Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Category: Child abuse

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Living in a republic

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.

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The Murphy report

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.

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After dark

Francisco Macias Nguema

Mad uncle Frank

Francisco Macias Nguema, was Equatorial Guinea’s first president. In the eleven years he held the post he was responsible for the deaths of 50,000 people, as well as sending thousands of others into exile. Before his overthrow and murder by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema (who is still in power) the country had earned the unwelcome epithet of “the Dachau of Africa”. Amnesty International’s annual report were full of the heinous acts of human rights violations carried out by Macias, not t mention the crimes against humanity to be laid at his successor’s door. He oversaw one of the most bizarre personality cults in history – so bizarre because it was so unmerited. He adored bestowing grandiose titles on himself, yet he was barely literate. It is said he failed the colonial exams to become an office clerk three times and was only successful on the fourth because of some positive discrimination. He was given to violent swings of personality and received treatment in Spain and the United States for unspecified psychiatric problems; towards the latter years of his life he had acquired some unidentifiable disease

A friendly dictator

Not really like his uncle?

which may have been AIDS-related.

His hold on power was maintained through fear, not only of his loyal thugs but of Macias personally. He deliberately cultivated the belief that his father had been a witch doctor and sorcerer, and that he had inherited many of these gifts. He was rumoured to have drunk the blood of some of his political opponents, and he kept a large stockpile of human skulls at his presidential compound, alongside all of the country’s foreign currency reserves and medical supplies. Macias loved the dark and detested light; a Spanish airline pilot was arrested and tortured when he accidentally shone his ‘plane’s headlights on Macias’ jet as it sat on the airport tarmac one night. In 1977 a visiting researcher was told that “… you may be against Macias while the sun shines, but after dark you have to be for him,” Even when overthrown and sentenced to death, no locals could be found to man the firing squad, and the task had to be performed by Moroccan soldiers.

Macias  Nguema’s preference for the dark reminds me of the activities of a solicitor employed by the Irish health Service Executive, who is sadly well-known to her victims, and who seems to delight in working in the hours of night, well after “The Bard’’s witching hour. Does she feel that her victim are more cowed by the inky blackness, and less able to put up a defence to her machinations when they are awoken suddenly by the headlights of the garda cars ferrying her to the scene of her nocturnal sacrifices? or is there a yet more sinister reason for this, tied up perhaps with practice of the dark arts?

While the sun shines it is easy to be against Ms Helen (or is it Ellinor?) Stone, but after dark …

I wonder what she’s doing for Halloween?

 

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Leavin’ on a jet plane …

The release of Irish aid worker Sharon Commins  after her ordeal in Darfur has been turned into a tawdry PR stunt by the government,

 Like the vast majority of Irish people I was overjoyed to learn on Sunday of her liberation, but it soon became apparent that there were those intent on using the story to add some kudos to their personas. The start was the news broadcast on RTE’s radio 2 at 11 a.m. The item on Ms Commins’ release was expanded into a “words of praise” piece, worthy of North Korea, about Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin, followed by an interview with the man himself,. Indeed the release was the only item on the news.

 And then there was the provision of the government jet to bring her home. Fair play to whoever in the government copped on that this would be a great way of deflecting criticism  about the abusive usage to which the ‘plane has been put recently by … a certain minister. I think the Irish people have a right to know just how much was spent on air fresheners to clean the aircraft of the lingering odour of body odour and flatulence left by Minister Harney. We can rest assured that Minister Gormless made sure they didn’t contain any CFCs.

It may be carping for me to comparer the manifest efforts by the Irish government to secure Ms Commins’ release with their utter ambivalence to find out anything about the children who have disappeared from care  in Ireland.

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Common decency

John O’Donoghue has received a nice fat severance payment, plus pension, PLUS his TD’s salary, after looting the state’s coffers. Given the economic straights we are in, would it not be decent of him to give some of it back, or preferably make a donation to a charity or charities? I think it would be, but then decency is a quality in short supply among ALL our rulers, of whatever political party. The vast majority have been educated in denominational schools, whether by religious orders or their dioceses. Any attempt to limit the sphere of the religious in education is met with howls of indignation by the Catholic hierarchy. Admittedly I attended a Church of Ireland secondary school, the Royal School in Cavan, which, for reasons best known to its headmaster, is now ashamed to consider me a past pupil. Nevertheless, I still pride myself on knowing right from wrong and I can say with my hand on my heart that I have never stolen anything. 

