Richard Dawkins ("Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse") - Cancelled by American Humanists and Trinity Students!

 

Richard Dawkins and Trinity College Students' Union

(A) Introduction

In 1996, the American Humanist Association gave Dawkins their Humanist of the Year Award. In 2021, they voted to withdraw it, stating he "demean[ed] marginalized groups", including transgender people, using "the guise of scientific discourse". In September 2020 The Hist - or the College Historical Society of Trinity College Dublin - rescinded their invitation to Dawkins to address the society in 2021 citing his stance on the religion of Islam and sexual assault as reasoning for their cancellation. Bríd O’Donnell, auditor of The Hist explained She added the society “will not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members comfort above all else”. 

I will write more about these two organisations. [The Hist was established in Trinity College in 1770, inspired by the club formed by Edmund Burke during his  time in Trinity in 1747. It is the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world.] For now, suffice it to say that neither of them saw anything immoral about Dawkins' grotesque attacks on the Catholic Church - even though some of his own followers are embarrassed by them! American Humanists and Trinity students are prepared to tolerate any vicious or lying attack on the Catholic Church because they themselves hate it. Their attitude is similar to that of some Weimar intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s who were so caught up in hatred of the Churches, Capitalists, Army etc that they failed to understand that the Nazis were the real danger! (See Notes [1] and [2] )

[The following is an edited version of the article on Richard Dawkins on my old website (not Blog)  www.IrishSalem.com ]

(B) Richard Dawkins: "Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse"

In October 2002, there was an article in " The Dubliner" magazine entitled, "The God Shaped Hole" reporting on Richard Dawkins conversation with editor Emily Hourican. In the course of the conversation, Dawkins compares Catholicism to the sexual molestation of children, and argues that Catholicism is worse:

"Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place."

As is clear from the full article, the above is not taken out of context but is an accurate representation of Dawkins' attitude to Catholics.

Article in "The Dubliner" and Reply re "Catholicism is Worse than Child Abuse"

Dawkins stated that:

"....The Roman Catholic Church is one of the forces for evil in the world, mainly because of the powerful influence it has over the minds of children. The Catholic Church has developed, over the centuries, brilliant techniques in brain washing children; even intelligent people who have had a proper, full cradle-Catholic upbringing find it hard to shake it off when they reach adulthood. Obviously many of them do - and congratulations to them for it - but even some really quite intelligent people fail to shake it off, powerful evidence of the skill in brainwashing that the Catholic Church exercises. It's far more skilled than, for instance, the Anglican Church, mere amateurs in the game.

"The Catholic Church also has an extraordinarily retrogressive stance on everything to do with reproduction. Any sort of new technology which makes life easier for women without causing any suffering is likely to be opposed by the Catholic Church. Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.

" I had a letter from a woman in America in her forties, who said that when she was a child of about seven, brought up a Catholic, two things happened to her: one was that she was sexually abused by her parish priest. The second thing was that a great friend of hers at school died, and she had nightmares because she thought her friend was going to hell because she wasn't Catholic. For her there was no question that the greatest child abuse of those two was the abuse of being taught about hell. Being fondled by the priest was negligible in comparison. And I think that's a fairly common experience.

 "I can't speak about the really grave sexual abuse that obviously happens sometimes, which actually causes violent physical pain to the altar boy or whoever it is, but I suspect that most of the sexual abuse priests are accused of is comparatively mild - a little bit of fondling perhaps, and a young child might scarcely notice that. The damage, if there is damage, is going to be mental damage anyway, not physical damage. Being taught about hell - being taught that if you sin you will go to everlasting damnation, and really believing that - is going to be a harder piece of child abuse than the comparatively mild sexual abuse. .......

 A critic of Dawkins,  Mike Gene replied:

I think it clear that this is raw anti-religious bigotry. We can ignore the letter from "a woman in America" as a) we have no idea whether her account is valid and b) even if valid, it is an anecdote. Since Dawkins is a drum-banger for science, surely he would recognize science would need much more than a vague anecdote to support this contention.

So let's think through on Dawkins' logic. First, where is the science? What scientific evidence does Dawkins offer to support the contention that believing in Hell is a worse form of abuse than being sexually molested? Where is the evidence of this "grievous mental harm" in bringing up the child Catholic? His biased opinion? His emotional approach? An anecdote?

Secondly, it is ironic that Dawkins has the science backwards. There are plenty of studies to show that sexual molestation of a child can have long term, negative effects. Dismissing it as "a bit of fondling" and being "mental damage anyway" is insulting to the many victims of child molestation. And there are plenty of studies that also show that religious belief and convictions, if held seriously, provide a net positive benefit in terms of psychological and physical health. In other words, contrary to the views of Dawkins, being raised a Catholic is not worse than being sexually abused.

But let's follow through with this example of Dawkins Think. As it stands, it is illegal to sexually molest a child. And, of course, it is not illegal to raise your child as a Catholic. But if it is really more harmful to raise your child as a Catholic than to sexually molest your child, as Dawkins believes, society needs to adjust its laws. According to Dawkins' logic, we should a) either make it illegal to raise your child as a Catholic, as it is worse than pedophilia, or b) legalize pedophilia, since it is not as bad as the legal activity of teaching a child about Hell and Catholicism. Which option would Dawkins choose? It's his logic, thus his choice to clarify.

Consider a simple analogy. The house next to your house goes up for sale. Two families are interested in buy it. The first family is a devout Catholic family. The father is hard working and has broken no laws. But he has taught his kids to believe in Catholic doctrine, including belief in Hell. The second family is not religious. The father is also hard working, but he also sexually molests his kids. In Dawkins World, you hope the child molester moves in next door, as he is not as bad as the Catholic man."

 (C) It Should be Illegal for Parents to Indoctrinate Their Children - Petition Signed by Dawkins

In December 2006, Dawkins signed a Petition that upset some of his most devoted followers - so much so that he quickly withdrew his signature and claimed he had "misunderstood" same. In contrast he has never withdrawn his claim that Catholicism is worse than child abuse. While the latter claim worries some of his followers, it is directly entirely at the Catholic Church and therefore a lot more palatable to anti-clerics).

