What’s past is present… Part 4… the central question and why the Catholic right keeps evading it. May 24, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Social Policy.trackback
For me personally, I have to be honest, this is in some respects difficult beyond the obvious reasons for finding the Ryan report a crushing indictment of this society. Over the years I’ve known, and continue to know, quite a few religious (not all of them RCC either). To see this report come out, to see that it wasn’t appalling but isolated cases but instead was a pattern of abuse across many if not indeed most institutions calls into question the nature of the organisation at its centre. Actually it does more than that. It call into question the nature of the organisation as a totality. This isn’t a case of a ‘few bad apples’ but of a systemic and near endemic problem with the complicity and collusion of Church authorities.
I don’t wish to belabour this, but one thing that struck me over the weekend thinking back about the Ryan report and the response from those on the Catholic (and other) right has been a curious void at the centre of the reactions. The various commentators all exercise their particular hobby horses in a bid to shift responsibility from the Church to whatever they wish to excoriate.
For John Waters the issue is of such seeming small interest or concern to him that in the course of just under 900 words he devotes half of one sentence to this… it is the State that is centrally responsible in his view. Again. I don’t dismiss or deny the responsibility of the State, but his analysis implicitly weighs a greater responsibility on the state than those who were directly carried out these crimes. An odd thesis from one who is quick to place ‘blame’ in other contexts. What is also striking is that were John Waters honest in his appraisal he would be directing his fire at the Catholic Church. But his bait and switch is essentially that of an apologia.
Of course Waters is only emulating the argument used by Bruce Arnold for which you can see here…
For a long time, the Church was blamed for the sufferings of children in Irish industrial schools. The Irish State wanted it this way. This is because the State was culpable. Its exercise of control, through the Department of Education, was negligent to a criminal degree. It has not been made answerable.
Yet this goes no way to answering the central charge that the Church was the entity whose institutions and members carried out this abuse.
Breda O’Brien is somewhat more discursive, but again, for her the issue of religious culpability is swiftly passed over to arrive at a sort of hazy ‘everyone is responsible’ approach. Does she quite understand how power operates in semi-authoritarian societies? Has she no sense of our history?
The same charge can be made against Eoghan Harris, who as Wednesday noted, this week in the Seanad was opining on the fault of Irish Republicanism in all this. There are basic problems to that thesis, and yet again one wonders has he read the report? Firstly these institutions were established under the British administration. They pre-existed an independent Irish polity by decades. That the Irish state did not see fit to rework this is a disgrace of, as we know, massive proportions. But before we don rose tinted glasses let’s be clear that the situation pre-Independence was far from optimal. Harris’s thoughts are worth recounting, not least because as Wednesday has also noted Joan Burton has complimented him on them.
Senator Eoghan Harris: Under British rule, these abuses were not practised in Roman Catholic institutions and Protestants did not practise them. The responsibility belongs to the Republic as a whole. I will not rehearse any political indignation but I challenge the assumption that this cover-up is new.
Daniel Corkery said Irish identity was made up of land, religion and nationality. These three factors operated in this abuse. Most of the Irish Christian Brothers I knew came from rural Ireland. They came from the tradition of the cover-up of the Great Famine. The fact that strong farmers survived the Famine and spailpíns died was covered up. In west Cork they talk about the descendants of Famine victims. The victims of the Famine are all dead and the descendants are in graves. The victims of the Famine in the Skibbereen area were all people who looked after their turnips. The complicity of the Famine has been covered up. A few landlords cannot grow, transport and export grain. The rural bourgeoisie was involved in the Famine.
There was a cover-up of the brutality of the War of Independence and the Civil War. We covered up pogroms against Protestants. We are very good at covering up things which touch on the national question. I have no doubt that every brother and priest involved was a devout nationalist. Indeed, that was part and parcel of the thing. The relationship with the Republic, its professional classes and the republican ethic concerns me. Ministers for Education, politicians, barristers, lawyers, doctors and the entire Irish professional middle class, who all professed republicanism and all wanted a united Ireland, turned a blind eye. It is ironic that if we had never left the British Empire and if the Treaty had never been signed, whatever else we might have suffered, these innocent victims would never have suffered. Our promise to cherish the children of the nation equally turned out to be an empty one.
