Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Historically the greatest institutional child abusers were the Catholic Church.  This was carried out with the connivance of the Irish police and the various local health boards. This had thankfully sharply declined.

 Sadly child abuse, of a physical, sexual and emotional nature still continues and shows no signs of diminishing. Nowadays it happens with the knowledge and even participation of government bodies, probably the greatest of which is the Health Service Executive (HSE), who sometimes return children who have escaped from abuse in the UK to the very locations and environments where the abuse initially took place. \In this they are assisted by the Irish courts and legal system.

It is very hard to listen to news reports on RTE without a feeling of deep disgust. I have just heard about the understandable anger of the brother and sister of a man with Alzheimer’s Disease and Down’s Syndrome who died less than a fortnight after being transferred to the Leas Cross Nursing Home. It has taken until now for the Health Service Executive to finalise a report, but before it is handed over to the man’s family the HSE want them to sign a confidentiality clause – a gagging order – that would prevent them publicising its contents.

 This is 2010. What though is the difference between this outrageous demand and the similar gagging order that the former bishop of Kilmore wished to impose on the victims of clerical sexual abuse in 1975 – thirty five years’ ago? The calls on Cardinal Sean Brady to resign because he was associated with that shameful episode have been loud. Surely the demands for the resignation of the Minister for Health Matry Harney, who presides at the pinnacle of the HSE, must be louder. m (It is an open secret though that the HSE has long been out of the minister’s control. In fact it has never been under any effective control but operates as a state within a state.

 The substandard care at Leas Cross came to light not through the health service’s own investigations, which were at most perfunctory. The clamour of the relatives of those who had suffered in that dreadful institution were brushed aside. They were only acted upon when the scandal of Leas Cross was exposed by RTE’s Prime Time program.

 As my mother died suffering from Alzheimer’s I am affected by this. Honestly it makes me feel sick that in this great country of ours someone can die due and those responsible seek to hide their culpability. That doesn’t happen in free countries; it’s the stuff of dictatorship worthy of Argentina after the Dirty War.

 We may very well live in a post-Christian society in Ireland, but let’s remember one thing. The vast majority of senior management in government institutions were educated in Catholic secondary schools, which so jealously guarded their Catholic ethos. It didn’t seem to produce more Christian or caring citizens – maybe that was because so many of the clerical teachers were busy abusing their pupils.

 To be honest, I think that the senior management of the HSE, or anyone who supports this gagging order, should be taken out and shot. In fact, I think a bullet would be too good for such miserable scum.

The Catholic Communications Office has revealed that, in 1975 then Bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan suggested that paedophile priest Brendan Smyth should see a psychiatrist (no doubt the hierarchy’s pet shrink Donal Lydon). I don’t care what McKiernan said or recommended. He could have advised him to go to a Dicky Rock concert as far as I’m concerned. The fact is he knew about Brendan Smyth and the allegations that had been made about him, but never sought to inform the agents of law and order in the state.

 This knowledge sits uneasily with the claims made on numerous occasions by Dr McKiernan to a group of pupils in St Patrick’s College Cavan, that he had known “nothing” about the Brendan Smyth case. It also is hard to square with the assertion, much repeated by some of the faithful in Cavan, that Bishop McKiernan had only learned of Fr Smyth’s actions in the confessional, and was therefore bound by the confidentiality of the Rite of Penance not to divulge anything to the Gardai.

Sixty-eight years have now passed insce the dreadful events in Cavan town’s orphanage, yet the victims and their families are still waiting for some form of fitting commemoration. My friend Sean Galligan has been campaigning to address this, and has set up a group on Facebook dedicated the Victims of Cavan’s Orphanage Fire “Remember the Cavan Orphanage Victims”. What’s more, he’s organised a public meeting to explore possible forms of commemoration. This is to be held in the Farnham Arms Hotel, Cavan town, on March 21^st at 8 pm.

 I have appended an article I wrote about the Cavan convent fire, that was published in the Cavan Echo in February 2007.

 The victims of those terrible events and their families have had to wait long enough for justice. They have been made to inhabit a world dominated by a code of silence, which will be readily understood by anyone reading recent revelations. When the Diocese of Kilmore wants to cover something up they don’t do it by halves.

 ___________________________________________

The fire which swept through the top storey of St Joseph’s orphanage in Cavan town in the early morning of February 24^th 1943 is one of the most sickening events to have ever occurred in Cavan town.

 An enclosed order

 The Poor Clares were an enclosed order of nuns, eschewing contact with the outside world. They had been brought to Cavan in the 1860s by Bishop Nicholas Conaty. They built a convent, chapel and school at the top of the town’s Church Street, and in 1868 they opened an orphanage for girls there.

