Via Election.ie today’s Sunday Tribune is running a story saying the Church wants its legal fees, arising from the Ryan Report, to be covered by the taxpayer:
While the orders are close to a final agreement with the government to make additional contributions of €100m plus properties to the redress scheme, the Sunday Tribune has learned that the Department of Finance has been notified that the orders have applied to have their massive legal bills arising from the Ryan inquiry covered by the taxpayer.
It sounds ridiculous. Scandalous. Beyond the pale. But would you be in any way surprised if we ended up footing the bill? I wouldn’t.
Remember, this is Fianna Fail, the party who did a deal with the religious orders that saw the taxpayer pay the vast majority of the compensation for victims of child abuse. Michael Woods capped their liability at £100m, the rest of the money paid out came from you and I. Even last year he defended that deal even though it is clearly one of the most corrupt, dishonest deals done in the history of this state, and it’s got some stiff competition there.
So while on the face of it we can think the idea of us paying the religious orders legal bills is absurd, it’s hardly unlikely. Brian Cowen leads this government and is still supplicant and deferring to the cunts from Rome. He backed the papal nuncio, doffing his cap to him like this man was some kind of superior, when his actions were indefensible. We needed leadership in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan reports, we got inaction, cover-ups and whitewashes.
Despite everything the religious right still have a stronghold over this country. That the religious orders would even contemplate such a move is outrageous. That is hasn’t already been dismissed out of hand more so. The taxpayer is not liable for the crimes of the church. They are responsible, they should pay.
If they get away with this then what have we learned? What’s different? We might as well just let them do whatever they want. This country is filled with brain-dead apologists for this most corrupt of organisations, sadly too many of them are in government.
The religious orders are like violent, perverted criminals – they fuck us, then rob us.
“Some complaints about him, he’s been raping the shit out of kids”.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Not again. I thought we had words with him the last three times”.
“We did but he’s up to his old tricks. Befriending families, getting them onside, then sexually abusing their children”.
“Right, tell him to pack his bags. I’m moving him to another parish. AGAIN! LOL!!”.
“ROFL! And what should we tell the parents?”
“Tell them nothing happened and that the Father is going to away to ensure nothing happens to lots of other children”.
“Splendid. Now kiss my ring”.
.
Scenario 2
“Archbishop, we’ve got a situation here”.
“What is it?”
“It’s Father O’Tax-Fiddly”.
“What is it?”
“He owed the revenue a load of money and called them bastards and cunts in a rag of a tabloid newspaper”
“What?! WHAT?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE”.
“I know your gracefulness but it’s hardly as if he’s been-”
“I take a most serious view of this matter”.
“I know you do”.
“This is disgraceful. You will call up the father and tell him that he will make a full and unreserved apology to the sweet, innocent revenue commissioners”.
“At once”.
“Think of the hurt they must have endured. The pain. The agony. The trauma. A priest called them bastards and cunts. Nobody deserves that”.
“No they don’t”.
“We are men of God and we will not tolerate foul language being used at simple men just doing their job. This priest has brought shame to us all who are missionaries of Christ”.
“Yes he has. He is very bold indeed. I shall telephone him at once and demand he calls into your palace as soon as possible”.
As the faithful go to mass today – and I’m sure poor attendance will be because of the rain, nothing else – what leadership has the Taoiseach shown in the wake of the Dublin report?
People want to see criminals prosecuted, whether they’re priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, lay people, Gardai who failed to act or anybody else who was involved in this huge conspiracy against the people of Ireland.
Brian Cowen says “I believe that just as there must be no ambiguity about the fact that all institutions and individuals are answerable to the law of the land, whatever their status, it is for those institutions and their members to determine the appropriateness of any individual to hold ecclesiastical office”.
Coward. He is afraid to criticise the church. He is afraid to say that those who perpetrated crimes against young people, those who covered them up, those who enabled vicious paedophiles to rape their way from parish to parish, are not fit to hold office in a church.
If a Fine Gael TD was discovered to be a child rapist, you can be sure he would say it. If the head of the Boy Scouts of Ireland was a paedophile he would say it. Would he not openly question the suitability of members of the Teachers Union to hold office in their organisation if it were discovered that they had spent decades abusing children then covering it up? Of course he would.
Yet when this country needs leadership, when we desperately want somebody in power to speak out against an organisation that has been guilty of the most unconscionable crimes, Brian Coward won’t do it, because he is afraid. Afraid of the church, afraid of the backlash from disciples of the church, the brainwashed masses for whom this is an irrelevance because the church can do no wrong.
He is pathetic. A spineless yellow-belly who has no right to supposedly lead this country. He is saying that we have no authority over these men … and let us remember that is all they are. They may have a collar and parish but they are just men, subject to the same laws as any of us, and if we had been involved in the kind of crimes and cover-ups the church has been we would be prosecuted and jailed. They are not special, they have no higher place in society, they are just men, yet Coward allows them to maintain the falshehood that they live on some kind of pedestal.
