Showing posts with label Bishop Eamonn Casey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bishop Eamonn Casey. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Gay Byrne, Annie Murphy AND Bishop Brendan Comiskey




RTE Archives and THAT Interview with Annie Murphy 2 April 1993:

According to an article in RTE Archives regarding episode of the Late Late Show broadcast on 2 April 1993.
Revelations About Eamonn Casey 1993

In 1993 Annie Murphy, mother of Peter who was fathered by Eamonn Casey, spoke to Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show about her affair with the then Bishop of Kerry.

In 1992 it was revealed that Bishop Eamonn Casey had fathered a child with an American woman Annie Murphy. The child named Peter was born in 1973 when Casey was Bishop of Kerry. Bishop Eamonn Casey resigned [as Bishop of Galway] as a result of the revelations. The following year in 1993, Annie Murphy published a book ‘Forbidden Fruit: The True Story of My Secret Love for the Bishop of Galway’, and made an appearance on the Late Late Show.

In this excerpt from the interview Gay Byrne remarks that
"If your son is half as good a man as his father, he won’t be doing too badly."
Annie Murphy responds by stating
"I’m not so bad either."
Annie Murphy promptly thanked Gay Byrne for the interview and left the set.

There was a furious reaction from Irish "liberals" to this exchange that occurred at the end of the interview. It was claimed Gay had insulted Annie Murphy in the course of defending his friend Bishop Casey. In fact the negative reaction continued for decades and this exchange was still being quoted in the mass media and social media as a black mark against Gay up to the time of his recent death  (4 November 2019). I think it gave Gay Byrne a nasty shock. He used to say that he was not pushing any political party or ideology and this is likely true BUT he certainly liked to be popular - especially in the eyes of "progressives". I suspect that this is the reason why Gay decided that the next time, a Bishop was being denounced in the media, he would take the side of the witch-hunters. Thus he betrayed his friend Bishop Brendan Comiskey in 1995. See article "Bishop Brendan Comiskey and False Allegations of Child Abuse" This is an extract:

Bishop Comiskey

Take the following from a sneering article by Declan Lynch in the Sunday Independent on 8 October 1995. It is headed "Gaybo Speaks and the Catholic Faithful Tremble":

"I personally would rate myself a friend and admirer of Brendan Comiskey [said Gay Byrne on his radio programme], and indeed I was looking for him on the telephone recently, and he didn't make contact with me which would have been kind of unusual, a little bit unusual.

"So much so that I don't believe now that Brendan Comiskey has gone to America because of stress, nor do I believe he's gone because of alcohol, nor do I believe he's gone because of his alleged protection of a priest who's up on charges.

"I think there is something other. I haven't the faintest idea of what it is, but I think there is something else, and I think it is something dreadful, and I.m almost afraid of what it might be. That's my personal reaction."

A second article in the same paper commented that "although the remarks appeared to be 'off the cuff' it is known that Gay scripts his shows with extreme care and attention."

So what was Gay Byrne suggesting? When Father Sean Fortune committed suicide he left a note claiming that he had been sexually assaulted by Bishop Comiskey! Is that what Gay had in mind?  ENDOFQUOTE

I rather think that paedophilia was what Gay was implying! But he was never questioned by our liberal journalists who - like Declan Lynch - didn't actually believe the libel but were pleased that it was published!

Gay never apologised publicly for his vile suggestion but may have done so privately to Bishop Comiskey. An article in the Irish Catholic  (7 November 2019) by Mary Kenny is entitled Gay retained the Catholicism  his Mother Brought to Him and it's possible he made his private peace with God and the Bishop. If so it wasn't enough, but liberal Ireland was not going to bring him to book over this issue. They were content to denounce him over his supposed mistreatment of Annie Murphy!

Rory Connor
5 December 2019


Background: The story of Eamonn Casey and Annie Murphy

Annie Murphy arrived in Ireland to stay with Eamonn Casey  in April 1973. She was 25, and recovering from the traumatic breakup of a two-year marriage.

Her mother was Eamonn Casey's cousin; her father, John Murphy, and Casey had become friends. Casey had offered to put Annie Murphy up at his residence in Inch, Kerry, while she got over her recent traumas.