 I don’t think though, they have much to be proud of. These schools have not produced better or more ethical people. Instead its products are greedy, nasty, narrow-minded hypocrites who however, are by and large willing to afford the Church a far wider influence than its dwindling numbers deserve.

O’Donoghue always showed what a nice Catholic boy he was when he’d start each Dail session with a prayer and a Sign of the Cross. This show reminded me of how classes were begun in the Catholic secondary school I attended for three months. There would be the recitation of the Hail Mary, with the l line “Seat of Wisdom Pray for Us” tagged on at the end;  if little Padedy or Micky wasn’t able to answer a question to the teacheer’s satisfaction he could look forward to receiving a coff on the ear – and that was from the lay teachers. But sure it made men of them - men who would think nothing of cheating on and beating their wives or abusing their children.  

More than ever I believe that I am in a kleptocracy, rules by thieves and scoundrels who are busily devising schemes of how much more they can steal from the little I have.

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Cavan local history gets new web presence

New CSB website

I’d like to tell all my readers about the new CSB – Cock-Suckers of Breifne – website. Naturally, it’s given over to narcissistic self-publicity on behalf of the soi-disants experts on local history, including that bad-assed cowardly scumbag The Honourable Dr B. Squirt, who appears in at least one photograph surrounded by druids. This was taken in association with a special novena held at the Ballyjamesduff pigsty in which they were praying for a miraculous increase in visitor numbers, so as to fend off the growing phalanx of calls for the pigsty’s closure as a costly white elephant.

 It is so reassuring for people like The Honourable Dr Squirt that, even at a time of swingeing public spending cuts, he inhabits a nice little sinecure enabling to get paid from the public trough even in the midst of economic recession. And it’s all thanks to daddy.

 Some in the pigsty have hit upon a new way of getting the punters in  – a pilgrimage. The pigsty has recently been recognised by the Sacred Congregation of Wights and others doing the work of God as a site intimately associated with the life of Blessed Oliver J. Hannigan, patron of blue plumbers, haemorrhoid sufferers and general pains in the arse

 Already miracles have been reported. One pilgrim from a Ballyconnell heritage group said: “For years I’ve been plagued with the piles, but since visiting Ballyjamesduff Pigsty I haven’t needed the Anusol once.“

 Another prized exhibit is the original confessional in which the late Fr Brendan Smyth confessed his craven sexual obsession for young children to a former bishop.  The hallowed prelate was a great idol of Dr Squirt’s, who considered him the greatest living expert on the O’Reillys, even though he was dead.

(Never having visited the site I don’t know whether I’m mentioned on it. I earnestly hope not.I’m more than happy to be thereby snubbed by that crowd of narrow-minded, bigoted, obscurantist budgie brains. Indeed I take it as a great compliment, as I thereby join other fine students of Cavan’s locl history who are now sadly deceased.

 Dr Squirt doesn’t like me; as I am not and never have had aspirations of becoming, either a poodle or a prostitute his likes are of no concern to me. But given that he has never met me I wonder what’s the reason for his problem? Many people have said it’s down to his jealousy towards me. Anyone who is jealous of a partially sighted individual who spends much of his tine in a wheel chair deserves our prayers – not a job – but then he could be in no better place. Aithnionn ciarog ciarog eile.

 People reading the above must be aware that it springs from my own opinions and does not aim to be in anyway factual. What’s more, there is no malice, which is more than I can say about the attitude of the pigsty’s “research officer” (!) towards me. I believe it constitutes fair comment, though there will be those who say it’s unfair comment. I reply that I consider that the only form of comment to which these people are entitled is no comment at all.

 I hear he’s writing, not just one book but two. I wonder what the titles are? Maybe the semi-autobiographical All Hands on Dick, while the second might be a history of clerical child abuse in the diocese of Kilmore. Most ordinary writers have to struggle with the financial demands of daily life while they complete their work, as well as with hectoring editors, but the Honourable Dr Squirt has his nice County Council sinecure to cushion him. But after all he is such a great writer, greater than any other who has ever worked in the benighted hole of Cavan.

I know how much this will annoy Brendan and his friends, peoplke like the equally jealous yet ill-informed Barry Leddy.

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A service economy

On the topic of vindictiveness you only have to look at the fate of the Combat Poverty Agency. It was trying to highlight the systematic penury which due to structural inequalities persisted in Ireland even at the height of the so-called Celtic Tiger period. However, it was gradually starved of funds and has now been swallowed up by the Department of Social and Family Affairs where it will have no other identity except that of a bauble in the midst of a ministry headed by the Lady Bountiful who doesn’t believe anyone is entitled to any welfare payments, a stance in which she is supported by her senior well-paid officials.