Martin Wagner of "The Atheist Experience" Blog *** wrote in an article called "Has Dawkins Totally Jumped the Shark":

"The petition, authored by one Jamie Wallis using a service on the No 10 Downing Street website that allows users to write their own petitions and gather signatures right there for the PM's consideration, reads as follows:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16. In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

"Whoa.

"Let's run through this.

"The first and most obvious thing that comes to mind is that what the petition asks is something that in America is unequivocally unconstitutional: government intrusion in private religious practice. Ed Brayton, over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, has gone into outrage overload at this whole thing, declaring that "as far as I'm concerned, this pretty much removes Dawkins from any discussion among reasonable people." He goes on to a laundry list of entirely valid criticisms.

This proposal is every bit as noxious and totalitarian as a proposal from Christian reconstructionists that those who teach their children about witchcraft or atheism should be thrown in jail would be. Just imagine what you would have to do to actually enforce such a law. No one could take their children to church, which means you'd have to literally police the churches to make sure no children went in. Nor could they teach their children about religion at home, read the Bible with them, say prayers with them before they go to bed. The only way to enforce such a law would be to create a society that would make Orwell's 1984 seem optimistic by comparison.

"In case the "thrown in jail" part sounds a little hyperbolic to you, recall that the petition itself uses the word "illegal," and the general idea is that if someone does something illegal, then they've earned at the very least a citation and at worst imprisonment. Does Dawkins really want people to go to jail for taking their kids to Sunday School? Has he really gone that far over the top?" [End of Quotation from Martin Wagner]

*** The Blog motto seems to be "We feed on the blood of the ignorant!" - but they may not be referring to Dawkins!

My Comment: Dawkins withdrew his signature, claiming that he had misunderstood the Petition, believing it only referred to religious schools. The Petition does not mention schools at all and moreover is perfectly in line with Dawkins claim that raising your child as a Catholic is a form of child abuse.

(D) Hitler was not an Atheist; He was a Catholic - as per Richard Dawkins

On 22 September 2010 the UK Guardian reported that "Richard Dawkins has contacted the Guardian to strongly deny that he compared Roman Catholics to Nazis, rather he said that Hitler was a Roman Catholic." The Guardian then gave a detailed account of his speech that included the following:

"The unfortunate little fact that Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth has been the subject of a widely observed moratorium. I've respected it myself, hitherto. But after the pope's outrageous speech in Edinburgh, blaming atheism for Adolf Hitler, one can't help feeling the gloves are off ..

"Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Or at least he was as much a Roman Catholic as the 5 million so-called Roman Catholics in this country today. For Hitler never renounced his baptismal Catholicism, which was doubtless the criterion for counting the 5 million alleged British Catholics today. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have 5 million British Catholics, in which case you have to have Hitler, too. Or Hitler was not a Catholic, in which case you have to give us an honest figure for the number of genuine Catholics in Britain today – the number who really believe Jesus turns himself into a wafer, as the former Professor Ratzinger presumably does.

"In any case, Hitler certainly was not an atheist. In 1933 he claimed to have "stamped atheism out", having banned most of Germany's atheist organisations, including the German Freethinkers League whose building was then turned into an information bureau for church affairs. ...

"Even if Hitler had been an atheist – as Joseph Stalin more surely was – how dare Ratzinger suggest that atheism has any connection whatsoever with their horrific deeds? Any more than Hitler and Stalin's non-belief in leprechauns or unicorns. Any more than their sporting of a moustache – along with Francisco Franco and Saddam Hussein. There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness.

"Unless, that is, you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of Catholic theology. I refer (and I am indebted to Paula Kirby for the point) to the doctrine of original sin. These people believe – and they teach this to tiny children, at the same time as they teach them the terrifying falsehood of hell – that every baby is "born in sin". That would be Adam's sin, by the way: Adam who, as they themselves now admit, never existed.

"Original sin means that, from the moment we are born, we are wicked, corrupt, damned. Unless we believe in their God. Or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell. That, ladies and gentleman, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were. We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus. What a vile, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on. 

"Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity. ..........."

 (E) Extracts from "Hitler's Secret Conversations" (aka "Hitler's Table Talk") regarding Christianity

The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, "Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944", which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)

14th October, 1941, midday:
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)

19th October, 1941, night:
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

9th April, 1942, dinner:
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)

27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

(F) MY CONCLUSION

Hitler was in fact, a Social Darwinist who believed in an impersonal Providence which gives victory to the strong by using a process of natural selection to ensure the survival of the fittest. (He objected to Christianity because he saw it as "a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature ..... the systematic cultivation of the human failure".) In addition Hitler - like Dawkins - did not believe in Original Sin - which the Catholic Church regards as a radical weakness in human nature by means of which we have a "natural" tendency to do evil rather than good.

NOTES:

[1] As per Wikipedia "The College Historical Society (CHS) – popularly referred to as The Hist – is one of the two debating societies at Trinity College Dublin. It was established within the college in 1770 and was inspired by the club formed by the philosopher Edmund Burke during his own time in Trinity in 1747. It is the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world. .... Prominent members have included many Irish men and women of note, from the republican revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone and the author Bram Stoker, to founding father of the Northern Irish state Edward Carson and first President of Ireland Douglas Hyde, and – in more recent times – Government Ministers Mary Harney (who was the first female auditor of the society) and Brian Lenihan."

Theobald Wolfe Tone, later leader of the United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, was elected auditor in 1785, and future rebel Thomas Addis Emmet was a member of the committee. The society was briefly expelled from the college in 1794, but readmitted on the condition that "No question of modern politics shall be debated". Eight members of The Hist were expelled in 1798 in the run-up to the Rebellion, and a motion was later carried condemning the rebellion, against their former auditor.