Casey was four years into his tenure as bishop of Kerry, a dynamic and colourful figure who combined a gregarious personality and habit of fast driving with an impressive track record in social advocacy and fundraising. His appointment as bishop in 1969 – at the age of 42 – was a recognition of his great success agitating and organising against homelessness in Britain, most notably as founding chairman of the housing charity Shelter. He didn't have the academic theological pedigree normally associated with Irish bishops, but neither was he in any way radical on doctrinal issues.

Soon after Annie Murphy arrived, she and Eamonn Casey began a relationship. By November 1973, she was pregnant. Casey pressed her to have the child adopted. She gave birth to Peter Eamonn at the Rotunda on 31 July 1974. Casey visited the mother and child in hospital, and they argued about her refusal to put the child up for adoption. She refused to go back to Inch, instead electing to stay in a Daughters of Charity home for single mothers, St Joseph's, Dublin. Casey visited, and they argued again. She was deeply unhappy, had medical complications after her pregnancy, and also became paranoid about Casey's intentions. Shortly afterwards, Annie Murphy left, with her baby, Peter, to go home to Connecticut.


Annie Murphy: The Question of Cash - and Libel

In an article in the Irish Independent on 3 August 2013, Nicola Anderson wrote
Annie Murphy: 'I regret he had to leave the church'
TRACKED down by the Irish Independent last year, Annie Murphy is currently living with her partner, artist Thaddeus Heinchon, in a trailer park in a town east of Los Angeles in California.

She admitted then that she has since regretted her devastating exposure of Eamon Casey, saying: "I took justice into my own hands and I regret that because two wrongs don't make a right." And she also regretted that he had to leave the Catholic Church after details that he had fathered a son emerged, saying: "The Catholic Church was Eamon's cornerstone and that was taken away from him."

Although she is thought to have made close to €300,000 from the publication of her book revealing details of the affair, Ms Murphy said: "When you get money like that, it makes you feel dirty, you want to get rid of it.She said she had given a lot of it to her son and some to her then partner, Arthur Pennell, – who had pressurised her to go public with her story – and said she had kept less than half of it herself, adding: "I didn't do anything useful with it, I didn't buy a home with it or anything."

That wasn't the only money Annie Murphy had received from Bishop Casey. According to an article in Magill Magazine Eamon Casey: Opening the floodgates of scandal  (Colin Murphy, 25 January 2006):

In March 1975, Annie Murphy's father, John Murphy, came back to Dublin to meet Casey. They agreed that Casey would send Annie Murphy $175 per month in maintenance, increasing over time to $300 per month. ...... In 1990, Annie Murphy and her partner, Arthur Penell, were in financial difficulties themselves, and they and Casey began to negotiate a settlement. In July 1990, Casey paid them a cheque of £70,669.20 ($117,000), plus a further $8,000 (a total of $125,000).

Murphy and Pennell then sought further monies to pay for Peter's college education. Annie Murphy was also concerned that Casey acknowledge his son. She decided to go public, and in January 1992, contacted the Irish Times. The newspaper gradually confirmed various aspects of the story, but didn't publish it. Murphy and Pennell meanwhile continued in negotiations with Casey, through his intermediary, an Irish priest in Brooklyn, Jim Kelly. These negotiations arrived at a figure of $150,000 to be paid by Casey for Peter's education, but weren't finalised.

On Thursday 1 May 1992, Phoenix magazine ran a short story on an unnamed leading cleric about to be involved in a scandal. This Irish Times still didn't publish, but the story was by then an open secret amongst the media.........

Casey Affair Book Publishers Settle Libel Action with £100,000 Payout
An article by Stephen O'Brien in the Irish Independent on 30 November 1998 confirmed that a major libel action linked to the book by Annie Murphy, was settled out of court for a sum reported to be in the region of £100,000. The Irish Independent confirmed that a settlement was agreed by publishers Little Brown, the company which brought out Forbidden Fruit written by Annie Murphy and Peter de Rosa.

The case was settled without any retraction or apology, or any question of the book being withdrawn from sale. The News of the World quoted people close to Dympna Kilbane  saying she was "overjoyed'' at the outcome. ``She has gone through a lot in order to clear her name and has emerged victorious,'' the source said.