I say these things as a warning. There is a deep brutality in Irish nationalism. It came up most recently in the Provos punishment beatings of children in Belfast ghettos. The problem is not simply in the Roman Catholic Church. It is in the republican ethic itself.
Of course the reality is that, just like the broader society, the Church was split by the national question and arguably split with greater weight towards the Free State side eventually. Now, as to every brother and priest being a nationalist (which Redmond was as well) perhaps he considers the history of this island to be irrelevant, particularly in the implementation of laws that proscribed Catholicism. As for the professed Republicanism of our elite classes, I find that hard to believe.
But if we examine the Ryan Report we’ll see that the structures were well in place long before Republicanism was even close to state power in the South.
Religious ownership and management
Each type of school was to be independently managed and run, though subject to State approval and inspection. Thus, a fundamental feature was private, largely religious philanthropy. It seemed natural that churches should take responsibility for providing assistance to the poor. In Ireland,Catholic emancipation in 1829 made the Church a central institution. It was powerful both at the level of the Hierarchy and, even more so, at grassroots where, in the absence of a trusted
landowner class, the priests who were educated and nationalistic were regarded as community leaders. Apart from religion, the main focus of the Church’s influence lay in education. The burgeoning character of the Catholic Church in the post-Famine period may be illustrated by the simple fact that the number of nuns increased eightfold between 1841 and 1901. There was huge growth in the numbers of priests and Brothers as well as nuns, and the establishment of a comprehensive range of services in the fields of education, health and social services. Moreover, there was even surplus capacity, so that many of the Orders exported personnel and services to America, Canada and Australia.
Indeed one could easily argue that it was the imposition of a model that sought to ensure the religious ownership of schools, which occurred in 1868, that copper-fastened the opportunity for the most pernicious outcomes to occur.
A related issue was the fear of each of the major religions of proselytisation by the other side. On either side, this was not an unreasonable fear: Catholics were moved by the fact that the last relic
of Catholic subservience was not gone until 1829. The ‘established Church’ was Protestant, in particular Anglican, and Protestant institutions were more richly resourced. Thus, a major concern of the Catholic side, which persisted into the twentieth century, was to keep Catholic orphans from being taken into the ‘Birds-nests homes’ run by the Protestant orphan societies. On the other side, the immense potential of the Catholic Church as the church of the great majority of the people was evident. From the perspective of both sides, the schools allowed an opportunity to imbue children with religion and to present a caring image of the Church.10In response to these considerations, the main modification of the English model, contained in the Irish Industrial Schools Act of 1868, concerned safeguards to prevent any change in the religion of a child committed. Catholic and Protestant children had to be committed to separate schools.
The control of the religious was also copperfastened by a provision that State funds could be used only for maintenance and not for capital expenditure to set up State schools; and that funding would be on a capitation basis. This avoided any suspicion of the Government favouring one denomination, which might have existed had payments been based on the institution as an entity.
In addition, this met Catholic resistance to State ownership. From the perspective of the State, the cost would be less, and it was believed that schools conducted by voluntary management would retain an adaptable character, and that their pupils would have better opportunities for employment than those afforded by juvenile houses of correction under official management.
In all that the issue of ‘Republicanism’ seems to be irrelevant, if it were a consideration at all. Economic and cultural issues trumped political at all times. Economic perhaps being the most important one.