Tension between the society and the college flourished in the early nineteenth century, with the auditor being called before the provost in 1810. After a number of members were removed at the request of the college board, the society left the college in 1815. The society continued from 1815 as the Extern Historical Society until 1843, when it reformed within the college again on the condition that no subject of current politics was debated. As per Wikipedia "This provision remains in the Laws of the Hist as a nod to the past, but the college authorities have long since ceased to restrict the subjects of the society's debates." 

The decadence of the oldest surviving undergraduate student society in the world ("we value our members comfort above all else”) is therefore significant and illustrates the truth of the old saying that "A fish rots from the head down"!

[2] The Guardian has a very informative article dated 20 April 2021 on the issue "Richard Dawkins Loses ‘Humanist of the Year’ Title over Trans Comments" The subtitle is "American Humanist Association criticises academic for comments about identity using ‘the guise of scientific discourse’, and withdraws its 1996 honour" 

Like The Hist, the American Humanist Association had no problem with Dawkins' view that raising one's child  as a Catholic is worse than child sex abuse. So exactly WHAT did the AHA object to? 

 On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black,” wrote Dawkins on Twitter. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

The Guardian article goes on to give details of a statement from the AHA board:

The AHA said that Dawkins had “over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values”. The evolutionary biologist’s latest comment, the board said, “implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient”, while his “subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity”.

“Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.”

The claim that Dawkins had "accumulated a history of making statements that .. demean marginalised groups" presumably includes his 2015 remark that: “Is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by chromosomes, no. If by self-identification, yes. I call her “she” out of courtesy.”

[3] The Hist and the American Humanist Association are not the ONLY secular organisations to take offence at Dawkins' tweet. The afore-mentioned Guardian article also quotes Alison Gill, vice president for legal and policy at American Atheists (founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair) and a trans woman. According to The Guardian "she said Dawkins’ comments reinforce dangerous and harmful narratives". She said: “Given the repercussions for the millions of trans people in this country, in this one life we have to live, as an atheist and as a trans woman, I hope that Professor Dawkins treats this issue with greater understanding and respect in the future.”

The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns [1]

Nuns, Mothers and Babies in Bon Secours Home, Tuam

The final report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy) was due to be delivered to the Government in June but delivery was postponed until 30 October 2020 due to coronavirus. According to the Irish Times  "It was set up following claims that up to 800 babies may have been interred in an unmarked mass grave in the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway." That's putting it very mildly. Brendan O'Neill editor of Spiked OnLine gives a flavour of the wordwide hysteria that preceded the establishment of the Commission (June 2004 article The Tuam Tank: Another Myth about Evil Ireland) 

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, declared the Washington Post. ‘800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, said the New York Daily News. ‘Galway historian finds 800 babies in septic tank grave’, said the Boston Globe. ‘The bodies of 800 babies were found in the septic tank of a former home for unwed mothers in Ireland’, cried Buzzfeed. Commentators angrily demanded answers from the Catholic Church. ‘Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves’, said a writer for The Guardian, telling no-doubt outraged readers that ‘the bodies of 796 children… have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway’

I discuss the credibility of three preceding Reports including two chaired by the same Judge Yvonne Murphy.

This is the first in a projected series of three articles on "The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns". Part [2] is HERE and Part [3] HERE

(A) Credibility of Ryan Report (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse), May 2009

The Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy is due to be published shortly. I gave evidence myself to the Ryan Commission (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse) as part of a delegation from Let Our Voices Emerge. I emphasised the clearly bogus allegations of child murder made by leaders of "Victim" groups against the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. The Ryan Report was published in May 2009 and  I outlined my experience in a letter published in the Irish Examiner on 7 November 2011 Ryan Report Did Not Deal With False Allegations  

The report of the Ryan Commission published in May 2009 makes no reference to these claims of unlawful killing. Originally I thought that the commission had ignored them completely. It now appears that the commission did investigate the allegations in private session, found no evidence to support them and took a deliberate decision to omit them from its published report. I find this reprehensible.

 I did not give evidence to the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese or the Commission of Investigation, Cloyne Diocese - both of which were chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy - Reports published in November 2009 and July 2011 respectively. However the modus operandi of Judge Yvonne Murphy seems to be similar to that of Judge Sean Ryan - including ignoring evidence of false allegations and accepting as true any claim that Church authorities cannot prove false!

(B) Credibility of Murphy Report into Dublin Archdiocese, November 2009

I am not the only one to have such misgivings. This is a Statement by The Association of Catholic Priests in July 2014 on the appointment of Judge Yvonne Murphy to chair the current Commission. 

Statement from the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) responding to the  establishment of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and the appointment of Yvonne Murphy 

The ACP welcomes the establishment of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. It is important that it be carried out competently, justly and in strict accordance with guidelines to be laid down by the government, which should reflect natural and constitutional justice.

The ACP notes the appointment of Judge Yvonne Murphy who chaired the Murphy Commission into abuse in Dublin diocese. It is also important to note that, in view of a report commissioned by the ACP into procedural fairness in that investigation, Fergal Sweeney, an Irish barrister who worked for many years as a judge in Hong Kong, concluded that the Murphy Report contained significant deficiencies in terms of respecting the demands of natural and constitutional justice.

Last October [2013], the ACP published Fergal Sweeney’s findings. His conclusions are on pages 37-39 of his document, which is on this web-site. The final point is as follows:

4.14   However, from the legal perspective it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that insofar as the Catholic clerics who were called to testify were concerned, the practices and procedures of the Murphy Commission fell far short of meeting the concerns of the Law Reform Commission and, more importantly, of natural and Constitutional  justice. 

In the light of the serious failings of the Murphy Commission, the ACP suggests that Fergal Sweeney’s important and robustly argued conclusions should be considered before the terms of reference for the investigation are established and the necessity of following them is accepted.  

Our concerns should not be interpreted as an attack on Judge Murphy, still less an attempt to obstruct the investigation, but a concern that the new Commission of Investigation should have the best possible team to carry out the vital work. 