He is allowing them to continue the kind of behaviour that has led to this appalling mess. He is condoning their behaviour. The Taoiseach. The leader of the country. He is a disgrace.
Ireland is broken and will stay broken as long as those in charge have no will to make things right. And those of you who go to church today and put money in the plate, you are complicit. Shame on you.
The audio clip below is a Father Tom Doyle, an expert in canon law, speaking to RTE’s Prime Time … in 2002 (hat tip @mark_coughlan).
His final words – “There’s something radically, radically wrong”.
Yesterday we discovered how wrong. The Dublin Diocesan report was published. It catalogues the systematic and constant abuse of children by priests. It details the knowledge that the Catholic Church had of it, how they moved paedophile priests from one parish to another, how they covered up, ignored the problem, used their power to sweep the rape of children under the carpet, how they, more than anything, acted to protect the church at the expense of innocent young people.
We were told the Gardai knew about it but these evil men were not punished simply because of who they were. The white collar and the frock protected them from prosecution. We were told of non-cooperation from the Vatican who refused to answer the commission’s questions. We learned that the Dublin Archdiocese took out insurance in the 80s to protect itself from compensation claims they knew would eventually come.
Acts of self-preservation to protect the ‘good name’ of the church, the assets of the church, the power and influence of the church and its priests. And in order to do that they allowed children to be beaten and raped and buggered. They protected men who destroyed not just those children’s lives but those of their families as the betrayal of an implicit trust became known.
Is there another organisation in the world that would go to such lengths to cover up such abuse instead of tackling it? I can’t think of one. The normal reaction of a person when they discover something like this is to ensure that the person in question is punished. Anyone with an ounce of goodness or morality would not allow somebody like that to go scot-free. They would, at the very least, try and stop them from doing it again.
But the bishops and the cardinals did no such thing. They allowed these men to go from town to town, leaving a trail of shattered lives behind them. They not only did nothing to stop them, they faciliated them, they aided them, allowing them to carry out monstrous acts of abuse over and over and over again.
Let’s be clear – the catholic church in Ireland has abused its power for too long and something has to give now. Not only with regard to the victims of abuse – like the children our lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin who were abused by the Chaplain – but every part of Irish society has suffered. The stranglehold they have had on Irish society and culture, on the Irish people, has been like that of a dictator. You cannot do this, you cannot think that, this is a sin, that is a sin, and we have accepted it because it has always been like that.
The Irish people’s reaction to the church is almost like Stockholm Syndrome, where the kidnappee feels trust or affection for the person who has taken them. The church has relentlessly abused the people of Ireland on every level and still people go to mass, they put money in the plate to fund the lifestyles of men who work for an organisation that facilitates the rape and physical abuse of children. In what decent society should this be tolerated?
If any other group had a track record like the catholic church would we allow it to exist? If it were a youth group whose workers sexually abused kids and whose leaders knew and didn’t say anything what would we do? We would prosectute those people. The Gardai would not turn a blind eye. And parents would never send their children to that youth group. Yet in spite of everything we know about the catholic church parents still blindly send their children to be indoctrinated into a church which has been the proponent of a huge conspiracy against the people of Ireland.
The kids go to school, they get their first communion, they do a religion class which is not about learning about religion, it’s about learning how to become a catholic, how to subject yourself to the church. Parents every single day in this country send their children to be educated by these people. This has to stop. Education should be about education, it should not be about religion. If you want to send your children to a catholic school then that is your choice. But there must be an immediate separation of the school system, funded by taxpayers, and the catholic church.
By all means teach about religion, it’s educational. Let kids know there is more to religion that catholicism. But no longer can we allow children to brainwashed via the school system by an organisation that cares nothing for them, only about its own power, influence and wealth. We cannot allow it continue. If we, as a nation, want to move forward, to better ourselves, then there must be an absolute separation between the church and the state. People talk about Ireland being a secular nation, it is not. Still the church thinks it can lecture to us about what we can and cannot do.
Laughably they think they still have some moral authority. It’s a bitter laugh though. They tell us we should we be anti-abortion, against homosexuality, that we shouldn’t allow drinks companies to sponsor sporting events, that we shouldn’t use contraception, and so much more. Their moralistic proclamations at odds with their criminal actions. They preach at us as if we were the ones that needed it. The truth is the Irish people need to stand up to the church, to tell them that they have gone too far, that we will not stand for what they have done.
And what they have done has come with the full knowledge and blessing, if you will, of the Vatican. The centre of the catholic church, from where the Pope, the head of the church, guides his flock. And they knew all about the priests and others in this country who raped children. They knew that the idea of solving the problem was moving the priest to another parish where he could find fresh meat, and I won’t apologise for that comparison because they were predators. From the very top of this most corrupt organisation nothing was done to protect the most vulnerable people in our society.
