Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A very persistent urban myth in American politics relates that the one-time governor of Texas, John B. Conally, once objected to any diminution of the use of the English language in his state on the basis that if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it should be good enough for the rest of us. It has been claims that this howler was uttered instead by governor Miriam Ferguson, but once again this seems unlikely.

 I’ve always been a bit uneasy with ethical relativism. For me the foundations of ethics are unchanging. What is more as a Christian I have never felt that the sermon preached by Jesus Christ on the Mount had a time embargo on it. It was good to go then and will be valid until the end of time. In other words, if it was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is certainly good enough for the rest of us, especially those who hold offices of ministry in any Christian church, To hell with the casuistry: if any action causes gratuitous pain or suffering, surely that is wrong. For that reason I find some of the excuses being put forward by leading figures in the Irish Catholic church for their non-actions when confronted with paedophilia to be intellectually feeble.

 I do feel that there is an element of shadow-boxing, maybe even dishonesty, about this issue. Some church figures are condemned for not informing the civil authorities, which they should have done. But let’s just ask what might have happened had they done so. I very much doubt that An Gardai Siochana would have known how to deal with the issue. Back in 1975 they were far busier looking for Dr Herrema or chasing after Dr Rose Dugdale to worry about paedophiles. The Murphy inquiry uncovered numerous instances of active collusion between the police and the church authorities in covering up child abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin. Many senior policemen viewed the Catholic Church as a type of religious police force, enforcing law and order, and generally keeping everyone in their place while some may have owed their promotion to membership of certain Catholic lay groups. Even younger police officers just out of Templemore tended to come from rural backgrounds, traditionally deferential to the more authoritarian aspects of religion. You never gave cheek to a priest, and if you did he could put a pig’s head on you or make you stick to the chair. Such police officers were reluctant to prosecute priests for minor traffic infringements, so how would they have approached the idea of a priest potentially committing something far more serious?

I suppose what I am trying to say here is: let’s not get fixated with attaching blame to a mere handful of individuals in the Catholic church’s past. These were not the only demons in Ireland’s society.