Some are calling Kenny’s tirade against Vatican interference in Ireland’s affairs a historic moment in the history of church and state. Certainly there are few – but they exist – who would disagree with the Prime Minister of a so-called liberal democracy castigating a state founded by a fascist government, which is ruled by old men and where there is no pretence of democracy which has sought to undermine efforts to protect his citizens from acts of sexual abuse. But, and there is a big but, why has it taken so long for an Irish government to get touch with the Vatican? The crimes of commission by a handful of priests and the crimes of omission committed by their bishops who protected them or moved them to locations where they could continue their foul deeds, have been known about by the dogs in the street for decades. It would only be a radical lefty with no hope of getting anywhere in Irish politics who would have given voice to such “slanders” against the church. The former bishop of Kilmore Dr Francis McKiernan, was never in any doubt that secular authority was always subservient to religious authority, and I don’t think he was unique amongst the Irish hierarchy in this.

 But there is one other aspect of Kenny’s speech which renders it more hypocritical. The Catholic Church, quite rightly, must be condemned for what it has done. If we were to believe Kenny it is the church and it alone who is at fault. What about the state authorities, the police, the health boards etc. who were also aware of what was going on, and who did sweet FA about it? Another area of deafening silence (excuse the cliché, but when talking of dishonesty I feel it is the most appropriate language) is that child abuse is continuing in Ireland as I write this, but the worst villains aren’t priests, but agents and employees of the state who work in centres charged with the “care” of young adults and children, or those involved in foster-care. The One-in-Four organisation has alleged that as many as nine out of ten reports of child abuse are not being investigated by the Health Service Authority, while the foster care regime in Dublin has been described as being in crisis, with many fosterers’ backgrounds not being checked.

 Those people who abuse children, the vulnerable, or indeed old people in nursing homes are truly evil, as evil as Josef Fritzl. But there are certain government departments, some of whose staff members are equally evil and cowardly. I sometimes think that such evil is a necessary prerequisite for their promotion. They often have free rein in committing acts of evil against those they believe to be too weak or frightened to defend themselves , and in a climate of economic hardship they can defend any action that saves money – and may very well be rewarded for it. Politicians seem either unable or unwilling to do anything about this. However many members of the church, the many good priests that Diarmuid Martin rightly talks about, are made fully aware of the victimisation of the poor and vulnerable carried on by the state. But no religious person would be allowed to defend them, as their criticisms of government policy would be swiftly swept aside with a remark such as “Who are you to talk?”

There is however a litmus test to Kenny’s sincerity. Does he support a possible Papal visit next year? This would be an opportunity for those elitist and narcissistic elements in the Vatican to come to Ireland, to strut their stuff, maybe to check out “The scene”. It would also be an opportunity for those whom Diarmuid Martin rightly refers to as a “cabal” within the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy to be rewarded for protecting child abusers. But there is one very practical reason why it should not go ahead. We can’t afford it.

 It’s amazing what you hear in Cavan, I mean the scurrilous rumours. One relates to why so many of Cavan County Council’s workers, that is, people who get their hands dirty (unlike the pen pushers whose alabaster-skinned hands can never be soiled by manual labour,) have been put on short time. This is because of, you’ve guess it, the fleadh. It seems as if the whole thing went way over budget and the inevitable cuts have to be made where they hurt ordinary people, and not in any way that might impinge upon the publicans and other hangers-on in whose interest the fleadh took place.

 But how did such budgetary overruns occur? Poor or non-existent management I say. I’ve written a bit about management (especially strategic management) and if anyone were to ask me to define the manager’s role, I’d say he or she is like an orchestral conductor in charge of a myriad of differing, sometimes conflicting resources. It’s the manager’s job to ensure that the various resources, human, technical, intellectual and financial (to name but a few) combine effectively and efficiently. It’s hard to single out any one resource as more important, but I think that many would say that finance is pretty big. If you don’t have cash how can you stay in business, pay wages, order supplies? So any manager who allows budgetary haemorrhages on his watch is a pretty poor example of the species. You don’t have to have an MBA to know this – but I’d love to have one nonetheless. (It should be obvious I’m not talking about Cavan County Council here: I mention “intellectual” resources.

 Maybe I’m being too idealistic here. I’m talking about managers in the private sector who have to operate against the buffets of an ever-changing market landscape Budgetary overruns don’t matter if the institution concerned can act with impunity, like so many in the public service. Such managers can (and frequently do) say “Ah sure fuck it, it’s only the public’s money…”(followed by drink-sodden laugh). Such public service managers may hypocritically claim that they are operating within a climate of unprecedented economic pain (Jaysus! That’s a good one! Same again is it?) but in reality these people can act as it likes – because they can – and no one can stop them or question them, least of all our castrated pubic (sic!) representatives – even if they had the ball to , which they haven’t. 

 And the money that was overspent can be made up out of the government’s “reptile fund” ;or failing that, through hospital and school closures, or through unemployed people being bumped off the live register because their faces don’t fit or their welfare officers don’t like them.

 I shouldn’t be asking these questions ( me? A cripple? Now I’m being silly – but I like it). What do I know about management? – a good deal more it seems than some managers in Cavan. We must believe that the fleadh was a success and anyone who doesn’t accept that is obviously a whinger, motivated by begrudgery. The people of Cavan should just accept how great it was and not worry about cutbacks – until they affect them. And if we all wish real hard we’ll get it next year, so that the mayhem can be revisited upon us and certain publicans can rip off their customers. Juvenal must be smiling. It is further proof of how you can attempt to fool people with bread and circuses.

 PS. There is only one reason why I feel in any way positive about the fleadh. It’s got nothing to do with the obese, flatulent – yes – bastards associated with it. It’s just that I happened to spy this girl. I think she was a busker, as she had a fiddle strapped to her back as she walked towards  Cavan town. She was really cute we exchanges smiles and … well, everyone knows my weaknesses for pretty women who play stringed instruments and the way their fingers move down the bridge of their instrument and …. We could have made beautiful music and the fleadh could have run three six five, twenty four , seven …

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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

 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.

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.

 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…

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.