The ACP is aware that Judge Murphy and the Murphy Commission are legally debarred from any comment once they issued their Report but even though strangely Fergal Sweeney’s study was largely ignored in the media and by the legal profession, it is vital for the credibility of the enquiry that those entrusted with investigating the Mother and Baby Homes should accept and implement the guidelines laid down by the government. This is a matter not just of natural justice but of judicial competence. 

We would also hope that the Commission will avail of the expertise of social scientists, especially anthropologists, to make sure that the cultural prism through which we interpret present reality is not imposed on the past. Here too competent historians must be consulted so that the Commission has an accurate understanding of the historical reality at that period in Irish history and of the various actors who were involved in the wider context of the Mother and Child homes at the time. 

Making the same mistakes twice, when people’s characters and reputations are at stake, would be unconscionable.

A discussion regarding Fergal Sweeney’s report can be found on the ACP website at 

ACP Report on Yvonne Murphy Investigation Published (November 2013)

The text of Fergal Sweeney's 40 page Report is here

A Review from a legal perspective of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 and of the Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (the “Murphy Report”)

Margaret Lee a retired Social Worker and former member of the Sisters of Mercy summarised it thus in the course of the afore-mentioned discussion 

I have read this review and I consider the following to be the salient Points

• 1. The enquiry that led to the Murphy Report was carried out under the 2004 [Commissions of Investigation] Act which was really guided by the Law Reform Commission Report of 2003. This report proposes a low key enquiry that would focus on the malfunction of the system not on the sins of the individual. It was viewed that such an enquiry would not attract the rules of constitutional justice precisely because the focus was to be on the system, not the individual. Two further recommendations of the LRC Report are pertinent: (a) the enquiry was to be held in private –again to protect the good name of the participants and (b) where a participant wished to comment on or disagree with the conclusions of the enquiry, such comments and/or disagreements would be included in the final report—in short both sides of the argument would be recorded. The Murphy Report does not meet the standards set out by the Law Reform because it names and blames individual clerics.

• 2. The legislation itself could be viewed as flawed and the Dail debates at the time foresaw the possibility of a legal challenge. The legislation does not make provision for an enquiry that might find a reason to go beyond the remit of focussing on a system and start adjudicating of individuals. If it had done so, it would surely have written into the legislation the 4 minimum rights which the Supreme Court set down in its Abbeylara judgement–right to know the content of the accusation, to cross examine the accuser, to address the adjudicator through counsel and make a rebuttal. Instead the legislation talks vaguely about “fair procedures” without stating how these fair provisions might be implemented.

• 3. The Murphy Report did not accord natural justice to the clerics who participated. Where there is a difference in the recollections of past events between clerics and professionals it resolves such differences in favour of the professionals and against the cleric and, most significantly, does not give any reason for doing so. The report does not give due consideration to any mitigating circumstances put forward by the clerics. This is particularly obvious in discussing the “learning curve”. The report dismisses out of hand that the clergy were on a learning curve when it came to child sexual abuse but freely acknowledges the existence of such a learning curve in the case of An Garda Siochana and Social workers—or indeed, psychiatrists.

• 4. The LRC places great emphasis on the limitations of any form of enquiry or tribunal when it comes to the administration of justice. It states that an enquiry is not able to carry out a function which belongs to the courts—that of punishment and it warns against the danger of attempting to do so in times of a public outcry.

This review of the Murphy report is not attempting to deny or minimize the wrong that was done to the victims of clerical child abuse. What the review is stating is that the clergy did not get natural justice. It is important to draw attention to this in a week when we have heard a lot of concern about targeting any particular group.

I find the silence of the named Bishops and of the members of the Law Reform Commission at the time of publication puzzling. I assume that the Bishops were terrified of savaging by the media. Why did not the members of the LRC not speak out?.....

Finally, there is no substitute for a formal statement of complaint to An Garda Siochana in the event of sexual assault or any other crime.

(C) Extracts from Discussion that followed ACP Statement on appointment of Yvonne Murphy (July 2014) 

Pádraig McCarthy July 18th, 2014 at 10:24 pm 
At the risk of increasing the task, it is important that the Commission of Investigation do not consider the religious run mother and baby homes in isolation: other such homes, including county homes, must be included. In relation to funding and staffing, the Commission must see how such homes which were funded by the state compare in funding to other kinds of homes, and to the regular maternity hospitals.

The matter of children being sent for adoption, and of children who died being sent to medical schools, must be looked at in all such institutions.

In looking at the matter of how society dealt with non-marital children and their mothers (what about the fathers?), the Commission must look at the context of how other jurisdictions at the time dealt with this. This would include the practice in some places of introducing legislation for the compulsory sterilisation of women in these situations.

In dealing with infant mortality, the Commission must look at how other institutions, including maternity hospitals, dealt with the burial arrangements; and how society at the time dealt with the deaths of small children – this includes the “Holy Angels” plots in many parts of the country as a normal practice. While today, we would see the burial of a child without a funeral rite as cruel and unfeeling, we need to ask how people saw it in the years before and following independence, including the question of whether it was seen as a kindness and help to the bereaved parents. The economic factors are relevant here. Also the fact that stillbirths were not registered here until 1995, so the child would not usually be given a name.

The level of infant mortality in society over those years is clearly important. Where there appears to be a much higher level of mortality of non-marital children, the Commission must look at the health and living conditions of the mothers; the question of poverty is relevant. The Commission must consider the experience in other jurisdictions also, where the level of infant mortality of non-marital children was frequently higher than the level in marital children, and what may be the reasons for this. The contemporary situation could be enlightening here. Also the kind of medical care available, and nutritional factors.

In the matter of adoptions, we must be aware of what was seen as good practice at the time. Often this involved minimising the bonding of the mother and child. Sending children abroad was not just a practice in Ireland: many children were sent from UK to Australia.

To look at international experience is not a way of justifying all that was done; but if we fail to look at the wider picture, we may be in danger of blaming ourselves because we are Irish, and largely Catholic.