And Harris ignores a basic fact that the Republicanism which he excoriates was arguably the version least amenable to the blandishments of the Church having been argued against time and again during the pre-Independence period and indeed afterwards. In fact it’s hard to take seriously the contention that ‘Republicanism’ as a philosophical – or political – construct in the sense he uses the term (which a lot of the time seems to simply be short hand for those he disagrees with and incorporates a spectrum as we see above ranging from the mild Home Rule nationalism of Redmond all the way through to de Valera and on to the Provisional IRA) had any serious part to play in this.
And lest it seem that the pre-Indepence period was idyllic.
Barnes and most other writers give a largely favourable impression of the nineteenth century industrial schools system. On the other hand, John Fagan, who was appointed Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in 1897, criticised virtually all aspects of the system at the end of the nineteenth century, especially the physical conditions in the schools and the overall
condition of the children. He was particularly critical of the poor hygiene and lack of cleanliness in the majority of the schools.O´ Cinneide and Maguire summarise Fagan’s criticisms, and conditions in many of the schools seem to have deteriorated around the turn of the century, in what Barnes termed a spirit of “complacency and a resistance to change”.
Nor are his entreaties that such matters were confined purely to Catholic institutions entirely convincing either.
Senator David Norris: The most chilling and damning words on the front page of The Irish Times this morning are “systematic” and “endemic”. They tell the whole story. This was known to many people in authority. In the Church, responsibility goes right to Rome, where a report detailing the systematic and endemic sexual abuse of children gathered dust for 60 years.
(11 o’clock)I respectfully disagree with Senator Harris, to an extent. The Protestant section of this society is not exempt, except by whitewash. I attended an up-market Protestant boarding school where sadism was rampant and someone very close to me had his life destroyed by this sadism. It is extraordinary that the Protestant churches should be so completely excluded. I feel great compassion for the victims but I also feel compassion for the many decent, good and self-sacrificing members of the clergy who are now tarred with the same brush, in the same way that we as politicians are tarred.
But in all this what is striking is that for Harris, Arnold, O’Brien and Waters each has an excuse, but none of them has an explanation. How did these events happen? Why did they happen? The question as to why they were never dealt with by the Catholic Church is never addressed. It is as if this is simply taken as read, almost as if they share a view that this abuse is like a force of nature.
The reasons why the Church itself refused to admit of these crimes, to the point that it facilitated their commission by relocating known abusers and shielding them from the state, was a matter of perception and power. Quite simply the Church could not, as it saw it, retain its authority if this were to be known. For it to show weakness would undercut its societal dominance. And this was a societal dominance predicated on control of education and health and … in some respects… welfare. Beyond that it was predicated on an implicit, and occasionally explicit, veto on the political system and processes and on the general culture. Pull away any element of that and the whole would crumble. Remember too that the stresses which modified and ameliorated this took place due to external rather than internal influences. Vatican II wasn’t the result of the internal lobbying the Irish Church. The move towards European norms as regards sexual morality – a project still half completed – took place a painful slowness and one can, I think point, in part to economic forces as playing a part in that. And hence the history of the latter part of the 20th century has been littered with successive last stands, contraception, divorce, secularism and so forth. But even then, remember that still, still, our education and health services, such as they are, remain linked to the religious. That these links grow thinner and thinner doesn’t detract from that point.
Again, to reiterate the point I made yesterday, for O’Brien and others to argue that the religious are victims of theological repression is to ignore that they were the theological oppressors.
And there are even darker interpretations of all these matters as well. One might wonder at the sort of networks that existed within the Church during this period and how they distorted matters to their ends. Again, this isn’t beyond historical memory. Many of those involved are still alive. Their deeds unpunished. Their names given an anonymity that beggars belief.
But for Harris, O’Brien, Arnold and Waters to admit to this would be to admit that the central institution is at fault. And that, from their perspective, would be to undermine the entirety of that worldview. So better, by far, to point at anything and anyone to deflect from that inconvenient truth.
