Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

The Murphy report allows people to say openly what they knew already, that child sexual abuse was endemic in the Dublin archdiocese and that successive archbishops before the arrival of Diarmuid Martin systematically connived at covering it up.

Another fact which has nowcome into the public domain is that Archbishops McQuaid, Ryan, McNamara and Connell were out and out hypocrites, telling the people of Ireland what they could do, believe and read in the name of a religion whose tenets they were flouting.

McQuaid was a particularly egregious monster who sought to destroy many lives and reputations. But he was viewed as almost saint-like admiration by former bishop of Kilmore, Fracis McKiernan, a man who had a lot to answer for when it came to covering up the sins of errant priests on hiw watch. But McKiernan was such a great man and a historian of note. He was when he was alive the world’s expert on the O’Reilly clan. When a man sought the assistance of a certain research officer on a roject he was compiling about an O’Reilly of the late seventeenth century he received a reply stating the research officer’s complete ignorance of the O’Reilly involved – strange as the research officer is supposed to be an expert on the seventeenth century – and that sadly the person who would have known all about him – Dr Franbcis McKiernan –  had taken his profund intelligence on the subject to his grave.

I don’t think it is unfair to say that reports similar to the Murphy inquiryt, which would be esqually shocking to the public and embarassing to the Catholic church, could be compiled in most of the country’s dioceses. But then many of the bishops who could be castigated were only following Vatican instructions on pushing the whole thing under the carpet. Any problems were to be deakt with by one person in the Vatican, the former Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, currently the rather reticent Pope Benedict.