I’m sure there are other relevant matters which do not come to mind at present. All in all, as the statement makes clear, it is important that the Commission take the matter in its historical context. This was a matter of serious failure in the Murphy Report.

The Commission must consider whether it can name and shame people they consider to blame: this was a very serious failure and injustice in a Commission of Investigation, as the Sweeney report makes clear.

It will be instructive to see whether this new Commission of Investigation learns from the errors of the past, and whether they pay attention to the study of the Murphy Report produced by Fergal Sweeney.

Rory Connor July 19th, 2014 at 4:03 pm 
One point that Fergal Sweeney did NOT mention is that the Murphy Report on Dublin includes criticism of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid even though he died in in 1973 and the inquiry was supposed to investigate the actions of the Catholic Church in the period 1975 to 2004. 

Also the Report failed to comment on the widely-publicized allegations of pedophilia against the late Archbishop even though these were made in 1999 i.e. WITHIN the period that Judge Murphy was supposed to report on. Could the fact that the allegations were universally rejected as false, have anything to do with this curious omission? The Dublin Archdiocese under Archbishop Desmond Connell, strongly repudiated the claims. Did they really have no effect on the attitudes of senior clergy who had to deal with similar sex claims against Dublin priests?

Judge Murphy’s report on Cloyne also failed to refer to scurrilous allegations against Bishop John Magee for which the UK Guardian was forced to apologise in 1994 and TV3 in 1999. Did Judge Murphy believe that these false allegations had NO effect on how the Bishop would have viewed similar claims against his priests?

The current investigation into Mother and Baby homes was sparked by a world-wide media storm based on claims that the Bon Secour nuns in Tuam had dumped the bodies of dead children into a septic tank. Most of the journalists who published this obscene libel have now quietly dropped it and only a few have had the grace to apologise. I hope that Judge Murphy will not fail to provide a detailed analysis of this fake atrocity story and name those responsible for creating it.

Dr Margaret Kennedy July 20th, 2014 at 9:34 am
 
It seems to me that the ACP despite its claim not to want to “attempt to obstruct the investigation” is in fact, conveying from day one that Judge Yvonne Murphy needs to brush up on her "practices and procedures" or even is "not suitable"  which from my perspective is disrespectful and does not fill me with admiration. Such enquiries are always limited by resources, information lost, not given (!) and in the end humanity and one’s human fallibility. I suspect some clergy did not equip themselves well in that enquiry! One could unpick most inquiries as ‘deficient’.


It further seems to me that the ACP wants to highlight the ‘unfairness’ of the Murphy Commission i.e. being allegedly ‘unfair’ towards clergy rather than hope that justice will be served to women and children incarcerated in ‘mother and baby homes’ and the subsequent (often) blighted lives of these women and children. That the ACP take this defensive clergy stance continues to present the Catholic Church as an institution largely only of benefit to clergy themselves! When Clergy begin to see the deficiencies of it’s OWN institution rather than point out the log in another’s eye, then will lay people subjected to the horrors of past Catholicism receive justice. I suspect that most of the Murphy Commission painted an accurate picture of victims abuse and the ACP statement above seeks to damn it whole and entire thus almost calling victims ‘liars’. Have we not endured enough of this clericalism? Now could the ACP speak/say something about the Women and Children who suffered in Mother and Baby Homes?

Pádraig McCarthy July 20th, 2014 at 1:19 pm 
Dr Margaret Kennedy 
Lessons need to be learned from the Murphy Commission – precisely because of deficiencies clearly identified by Fergal Sweeney, and also in my book Unheard Story. The ACP and Fergal Sweeney and I have been careful to recognise explicitly the valuable work done by the Commission. We are greatly concerned that justice be done for those who were abused, and for all concerned in the mother and baby homes.

The ACP itself is not a perfect association, and is very much aware of serious failings in the Church. The ACP certainly does not take a defensive stance in this regard.

It is not true to write, as you do, that “the ACP statement above seeks to damn [the Murphy Commission] whole and entire thus almost calling victims ‘liars’.” This cannot be found anywhere in any statement from the ACP; nor is it in Fergal Sweeney’s document; nor is it in my book.

This is not at all incompatible with bringing to attention deficiencies in the Murphy Report. One does not correct one injustice by inflicting another injustice. The points made by Fergal Sweeney in his document are the points to address: this is what is at issue here. The really strange thing is that the media and the political establishment have not so far addressed the matters raised by Fergal Sweeney.

Your work has been valuable in bringing public attention to abuse. It is understandable that any person who has experience of abuse, as you have, would be wary of anything that may seem to downgrade the appalling abuse which is well documented in the Murphy Report. It is vital that we hold on to that, and at the same time not fail to address failures in procedural fairness in the work of the Commission. This is not an attempt to exculpate anyone.

It is because the ACP wants the full story of the mother and baby homes to be made clear that the statement was issued. The media have backed away very much from initial sensational reports. As the ACP statement says: “It is important that it be carried out competently, justly and in strict accordance with guidelines to be laid down by the government, which should reflect natural and constitutional justice.” If there were deficiencies in the Murphy Report, as I believe Fergal Sweeney shows, then, indeed, “Making the same mistakes twice, when people’s characters and reputations are at stake, would be unconscionable.”

Joe O'Leary July 21st, 2014 at 11:50 am
 What one would like to see in a new Murphy report is a deeper sense of historical perspective, setting the work of the sisters who ran mother and child homes, Magdalene laundries, etc., in the context of the demands of society at the time. Even the shaming and shunning of unmarried mothers alleged to be a uniquely Catholic outlook could be put in perspective — unmarried mothers were not viewed benignly anywhere. As Fintan O’Toole points out, the vast amount of secret abortions that is our current solution to unwanted pregnancies bespeaks similar attitudes which have not gone away even though no longer connected with Catholic notions of guilt and sin. And it would also be nice if the next Murphy report recorded also the positive things people had to say about the sisters. If demonizing indignation is allowed to set the tone of the new report, as it in part set the tone of the Dublin and Cloyne reports, it will only undercut its reliability as work of historical reference.