And finally on this topic, cutting through the cant and rhetoric a useful spanner was thrown into the cosy Catholic right consensus by Senator Joe O’Toole, who noted that when given an opportunity to actually do something to protect children in the contemporary and near-contemporary era they were found wanting. As he notes:
Senator Joe O’Toole:I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that we discuss the Ryan report today, if at all possible. I listened to the Leader’s reply on it, but I believe this is an urgent issue.
Senator Fitzgerald’s point is crucial. This covers the whole of our community and follows logically from one step to another. The problem two weeks ago with the Ombudsman for Children was that she did not get some information from the HSE. The reason the executive did not give the information was that it was supposed to have come from Cloyne. The reason it did not was that the church authorities would not give all the information and sent their lawyers chasing the HSE. That is what we need to look at.
It is not just the churches, although I shall come back to that. There is the clergy and the churches, the State, politicians, the Judiciary and the media. All of us have questions to answer. We have provided an enormous carpet under which all of this was swept and hidden. We need to look at the common bonds. I want to put on record where I believe an enormous element of the problem lies – I know what my phone is going to do after this – namely, with the pervasive influence of those secret, shady, sinister, right-wing Catholic organisations that have been in the middle of this all my working life.
Senator David Norris: Hear, hear.
Senator Joe O’Toole: can give the House chapter and verse and name the people who stood in the way of the Stay Safe programme, mandatory reporting, sexual education programmes in schools and I could go on. These people did the same here in education in some of the high offices of State and managed to carry the day. They have escaped in the course of these reports and I certainly believe they have much to answer for. There are people in this and the other House who can back up what I am saying.
A former Minister for Education, Deputy Mary O’Rourke, sat in a room with me when we saw them at their worst, having a go at us on the Stay Safe programme, and that is 25 years ago. Inside this House more than 20 years ago we raised issues concerning mandatory reporting after Kilkenny, Mayo, etc. to ensure teachers, social workers and gardaí would have to report, but it never happened. All these things ended up in culs-de-sac when they were reported. The information was to be found in many places and yet it never flowed out of those culs-de-sac. Excuse me if I have a curl in my lip when I think again about all that spurious, specious argumentation being put about by these groups about destroying the innocence of young people at a time when they were being destroyed and wrecked and their lives, not just their childhood, was being taken from them in these institutions.
We have a great deal to answer for. I would like this investigation to go further to see where these influences were brought to bear on the Department of Education and Science, other Departments, Governments, media and on the church to ensure this thing was never dealt with when it should have been.
That small fact, something our commentators ignore entirely, perhaps points up the near total hypocrisy on the part of those who wring their hands and point fingers at everyone other than those directly responsible for the horrors catalogued in the Ryan Report.
Bingo. It’s a measure of the smallness of the man that for Harris, every damned thing in life is seen through the prism of an obscure split in Republicanism from nearly forty years ago (I suspect that this underlies most of our man’s positions, such as on Israel/Palestine).
I suspect that Eoghan Harris’ opinion on the proper way to grow vegetables in your back garden would be based on his finding out what policies the Provos follow, then coming out against them. Or failing that, pushing the line that growing cabbage, parsnips and carrots in a row betrays your Sneaking Regard and Fellow Travelling (and that’s unfortunately not as unlikely a batshit crazy positioning as one might hope).
So, the abuses of the Catholic Church-run school system are the fault of (often anti-clerical, excommunicated or even non-Catholic in religion) Irish Republicans? Who knew! And here was I thinking that the Irish Catholic school system was a reward for the RCC by our British rulers once the Hierarchy had proven their loyalty to London (most obviously in their support for Crown recruiting efforts and the expansion of the British Empire). I guess that Patrick Pearse (whom I believe Mr. Harris has heard of) must have been veering wildly off-message when he referred to the RCC-run Irish educational system as the “Murder Machine”, then.
And perhaps my own grandmother’s recollection was mistaken, when she recalled her own mother (a Gaeltacht girl) having Irish beaten out of her by “the Nuns” pre-Independence, and maybe the same nuns beating Irish into her herself post-1922 (the Catholic Church is nothing if not pragmatic in judging where the power lies). But, maybe she was wrong, and our clever modern-day revisionists are right. And maybe the moon is made of cheese.
