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IT’S BEEN A hectic two weeks, with some great highs and some lows. I suppose it’s always good to start with the highs.
I am now down to 18 stone 9 pound, which for me is an absolute delight. I suppose I’ve never been so proud of myself for accomplishing my goals and seeing how far I have come in a year. We also had the end of RTÉ’s Operation Transformation 5k in Phoenix Park and what a day that was.
Phoenix Park 5k run
The crowd that gathered at Phoenix Park were all there for one reason and that was to complete their own goals that they had set and, by God, I think everyone did themselves proud.
It goes to show that you don’t need to be an athlete to get out and run 5k because there were people there that were all different shapes and sizes.
For me, the crucial part about the run was when someone was going to give up. A voice would come from behind them and encourage them to drive on that little bit more.
It’s great to see so many people do a small thing like that, because it gets people more determined to cross that finish line with their head held high, regardless of time.
Bad news this week
Now, it’s time for the bad news, so whilst back GAA training I ended up tearing ligaments in the back of my left leg. It was devastating as I am getting on so well with my weight loss journey and I was more determined than ever to shed the weight.
But, in a second it could all be over just because of one simple movement.
I went to the physio who I must say was an absolute gent and basically told me I had a grade two tear and that I would be out between 4-6 weeks. Automatically I thought there has to be away around it, that I would be able to train, even though I can’t use my legs.
Straight away I contacted my personal trainer, Stephen Spollen in Rahan Fitness, and within an hour he had a new exercise regime made up that wasn’t going to affect my lower body, but would still get me into a sweat and would burn the calories.
I suppose anyone that suffers a setback in their journey to lose weight often thinks about just throwing their hat at it and walking away altogether, but for me, this time it was different. I know what I want to achieve and my goals are set to a high standard.
Failing for me is thoroughly not an option at all, because I know in my own heart and soul I am better than that and there really is no excuse to what you can achieve when you put your mind to something.
It really is all about positive thinking and make sure that any negativity that starts to creep in is gone straight away and nipped in the bud.
It has been an amazing year for me so far and I will not stop until I reach my goal. It has also been an absolute pleasure being able to write for TheJournal.ie and many thanks for people who continue to support me.
I’m forever thankful for it. One thing I always say to people who are down and out is never forget where you have come from, because when that low point does hit, remember that you don’t want to ever be in that situation again.
My final motivational quote for you guys is:
I may not be at my goals yet, but I am a lot closer than where I was yesterday, all was push forward and never look back.
Anyone with any questions or wants to follow my plan and see my progress can check me out on Facebook at Alan Mullen OT Leader 2015 or on snap chat at Murphy1010 or instagram murph-mullen and finally my new website , www.yearofthemurph.com and until I see you again, enjoy your health.
Alan Murph Mullen was a leader on Operation Transformation in 2015. You can still catch up with Operation Transformation on their website here and catch up with the videos on YouTube here. You can also stay up to date on Facebook. You can keep up with updates from Alan on his Facebook page here. He’s also now on Snapchat: murphy1010.
This is the sort of strong condemnation that we need to see from all the bishops. There can be no ambiguity when it comes to protecting children.
Mary the “Bishops” were the ones covering up for the Child rapists their “strong condemnation” means nothing.
Who’s Mary? Well, anyone who covered up for child rapists should face the wrath of the law. I still welcome this particular statement. I don’t like to bunch any group together for condemnation, but if all were guilty, then all should be punished. I’d like to see a bit of new blood anyway.
Apologies Maria for getting your name wrong.
No problem, Joe.
I have known Denis O’Callaghan since I was a child and have liked and respected him.
In my opinion he was,and still is, a man of intelligence, selflessness and decency.
For this reason I was shocked and saddened when I heard of the role he played in handling abuse cases in Cloyne.
He has shown no understanding of the plight of the survivors and at all times placed his concern for his church and what he calls his ‘family of priests’ over his concerns for them.
He should now follow the advice of his Archbishop and refrain from making further comments which are only causing more harm to those who have suffered enough.
Don;t know Dennis o’Callaghan but his family are as decent and humble people as you could meet. Blind loyalty to institutions is the problem here. Agree with the above but would add that he should resign.
The Church has finished itself by trying to hide the issue.
The archbishops statement is not a condemnation, but a PR exercise. It is an attempt to claw back some credibility to a disgraceful institution and gag clergy who might heap even more shame on it. (If that was possible)
The monsignors letter exposes the true perverted corruption at the heart of the church. This is reinforced by the complicity of the Vatican in this shameful episode and it’s refusal to comment, or act on, the Cloyne report.
The Vatican is just paving the way for the Papal Nuncio to return to Dublin. I hope our foreign minister stands firm and kicks the useless waste of space out of the country. It would also save the tax payer over two million euros a year.