Pádraig McCarthy July 29th, 2014 at 9:41 am 
Vincent Twomey has a good article in the Irish Times today (29 July) on the Opinion page, expressing similar reservations about how the Commission of Investigation may be influenced by its composition.
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission
Opinion: Appointment of judge to chair body raises expectation of criminal findings

Eddie Finnegan July 29th, 2014 at 1:28 pm 
The interesting Opinion piece by Vincent Twomey in this morning’s Irish Times perhaps goes a step further than the ACP Statement and other substantial comments above. He asks, not just “Why Judge Yvonne Murphy?”, but why any judge as chairman of the mother-and-baby home inquiry? Like several of the contributors above, he asks why the narrow concentration “primarily on the mother-and-child homes run by Catholic religious congregations together with one Protestant-run home”. He also wonders whether the commission will enquire into the sensationalist media coverage of the original Tuam story.
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission

Perhaps Vincent can hope for a fairer hearing from commenters on this forum than from the often rabid online commentariat the Irish Times now permits or even encourages. If they don’t permit such mindless anonymous or pseudonymous rubbish in their Letters Page, why leave serious contributors open to it online?


Rory Connor August 4th, 2014 at 12:34 am 
Fr. Vincent Twomey’s article in the Irish Times on 29 July raises a couple of very important issues
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission

“Should the commission uncover grave misdeeds, even criminal actions, natural justice demands each instance be dealt with according to due procedures, all of which are predicated on the presumption of innocence. Malicious accusations against “the nuns” by some public commentators have been deeply offensive, not least to today’s aged Sisters, who, with depleted human resources, continue to provide unsung service to the marginalised in Ireland, which the State cannot provide. ……

“Finally, it would be a welcome development if the commission were to devote some attention to the media’s coverage of the initial Tuam story. How did such sensationalist coverage affect the women and children themselves – and those who provided service in the homes? What further hurt did it cause?”

The purveyors of ludicrous atrocity stories about the Bon Secour nuns have now largely gone silent – at least on the allegations that actually can be TESTED. So it may be helpful to remind ourselves of what they originally wrote: 

‘Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, declared the Washington Post. ‘800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, said the New York Daily News. ‘Galway historian finds 800 babies in septic tank grave’, said the Boston Globe. ‘The bodies of 800 babies were found in the septic tank of a former home for unwed mothers in Ireland’, cried Buzzfeed. Commentators angrily demanded answers from the Catholic Church. ‘Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves’, said a writer for the Guardian, telling no-doubt outraged readers that ‘the bodies of 796 children… have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway’. ……. 

The foregoing details are from Brendan O’Neill’s article on the SpikedOnLine website and he also comments that 

A hysterical piece in the Irish Independent compared the Tuam home to the Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda and Srebrenica, saying that in all these settings people were killed ‘because they were scum’ 

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tuam-tank-another-myth-about-evil-ireland/15140#.U9muh9J4xjs

Brendan O’Neill is an atheist. Yet his article is entitled “The Tuam Tank: Another Myth about Evil Ireland” and the subtitle is “The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged.” Compare this to Fr Brian D’Arcy’s article in the Sunday World on 10 June entitled “Fr Brian: Baby Graves are Our Greatest Crime” that includes the following
http://www.sundayworld.com/top-stories/columnists/fr-brian-d-arcy/fr-brian-baby-graves-are-our-greatest-crime

“When I first heard the news that more than 800 babies were buried in what was formerly a septic tank I was astonished – because initially I thought it happened in some famine-stricken country today. Then I thought I was hearing about Nazi Germany…..” etc etc

When the Commission of Investigation eventually issues its Report, will it even mention these fake atrocity stories that shamed us world-wide? Or will the Report ignore every allegation that is OBVIOUSLY false while accepting as true any claim that the nuns cannot PROVE is a lie? I strongly suspect the latter. After all, that is what happened in all previous investigations of this type!

Fr Brian D'Arcy [My comment dated 17 August 2020]

The above-mentioned Sunday World article by Father D'Arcy is no longer online but a shorter version is available  in the Irish Examiner dated 5 June 2014 entitled Disposal of babies' bodies in Tuam 'as bad as Nazi Germany': Fr Brian Darcy 

Well-known cleric Fr Brian Darcy has said the discovery of almost 800 babies bodies next to a Galway mother and baby home is as bad as anything that happened in Nazi Germany.

The Government has today confirmed that a "scoping exercise" is underway to determine whether other mass graves such as that found in Tuam exist in other parts of the country.

Fr Brian Darcy said he thought previous scandals involving the Church had left him "unshockable", but that this was a shocking as something that happened in Germany during World War II.

He added that people needed to be brought to justice for "sinful crimes". "I think if the facts are as bad as they seem to be, and I have no reason to doubt that, I think this will cause a massive revolution about the kind of country that we had and the kind of country that we're all children of."

(Helpful key words after the article include "Nazi Germany" and "World War II")

Sex Scandals Rock the Catholic Church - and the Role of Pat Rabbitte

Pat Rabbitte Chair of Child Protection Agency Tusla

According to the website of  the Child and Family Agency Tusla 

 "Mr. Pat Rabbitte has served as a public representative for 30 years. He is a former Irish Labour Party politician who served as Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources from 2011 to 2014, Leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2007 and Minister for State for Commerce, Science and Technology from 1994 to 1997."

Tusla go on to expand on Mr Rabbitte's career in more detail and mention that he "was appointed Chairperson of Tusla by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Dr Katherine Zappone". Dr Zappone was a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2004 when they declined to investigate the journalists and broadcasters who were making false allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers. (This is the subject of my article "Blood Libel in Ireland...") Tusla do not however mention Pat Rabbitte's role in the fall of the coalition Government headed by Albert Reynolds in 1994, following a grotesque allegation made by Rabbitte in Dail Eireann that targeted Cardinal Cahal Daly and Attorney General Harry Whelehan as authors of a non-existent conspiracy to protect a paedophile priest.