An article in The Herald (Scotland)  on 13 April 1993 "Woman Steps into Bishop Tape Row" gives some background information. Dympna Kilbane said she shared a flat with Annie Murphy, when Ms Murphy was pregnant in 1974 as the result of her affair with the bishop. Ms Kilbane confirmed she was taking legal action against Ms Murphy for references made about her in the book, Forbidden Fruit.  She said she had provided the Sunday Independent with a tape recording of a conversation he had with Bishop Casey in which he called Annie Murphy ''an evil woman''.

As per an article in the National Catholic Reporter on 30 April 1993:  "Kilbane has also raised questions about the paternity of Peter Murphy, the son Annie Murphy claims was fathered by Casey."


Society's Attitude to "Kiss and Tell"

In point of fact, Annie Murphy got off pretty lightly during the 1993 Late Late Show interview with Gay Byrne. (It also emerged during the interview that she was hoping for a film deal - or TV mini-series - based on her book.) In general the women - and occasionally men - who try to make money out of sharing their sexual activities with the public are regarded with contempt by society - sometimes amused contempt. By its nature "Kiss and Tell" involves a comparative nonentity trying to exploit his/her sexual relationship with a much more important personality. Even when the public are titillated, this doesn't do anything to create respect for the person who is betraying confidences. TWO EXAMPLES

(1) When Terry Keane died in June 2008, RTE described her as "well known columnist and fashion journalist" and "principal contributor of The Sunday Independent's long-running gossip column The Keane Edge". It was also mentioned that she studied medicine at Trinity College but dropped out without taking a degree and that she had married a young barrister Ronan Keane but separated from him, after which he went on to become Chief Justice. A slightly more substantial figure than Annie Murphy then but she is chiefly "well known" for being the long time mistress of Taoiseach (Irish PM) Charlie Haughey and for announcing this during an interview on the Late Late Show in May 1999! This was some years after Haughey had been forced to resign as Taoiseach and during a period when he was under intense pressure from the McCracken and Moriarty Tribunals regarding his irregular financial affairs. Keane also gave the story of their affair as an exclusive to rival newspaper The Sunday Times, although she was still employed by Independent News and Media, and abruptly left the Sunday Independent.

Terry Keane was subjected to considerable criticism in the media- far more so than Annie Murphy. According to the RTE obituary: In later years, in an RTÉ documentary, Terry Keane said she regretted the pain that she had caused by speaking about her 27-year-long affair. 
Given her cynical betrayal of Haughey (they never spoke again before his death in June 2006), it is likely that the main pain she regretted, was that suffered by herself!

(2) Captain James Hewitt  a former British cavalry officer, who came to prominence in the mid 1990s when he disclosed he had a love affair with Princess Diana from 1986 to 1991 at a time when she was still married to Prince Charles. He was a major source for the book Princess in Love by Anna Pasternak published in 1994. His Wikipedia article has a very interesting link (unfortunately broken) to an article in the new York Times on 5 October 1994 entitled "'Kiss and Tell' Officer Draws Heaps of Scorn". However this proved to be only the opening installment of the ridicule and opprobrium heaped on Hewitt. 


Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in August 1997 and In 2003, Hewitt tried to sell his 64 personal letters from Diana for £10 million. The act of selling the letters was considered to be a betrayal of trust, and Sarah, Duchess of York, condemned his action. She was reported to have said, "Betrayal, I think, is the most horrible, horrible, disloyal thing you can do to anyone".

Wikipedia mentions that in In 1991, Hewitt served as a Challenger tank commander in the Gulf War and was mentioned in dispatches.  However he failed the exam for promotion to major three times. Again he is a more substantial figure than Annie Murphy whose sole lifetime achievement seems to have been as a Kiss and Tell artiste!

Compared to the others, Annie Murphy got off very lightly indeed. Hewitt was furiously denounced for an action that could not have harmed a deceased person. Terry Keane betrayed Haughey after he had been forced out of politics and was under pressure because of his irregular financial dealings. She added to his troubles but didn't create them. Annie Murphy was solely responsible for forcing Bishop Casey to resign. Gay Byrne and his audience treated her respectfully during that infamous Late Late Show interview. It is not insulting to point out that there are discrepancies in the story being told by a Kiss and Tell artiste!





Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Eight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland

Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (slandered by Dr Noel Browne and John Cooney)


Cardinal Archbishop Cahal Daly (slandered by Deputy Pat Rabbitte)



Background:

This article started as an "open letter" to several Irish historians on 7 December 2006, with a follow-up 10 days later. Both were published at the time by the "Alliance Victim Support Group" on its website AllianceSupport.org. I think that the Group which was founded in 1999, disbanded recently and there is just a skeletal website remaining. The first two letters refer to false allegations against six Irish Bishops - including two Archbishops (John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and Cahal Daly of Armagh - pictured above). In June 2008 I forwarded copies of the two to Brenda Power of the Sunday Times in response to an article she had written concerning the effects of false allegations of sexual assault. By this time there had been an additional allegation against a former Archbishop i.e. Thomas Morris of Cashel and I also recalled that Mary Raftery had slandered the former Bishop of Ossary, Peter Birch. Bishop Birch had been widely admired for his work among the poor by many people - including by my own mentor Brother Maurice Kirk.

All of the falsely accused Bishops were extremely high-profile - including three Archbishops. There are only four Archdioceses in Ireland and I have joked over the years that an Archbishop of Tuam - either current or deceased - is obviously next on our anti-clerics hit-list. Actually it has already occurred - but more on this later!


EIGHT Falsely Accused Bishops 

Monday, 23 June, 2008
From: "Rory Connor"
To: Brenda Power, Sunday Times

Brenda Power
The Sunday Times 
Regarding your article "It's the Innocent who Merit an Explanation" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188284.ece
you may like to look at the following two articles which have appeared on the www.alliancesupport.org website.

The letters were originally addressed to a number of Irish Historians - and cced to Colm O'Gorman of the "victims" group One in Four for obvious reasons.

A total of 8 Bishops have been falsely accused of sex offences in Ireland - including 3 Archbishops. There are only 26 full Bishops in the country including 4 Archbishops so the Archbishop of Tuam is presumably next on our liberals hit list!

The following articles dated December 2006 relate to 6 Bishops. There has been one subsequent case - the late Archbishop Thomas Morris of Cashel [1] and incredibly I had overlooked one case - that of the late Bishop Peter Birch of Ossory (Kilkenny) [2].

Finally the hysteria about sex crimes is not indiscriminate or at least it didn't begin that way. It was first directed at the Catholic Church and then spread to the rest of society. To counter it you need to start with the obscene lies directed at Churchmen.

Regards

Rory Connor

[1] See "Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O'Grady" on www.alliancesupport.org on 17 January 2007.
Relevant Link: Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O'Grady

[2] Included in the article "Vincent Browne, Mary Raftery and Sister Conception" on www.alliancesupport.org on 21 July 2006.
Relevant Link Bishop Birch and Mary Raftery

Originally SIX Falsely Accused Bishops

Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,
The following article concerns false sex allegations directed against 6 Irish Bishops between 1994 and 2006. This represents nearly a quarter of the Irish Hierarchy (shades of "One in Four"!).

Can we expect Colm O'Gorman, the founder of "One in Four" to comment? After all people who make false allegations of child abuse are trading on the misery of those who were REALLY abused. When our current Witch-hunt eventually comes to an end, children who are true victims of child abuse will find it difficult to get a hearing.

Cynicism is the legacy of Hysteria and Cynicism will be the ultimate legacy of our Irish Salem.

Regards

Rory Connor 
7 December 2006

FALSE SEX ALLEGATIONS AGAINST IRISH BISHOPS

In the 12 years since 1994, a total of six Irish bishops have been the target of false sex allegations in the media. The majority of the allegations relate to claims that the bishop was a paedophile, one to a different sex claim and one to a charge of trying to prevent the extradition of the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.

There are only 26 bishops in the whole of Ireland.