Its inmates embraced a sad spectrum of Irish life. Some were orphans; others had been abandoned by parents often incapable of looking after them through hardship or illness. A handful were illegitimate. At the orphanage they were sometimes brutalised by nuns who were themselves psychologically damaged through living in a world that had rejected all human feeling.

 The children were in effect prisoners. They were segregated from the other children in the school and beaten more frequently.  They were treated as slaves and were cold, badly-clothed and ill-nourished. A small book used at the orphanage described the lessons they received in cookery and laundry work. They were seldom offered the opportunity to eat the dishes they had prepared.

 The tragedy unfurls

 In the early hours of February 24^th, 1943 a fire in the orphanage’s laundry quickly spread to St Clare’s Dormitory on the building’s top floor, trapping over forty young girls. Attempts at evacuating the children had been thwarted by some of the nuns, who apparently did not want any of the girls to be seen in their nocturnal attire. The town’s fire engine consisted of a cart and hose-pipe. When it was attached to a standpipe the hose was full of holes and was of no use whatsoever. Some long ladders belonging to the urban district council, which might have been capable of reaching the top floor, fell apart and could not be extended.

 The fire was eventually brought under control by the Auxiliary Fire Service. A properly-equipped fire engine eventually arrived from Dundalk at 5 am. By this time the fire was extinguished: so too were the lives of thirty-five residents of the orphanage, plus an elderly resident of the convent. A number of children were injured jumping to safety. None of the nuns was amongst the casualties.

 Heroism

 There were many acts of heroism. Some girls went back into the fire in an attempt to save their friends, often paying the ultimate price. Louis Blessing, a star of the county Gaelic football team which had first brought the All-Ireland trophy to Cavan, broke down locked doors and organised additional help. Mattie Hand, an employee of the Electricity Supply Board had some ladders capable of reaching the beleaguered children. He saved five girls who were on the point of being consumed by the flames.

 Crocodile tears

 In the days that followed messages of sympathy flooded in to Cavan, though they were seldom addressed directly to the families of the deceased or the survivors. They were directed to the abbess of the Poor Clare’s Convent, none of whom had perished, and stranger still they were sent to the Catholic Bishop of Kilmore, Dr Lyons. In the requiem mass the bishop spoke of the “… terrible ordeal it has been for the good nuns to have the fierce glare of publicity turned on their quiet sheltered lives.”

 The dead were encased in eight separate coffins. They were buried in a mass grave at Cullies cemetery outside Cavan. Initially, this bore neither their names nor the dates of their deaths.

 The response of the great and the good in Cavan was stomach churning. The town’s lack of adequate means for fighting a fire had been rightly criticised in the national press. Yet this criticism was rejected in a spirit of sullen vindictiveness by the local political elite. Senator Patrick Baxter used his membership of the upper house to deliver an intemperate attack on the press, denouncing its “misrepresentation of the facts”. Those responsible for the maintenance of safety equipment in the town made idiotic statements claiming that the hoses and ladders were in “excellent condition” and in “perfect order.” A member of the council stated that the town had been “disgraced” by the Irish Times in its exposure of the council’s abysmal negligence. Such stinging criticism was obviously more unsettling to the council than the immolation of the girls.

 The inquiry

 A commission of inquiry was set up. It met in Cavan’s Court House in April. The victims did not have any legal representation – it was clear that they did not matter. Among the evidence to trickle from it was just how remiss the fire prevention mechanisms in the orphanage had been. It also showed up the truly shambolic nature of Cavan town’s fire brigade, described by a commission member as “an afternoon’s amusement.” Its captain even claimed that he was only “sort of” captain,

 Culpability

 A finger of culpability could have been pointed with earnestness, but as it would have been directed at powerful interests the findings of the commission were something of a watered down whitewash. It stated that while it was “satisfied that more efficient means of escape should have been made available”, it added that it could not state that “… their absence of these contributed to the loss of life…” Not really to blame, only sort of. It did not require much reading between the lines to discern the urban district council’s negligence, yet the commission commented: “… we do not wish to suggest that the council was … avoiding its duty.” Not really to blame, only sort of. It did recommend the creation of adequate fire-fighting services throughout the country.

 The secretary to the commission was civil servant Brian O’Nolan, far better known as the brilliant writer Flann O’Brian and satirist Myles na gCopaleen. Perhaps he best summed up the commission of inquiry in a limerick he supposedly penned in a Cavan pub.

 In Cavan there was a great fire

Joe McCarthy was sent down to enquire.

If the nuns were to blame

It would be a shame

So it had to be caused by a wire.

O’Nolan’s scepticism was to cost him his civil service career in the future, for it was a Cavan politician, Paddy Smith, who, when named minister of O Nuallain’s department, oversaw his “easing out” from the Department of Local Government.

