
who's quite a well known theologian comes scientist. He helped
to Chair of Religion and Science in Oxford until two
years ago. And he started off as an agnostic, then
become an atheist, and then became Christian. So he's an
elderly man now i'd say he's well, actually maybe he's not.
Perhaps he's only in his very early seventies, but he's
written several books, and one of the books which he's
recently written is White. It's important to believe and he
talked about that that cost me that the finite mind
which we have as humans is by definition incapable of
understanding infinity. And one of the great attributes, according to
Thomas Aquinas, of God, is infinity. That God is beyond
any measurements that we can calibrate with or understand. So
I often think of that as a conservation. If I
don't understand many of the contradictions in religious faith, well
then I'll say, well, that's okay, It's not important for
me to understand. The fact is I give my assent
to what I do understand in the hope that the
rest of it will fall into place, a little bit
like when you give a promise to somebody where you
make an oath, you can only do so within your
own limitations, and then the rest you hope is going
to be taken up, either by the other person or
the other issue that you've made the oath to or
the promise to father.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that some people are just born evil?
Speaker 3: No, I don't. Funnily enough, I'm thinking back to something
my mother said many years ago, said, nobody's born to
do evil in the world. You know, we're born as infants,
but I think what is true is that all of
us are. But the buzzword now is neurologically diverse. So
there's no such thing as the standard issue run at
the middle human being. It doesn't exist. We don't exist
as that perfect person. So everybody who's born, just like
in the same way that we all have a different
ires or different fingerprint one from the other, in the
same way we all have a different approach to our morality.
But I think what's probably true is that there are
some people who have such a conscience that they can
see no wrong in stealing from another person, or doing
an the person ill, or premeditating to harm that person
or even to kill them. That is true, and that
is in a sense. Again, no psychiatrists, psychologists that couldn't
say this, but it's something neurologically. They're differently wired from
the majority, because fortunately the majority of people don't think
along those science. We just get along. You know. We
all have homoseepions where you know, one hundred and sixty thousand,
one hundred and sixty thousand years of or million years,
I can't remember that, evolving from much more basic primates.
So we are constantly refining our reasoning and our understanding.
So in the answer to your question, what I'm trying
to say is, no, I don't believe that somebody is
born intrinsically evil or intrinsically good. I think we're born
in such a way that we've got to use our
talents and again stay away from those things to lure
us to the side of evil or lurus to doing
things which are harmful, which are psychopathic actions. You know
that they're against what society accepts as the norm. So
that brings you back into the whole area of what
it is and how it is acceptable to do certain things.
For example, I was in an archaeological dig a few
years ago, about five or six years ago, a place
called a Properte in Spain, and the archaeologist who is
leading the seminar that we were attending was explaining that
the cave which we just visited was a place where
children were evidently sacrificed and humans ate flesh and it
gives them all reason. I would need to go into
that at the moment, but just think that was hundreds
of thousands of years ago, but it's something that within
parts of society even still exists as far as I
understand today, but there's some parts of humanity which would
accept cannibalism as you know, not morally reprehensible, and probably
was much more so in the past, but it's kind
of been pruned out of society or shaped away.
Speaker 1: If I can, while I have you and you've been
more more than generous with your time. Did you see
that movie Conclave?
Speaker 3: I did, Yes, I did. I thought the movie was good.
It probably could have been a little bit better, and
the ending was pretty silly, but the movie itself was
very good, but the book was better.
Speaker 1: Actually, you say that, you say the and we won't
give away any spoilers, but you say the ending was silly.
What was it? Was it? This? Would that be something
that would just you wouldn't agree with? Or is it?
Is it not a sign of the world we're living
in at the moment?
Speaker 3: No? No, no. What happens is with I've read most
proper parts of books and the all kinds of there
they're fabulous as you and then just he runs out
of interest or accounting to good end the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just butcher the ending, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the dial of mode and then suddenly yeah, oh.
Speaker 1: Dear, and folks, I really did have to butcher the
end of that for reasons of time. My thanks of
course to the Squire aka David McGlynn, to Kiran Fanning,
the author of Haunted Ireland, and of course who you've
just heard, father Michael Collins, for helping me put together.
Wow this episode of Scary Eric, could you believe we're
into thirteen episodes now? Next time you'll be joining us,
I'll be talking to Bertie Brosnan, who has compiled a
history of the Battle of Clontarfe. What that says you, Well,
it's basically when US Irish got rid of the Vikings,
as we got rid of many other invaders to come
throughout the years, and also a battle of Avian sorts.
Would you believe there was an honest to goodness true
battle of the birds in Cork in the sixteen hundreds
They actually massacred each other. Two different flocks of birds gathered,
it's over the days and then just went into battle.
It's fascinating stuff. So do join me, Mark Manning next
time around on your Scary Era. Scary Era. Goodbye, take
care because I care