So, what of our Mr. Harris? What of a man who clearly is obsessed with trawling through history in search of talking points to concoct in furtherance of a forty-year grudge against ’splitters’? Someone whose preoccupation with sticking the knife into the Provos has led him into becoming a noted Southern unionist and apologist for the British Empire? (Bruce Arnold – very much a fellow traveller of Harris in all things – has the same motivations, albeit via a different route for this British passport-holder. O’Brien and Quinn just make livings from being reactionary advocates and apologists for Rome in all things).
Well, in deference to our hosts who run this blog (and who may not wish to be on the receiving end of litigation from certain Sindo journalists), I think that I’ll refrain from expressing any of the strong language which springs to mind right now.
The past is present series on this blog should, perhaps, be revised into pamphlet form, for further and wider dissemination.
As to explanations, the other night I was flicking through Engels’ Anti-Duhring (as you do) and came across a line to the effect that the rising bourgeoisie of late medieval and early modern Europe had to tackle obstacles in its path if it was to continue rising; and one of those obstacles was the Catholic church.
The bourgeoisie of modern Ireland, on the other hand, were not a self-confident rising and progressive class, but a fearful elite of a peripheral and dependant underdeveloped country. Hence the need for the Church as an indispensable tool of social control – and hence too the circling of the wagons by the commentariat.
The other night I was looking at Engels’ Anti-Duhring (as you do). I noticed a line to the effect that the rising bourgeoisie of late medieval and early modern Europe had to take on the Church if it was to continue rising.
The Irish bourgeoisie – the one that emerged in the 19th century – was not a self-confident rising progressive class, but rather an elite group witihin a dependent, underdeveloped country. As such it could not base its claim to social leadership and legitimacy on rising, progressive credentials of any sort. On the contrary, it needed the Church as an indispensable tool of social control. And this, IMV, is why we see the commentariat circling the wagons today. . .
NB, could we see the ‘Past is Present’ series worked up into pamphlet form for wider dissemination?
In case you’re wondering who this ‘Dr. X’ character is, I was previously known as DJP O’Kane; wordpress was rejecting my posts for some reason.
While not excusing the church, or minimising individual guilt, i think Tom McGurk today makes a fair stab at locating a structural contributing cause, one which, to no surprise, none of the commentators you mention see fit to notice:
Ryan has exposed, as never before, the deep class hatred of working people and the rural poor that permeated the state, the government and its agencies, as well as the Catholic Church, down the years.
If post-independence Ireland unleashed a social-climbing competition, institutionalised children seem to have functioned for some as the lowest step on the ladder. These little ones were to be hated, apparently, because they had committed the new crime of having nothing.
Class prejudice, and the deep dysfunctionality of the post- colonial era when the Catholic Church took over as the dominant establishment, sealed their fate.
From the SBP
And that creation of high-status identity through the denigration of those considered low-status still goes on. A young relative of mine was taken on a tour of Cork prison with the rest of his fee-paying school, so they could see how the other half lived.
To his credit, this lad had the decency to find the whole thing creepy and wrong.
Ryan has exposed, as never before, the deep class hatred of working people and the rural poor that permeated the state, the government and its agencies, as well as the Catholic Church, down the years.
Well that’s very well said. And remarkably similar to the opening paragraph of the Communist Party statement issued on Thursday:
“The publication of the long awaited ‘The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report’ into abuse suffered by children and young people at the hands of religious orders while detained in residential institutions has exposed as never before the deep class hatred of working people and the rural poor that permeated the state, government and its agencies as well as the Catholic Church itself.”