Agree. It is time for statements like this to be accompanied with announcements of expulsion and excommunication and referral to the Guards to see if laws were broken. That is what clergy who want the church to survive would do, that is what the people on the pews want.
As someone quoted recently ” I like you Christ but i do not like your Christians, they are nothing like him” Gandhi.
Disgusting. This is another smoke screen to protect the Church and those in the Vatican. Magee and O’Callaghan are just scapegoats to deflect the real blame that lies at the feet of that despicable man Ratzinger in the Vatican.
If a person has been guilty, they can’t just bat it back to the Vatican every time. Ever hear of personal responsibility?
@Maria. Do you understand the concept of a “cover up”?. This is a cover up from the top down and until the church changes its culture from within then it will continue to decline and the blame for that does not lie outside the church itself.
seems to me that he used his ” his commitment to pastoral care ” as a convenient loophole to avoid doing the right thing for the sake of children.
He is also being used by his masters now to deflect attention from John Magee in my opinion
Rommel he is not deflecting for Magee but for Ratzinger.
Thats what i meant Joe, the further down the chain of command, so to speak, to make a scapegoat the better.
What the pope knew :
http://vimeo.com/27012906
There is a nice can of worms to open.
Dirty lying deluded pedophiles and abettors the lot of them…lock them all up and through away the key, and put an end to this pedophile ring once and for all.
‘throw’ I mean, not ‘through’…despite that minor error I think my sentiment is clear enough.
ya glenn u idiot , not everyone can be painted with the same brush . when u grow up and mature and come out from that rock uve been hiding under u will realise the world is full of evil , but the church and priests do a lot of good in the world , helping people , aid work , even praying for ppl like u , so grow up kiddo
A slight generalisation there, Glenn!
Glen I think you were just speaking your mind there and I would agree with you, maybe not on the generalisation front. But it is time the church was abolished. Keyese is the one living under a rock if he/she still believes and follows the teachings of the church or any religion. It’s about time religion was striped of the undeserving respect it has wallowed in up until now. Maybe now people like keyese will open their eyes and see the universe for the wonderful place it is without needing the supernatural to make sense of it.
Well with the church from orders from the Vatican to cover up the abuse for decades how can u tell ‘good’ priests from the bad ones. How can people feel safe with priests having so much time around children. can u risk it. Would u put ur child at risk like that.
No, I wouldn’t, but that applies to anyone dealing with children, not just priests. That’s why there are child protection guidelines and why parents are encouraged to get involved.
There might be guidelines but ur dealing with an organization that doesn’t care about rules of the land. If there was a peado working in a creche and found out that person would be reported arrested and jailed not moved to another creche where he has new victims. You are ignoring the fact that the Vatican actively and knowingly protected peado priests and knowingly let them rape again and again and again. As a parent how can anyone trust a priest. How do u know that ur local priest isn’t a peado. With their monopoly on schools they have unbelievable access to children. It’s cover up after cover up. They don’t even care bout the proven victims of child abuse. Why arent these people in prison. And why do people still blindly stick up for the catholic church when the truth is staring u in the face. The list of tragedies the catholic church has done to people and there are people running to their defence. They have raped children, protected the rapists and made the children swear to secrecy. They have beaten children and women in institutions. They enforced slavery of women in laundries. They have stolen women’s babies and sold them for money!!!! How can anyone be apart of this vicious cult!!!!
David, I just don’t share your view that everyone in the Church is evil. I think it’s all too easy to throw out statements about the Catholic Church or the Vatican as if these organisations or bodies didn’t contain lots of different people who were horribly guilty, culpable by their silence or not involved in any way. I believe in rooting out the rot and keeping what is good and life-enriching. I know, to some, any religion is ridiculous superstition and they’re entitled to their views, but I don’t see why I should leave my Church to evil child abusers and to those who perverted the truth. They should be the ones to leave, not the people who are in no way guilty and are disgusted by their terrible actions.
As to your question about trusting priests – I don’t trust my kids with anyone outside the immediate family circle. I notice that when there are activities involving priests, at least one parent has to be present too, although this seems to be the same for most organisations involving youth. With all the focus on priests, we could easily forget that there are other adults out there who might be capable of abusing children, so we just have to take normal precautions in every situation without becoming totally paranoid.
When the lovable, liberal Pope John Paul the FIRST died mysteriously just 33 days after he had been elevated to the papacy, John Magee was one of the very few people with access to the pope that night. Maybe it’s time the controversy surrounding that pope’s death be revisited. A good start is http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/murderedpope.html .
What’s your point?
Where I come from… a commanding officer is ultimately responsible for everything that his subordinates do …or fail to do. Apparently, this is not the case in the Catholic Church.
How can you be responsible if some maverick breaks the rules and totally ignores guidelines that were put in place? Is a matron responsible if a nurse decides to inject a patient with some lethal cocktail of drugs? That argument doesn’t stand up.
