The problem with Ireland is that there are so many good reasons why one should –and must — remain anonymous in a totalitarian society… The unfortunate consequences of such understanding,however, is that it is doomed to to remain in the clutches of liars, cheats, treacherous Romans and their endless legions of liege lackies everywhere, especially from UCD (and now Trinity) to the Law Library and the Civil Service. At least Michael MacDowell know this, for whenever anything had to be enquired into , the enquirers invariably came from UCD and/or the Law Libary. The practice mirrored exactly what the Jesuits (qua Sociologists) did over the last 50 years. There wasn’t one enqury but one of these ’sociologists’ dominated its proceedings, the people who manned them , and came up with the most massively boring reports.

On the question of clerical pedophelia alone, there had been no less than two penal enquiries, both managed by Jesuit/’Sociologists’ and both having absolutely nothing to say about buggery in the Reformatory or Industrial Schools — even when, later, thanks to the persistence of English journalists and Bruce Arnold in particular, a report had been buried in the Archdiocese for years. We are led to believe that no Minister, including Mr Woods ,the generous Minister for Education, never knew anything about it. And what of Ken Whitaker, the civil servant who after fifteen years, read Keynes and actually convinced the Irish clergy that making wealth by way of a most pedestrial economic plan is not ‘materialism’ gone mad. The Irish Church, snug behind its granite walls, convinced the Irish world that it should remain in the same state of ignorant paralysis as it was in the middle ages…

Why would a serious mind bother himself with such people? Does it not, indeed, prove the unassailable proposition that the Irish mind , when it isn’t mediocre , is invariably medieval. Wasn’ t it for these reasons that our best minds, James Joyce and Dermot Morgan, were chased out of the country, while Dave Allen had the good sense just to leave.

Quite recently the periodical hatred for Cromwell flaired up in the press, the true remnants of catholic propaganda against the hated English whom the Papacy first invited to occupy Ireland. What no Irish person dares to ask is how they imagine Parliamentary Democracy was invented, if not through the strength and courage of Cromwell. Do Irish people imagine that the RC Church would ever allow democracy within their own ranks or worse, social mobility between the laity and the ones with the sacred fingers? What could anyone do with the Irish. Cromwell had to take out his king and chop his head off: the Irish could’nt produce a monarch,and when they had one in Parnell, the same rabble from Rome that sold them into slavery, destroyed Parnell. Why? Because he loved a woman, a real , live, mature, sensuous, baby-producing woman…. The celibates wouldn’t alow the Irish to have a King — and not for the first time; so, they reigned in their superstitious rabble against Parnell. It was Joyce who kept that struggle alive — otherwise it would go the way of all things Irish, into the endless pit of an unexamined past.

The point of the argument, I thought was the condition of Irish poltical life. So, I shall repeat what I have said elsewhere on the simple suppostion that whoever seriously wishes to discover these things may do so for themselves: The Irish Republic, apart from words on a piece of paper, has no ‘Separation of Powers’; it is owned and run thoroughly by the RCC, who know no ’separation of power’ within its own ranks or within its Church/State grasp at the heart and throat of the Republic.

No matter what aspect of Irish life one enquires into, one finds the same dead end in the repetitive assertion of the superstitious values enshrined in Titus Vespasian Caesar’s Vicar’s New Testament. Apart from the appropriation of Irish wealth, Irish fertility and the management of the IRISH mind universally , this whole tissue of superstitions is an utter lie and has consequences detrimental to the nation’s well-being. Even now that scholarship has shown these things to be true, the Church/State ensemble is everywhere connived at by secret societies, religous and lay, and are perfectly patrolled through the universities, the Law Library and the Political Parties. It isn’t a question of Fianna Fail being a thoroughly Opus Dei driving party, but that all other parties have no greater ambition than to take their place. As a matter of interest, one might have hoped for serious politicoes to have asked the serious quesion: How did De Valera get on the inside track, when Cumann na nGaedheal had done such stalwart service for the Chruch in the first ten years of the Saorstat. No one has bothered to look at the Eurcharistic Congress, the 1937 Constitution , the sale of Irish children to the US in the 50s, the gradual ownership of the schools or the ratlining of the Nazies in this respect. What did De Valera promise the Holy Romans to get their party in power for such a long period. When we think of Michael Woods ,we know why they are kept in power, but how did they make the initial impression?

If there is no real Separation of Powers, merely a sop to good Protestant Government, how can they be a genuine judiciary, civil service or universities. A casual scan will see that all these institutions connive at advising the Bishops against being caught for buggaries or for financial transactions also, and that they perpetuate themselves on standards that have nothing whatsoever to do with academic know-how. One can labour in the charitable field (the Church/State has so many vineyards to work in) — one of those awful charities ad nauseum — rake in the money, leave the civil service, advise the Church how not to be caught, and step up to a High Court bench without the slightest qualms of conscience. One can move from one part of government to any other without as much as planting a ad in the paper…The little Republic loves the sound of big words like ‘The Separation of Powers’, but guided by its Roman Alter Ego it can ignore them totally.

The question hanging over the Irish is much more fundamental than where some lecherous Opus Dei or Jesuits types are hiding being every Minister’s wardrobe. The proclivity of the Irish is to produce squalor and put nice names on it, and that this , in my opinion, is its historical nature as informed and organised by the Church/State ensemble.

Seamus Breathnach

http://www.irish-criminology.com

Still is…

Just caught the end of Prime Time’s look at University funding, and, frankly, Hugh Brady’s obsession with league tables, and marketing is a much bigger threat to the quality of education you’re liable to get there (and elsewhere in the sector) than the shadow of the Crozier.
Another area where the a ‘neo- liberal’ case (to quote Kieran Allen in the programme) is given a free run in the media, whereas arguments about inclusion and the quality of undergrad. teaching (and fair treatment of post-grad tutors and demonstrators) are given short shrift.