Remarkable……
A columnist in The Sunday Business Post stealing from the Communist Party!
ewi: tend to agree with your remarks apart from this
“for this British passport-holder”
completely idiotic and backward for reasons I trust are not necessary to spell out
Eamon, it’s been the subject of snarkery in the past from many people (not just myself) that despite living here for many many years, and using the “we” when it suits his purposes in advocating, our Mr. Bruce Arnold still doesn’t hold an Irish passport but instead is a British Subject (and yet another member of the unionist “Reform” group).
Does he deserve low blows based on his citizenship? Based on his public positions (and not so public – Reform members are notoriously shy on their membership), I have no problems with doing so.
I really agree that a sort of sublimated and in many of these instances overt class war on the poor was in operation. That the distinctions in the society at the time, and it’s fair to say it was pretty impoverished, were relatively minor perhaps accentuated it. Or point to the vicious need of some to raise themselves up over someone, anyone. As is said above, that mentality has in no sense gone away, and to return to Carey et al, you see more than traces of it in operation in a sort of diffused ’sure we’re all middle class now… except for *that* tiny minority etc etc’..
Re McGurk, I’m beginning to warm to him again. He’s made a couple of very sensible points in the recent past.
In regard to the people who opposed the “Stay Safe” & sex-education programme, don’t forget people like Nora Bennis and the “Brandsma Review” magazine fought aggressively against those programmes. I feel they should be condemned unequivocally for these action. Warning
children about bullying and inapproriate adult behaviour towards
children is important, and such authoritarian demagogues should
be rejected.
No argument from me here on that Vabian. Absolutely correct IMO.
Dr. X… I like it… It has a ring to it…
McGurk’s piece is interesting (although kudos to Wednesday for spotting the plagiarism – that’s nuts!). Fintan O’Toole made similar points in his article in yesterday’s IT.
Certainly it’s reasonable to raise the question of the role of the post-Independence state in facilitating the abuse, particularly in the context of its submissive attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church. The problem with Harris’ article, of course, is that the State/Church relationship has nothing at all to do with Republicanism (particularly the specific brand of Republicanism which he finds most objectionable) but is, rather, a function of the broader position of the Irish bourgeois political class. The assumption that things would have been different if independence hadn’t happened is, therefore, profoundly flawed. The RCC dominated Irish civil society since the mid-19th Century and, while its position might have been further entrenched by the nature of the post-independence state, there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t have continued to act as a state within a state even if the Home Rule course had been pursued.
Indeed, as someone (I think someone commenting on a different thread here – sorry for not remembering) pointed out, the common factor between the scandals in Boston, Ireland and Australia is the existence of a predominantly Roman Catholic political class with a position of extreme deference to the Church. Is it realistic to think that a Redmondite Ireland would have been any more willing to stand up to the institutions of the Church than the Boston social services?
Here’s a comment on China under Chiang Kai-Shek which sounds strangely familiar:
Incapable on account of their social peculiarities of unfying the country, of assuring its independence, of resolving the agrarian question, this bourgeoisie of compradors, unable to play any progressive role in history, kept the country in chaos and prostration.
I think O’Toole was dead right about the class element. Remember where the children who were put into these places came from; and remember too what social background most priests and nuns came from, and all the petty prejudices inherent in that relationship and the opportunity for bullying the situation provided. Add the power that the Catholic church had within society and the Irish church’s obsession with sexuality and you have a recipe for disaster.
Some of what the good senator was saying has a basis in fact but he really should stop and think before he starts going on about punishment beatings; has he no sense of self-awareness?
The second page of today’s SBP carries a story claiming that the Ryan report people plan to destroy thousands of documents relating to the cases of abuse they covered. I find that deeply disturbing and sinister, and I’m afraid they’ll get away with it. . .
Yeah, to a degree I’d agree with some of his points about identity, albeit that is changed in the contemporary period and he’s not entirely wrong about the Famine. Not by a long shot. But it’s the way the rest grows out of that to develop a specious argument.