My articles on the allegations are published on the website www.alliancesupport.org between June and November 2006.

    www.alliancesupport.org 29 September 2006

Relevant Link: The Guardian and Bishop Magee

On 2 April 1994, The Guardian, which is Britain's most distinguished "liberal" newspaper, published an allegation that a senior Irish Bishop was linked to a paedophile ring. 

The Guardian thought that, by not naming the bishop they could get away with their lies. However there are only 26 bishops on the whole of Ireland and the newspaper report contained certain remarks that reduced the number of possible targets still further. The Irish Hierarchy threatened a class libel suit and the Guardian were forced to apologise.

On 22 April 1994, the Irish Times which is the Irish equivalent of the Guardian, published a report that contains little more than the text of their sister paper's apology. However the more down-market Sunday Independent published a detailed report into the background of the libel. Independent journalist Sam Smyth pointed out that this claim had been previously investigated by a number of British TABLOIDS which rejected it as false! Yet the Guardian went ahead and published anyway!


The following summary comes from Richard Websters article "States of Fear, The Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" on the website www.richardwebster.net. 

(My own longer article "FALSE ALLEGATIONS: PAT RABBITTE AND CARDINAL CATHAL DALY" is on www.alliancesuppoprt.org in October 2006.)
Relevant Link: Pat Rabbitte and Cardinal Cahal Daly 

"The beginnings of the story go back to 1994 when the authorities in Northern Ireland sought the extradition from the Republic of Father Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest who was facing a number of counts of child sexual abuse to which he would eventually plead guilty. It would appear that he had previously been protected against allegations by his own Norbertine order, which had moved him from parish to parish as complaints arose, and failed to alert the police.

 Perhaps because of the age of the allegations, which went back twenty years, there was a delay of several months during which the Irish attorney general took no action in relation to the extradition request. Unfounded reports began to circulate in Dublin that the process was being deliberately delayed in response to a request made at the highest level by the Catholic Church. An Irish opposition deputy, Pat Rabbitte, then referred in parliament to the possible existence of a document that would ‘rock the foundations of this society to its very roots’. He apparently had in mind the rumoured existence of a letter written by the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Cathal Daly, to the attorney general in Dublin. In this letter the Cardinal had supposedly interceded on behalf of Father Brendan Smyth and requested the delay in his extradition which had in fact taken place.

No evidence has been produced that any such letter ever existed. Yet, as a direct result of the rumours which now swept the country, confidence in the ruling establishment was undermined and the Fianna Fail government of Albert Reynolds fell, amidst talk of a dark conspiracy involving politicians, members of Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbus and others. This conspiracy was allegedly seeking to cover up the activities of paedophile priests."


[from my article "BISHOP BRENDAN COMISKEY AND FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE" on www.alliancesupport.org in October 2006] 
Relevant Link: Bishop Comiskey and Gay Byrne

The following is from a sneering article by Declan Lynch in the Sunday Independent on 8 October 1995. It is headed "Gaybo Speaks and the Catholic Faithful Tremble":

"I personally would rate myself a friend and admirer of Brendan Comiskey [said Gay Byrne on his radio programme], and indeed I was looking for him on the telephone recently, and he didn't make contact with me which would have been kind of unusual, a little bit unusual.

"So much so that I don't believe now that Brendan Comiskey has gone to America because of stress, nor do I believe he's gone because of alcohol, nor do I believe he's gone because of his alleged protection of a priest who's up on charges.

"I think there is something other. I haven't the faintest idea of what it is, but I think there is something else, and I think it is something dreadful, and I.m almost afraid of what it might be. That's my personal reaction."

A second article in the same paper commented that "although the remarks appeared to be 'off the cuff' it is known that Gay scripts his shows with extreme care and attention."


[See article "Apology to Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee by TV3"  on www.alliancesupport.org on 27 Sept 2006]
Relevant Link: TV3 and Bishop Magee

The following is the text of TV3's apology for libelling Bishop Magee:

RETRACTION AND APOLOGY TO THE BISHOP AND DIOCESE OF CLOYNE BROADCAST BY TV3 ON TUESDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER  [1999] IN THE 5.30PM, 7.30PM AND 10.45PM NEWS BULLETINS

It was reported on the 15th September last in the news at 5.30pm, 7.00pm and 10.45pm that the Catholic Church had settled a case with a man who claimed that inappropriate behaviour took place in the Bishop of Cloyne's residence. We wish to unreservedly retract same as it is clear that no such claim was made by the man in question. We are satisfied that there was no basis or truth whatever in the allegations and any suggestion that the Bishop of Cloyne has been compromised in any manner in the conduct of his duties is sincerely regretted and entirely without foundation. We wish to offer an unreserved apology to the Bishop and to the Diocese of Cloyne.