The end of the orphanage

St Joseph’s orphanage closed its doors in 1967. It must be said that not all of the nuns who served there were tyrants. It has taken many years for the acrid stench from the timbers of the orphanage to clear from the nostrils of Cavan’s town-folk, not to mention the refusal of those in positions of authority to accept blame. 

© Ciaran Parker 2007

A spokesman for a group of victims of clerical abuse has urged taoiseach Brian two-face Cowen to spend the money the government intended to devote to a monument to survivors on disaster relief in Haiti. I am entirely in agreement.

 I am not a big fan of monuments, plaques, statues what have you. For me they are associated with authoritarian regimes that want

Someone to watch over me

to glorify themselves. One thinks of the way in which El Caudillo littered Spain with statues of himself, or of the gargantuan and hideous examples of bad taste associated with the bizarre personality cult of Saparmurad Niyazov in Turkmenistan, culminating in a larger-than-life statue of Niyazov which would turn in an orbit every twenty-four hours, topped with a strobe light to shine into different areas of Ashghabat, Turkmenistan’s capital.

 I think the government’s commitment to such a plan demonstrates their bad faith towards survivors. They don’t give a damn about them, but such a project would be a nice little money=spinner for the boys and girls. There would have to be a committee, with a token representation from survivors’ groups, but made up primarily by higher civil servants, politicians and their relatives, all of whom would get nice expenses. Room might be found for the Arts consultant who was the minister’s brother who was paid by the taxpayer to go around the country telling the local arts officers what they should be doing. And then there would be an “open and fair” competition for the design which, once again, would be awarded to the artist or sculptor of the moment. But finally, what about the wording? Cowen has insinuated that the monument is an act of supplication from the people of Ireland to abuse victims. The ordinary people of Ireland need not ask the forgiveness of survivors – they weren’t the ones doing the abusing or covering it up. The people who should be on their knees are the Catholic hierarchy and leaders of religious groups, as well as those members of the laity who helped them up in it, namely the higher civil servants, health board officials, members of the judiciary and police force and members of certain Catholic lay groups which monopolised the upper echelons of Irish society. And let us not forget certain right-wing politicians, some of whom were members of Brian Cowen’s own party and were fathers of serving ministers, upon whom the Catholic hierarchy could depend to parrot their opinions and on occasions embellish them. They had a stranglehold over Irish life, having erected an impenetrable monolith which is only now beginning to crack but which still retains its vigour in certain areas.  These were the antichrists, the devils disguised in soutanes and collars who should beg on their bellies for forgiveness and what’s more any resources they have (which one suspects are considerable) should be taken from them.

 Let me end by quoting the Roman poet Horace.

 Exegi monyumentum aere perennius

Regalique situ pyrammidum altius

Quod non imber edax, non Aquillo impotens

Posit dirvere …

That’s your actual Latin that is, and so lest Cowen or his goons read it, I should translate

I have built a monument longer lasting than bronze

And taller than the royal site of the pyramids

Which no hungry showers or impotent north wind

Can destroy…

I’d like this to be my epitaphs, though I don’t intend to have a ταφος on which it can be inscribed.

Dr Donal Murray has been forced to resign from the bishopric of Limerick. It is true that he was guilty of sins of omission, rather

Donal Murray - fall guy?

than commission. Donal Murray was not the worst member of the Catholic hierarchy – he was a saint compared to his boozy, Opus Dei-loving predecessor Jerry Newman. I can’t help feeling that he is being made a sacrificial lam, a fall guy if you will, for others in the body of the church and the laity.  far more deeply stained with guilt.

 The Murphy report was a very courageous and candid document that uncovered the horrors of a dishonest culture of silence and deceit. But people were shocked by the degree of what had gone on, not by the revelation that clerical abuse had occurred and been hushed up. The proverbial dogs in the street knew that.

 So the report was issued to general, and to an extent quite correct condemnation of the Catholic Church in Ireland. This occurred only weeks before the most dishonest, cruel and vicious budgets in the State. Ordinarily it might have been expected that some members of the hierarchy, as well as ordinary religious, would have spoken out against a measure that deliberately targeted already disadvantaged sections of Irish society such as the blind. However, with the Murphy report on the table, all bishops were cowed into silence; had they spoken out against the budget I could well have imagined some government minister telling them to get their own house in order first or words to that effect.

 Those who were the victims of abuse are still hurting. It’s possible the hurt will never heal. Alas, I sense that some of those in the government who have set themselves up as guardians of the rights of victims, or who have proclaimed themselves citizens of a republic, are the very people who knew full well that such abuse was rampant and systematic, but did or said nothing because they viewed the Catholic Church as too powerful and influential. It is only when they sense they can kick a dead horse with impunity that they do so with alacrity.