Seriously, though, while one really shouldn’t engage with someone like Seamus Breathnach, as there are obvious certain personal issues being worked though, in relation to the question of the social sciences in UCD, if you look at some of those who are prominent in the university at present – Kathleen Lynch, Ger Moane, John Baker, Kieran Allen, Ailbhe Smyth – they’re not really the kind of people you might expect to find muttering to themselves when the bell goes ‘ding’ at 12 and 6. But Seamus’ argument doesn’t tend to rely on facts of evidence so much, so he’ll probably think this is an irrelevance.

However, on sonofstan’s point about the driving ideology behind the UCD philosophy department, it’s certainly the case that there was (and, to a lesser extent, still is) a strong RCC element, with the proportion of academics who are in religious orders being significantly higher than in most other departments. It would certainly be quite noticeable in terms of the department’s approach of moral philosophy, for example, but as WbS correctly points out, it is something primarily confined to that Department.

On a personal point, though, I recall Ger Casey’s lectures in philosophy when I was a student there in the early to mid nineties (during the period where Richard Kearney – hardly someone who bowed his knee to the Pope of Rome – was the head of the department). Casey lectured me on logic in first year, while in final year he taught analytical philosophy (late Wittgenstein, if I recall correctly; it’s quite a while ago now). Seamus is unlikely to be aware, but that’s pretty much as close to ’secular philosophy’ as you’re likely to get. He also gave a course in Chinese philosophy, but I wasn’t very good at it and didn’t do very well in the exams. I never once heard him proselytise or make any comment with any bearing on his activities outside the day job.

He was completely nuts, though.

As for the rest, you are absolutely entitled to your opinions and it’s great you have a site to promote them. If you took five minutes to read this site you’d see that it has been harshly critical of Catholic social policy and the cheerleaders of same in the media. But measured in that criticism. Measured.

If you serious think that the argument will devolve to one based in Biblical contexts then I think that says more about your thoughts and expectations than mine.

Finally, I use a handle much like many other people on the internet, and I note most who visit here, for my own reasons and I see no compelling argument to discard it for your reasons. Particularly in light of comments that I know from personal experience to be at best overblown.

And when those of us who are fighting actually to try and make a secular space in the same society that Joyce fled, we get the argument that there is a ‘left-wing faction’ operative — Where? Inside the Catholic Church. Such self-delusion is impossible to find anywhere in the world, even in East Timor.

I think it imperative that people who pretend strong passions or political convictions, show their faces and drop the Opus Dei cover. We are, after all, a Republic governed by the absolute right,so why, when arguing for the further right — why not give your name.

Anyone who has listened to Ger Casey (or Patricia) knows precisely where the Caseys stand. The real search is for someone who has somethinng to say that has not been biblically forged out of the middle ages.Not too long ago, all the sociology departments were manned by Jesuits calling themselves Sociologists…. Where else in the world would you get such mediocrity except in places llike Rwanda. Where else could you find a ‘modern State’ where the crystal ball of christianity prevents any social science from surfacing? Where else are all the weak sides of the economy, the poor, the weak, the old, the educational system — all the things that the secular social scientists should be manning and progressively criticising — where else are all these activities hived off by the Church, which uses them constantly to milk further funds from the State? Where else ratline Nazies and the populace haven’t a clue about it and lack any indignation after? Where ele — who else would pay to have their children buggered by clerics? Where else in the world does one get a national tv station that cannot stop pushing Christian imperialism? Where else do you find so many beggars on the streets — all of them , well-got males and females, for charities that are not even registered and never analysed?

The quality of the argument on this page, by the anonymous ones, is developing into that patronising nonsense that people imagine is ‘Irish charm’. At any moment now we will get ‘Jesus said….” or ‘The Bible says..’.. Given the mediaeval goodies that ‘we’ have to offer, is it any wonder that Irish youth is so ready to top itself.

Consider this, as people fight for their medical cards.

The entire Irish government, its entire legal, parliamentary and governmental, machinary was mustered by our ‘Taoiseach’, Brien Cowan, in order to pay MR MICHAEL WOODS a pensionable extra sum in the amount of 75,000 euros… Imagine that! Wouldn’t that make you want to kill yourself!

Seamus Breathnach

www. irish-criminology.com

Well, yes and no.
Of course he has every right to his beliefs, and no, he doesn’t proselytise (much). Thing is, he joined the dept. at a time when it was still largely staffed and run by clerics and when it was quite explicitly thought of itself as a ‘Catholic’ philosophy dept. and thus, it might be argued, he may owe his career to the congruence between his views (and research interests) and those of his then superiors. And of course a philosophy lecturer has as much right to be a member of OD as a sociology lecturer has to belong to the SWP – but the suspicion that certain areas of research might be supported and certain other areas, let us say, not so supported, thanks to the influence of key members of the dept. can be invidious. And I wasn’t suggesting that UCD was a bastion of Caholicism – I was suggesting that a one dept. once was (well within the span of an academic career), and that the influence lingers a little bit more than you might expect. Nothing more.
Remember you said ‘I can’t say I saw any particular catholicism in either place’ – I was answering that with a particular example…..

Could it be that there isn’t a specific linkage between religion and the development or not of the left?

I probably agree with this – of the factors you go on to list though, all are common to Spain and Portugal (and Italy) as well as Ireland exceptthe precedence of the national over the class struggle.