In The Name Of The Rose, Sean Connery portrayed a medieval Franciscan with a keen eye and a good head on his shoulders. His modern day counterpart may be Brother Kevin Crowley, who oversees a food and refuge shelter in Dublin. Tough times mean the shelter is handling twice the volume of people seeking help, and its budget has crumbled under the weight.
So when players at a Dublin poker tournament offered to donate up to €20K to the shelter, Brother Crowley had the damn good sense to put need ahead of dogma. “I don’t for a moment condone gambling but this comes from the heart.” We’ve come to expect moral jujitsu from our politicians, and like they say, a drowning man will grab onto anything, even the point of a sword, to keep himself afloat. But somehow it’s hard being cynical about Crowley’s motives.
For one thing, he didn’t accept the donation with gritted teeth, claiming that his hands were tied, that he had no other option. Crowley publicly thanked his benefactors for their donation and acknowledged that, on this matter at least, they were on the same wavelength. It’s hard to think of anybody from, oh, let’s say… Focus On The Family who’d have the brains and/or balls to adopt Crowley’s position, especially while they’re preoccupied with such weighty matters as the length of Angelina Jolie’s kid’s hair.
Brother Crowley, if you ever feel like winging over the pond and slapping some sense into these idjits, the first pint will be on us. Read more.