I’m getting quite sick of the coverage of this report. So far, there’s been far more heat than light. You get the same old tired nonsense from the usual suspects. Harris is the best example, but he’s hardly alone in interpreting the report to suit his own preconceptions. This applies to those who would traditionally find themselves in opposition to the RCC just as much as it does to the likes of O’Brien and Waters. I listened to ‘The Wide Angle’ on Newstalk this morning. There were some interesting observations but there was also some nonsense attributing the abuse to celibacy and the RCC’s teaching in regard original sin. People keep saying that this report will hearld new changes, but they seem to expect that the changes should happen in the minds of other people, not themselves.
To reiterate EWI’s point above… bingo. That’s it exactly right to my mind Niall, and I agree as well it’s from people who are in opposition to the RCC. What’s astounding is that there is no clear sense that the RCC is being asked to explain itself and demostrate how it intends to make amends. I’m dispirited to see CORI taking a certain line, at least according to its spokespeople this evening.
What’s the CORI line? Are they insisting that they cannot renegotiate the deal?
As for the RCC explaining itself, I think that is the area where we need real leadership from the leaders of the political parties. If, say, Enda Kenny sent an open letter to the Irish bishops asking them 10 relevant questions and requesting a prompt reply, it’d be worth far more than the rubbish they’re at now. They’ve taken to party politics. The deal struck by Bertie and Martin with the religious orders would not appear to be a good one, but that deal is not the single most pressing matter to be discussed. Right now, the state needs to re-evaluate the policies it has in place for the inspection policies it has in place for children and vulnerable people. It needs to tackle the legacy of this abuse, a legacy that often leads to our prisons and mental hospitals.
In relation to the deal struck by the state with the religious orders, I think that one major reason the state didn’t press for the orders to pay a larger portion of the bill comes from the realisation that if these orders lose the capacity to act as patrons, then the state would have to step in. As we saw in the case of Louise O’Keeffe, there are major benefits to the state in preserving the status quo.
As far as the coverage goes, I’ve just had a look at Kevin Myers’ effusions, and I feel genuinely sick. Apparently if you feel outrage at the facts contained in the Ryan report, you’re a part of the liberal-lefty witch-hunt.
Also have a look at the Studies blog. The phrase ‘learnt nothing and forgotten nothing’ is what comes to mind.
you’re a part of the liberal-lefty witch-hunt.
Time we got one of those together, then.
Niall, yep, that’s my understanding of the CORI stance. Re a united political response that’s certainly true. It needs a concerted action. We’re not seeing it though. That makes sense what you say about the nature of the deal struck (and tells us something about how the dynamics of the preexisting relationship stretch into this century with the state only too willing to see them plug the gap, an approach that ceded way too much authority to them).
Haven’t seen Myers yet DocX. Will do so now.
Great idea SoS.
Myers…
“The past is another country.
The greater truth of that mysterious land perishes soon after the train leaves the station, and thenceforth, it is largely a question of travellers’ tales — of griffons, dragons, mermaids and unicorns. Not just about child abuse, but about everything.”
Self-referential (read the whole piece), self-serving, complacent, hand-washing shit.
Disgusting.
The commission dealt with cases going right up to 1990, didn’t it?
I was 19 in 1990.
And I was 16 when I got talking to a guy (middle-aged, balding, suit and tie and glasses) on Stephen’s Green and he told me that he’d been raped by a priest while in secondary school.
Weren’t there some instances up to 2000?
But that man will still be alive, most likely today, and his past isn’t another country. Or – glib effer that Myers is – ‘a travellers tale’.
BTW, I note that Myers doesn’t extend the same facilities to his bete noir, the hated Shinners (or Republicans in general). There the past surely isn’t another country.
His past, and the past of all the others who gave evidence to the Commission. The only reason the Commission was able to report is because that aspect of the past is very real to the hundreds if not thousands of those experienced it and are still around to talk about it.
The point about his hating Republicans also applies to this stupid, smug piece about faux outrage among commentators. The next time a police officer gets knocked off in the six counties, let’s see if he pulls out his “I can’t even remember what we’re annoyed about” trick, or if he goes back to BIG SERIOUS writing.