As Minister for Communications in 2014, Pat Rabbitte reacted to RTE's libeling of John Waters and other members of the Iona Institute as follows :

Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte is to relax the rules that require broadcasters to ensure nothing can be aired that can be regarded as “reasonably” causing offence.The move by Mr Rabbitte comes amid the continuing controversy over damages paid by RTÉ to six people including members of the Iona Institute and columnist John Waters.The payment of about €85,000 followed an interview on RTÉ’s The Saturday Night Show with performer Rory O’Neill, otherwise known as drag queen Panti Bliss, who accused certain named individuals of homophobia. 

While Mr Rabbitte said the defamation laws are outside his remit, he told the Dáil he intends to relax certain aspects of the Broadcasting Act.

Quoted in Irish Times article ‘I’ve been beaten, spat at, chased, harassed and mocked’ subheading Gay TDs tell Dáil of treatment as Rabbitte says broadcasting rules to be relaxed

So the then Government Minister's reaction to a successful libel action against the State Broadcasting Company was to try to make it more difficult to sue RTE in future. If RTE had libeled the above-mentioned Gay TD - Fine Gael's Jerry Buttimer - Pat Rabbitte's reaction would have been very different. It fact it would have been the opposite! 

The following discussion includes the views of the late UK cultural historian Richard Webster on Pat Rabbitte and his conspiracy theory concerning Cardinal Daly and Harry Whelehan. See Comment number 11.***  No Irish historian seems to have gone into that amount of detail concerning Rabbitte's antics - which is surprising because Webster didn't write that much about the affair!

*** It should have been number 1 but  the Moderators originally declined it. I was perhaps lucky that another person made a thuggish comment about the Church that was published and may have opened the door for me!

Rory Connor
9 June 2020

At the end of December 2009, BBC journalist and broadcaster William Crawley did a round up in his Blog of the Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year , the first of which was Sex scandals rock the Catholic church. He wrote:  

This was the most difficult year for the Irish Catholic Church for as long as anyone can remember. In May, the Ryan Report made headline news across the world when it revealed that rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in schools and orphanages run by the Irish church over seven decades. Two months earlier, Bishop John Magee was forced to "stand aside" from the management of his Cloyne diocese, in county Cork, after an investigation, published the previous December, found that his diocese had put children at risk by failing to follow child protection guidelines.

Things got considerably worse for the church with the publication, in November, of the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Dublin. Judge Yvonne Murphy chronicled an organised cover-up of child abuse allegations in the diocese spanning a period of nearly four decades. In the wake of the report's publication, there were unprecedented calls for the Pope's diplomatic representative, the Papal Nuncio, to be expelled from Ireland, after it emerged that he failed to correspond directly with the Commission of Investigation. Four bishops named in the report resigned, many said belatedly. A fifth bishop, Martin Drennan of Galway, has so far resisted the growing clamour for him to also step down.

The archbishops of Armagh and Dublin visited Pope Benedict, who expressed his sense of shame and outrage at what was exposed in the report, and Ireland was promised an historic pastoral letter from the pontiff setting out in detail how the church proposed to deal with the crisis. At the end of the year, commentators were predicting the greatest organisational shake-up of the Irish Catholic church for centuries. 

COMMENTS: This is a selection from the 21 Comments the story attracted. I am Kilbarry1

Comment number 1. At 12:06 1st Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.   [See Comments number 10 and 11]

Comment number 3. At 22:35 1st Jan 2009, LucyQ wrote:
.........   The #1 Irish story of last year and in fact the past few hundred is the ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy. I simply cannot fathom how it is that anyone can so easily believe that gods, leprechauns, life after death or any aspects of magical enchantment that is the bases of religious belief is true other than in literary fiction. Any pope, priest or other clergy that claims to specific evidence of any of the above is lying. Reasonable, intelligent adults surely know better than to be emotionally bullied by such silly talk any longer.

Today is the day that the Irish Blasphemy Law comes into play. As if the cops don't have enough on their hands in dealing with serious crime now they have protect religious superstition from those who would shine the light of truth on the fantasies. Aren't people embarrassed by this? BTW it is impossible to blaspheme against something that doesn't exist.

Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes to counter the crazy new law.

Comment number 4. At 00:24 2nd Jan 2009, mccamleyc wrote:
Normally with petulant teenagers it's best to ignore them, but in Lucy's case I'll make an exception. Why do people who believe in nothing care so much what other people believe?

Except of course Lucy has her own little made up belief - "the ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy", for which of course there is precisely no evidence.


Comment number 10. At 00:33 3rd Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
There are now 9 comments. Mine was the first 2 days ago now but is still "referred to the moderators". In the meantime you published the patently ludicrous comment that there is "ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."

That is the kind of attitude dealt with by Richard Webster in "The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch-Hunt" which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2005. It is the kind of hysteria that enables people to conjure up child abuse conspiracies - and even use them to bring down a Government, as happened in Ireland in 1994.

Since the late Cardinal Daly figured in that conspiracy theory, this is a good time to consider how it could have happened.

Comment number 11. At 00:45 3rd Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
Perhaps my original comment (no 1 above) was simply overlooked? If so here it is again:

The life and death of Cardinal Cahal Daly provide a link between your first and last stories of the year. In his article on child abuse panics "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" UK cultural historian Richard Webster also recognised the importance of the Cardinal's story. The following is an extract:

Another country which has developed a particularly intense and dangerous crusade against child abuse is the Republic of Ireland. Here, as in almost every modern instance, the collective fantasy which has been progressively developed has a core of reality. 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.

Webster's essay is taken from his book "The Secret of Bryn Estyn" about a child abuse witch-hunt in North Wales in the 1990s. This was directed at LAY child care workers not religious. However Webster - who is probably an atheist - sees the connection with the anti-clerical hysteria that has torn this country apart since 1994 and of which the late Cardinal Daly was one of the first victims.

