Author: Anthony

Sr Stan's option

Nuala O’loan, writing in this week’s Irish Catholic about the Ryan Report quotes the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly.

If things were hidden, they were hidden in clear sight.

The crocodile lines of boys and girls that streamed out of the institutions; the certain knowledge that corporal punishment at the very least was practiced therein; the incarcerated Magdalene women in their Madonna blues and whites who walked the open streets of towns and villages in church processions.

judges knew, lawyers knew, teachers knew, civil servants knew childcare workers knew, Gardai knew. Not to know was not an option.

It was an option for Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy

What has to happen…?

Judges won’t take voluntary cuts; politicians won’t take voluntary cuts, while everyone else is taking involuntary cuts right on the kisser.

Politicians of every hue take to the airwaves. From our remove, they’re freakily removed from reality, their soundbites giving new meaning to twitter. The truth is “unpatriotic”. Cuts are “savings”. Shameless political self-preservation is sudden-onset “responsibility”.

Bankrupting bankers are untouchable, the Minister for Finance telling an apoplectic Vincent Browne that these international men of mystery have contracts, you know.

So had the rest of us. This is not Kafka. This is a parish-pump farce. One that reveals a deep, dangerous fracture in Irish life. People listen to the estranged politicians, look at their wreckage of their lives and wonder if they’re living in The Matrix.

This is serious. Deadly serious. We’re not just losing money here. Too often, we’re losing our minds, our lives. Scared parents wander the house at night, watching the children sleeping, wondering how long they’ll be able to keep their job, their head, their home.

Distracted men (usually) are doing away with themselves in sheds, hotels, rivers, lakes. Small, devastating exits. The ultimate personal response to political and financial treason. Yes, we’re still dying for Ireland. And the megabankers are still on the golf course, blind to the fates of mortals. A perverse acquittal granted them by the State.

Miriam O’Callaghan, Irish Times

Parish pump farce? Political and financial treason? State protection for the bankers.

So why aren’t the people on the streets? What has to happen before Irish people realise that they live in a failed political entity?

What has to happen to make them realise that that failed political entity has to be torn down and destroyed before we can start afresh?

Stumped

Letter in today’s Irish Times

Madam,

I was sorely tempted to write a witty letter on the subject of thousands of people worshipping a tree stump in County Limerick.

Then I noted the fines for blasphemy in the Government’s proposed legislation.

Isn’t the weather grand for the time of year all the same?

Yours etc,

Dr NIGEL P COOKE,

58 Wythburn Crescent,

St. Helens,

Lancashire

Sr. Stan is innocent – Now stop asking questions

Yet another journalist has come out in defence of Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy.
Writing in the Irish Daily Mail Brenda Power says:

I know Sr. Stan and I honestly can’t accept that if she had a chance to save a child from torment, she’d have chosen not to act.

Power’s absolute certainty in this nun’s innocence is based entirely on her friendship and the good work that Sr. Stan has done over the years. She warns those who would disagree:

If the representatives of abuse victims continue to doubt this patently honourable woman they risk costing their cause public sympathy and support.

It is exactly this type of blind loyalty that created the environment that led to child abuse in the first place.

Brenda Power and Joe Duffy are not interested in the facts; they’re not interested in proper investigation.

They already know the truth based entirely on their personal contact with this nun and are, in effect, demanding that all further questioning be stopped immediately.

Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy apologises – Again

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy was again apologizing on behalf of the Sisters of Charity for the abuse of children at St. Joseph’s Institution in Kilkenny (Morning Ireland, 10th report).

But she was also denying, again, that she knew anything about what was going on despite the fact that she lived in the institution at the time.

Like most religious Kennedy has become very adept at fending off questions which by the way was easy in this particular RTE interview where the interviewer was almost apologizing for having to ask the ‘awkward’ questions.

Kennedy adopted the by now standard response of blaming the Government, Gardai, courts, government departments, society and, just in case she missed anybody, the entire population of the country.

She then quickly tried to change the subject by expressing her concern for the totally inadequate child care system of today before she was stopped with another gentle question.

Personally, I don’t believe Kennedy. I think she knew what was going on but didn’t have the courage to challenge or betray her beloved church.

Her claim that ‘she was there but didn’t have anything to do with the children’ rings hollow especially when we witness priests, nuns and Catholic apologists in general constantly telling us that everybody knew what was going on and therefore all are to blame.

RTEs Joe Duffy, however, would not agree with my views. Writing in the Mail on Sunday Joe tells us that when he was down on his luck in 1980 (when the abuse was going on) Sr. Stanislaus ‘saved his bacon’ by giving him a job.