Very true, the use of ‘mythic’ language pushed the article across a line. It’s gratuitous and deeply dishonest as is his anecdote about his own experiences of sadism which he sort of kind of tries to diminish by saying it’s not comparable in which case why raise it at all?
To be honest, Myers almost has a point in that memory isn’t particularly reliable when dealing with things that happened years ago, especially emotional incidents. But the accuracy of specific details isn’t really an issue in cases where there are multiple independent accusations against individuals.
I just noticed the Stay Safe programme was mentioned earlier. I seem to remember getting that when in primary school. From my memories, it was a joke. The major theme was “Stranger Danger”. It featured Pajo telling us that sometimes dangerous strangers might give us a “No Feeling” and that we should run away and tell someone we trust. It almost totally ignored the reality that it is parents, and rarely stranges, that commit the most abuse.
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BTW, I note that Myers doesn’t extend the same facilities to his bete noir, the hated Shinners (or Republicans in general). There the past surely isn’t another country.
The Shinners, you say? Myers still hasn’t forgiven the Fenians for their violent, sadistic, murderous dynamiting campaigns* of the 1870s, never mind the 1970s, and he utterly detests such needless barbaric waste of young life, which showed the ruthlessness and evil of the Fenian godfathers.
Nor has he forgotten the glorious, noble, heroic war waged by Britain in the Crimea at the same time; indeed, it very nearly brings a tear to his eye to think of such manly warriors sacrificing for King and Country with steel and blood, by Gum, and all modern Irish youth should follow this example and sign up for the British Army to go to Afghanistan post-haste.
*and the recent revelation that the Fenian dynamiting campaign was the inspiration of British agents provocateurs will go unmentioned by him, never fear.
Myers, Harris, and that whole sorry crew thought they had liberated themselves from nationalism. But all they did was substitute one false idol for another.
And as for the liberal agenda (a telling phrase – other countries have liberalism, but Ireland only has a liberal agenda), we can see now that it was just a counter-revolution in the counter-revolution.
I’ve always been told that the actions carried out by the Spanish anarchists during 1936 were ultra-left; well they seem justified to me now, if a few Irish priests and nuns had gone to the wall that might have out manners on them.
Funnily enough I was watching Ken Loach’s ‘Land and Freedom’ the other day and at the point where the POUM shoot the fascist priest I thought “hmmm”.
One of the Morning Ireland presenters said that there were about 170,000 detained in the clerical gulag over the course of the last century. Does anyone know if that’s true? Does it appear in the Commission’s report – I’ve only read the excutive summary and it doesn’t appear there from what I can see.
A basic tenet of republicanism is the separation of church and state, a principle embodied in the U.S republican constitution, which forbids public support for schools run by religions. The ‘Republic of Ireland’ is not republican.
The crimes committed by the Catholic church against children,-and 1% of all children were incarcerated in these penitentiaries-have largely gone unpunished. The catholic church in Ireland is a criminal institution. The church, with the complicity of the state, continues to protect and facilitate serial rapists of children. And the Irish state and society amazingly continue to entrust the education of young children to this criminal organization.
Heinrich Boll, in Ireland in the 1950s was impressed by the medieval nature of Irish society. It still persists. A modernization movement is needed. Leftists and republicans should demand the separation of Church and state.
[...] a thing or two to teach the Irish Church. On the Irish scandal, WorldbyStorm has been covering this exhaustively; also note that the Archbishop didn’t say what the media accused him of saying last [...]
Why didn’t Joe O’Toole name the people he was talking about in re Stay Safe? What is parliamentary privilege for if not for occasions like this?
How far back does this abuse go? I can remember Mary Raftery’s
“States of Fear” recording abuse in the early 1920s, and there are
some records of boys in French schools being sexually abused by priests
in the 19th century. Was the abuse always there?