Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
Letter in last Tuesday’s Irish Independent.
ONCE again we have an apologist for the Catholic Church making the nauseating equation between the ongoing child abuse outrages in the Catholic Church with the tiny number of clergy who have suffered through false allegations. Mary Kenny’s article (Irish Independent, January 5) puts her morally in the same place as Bishop Magee.
ANTHONY SHERIDAN
The holocaust of child abuse continues in the Catholic Church. A publication by the National Board for Safeguarding Children strongly censured Bishop of Cloyne, John McGee, for “potentially exposing vulnerable children to further harm.”
Even the usually mild mannered and conservative Marian Fincuane (Saturday) was angry.
“I was listening to the Bishop on the six o’clock news where he said ‘we’re in learning mode’ – learning mode??
And I just think we should remind ourselves that Ivor Paine was first sent for treatment in 1981, the Brendan Smyth event happened in 1994, we had the revelation about the £30,000 which was paid to Andrew Madden and then we had Archbishop Connell coming out in May 1995.
Then we had Ferns, then, fortunately we had Archbishop Martin who said we’re going to get our act together here, we’re going to cooperate in every possible way with the State, we are going to be open and transparent.
But down in Cloyne they’re still in ‘learning mode’ and this is about the protection of children who can have their lives destroyed by these kinds of events happening. So, I think now that below in Cloyne it would be very useful if you got into a slightly faster learning mode.”
Matthew Ring, a priest who nine years ago courageously left the Diocese of Cloyne in disgust at how sex allegations were being dealt with by McGee, was even more to the point.
“If John McGee as bishop of Cloyne was resident in England he would be questioned by the police and all his documents would be removed from his house and there would be a thorough investigation into what went on. I think in terms of Ireland the bishops feel they’re above the law and above accountability and that’s the fundamental problem in Ireland. Until such time as a bishop is held before the courts of the land in Ireland there will be no transparency and no accountability.”
We at Public Inquiry would add to the list of those who are above the law in Ireland – Politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, solicitors, policemen – the list goes on.
The Catholic Church always puts its own interests before the vulnerable it claims to protect. This is unlikely to change given that it is now led by a man who fatefully served Hitler’s Nazi party until the very last days of the war.
The HSE, another agency that often operates outside the law, refused to give a date for the release of another report it possess concerning child abuse. No doubt it is waiting for the most opportune moment to slip it out quietly while the media is otherwise engaged.
Letter’s in today’s Irish Times.
Madam,
Judge Mary Fahy deserves great praise for her liberal and perfectly logical judgment regarding what she called the “ludicrous and ridiculous” prosecutions brought by Galway gardaí against nine restaurants for serving wine on Good Friday ( The Irish Times , September 10th).
This religiously inspired medieval law should be scrapped forthwith.
Yours, etc,
ANTHONY SHERIDAN
Madam,
The comments of Judge Mary Fahy, criticising laws banning the sale of alcohol on Good Friday, are astounding. Even more amazing is that the judge refused to apply the law and record convictions against people who had demonstrably broken it.
Since when is it the responsibility of judges of the District Court to criticise and refuse to implement acts of the Oireachtas? Are we to live in a state where judges pick and choose the laws which, in their opinion, are worth applying? – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL KELLY
Picture the scene:
A large group of policemen are sitting around the station with nothing to do. Organised crime has been terminated; carnage on the roads has been brought to a halt; even white collar crime has, at last, been tackled and the jails are full.
What are we to do pleads a desperately enthusiastic rookie. The experienced Sgt. has the answer. C’mon me boyos, it’s Good Friday – Let’s raid the restaurants.
And so, the greatest insult to the Great One in his heavenly abode is finally redressed, the greatest danger facing the civilised world is narrowly averted by our boys in blue as they bravely tackle those evil, meat eating, wine drinking demons
The world, nay, the universe is at peace – God bless Ireland.
Every once in a while the Catholic Church comes out of hiding especially when it thinks it’s on a winner. The defeat of the Lisbon Treaty referendum is one such instance. For some time now the church has been whining about the downgrading of the Christian god by the EU. The Irish wing of the church is now suggesting that the referendum was rejected because good Irish Catholic’s are worried about this development.
I disagree, it’s more likely the referendum was rejected because people simply don’t trust either EU or domestic politician; neither do they like being treated as fools.
Cardinal Brady was preaching on the subject recently at the Humber School and Emer O’Kelly, as always, was quick to respond. Her article is worth reproducing in full.