The Gardai Siochana really should go out on strike if they feel devalued, as claimed by Garda Representative Association P.J. Stoned. But they should stop the bloody sabre rattling and get out there and show for the first time that they are with the people, and not merely the paid security punks of the corrupt elite. As for that shit that Dermot Ahem came out with about it being anti-democratic and unconstitutional, stop the shaggin’ lights Bunny. As Ken Livingstone said if Democracy really changed anything they’d abolish it, and as for the constitution, nobody takes any of that seriously. And then there was the line that striking gardai could be arrested !!! There is only one group in Ireland who have either statutory or common law powers to arrest anyone – the Gardai. Does anyone think they’d arrest each other? They don’t do it for speeding or drunk driving.

 So listen you flat-footed Fascist bastards. Come on and show us that you’re men and not fecking pansies, and that you’re able to stand up to REAL criminals, instead of harassing suspected illegal immigrants and rounding up their children prior to transportation.

 Of course if the Gardai did go on strike that’s when things would really start to kick off. There would have to be a State of Emergency and the suspension of Civil Liberties. Jaysus that would be just the lad for all those Opus Dei cunts in the Department of Justice. There’d be no talk then of Clerical Sexual Abuse of Minors, and anyone showing less than clear deference towards their betters would be interned. I’m fairly sure that among the first to go would be this blog, but they couldn’t touch me. I’d just plead insanity. Now where did I put that packet of razor blades and that bottle of paraffin…

Recently another case of sexual abuse involving a priest and a young boy has arisen here in Co. Cavan. The details are too sordid to interest me. What is interesting, though, is that the affair has been mentioned in the local rag, the Anglo-Celt. You’d know that the likes of Anselm Lovett Sr. no longer work there. This former chairman of the local Fianna Faill cumann was also a stalwart of the Knights, and was therefore able to ensure that there were no stories which might have caused embarrassment to the local clergy – t that, according to my information, he ever did so

Anselm was of course the father of David Lovett, one-time town clerk in Cavan; a brother of John Lovett of The Copper Kettle, Kilnaleck, a past president of the Irish vintners and keen beekeeper; and an uncle of poor Ann in Granard.

The Catholic Church really has an awful lot to hang its head in shame about in Ireland – not all of it necessarily the fault of its priests.

The Murphy commission report pointed to an inappropriate relationship between the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin and senior

Up the Republic Dermot?

members of the Irish police force. The report should have been more candid. These senior figures in the Gardai were often members of Catholic lay groups such as the Knights of Saint Columbanus, and often owed their positions and promotions to such membership. And when the church wanted something hushed up they could be relied upon to do it,  You had a situation – in some places you still have a situation – where the legal system was infected. The colonisation of areas such as the judiciary and the police force essentially meant that the clergy as well as other members of these lay groups, were beyond the legal pale and could do what they liked. Such a form of infection is invidious and has nothing to do with Christianity.

 As someone who belongs to the Catholic branch of Christianity I am appalled by the actions of some of its bishops in league with well-placed members of the laity, but my horror is not recent. Oh no, I have observed the hypocrisy, the double standards, for years. I have kept silent because to do otherwise would be to invite victimisation, and sadly the victimisation has come anyway.

 I have nothing in common with these people in the Knights or Opus Dei or any of the plethora of Catholic Masonic groups. They have no part in the version of Christianity I subscribe to. In fact, I see them as fifth columnists, people who have infiltrated the Christian religion and who clothe themselves in a selection of its rituals and who pervert its doctrines in order to conceal their own baseness and evil.

 Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, in presenting the Murphy report, attempted to come over all radical, as a child of Rousseua and Voltaire. Instead of demanding the crushing of infamy he stated that we live in a republic where none are beyond the law. But yet how is it that his colleague Dr Michael Woods made such a nice deal with the religious orders so that they escaped having to pay out too much in redress to their victims. There wasn’t much sign of a republic there. Let us recall during the shameful referendum debates of the 1980s when Archbishop McNamara’s de facto political spokesman was that wonderful politician from the west Padraig Flynn who brought his children up so well, inculcating one of them with the belief that tax evasion was a worthwhile endeavour. Then there was senator Don Lydon who regaled the Irish senate with his homosexual fantasies, not to mention the late Jim Tunny. Former deputy for Dublin North West Michael Barrett who took part in the picket objecting to the screening of the boring Je Vous Salue Mariez, which, because it was denounced by the Vatican, acquired a notoriety it never deserved. I could go on, and on and on, but it would be boring. So, before Dermot Ahern starts trying to fly the flag of enlightened republicanism, he must dwell on how many members of his party, at all levels, are members of right-wing Catholic lay groups whose unspoken policy is to subborn the state to the Catholic church. No wonder Protestant bigots in Northern Ireland are able to snidely remark that Home Rule still means Rome Rule, while forgetting the nefarious influence of their Orange Order.

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.