The sincerity of TV3's repentance can be gauged from the fact that, one month later, in October 1999, they broadcast Louis Lentin's documentary "Our Boys". This contained an allegation by Gerry Kelly that he attended the funerals of boys in Artane who had been killed by the Christian Brothers. No boy died of any cause while Gerry Kelly was in Artane!

Relevant Links: Five Articles on John Cooney and John Charles McQuaid

I have published several articles on this subject on the Alliance website from July 2006 onwards. See in particular the 5 articles entitled "JOHN COONEY AND JOHN CHARLES MCQUAID" (1) to (5). The first article contains quotations from 4 Irish historians, all of whom agree that the allegations in Cooney's biography of John Charles are rubbish. Incredibly they also agree that its a great book - provided you disregard the "silly bits" about paedophilia!! 

The most outrageous claim in John Cooney's book "John Charles McQuaid - Ruler of Catholic Ireland" is that the Archbishop was a homosexual paedophile. However in my third article I refer to Cooney's other allegation that the Archbishop used an astronomical telescope to spy on courting couples on Killiney beach and on girls in a schoolyard. I point out some problems with these claims
:
(A) Killiney beach is not visible from the Archbishop's observatory
(B) Homosexual paedophiles do not normally display an interest in courting couples or females of any age (Actually the same applies to non-paedophile homosexuals!).
(C) An astronomical telescope is designed to view stars millions of miles away. It is not suitable for observing human beings a hundred yards away!

Dr Noel Browne is the source of the main allegation against the late Archbishop. See articles "DOCTOR NOEL BROWNE AND HIS ENEMIES" and "DOCTOR NOEL BROWNE AND THE BISHOPS" on the Alliance Support website.
Relevant Links: Noel Browne and His Enemies and Noel Browne and the Bishops

[see article "Eamonn Casey, the Bishop Still Seeking Sanctuary from His Past" on www.alliancesuppport.org on 19 November 2006]
Relevant Link: Bishop Casey Accused

Bishop Eamonn Casey was recently accused by a middle aged woman who claimed that he had abused her 30 years ago. Thus we are clearly talking about an allegation of pedophilia. The claim was given huge publicity by the media which emphasised that the woman is regarded as mentally disturbed and has made unfounded allegations against other people. So why all the publicity since journalists obviously did not believe her?. If she had accused a retired headmaster or senior civil servant would her lies have been given equal prominence? The difference is that Eamonn Casey is a retired Bishop. The Rape Crisis Network also thought that this was a good opportunity to demand that he apologise again to Annie Murphy. 

What we have here is a society that is spewing on itself. The saga of false allegations against Bishops began in 1994 when the UK Guardian accused an un-named Bishop of being part of a paedophile ring. Later that year Pat Rabbitte  implied that Cardinal Cahal Daly was engaged in a conspiracy with the Attorney General to prevent the extradition of Father Brendan Smyth. In that year the false allegations were being made by the highest in the land. Now a poor deranged woman is repeating them. "A fish rots from the head" says the Russian proverb about the role of intellectuals in society. Now the rot has reached both tail and heart!

Rory Connor 
7 December 2006

'One in Four' Bishops - as per Colm O'Gorman!

Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,

A couple of objections to my article on "False Allegations against Irish Bishops" have come to my attention. [www.alliancesupport.org on 9 Dec 2006]. The main objection is that I am overstating the significance of the number of false allegations. I claim - only partly with tongue in cheek - that the allegations against six Bishops amount to "One in Four" of the Irish Hierarchy (as per Colm O'Gorman and his group of that name).

FIRST OBJECTION.  You are referring to TWO different generations of Bishops. After all Archbishop McQuaid died in 1973 and Bishop Casey retired in 1992. Therefore the proportion of falsely accused Bishops is one in eight or ten rather than "One in Four". 