Secularists have a right to maintain their ethos
Cardinal Brady is demanding the right to control the way of life of every citizen of Europe, says Emer O’Kelly
Sunday August 31 2008
SO CARDINAL Sean Brady still expects us to believe that the Catholic Church has no desire to interfere in the political process. The Church’s often-repeated mantra to that effect is about as objective and accurate as the mendacious and misleading statement that secularism is hostile to religion.
It can be argued that secularism and relativism, the Cardinal told the Humbert School last Sunday, “enjoy an uncritical acceptance which would never be accorded religious faith”.
First, the Cardinal is wrong about hostility. The only hostility in the relationship between religion and secularism is religion’s hostility to the demand for rational proof that is the basis of atheism. Religion is also hostile to liberal humanism, because its own doctrinaire authoritarianism won’t accept that people can be trusted to live by the tenets of their religion unless the civil code imposes them by law. The Cardinal spoke of “shared humanism”: that does not mean one religion imposing its beliefs on those unwilling to accept them.
Far from being hostile to religion, secularists are supremely indifferent to it. Their objection is to religious-based doctrines, laws, and customs being forced on the entire community in order to appease strident religious authorities who do not trust their adherents to live within the code of the faithful unless it is enforced by civil law.
Secularists have no objection to every Roman Catholic in Ireland, for example, spending each Sunday sprinkling broken glass on the sides of Croagh Patrick and then climbing the mountain on their knees.
Secularists have no objection to Roman Catholics burning condoms and packets of contraceptive pills in a merry bonfire to defend the Church’s loathing of artificial contraception and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. They just don’t want to subject themselves to the danger of STDs or to people the earth with unwanted children.Secularists have no objection to Roman Catholic homosexuals living celibate lives, their natural instincts held in abeyance by prayer and fasting according to the Church’s teaching. But they object strongly to laws being passed by their parliaments which force secular gay men and women to live by those teachings.
Second, the Cardinal was impertinent to Irish and other European citizens when he asked if the debate in the European Union was fair or representative of the views and convictions of the majority of the people here in Ireland. And he blamed the media for being dominated by a secular view hostile to or disposed to relegate the value of religion.
Secularists never deny the value of religion to those who believe in it; they merely do not want its teachings to dominate their own lives. And the Cardinal is in dangerous territory because he implies that only religious values can ensure an ethical society. In this, of course, he is at one with President George W Bush, who is on record as saying that atheists are “not citizens”, because to be a citizen you have be at one with god.
“Is it possible,” the Cardinal asked, “to agree that there are objective values for which we should have serious regard because of their implications for the good of society?”
Objective by whose standards, in what era?Half a century ago, the objective values for which the Irish hierarchy had serious regard included obstructing a health service designed to protect the lives of mothers and their children: communism by another name, the Church howled. And the poor and their babies died in droves. Objectivity can be a very subjective matter.
“Successive decisions (in Europe) which have undermined the family based on marriage, the right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, the sacredness of the Sabbath, the right of Christian institutions to maintain and promote their ethos, including schools, these and other decisions have made it more difficult for committed Christians to maintain their instinctive commitment to the European project,” Cardinal Brady said.
That doesn’t sound like a man and an organisation that does not wish to control a legislature, national or international. Cardinal Brady is comprehensively demanding the right to control the way of life of every citizen in every European country, whether Christian or not, much less Roman Catholic.
It does not seem to have occurred to the Cardinal before he made his sweepingly arrogant demand that those of no religion also have a right to maintain their ethos.
But there are no secular State schools in Ireland, not one, and Dr Brady and his cohorts are determined to keep it that way. And the Church (despite what some people believe) is so dominant that it has managed to brainwash the public (even some secularists) into believing that a multi-denominational or inter-denominational school is a secular school and should be quite acceptable to those who wish their children to be raised with a secular humanist ethos.
Without respect for “Christian memory and soul”, the Cardinal claimed, difficulties will emerge not only in economic terms but in terms of social cohesion and the continued growth of a “dangerous individualism” that does not care about God … with continuing difficulties for the European project. So much for “instinctive commitment” to the project, which was another of his phrases.
Instinct is vague, just like religious faith: an irrational comfort zone. The European project, as Dr Brady calls it, is a very defined political entity, and it is based on political reality, not on instinct. It’s not a woolly feelgood factor which can be abandoned if the going becomes intellectually or politically rigorous. It involves a defined common core of political values in which all citizens can share, not just those of a given faith, or all religious faiths.