Maria was it not ratzinger as cardinal for protection of the faith who wrote the orders for bishops not to report peado priest to the gardai. I think that holds him 100% responsible. So the argument does stand up!!!!
@ keyese, if you are going to challenge somebody on their maturity, probably best not to name call. Pot kettle … Argue the point not the person. Also your spelling weakens your argument. Speaking of which – the church is a structure, the people in it do good, can they not do good without it? At this stage i would think that the flaws of the structure far outweighs and undermines the good work of the people who are part of it. Do they have the courage of their faith to be able to accept that? In biblical terms the catholic part of the church founded by Jesus have become the Pharisees.. it’s time for the good members of the church to take their good elsewhere if they truly believe in the god they speak about.
excellent points! totally agree.
TRUST ME SON, i have more education in my baby finger than you will ever have . OH on a final note Jesus didnt find the church . So obviously know nothing about it . Nice picture kid , looking better than usual.
For those who are so into the separation of Church and State, there seems to be the belief that the Catholic Church should be doing the job that is really the role of the criminal justice system. If someone has a case to answer, the legal system should deal with it, not the Church. If someone is guilty of committing a crime, is it not up to the guards to investigate the crime and forward a file to the DPP? As for excommunication- if people think religion is pure superstition, the inner processes of the Church should be of no relevance to the pursuit of justice.
There are two issues there Maria. The Church should be bound to the law of the land but the law of the land should not be bound to primitive superstitions of the Church and its dogma.
atheist ireland promoter brian m , people like me CATHOLICS are proud of our religion , not living under a rock son either . The church will still be around when ur sorry ass leaves this world ,u have ur beliefs , which u believe in nothing , so u actually believe in something never the less.
I’m not a promoter of any specific organisation "son" so get that straight "son". I haven’t got a ‘sorry ass’ either, no clergy have been near me!!
we got a name for u brian , a rebel without a cause!!
We’ve got a name for you too keyese, it’s called being a TROLL, look it up or better still look in the mirror! You have no real answers to anything so you revert to the name calling antics of a school child. Your limited intellect defies your claim to “have more education in my baby finger” (not sure what your ‘baby finger’ is, perhaps it’s the one you suck on when haven’t got your soother to hand) your tiresome myopic ranting devalues any thread you post on.
Pray for us, keyese. Pray for our sorry asses. The longer you pray for us the less time you can stink up the internet.
I appreciate Maria’s thread of contributions. If I understand you correctly Maria, you are appealing for commentators to explore here the complexity of realities involved in public discourse about very private matters. For example, where I live if a teacher abuses a child in my neighborhood President Obama does not get hauled into our local courts. Nonetheless, propriety is called for in commenta…ry and across a wide range of sensibilities.
However, in publically managing our reactions to Msgr. O’Callaghan’s public remarks, none of us is capable of covering all the bases. A point or two is all that can be made.
For me, Dr. Clifford’s public attempt at silencing one of his staff, the one best qualified both personally and professionally in this case, I suggest, is indicative of a wider malaise. Catholic power dynamics often silence somebody who has a right to put the record straight. In this priest’s case, it is in his own regard. In so doing he also gives victims another gloss on the Cloyne affair. The contrition displayed by him and the spectrum of dilemmas he faced as a pastor who is not law enforcement, are what I heard. And I would have resigned too.
What we witness in too many Catholic power plays is INFANTALIZATION by someone further up the food chain.
+Clifford, infantalizes Msgr. Callaghan, a lifelong professor of Moral Theology, in the public media. He takes what any true leader would welcome as a further gloss on the Cloyne affaIr and something that we should ALL know, and infantalises the messenger.
We are dealing here with a bishop who seems to want to simply control the conversational environment. +Clifford, with all due respect, be advised, true leaders master the conversational environment they don’t seek to control it. They abhor controllers of it…that’s Gadaffi/Murdoch country. True leaders insist on having a voice while making sure everybody else attempting to be a contribution has a voice too.
Msgr. Callaghan is eminently qualified from both personal involvement in Cloyne and professional competency as a moral theologian to speak now and in the future on this and wider matters. I personally would like to bear more from him not less.
As a mandated reporter myself I have had to endure both professional and personal agony in what it takes to honor the public sensibilities of victims, perpetrators and managers of the abusive context within a local community. And all the while try to function as the Man from Nazareth would have done. The most difficult was negotiating my own child’s abuse, in such a way that the full spread of competing values were honored.
How to do that I learned 35 years ago from my teacher, Denis O’Callaghan. Victims, Bishops, Law Enforcement, Irish citizens! Stop eating yourselves alive in a blame game. Freedom, power and integrity can coalesce around this horror if dictatorial bishops of old and a formerly colluding laity insist on raising congregations that are peppered with a critical mass of fully self-expressed priests and laity. The blessing is in the wound.
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