MY ANSWER. Yes but all of the allegations date from 1994 to date and these 12 years fit neatly into one generation. MOREOVER the usual explanations for making claims decades after the event, do not apply in these cases. The usual excuses are:

(A) I was traumatised by my experiences and only recovered recently, 
(B) Nobody would believe my word against that of a priest/Bishop.

Since we are talking about lies and slander these explanations are irrelevant. Thus the "One in Four" proportion is OK.

SECOND OBJECTION: There are 26 Irish dioceses but 33 Bishops - the other 7 are "Auxiliary Bishops". Again this means that you have exaggerated the proportion of those who have been falsely accused.

MY REPLY.  No Auxiliary Bishop has been falsely accused (as far as I know) and I think it unlikely that one will be in the future. Just look at the list of those who have been the target of obscene lies:
  • John Charles McQuaid was the best known Irish prelate of the 20th Century. He was Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland.
  • Cathal Daly was Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
  • John Magee of Cloyne is the only man in the history of the Church to have been Private Secretary to three Popes (Paul VI, John Paul 1 and John Paul 11)
  • Bishops Eamonn Casey and Brendan Comiskey are very well known prelates who had frequent dealings with the media
  • I am reasonably sure I know the identity of the un-named Bishop who was accused by the UK Guardian in 1994. He is no "Auxiliary" either!
  • Our lying intellectuals tend to concentrate on the "big shots" in the Catholic Church and disdain mere Auxiliary Bishops.  Thus I think my "One in Four" proportion is still valid.
FINALLY I believe that the behaviour of our lying anti-clerics says a great deal about the nature of the paedophile problem in this country. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a major problem with paedophile clergy in the Catholic Church. Then over the last 50 years or so, you would expect that at least one Bishop would be identified as a paedophile. You would also expect that this man would be operating in a small diocese and that few people would have heard of him before the scandal. THAT is the way things work out in real life (as opposed to Salem Style Witch-hunts). And the reason things happen that way is that a man with severe moral and emotional problems is unlikely to be a high-flier in any profession. (Compare the unfortunate Judge Brian Curtin).

However that is NOT how things actually worked out. Ludicrous and lying allegations have been made against  a Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, a  former Archbishop of Dublin who was a hate figure for "liberals" since the 1970s etc etc. 

Clearly we are not talking about real life but a parallel universe in which our anti-clerics draw their plots from Dallas and their morals from the Nazi pornographer Julius Streicher. 

Is it possible that I am overstating my case?

Best wishes, 

Rory Connor

[19 December 2006]


False Allegation against Former Archbishop(s) of Tuam

Over the years I have joked that  Irish "liberals" who slandered three of our four Archbishops, were bound to take aim at the Archbishop of Tuam. Actually it happened  a few years ago but I didn't fully appreciate its significance at the time. In June 2014 the Jesuit magazine "America" persuaded the Associated Press to issue an apology for claiming that the Catholic Church had refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers at the mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secour nuns. Senior Editor Kevin Clarke wrote in "The Galway Horror Part II"
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii
“Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.” It is a sentence, unattributed to any source, which repeats—either word for word or in a close approximation—in hundreds of articles concerning the now infamous deaths and burials of hundreds of children in Tuam, Galway between 1925 and 1961. This appalling sacramental indifference is referenced in major U.S. and U.K. publications and cited in leading online opinion journals like Salon as more evidence of the cruelty of the Bon Secours sisters who ran the home and the Catholic Church in Ireland in general.

The text of the apology is as follows:
DUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 [2014] about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.

The journalists who published those lies were aiming at the Bon Secour nuns in particular and at the Catholic Church in general. However it is the clergy and not nuns, who would have made that decision and the local priest would certainly have referred an issue of such rarity and importance to his Bishop - or in this case to the Archbishop of Tuam.  According all four Irish Archbishops have now been subjected to obscene lies by our "liberal" media!

If our journalists - and politicians - were targeting Protestant Archbishops or the Chief Rabbi of Ireland with such lies, no one would be in any doubt as to their motivation!