The kind of “instinctive commitment” the Cardinal seems to be talking about is a blithe membership club where each member can make their own rules, the devil (if you’ll forgive the phrase) taking the hindmost. Except clubs don’t work that way; certainly the Roman Catholic Church club does not. You’re in and you keep the rules, or you get out. The Cardinal should understand that.
You can’t keep only the rules that suit you.It was what Wolfe Tone meant when he spoke of Republicanism: it could unite Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter, he said. He didn’t mean that it would incorporate all of their beliefs; what it would do was separate itself entirely from religious belief, so that clashing doctrines of transubstantiation, Eucharist, biblical interpretations and the other elements of Christianity which had given people the excuse to murder each other for generations in the name of various denominational gods, could move forward in political brotherhood.
And they could still go to church, chapel, or meeting house on Sunday, each in their own way.
Two hundred-odd years later, nothing has changed. Nobody is asking the Cardinal’s flock, or the Archbishop of Canterbury’s flock, or anybody else’s flock, to deny their beliefs or abandon a way of life which reflects them.They are just asked to respect the beliefs of others, and accept the existence of an ethical code which may not include Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus Christ.
Secularists, even atheistic secularists, are not the anti-Christ. Most of them live their lives as well or as badly as fervent Christians. They pay their taxes, they don’t kill other people, and they don’t molest children. They probably don’t even spit on the street, much less on each other. They keep the law and behave decently because they believe that humanity is the highest form of life. And they object very strongly to being told that they are slavering monsters of depravity because they don’t believe in a supernatural being.
I wrote recently about how disturbing it was to see Obama and McCain prostrate themselves before a religious fanatic as part of their campaigns to get elected to the most powerful office in the world.
One of our own home grown religious fanatics, David Quinn, takes the complete opposite view. Here’s what he wrote in this week’s Irish Catholic.
The Power of Rick Warren
“What power. Rick Warren is founder of one of the biggest evangelical churches in America, and author of the mega best-seller The Purpose-Driven Life.
Last weekend, both John McCain and Barack Obama were separately interviewed for one hour each by Pastor Warren about every kind of issue, both private and public.
In a million years I cannot imagine any politician here agreeing to spend an hour of his time answering questions put to him by a priest or pastor.
And we pretend to respect religion.”
No comment needed.
I see the Holy Cross ‘priest hero’, Father Aidan Troy, is being moved to a new position in Paris.
I’ve always had a problem with the events at Holy Cross where parents, with the active support of Fr. Troy, used their children as pawns in a religious war.
I remember seeing those terrified children forced by their Catholic parents to run a daily gauntlet through a Protestant tribal area.
Whatever about adults engaging in a primitive religious war, there is no justification whatsoever for abusing children in this manner.
I found it disturbing and even a little frightening to see two men who are campaigning to hold the most powerful job in the world prostrate themselves in front of the religious fanatic, Rick Warren, to be interrogated about their religious beliefs.
I know Obama and McCain have no choice given how important the religious vote is in American elections. Nevertheless, it is depressing.
See here for a lecture by Warren on his book; The Purpose-Driven Life.
See here for a brilliant critique of Warren’s book by the philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett.
There was a curious editorial in the Irish Examiner last Saturday warning readers not to ‘deride and sneer’ at the putting on public display the body of Padre Pio.
The writer claims that the faithful, by visiting the body, are making a statement about their belief, that they ‘still believe in a faith challenged by scandal and undermined by the mores of the day’.
This, in my opinion, is a weak argument for justifying what is a bizarre and exploitative act. Let’s analyse the motives of those involved.
The pilgrims:
The hundreds of thousands of people who visit the body do so principally for two reasons. Firstly, they have a strong faith and wish to express that faith by paying homage to what is now considered to be one the superstars of the Catholic Church.
Secondly, they are motivated by self interest. Most of them are hopeful that by looking at or touching something connected to the body they will be cured of a medical condition or have some other problem in their lives resolved.
Antonio Zimbaldi (19) whose entire body was burned in a fire is a good example: “He knows what I want from him.” he said.
The Catholic Church:
The Catholic Church teaches that the body is merely a container for the soul and that after death it is just an empty husk. Centuries ago, however, the church realised that most people were superstitious and successfully set out to exploit this natural human tendency.
Let’s be blunt about this; the digging up and putting on display of this dead body is all about money.
Over the years countless millions will be extracted from desperate people who have been fooled into thinking that the Catholic Church can, through the agency of a rotting corpse, defy the scientific laws of nature and provide them with a miraculous cure.