I may have mentioned that the story about the ombudsman was nobbled. It was pushed off the top of the news – in fact the news altogether – by reports about how some government agency has identified 5 billion euro worth of public spending cuts. These will include a savaging of welfare payments. It won’t effect the members of the oligarchy and elite, who can be comfortable that their taxes aren’t going to the “work shy”. It will of course lead to an increase in mendicancy and probably an increase of those women and girls who will be forced to sell their bodies in order to make ends meet. Such an increase in supply will be music to the ears of the many senior civil servants, judges and members of the judiciary who frequently use such services – I could name names here. They’ll be delighted to have prossies who speak English instead of all of the foreign women they’ve had to deal with. But then some of these gentlemen’s tastes extend beyond women and girls.

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Omerta – the code of silence

On the subject of Emily O’Reilly’s comments about the Ryan report, one of the reasons why nobody said anything about institutional abuse even though everyone knew it was going on was for self-preservation. If you were a member of the Knights of St Columbanus or some other ultra Catholic lay group your passage to the higher pastures of employment was guaranteed. If you weren’t a member your outlook was less assured, but were you to offend the Knights in any way you could kiss goodbye to any effective advancement in vast areas of the Civil Service and Judiciary, and the Knights were (indeed honesty compels me to switch tenses here) are very vindictive, unforgetting and unforgiving. Their members conceal their intrinstic reactionary views on everything behind a cloak of religious clap-trap. I remember being in the company of a knight – one of the best of them now dead alas – when the television reported the demonstrations in Belgrade which brought down the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. He stated: “They’re getting’ as bad as us.” As to their attitude to those complaining of abuse, I remember one of them denouncing a victim as a “whinger” who “deserved everything he should have got”.

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Irish ombudsman speaks about Ryan report

In a personal response to the revelations of the Ryan report on abuse in Catholic institutions, Ireland’s ombudsman gave a very forthright response to the release of the Ryan report on institutionalised abuse. Extracts from her speech can be found at The Irish Times site.

She said that the report had shown Irish people as exposed “not as chatty, avuncular scholars but as a repressed, cold hearted, fearful, smugly pious, sexually ignorant and vengeful race of self styled Christians.” She added: “”If things were hidden, they were hidden in clear sight … Judges knew, lawyers knew, teachers knew, civil servants knew, childcare workers knew, Gardaí knew. Not to know was not an option.”

RTE news carried a fairly extensive report on Ms O’Reilly’s speech on its One O’Clock broadcast, but by the time of the evening news it had been nobbled. There was nothing about it on the Eirtel teletext service either, thanks to the rats and the members of Ireland’s home-brewed “Klan”.

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A glimmer of hope

In a recent post I wrote how the dogs in the street knew that the physical, sexual and mental abuse of children by some Catholic religious orders was systematic and widespread. Perhaps it will take another commission working for ten years to “reveal” another self-evident truth: that the “sweetheart” deal arranged between the state and the religious orders on compensation of victims was drafted and composed by civil servants who were either members of or sympathetic to right-wing Catholic lay groups such as Opus Dei and the Knights of St Columbanus. Those same urban hounds are also well aware that the minister who signed off on this deal and who now seeks to defend it, was probably a member of one of these organisations. Dr Michael Woods liked to appear as the innocent, almost simple north-side politician, singing “One Day at a Time Dear Jesus” on Irish television, but he was also the minister who unleashed a vicious campaign against welfare recipients under the guise of unearthing “social welfare fraud”. I believe the agreement between Woods and the religious orders is possibly the most flagrant and biggest piece of fraud in the history of the state.

The members of these lay Catholic groups, and the vile and depraved individuals they protect, are truly evil. They masquerade as so good, often wrapping themselves up in the raiment of religiosity. But in fact this is just a confidence trick, to conceal their inner baseness and wickedness. I am convinced that if Jesus Christ were to appear in Ireland today he would be “dealt with” by these people; there wouldn’t be a trial or anything so public as a crucifixion. That would create a scandal, and the last thing the Knights or their friends can tolerate is a scandal.

But I know that anyone who speaks out about these heinous fiends faces years, decades, probably a lifetime of victimisation at their hands from which there is no reprieve.

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