St Patrick's day 2021

At the very least, the Irish bishops seem to have made an effort to rally the government. There's nothing as irritating as clergymen announcing that closing churches is 'the right thing to do'(quoting Finn,the force awakens?)

Even His Holiness has hinted at objection. I recently came across mention that one particular day in Holy Week is sometimes called Figtree Day in reference to the cursing of the tree which was somehow expected to unnaturally fruit at all times;the Kingdom of God had been earlier compared to the growth of the seed of this same plant:do we see here mention that there's realistically no season for closures?

St Patrick's feast came shortly after one of Francis' rare (or rarely reported) moral stands- that same-sex unions can't have church blessing. Elton John's reply was unsurprising,but I was at bit bemused on hearing that the Vatican had funded Rocketman film by several million; 'hypocrisy',says Elton. I'm sure many Catholics were unaware that the Vatican funded or invested secular movies; whatever limited cultural value there was in a John bioptic we'll hope that Rome's officials will, post-covid, consider the cultural heritage embodied in the many churches throughout the world cut off from regular income through restrictions of whichever type.

In case one might think that St Patrick is the only national icon to effected by all this, there was a piece of interest in this morning's paper: "wildlife parks have been devastated by a year-long absence of foreign travellers who normally flock to these centres to get close to unique native animals such as kangaroos and koalas. Tourists have been barred from entering Australia since March last year creating financial black holes...Cohunu (private park) said on Monday that it may soon have to shut it's doors...even the animals have noticed the lack of visitors...'you can sort of tell they're missing being around lots of people, because they're used to that attention and human interaction' " (today-travel march18)
Really?