And it is a shame on this country, a stain on us all. They have ridden roughshod over the people of Ireland and the people of Ireland have allowed it to happen. We have tolerated the kind of behaviour that nobody in their right mind would tolerate from somebody else. We have to stop it now. We have to stand up and let them know that we will not accept it anymore.
Their apologies have come too late. They’re mealy-mouthed and the simple fact is that they are only apologising because they have been caught and because they have no choice. If they were really sorry about the actions of the evil men who carried out abuse in their name then they would have stopped it when they found out. They would have handed these people over to the authorities, cooperated fully and accepted the punishments handed down. They did nothing of the sort, they made it worse. And worse. And worse. And now the whole thing has been blown wide open the victims are supposed to accept an apology? I don’t think so. The rest of us are supposed to forgive and forget because of some PR company prepared press release from a despicable man like Desmond Connell?
Remember – this is only Dublin. There are 26 dioceses in Ireland and does anyone think Dublin was alone? Of course not. The scale of it, given the size of the area, is likely to be bigger here but I am positive the same kind of abuse went on in every single diocese in Ireland. There must be an investigation in each one because there are criminals who need to be punished and victims who need to see that happen.
When the previous report into Instutional abuse was published back in May there was, rightly, outrage. But then life went on, people forgot, the church continued its business as usual and you even had reports of attendances at mass being up. I’m doubtful they’re true but that we have allowed that spin to remain unchallenged is a shame on us. Now, after the Dublin report confirmed what we all knew (and how sad is it that so little of it was that shocking?), we cannot allow that to happen again.
The catholic church is a massively corrupt business. Nothing more. Imagine a large business who, it turns out, polluted rivers and caused deaths via cancer. It would be shut down. Or people would refuse to use its products. The catholic church is that business, it has caused deaths, it has destroyed countless lives, all for money, all for reputation, and if we continue to tolerate its presence then we are the fools who get nothing more than we deserve.
—
A final word for people like Andrew Madden and Marie Collins. The word ‘hero’ is bandied around too often, so often that it loses its meaning, but in this case is it is the only word that is appropriate. They are heroes for what they have done. Their bravery and courage in facing up to what happened to them and their determination to ensure those who carried out the abuse are punished cannot be commended enough.
Without them there might be generations of victims still being preyed upon by the wicked men of god.
In the light of the child abuse report what will happen?
Are there many of the perpetrators left alive? If so can they be prosecuted? Age should be no impediment.
What about naming those who carried out such abuses?
I heard Christine Buckley on the radio earlier and she spoke about how relieved she was that after 25 years people would know the truth, that she would be believed.
This afternoon a report into institutional abuse by religious orders will be published. At a cost of €70m it will outline how children were abused in industrial schools, institutions for children with disabilities and ordinary day schools.
I wonder will anything in it shock us though? Will it be enough? I’m not trying to play down the need for such a report nor the fact that information like this should be released publicly, I just wonder how much attention will be paid to it.
We know already that the Catholic Church in Ireland has been guilty of horrendous abuse of children, sexual and physical, and that their first method of dealing with such abuse when they discovered it was not to address it or punish those guilty of it, it was to cover it up.
When the report is published will there be the usual outcry and sensational headlines for a few days or will it have a real impact of on the Catholic Church as an organisation?
Sure, it no longer holds the same power as it used to, but still every week people flock to churches, put their money in the collection plates, go up to the altar to receive a piece of tasteless wafer which is just a tasteless wafer, and send their children to be educated through religion (the newly returned Fatmammycat touches on this here).
Imagine if a tender went out looking for someone to run Ireland’s schools. One organisation is successful. And later it emerges that they used the power and influence they had over children to beat them, to force them to engage in explicit sexual acts, to scar them mentally and physically for life. And not just on an occasional basis. The abuse is widespread and systematic.
Would we not take serious steps to punish the abusers, those who enabled the abusers, those who hid them, moved them from one school to the next where the children there were just fresh meat? Would we not, as a nation, decry that organisation, speak of them in hisses, castigate them at every turn, condemn them, shun them?
Yet every day, every week, people flock to churches, hand over their hard earned cash to people whose abuse has cost all of us millions of pounds. It’s insane.
I’m not saying every priest is a bad priest, there are obviously dedicated, devout and good people, yet they represent an organisation so venal, so corrupt, so deliberately wicked at times, that it is completely at odds with what they try and teach and preach.
The report is welcome, it may well be shocking, it will shame the church and the government, no question, but will anything change? Children will have their communions and confirmations and people who don’t go to mass from one end of the year to other because they do not believe in God will get married in their local church.
Isn’t it time to think differently about the Catholic Church?
Update: Ok, I take it back. Reading this now is actually shocking. Even though you know what went on, the witness accounts are horrific.