The desperate unfortunates who are exploited by this scam should not be derided or sneered at but the Catholic Church as an organisation certainly should be.
When I read Christine Buckley’s letter in the Irish Times on Friday 11th April I was a bit taken aback. Ms Buckley was fulsome in her praise of Bertie Ahern for his apology to survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland.
I remember being very angry when Ahern made that apology. I felt he made the gesture, not because of the suffering of the abused but because it was politically expedient to do so and also formed part of a strategy to save his beloved Catholic Church from further damage.
The subsequent Redress Board set up by Ahern’s government is, in my opinion, a bullying monster that operates under Soviet style regulations and secrecy.
I didn’t respond to Ms. Buckley’s letter partly because she herself is a victim of the Catholic Church holocaust of abuse so I was happy when another victim did write in response.
Both letters are reproduced here.
Madam,
In recent days the pivotal role of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in changing Irish life for the better in vital areas such as the peace process and the economy has been rightly recognised. However, there is another and no less significant act for which the Taoiseach shall be forever appreciated and admired by those to whom it meant so much.
In 1999, Bertie Ahern gave an unreserved apology to the survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland. In doing so lifted the veil of secrecy, stigma and injustice which had dogged our lives and impeded our futures. His apology touched our hearts profoundly, because it was clear that he had listened to survivors with a depth of commitment unequalled by any other politician, apart from the then minister of education, Micheál Martin.
This became evident in the swiftness with which he followed up his words with actions that supported the healing process for all of us who had endured the regimes of the various institutions that had destroyed our childhoods.
Despite all his recent troubles, Bertie Ahern will always hold a special place in the hearts of abuse survivors for his compassion and courage in standing with us, his efforts to bring about redress, the respect he gave us all as individuals and organisations. On behalf of all survivors, I thank him.
Yours, etc,
CHRISTINE BUCKLEY, Aislinn Centre, Jervis Street, Dublin 1.
Madam,
Christine Buckley (April 11th) lavishes praise on Bertie Ahern for his management of the economy, for his role in the Northern peace process and his apology to those of us who were institutionalised and abused by various organisations of the State and by members of religious orders, all in the name of childcare.
Ms Buckley seems to forget that the apology given by Bertie Ahern was not something he gave willingly. It was brought about by the revulsion of people who watched the States of Fear programmes on RTÉ.
His apology came about just before the screening of the third programme in the series, when the government and the religious orders were being shown to have covered up the most horrendous abuse of innocent children.
As Taoiseach, Mr Ahern and various members of his Government were aware before the screening of States of Fear that institutional abuse of children in the care of the State was widespread.
My own book, The God Squad, highlighted this issue 20 years ago, yet not one single member of any government or religious order ever apologised to me, or indeed to the many thousands of children who were served with “Orders of Detention”, rendering them criminals.
Perhaps before he leaves office and fades into the background of Irish politics, the Taoiseach will rescind those orders of detention served on children as young as one year and who today are in effect branded as criminals under the 1908-1941 Children’s Act.
According to Ms Buckley, Mr. Ahern’s apology “lifted the veil of secrecy, stigma and injustice which had dogged our lives and impeded our futures. His apology touched our hearts profoundly, because it was clear that he had listened to survivors with a depth of commitment unequalled by any other politician, apart from the then minister of education, Micheál Martin”.
Mr Ahern’s apology did not touch my heart. It didn’t touch the hearts of many thousands of people who were abused while in the care of the State. The “veil of secrecy” to which Ms Buckley refers was lifted long before Mr Ahern uttered a word of apology. There is no evidence I know of that Mr Ahern listened to survivors? I hold the view that, were it not for the sterling work of journalists such as Bruce Arnold and Mary Raftery, no apology would ever have been forthcoming from Mr Ahern.
I can only surmise that the “swiftness with which he followed up his words with actions that supported the healing process for all of us” is a reference to the Redress Board, set up to “compensate” people who had been detained in industrial schools around the country and treated brutally in every sense of the word.
As one who appeared before the Redress Board, I’d like to elaborate on its secret proceedings; but to do so would see me being fined €2,000 in the first instance. Were I or anyone else who appeared before the board to speak about what went on behind its closed doors a second time, we would face a fine of €25,000 and/or two years in prison.
Surely Ms Buckley can’t regard what I view as a perversion of natural justice as being in any way a “healing process for all of us”.
Yours, etc,
PADDY DOYLE, Ardagh, Co Longford.