He infers from this act of kindness that Kennedy must be innocent of all allegations.

Jackson first to break Ahern's blasphemy law?

I see in last Sunday’s Irish Mail on Sunday a picture of the Last Supper with a difference in Michael Jackson’s bedroom.

Jackson takes the place of Jesus and Abraham Lincoln and Elvis are among his ‘apostles’.

Lucky for Jackson that he passed on before Dermot Ahern got to know about this outrageous blasphemy otherwise there would be a squad of Gardai on their way to break down Jackson’s door and arrest the miscreant

Corruption, accountability and political ignorance

An article in yesterday’s Irish Times by Peter Murtagh relates the story of Seán, a man who, in normal circumstances, wouldn’t say boo to a goose but was now gripped by naked rage because of his financial loss as a result of the banking collapse.

Seán, who voted Fianna Fail all his life, had some colourful language for Fianna Fail, Bertie Ahern and Anglo Irish Bank.

According to Murtagh the principal reason for Seán’s anger was the lack of accountability for the banking fiasco.

This is a misinterpretation of Seán’s anger. Seán is not the slightest bit interested in accountability, his anger stems entirely from the fact that he personally lost money.

If his money hadn’t been invested in Anglo Irish Bank, if it was still secure in some other scheme he wouldn’t have featured in Peter Murtagh’s article.

In other words, he would still be, as Murtagh describes him – a nice quiet man, a gentleman. He would still vote Fianna Fail at the next election as he has done all his life and the financial devastation inflicted on Ireland and its people would only be of passing interest to him as he looked forward to his retirement.

If Seán was genuinely interested in accountability, rather than his own selfish interests, he would not have blindly and consistently voted for the most corrupt political party in the history of the state.

It was only when the disease of corruption infected him personally that he suddenly realized that somebody should be made accountable.

It is this extremely narrow outlook that lies at the root of most of Ireland’s problems. People like Seán do not vote in the national interest, they vote strictly for their own interests and it is this political ignorance that creates the perfect environment for corrupt politicians to buy votes in order to obtain power.

At the end of the article Murtagh suggests that perhaps things are changing.

Maybe the anger of all the Seáns out there will translate into our “betters” being held to account by the Garda, the DPP and the corporate enforcer.

Like Seán, Murtagh is living in a very narrow world completely unaware of the reality of what Ireland has become.

Every single action by the Government and State authorities since the economy collapsed and exposed Ireland as a corrupt state has been to protect and maintain that corrupt system while at the same time trying to convince the international community that we are a normal democratic country.

The Garda, DPP, Corporate Enforcer, and all other so called regulatory agencies are a major part of the problem and the problem will not be resolved until all of these agencies are radically reformed or replaced altogether.

But nothing, absolutely nothing will change until the present corrupt political system is completely destroyed and replaced with a genuine, accountable, democratic system.

That’s how radical we need to be and quoting meaningless sentiments from a Bob Dylan song, as Murtagh does, will certainly make no difference to the forces of corruption that have infested every level of Irish society.

Copy to:
Peter Murtagh

Catholics throwing stones in a glasshouse

The evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has helped to establish a summer camp for children in Britain where they will be taught rational skepticism and receive lessons in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology.

Seems like a reasonable idea for those who wish to challenge the all pervading indoctrination of children by the main religions.

Catholic apologist, Mary Kenny, however, is scathing of the idea. Writing in the current issue of The Irish Catholic Kenny compares the camp to Hitler Youth and Soviet Youth camps where, among other things, children were taught to report their parents for anti state tendencies.

Meanwhile, in the same issue of The Irish Catholic there’s a two page spread outlining plans for a year of evangelisation in the Dublin Archdiocese.

This will be a major effort to convert new recruits to Catholicism and convince those who have fell by the wayside to return to the fold.

Evangelisation, of course, has a dark history. Christian missionaries spread like a cancer all over the world in past centuries ruthlessly converting ‘the heathen’ to the ‘one true religion’.

The peoples of South America, in particular, were the victims of a brutal regime similar to the Nazi and Soviet slave labour/genocide programmes.

No doubt Mary Kenny would claim it was all necessary to save their pagan souls.

Catholic belief (in anything)

Uri Geller, who not only bends spoons by thought processes, but is an effective mind-reader.

This is a quote from an article written by Catholic apologist Mary Kenny in today’s Irish Independent.

It seems Ms. Kenny actually believes that Geller can bend spoons by thought and read other people’s minds.

Understandable I guess when we consider that she also believes in demons and angels, miracles and people rising from the dead.