(Actually the consequences for Albert Reynolds and the then Attorney General Harry Whelehan were worse. In general the fact that someone could use false claims of a child abuse conspiracy to bring down a Government, set a ghastly precedent for our society).

Comment number 12. At 01:33 3rd Jan 2009, romejellybeen wrote:
LucyQ Please!!!

"The ongoing sytematic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."

How dare you smear the good name of priests in this manner. You have absolutely no proof what so ever that the abuse is "ongoing." MCC and Kilbarry1 are absolutely correct to jump to the defence of poor, innocent clergy (in the exact same way that they didnt jump to the defence of victims of that abuse. In the same way that they didnt want fair play and a fair hearing for the abused.)
Please correct your statement to, "The ongoing systematic COVER UP of the abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."

You have absolutely no way of providing proof that sexual abuse by clergy is either 'ongoing' or 'systematic.' No one has.

However, the cover up by the Bishops and the Vatican is much easier to prove. You'll find plenty if you just google any combination of - abuse, Vatican, cover up. MCC and Kilbarry1's moral indignation may then be tempered.

I know what was whispered at Deanery and Diocesan meetings over the gin and tonics 20 years ago, 10 years ago and five years ago. I know how many priests knew.... and, through fear, said nothing. I was there. [My emphasis - RC]

They do not need apologists or self perceived Knights in shining armour to jump to their defence. They need to confess to their people that they share the guilt, to admit that they were frightened and to ask forgiveness FROM THEIR PEOPLE.

Their people WILL forgive, and then the Church can begin to be healed.


Comment number 16. At 03:03 5th Jan 2010, Kilbarry1 wrote:
romejellybean wrote: I know what was whispered at Deanery and Diocesan meetings over the gin and tonics 20 years ago, 10 years ago and five years ago. I know how many priests knew.... and, through fear, said nothing. I was there.

I was there myself 40 years ago in a religious congregation of Brothers that ran industrial schools. (Diocesan priests would rarely be involved in that work.) It is true I was only there for 3 years and not involved in residential institutions. However I lived in a few different houses of the congregation, including one very large one, and I was with Brothers who had been teaching all their lives in every type of institution. I can assure you that I never heard such conversations.

I have been out of touch with my former colleagues for a very long time now but I understand that the situation is similar to that of the Christian Brothers i.e. practically every Brother who ever worked in a residential institution was accused of child abuse. In Artane allegations were made against about 75 Brothers. After a 3 year investigation involving 10 Gardai, ONE prosecution was approved and one Brother was eventually convicted of indecent assault. (See article in Irish Independent on 4 September 2003
Ten gardai, a three-year inquiry . . . but only one prosecution )

Assuming the proportions were similar in my own congregation, it is hardly surprising that we did not whisper the stories over our gin and tonics, or even Guinness.

Comment number 17. At 09:29 5th Jan 2010, graham veale wrote:
I think it's important to remember that abusers wouldn't be uniformly distributed across the Church. That's like saying 3 in 100 people have Swine Flu, then assuming that there are 9 pupils in my School with Swine Flu as it has 300 pupils. Some groups of 100 will have more than the average, some less.

So Kilbarry and RJB's experiences are both noteworthy. But neither can extrapolate out to the whole Church from their own experience.

(It's also worth considering that abusers would be drawn to, and survive in, areas were their risks were low. That may mean that we are more likely to find them in certain diocese compared to others.)

Comment number 18. At 01:03 6th Jan 2010, mccamleyc wrote:
I only ever heard rumours about one priest and that was about a month before it became public and obviously the complainant was in legal discussions at that stage. Perhaps there were loads of people who knew about these things but the great majority of priests I know weren't aware of them. And RJB I'm not saying you are a liar before you conclude that - I'm just agreeing with Graham that it wasn't my experience.

As for "they didnt want fair play and a fair hearing for the abused" - you have no basis for that statement. If the abused had simply got "fair play and a fair hearing" then we wouldn't have heard about most them because the normal judicial process would have excluded the vast majority of these cases. The normal fair approach is you go to the police with your complaint, they investigate, assess the evidence, present to the DPP who decides whether to bring a prosecution. The great majority of victims whether in the Ryan Report, Ferns or Murphy would never have had a day in court. If the Church had simply dug in its heels and stuck with the sue me approach most of these victims would never have been heard.

Appendix 1

Author, journalist and somewhat unconventional feminist Victoria White wrote about Pat Rabbitte's antics - and their long-term consequences - in the Irish Examiner on 25 April 2013. This is an extract from her article Labour is Paying the Price for Unrealistic Coalition Expectations [emphasis is mine]

It was Nov 16, 1994, and I was so excited that I made an excuse to get off work and cycled home to watch telly. There was a motion of “no confidence” in Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Albert Reynolds amid controversy relating to his appointment of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court.

There was an allegation that Whelehan had delayed the extradition of Fr Brendan Smyth to the North to face child sex abuse charges. In fact Whelehan had never been made aware of the case. It was further alleged that Cardinal Cathal Daly had put pressure on Whelehan to delay the extradition. Pat Rabbitte, then of Democratic Left, suggested in the Dáil that there could be a letter to this effect in the Attorney General’s office which would “rock the foundations of this society.”

No such letter has ever been found. We are talking George W Bush looking under the desk for the weapons of mass destruction here. But I didn’t really care if the allegation was true or not. It felt true. The Left was doing battle with a nasty conspiracy between Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church, as far as I was concerned.

Wasn’t Whelehan as attorney general responsible for seeking the extradition of Ms X when she travelled to the UK for an abortion? Matter a damn that it was his job to defend the Constitution on which we, the people, had voted. He should have ignored the Constitution, that’s what he should have done, but word was out he was a practising Catholic.

I’ll never forget the speech Labour leader and Tánaiste Dick Spring gave that day. Well actually, I remember nothing about it except its oratorical structure, the build-up to the sudden explosion when he said his party was withdrawing from Government. It helped that Spring was tall and handsome. I was quite sick with excitement and I remember friends calling over so we could crow over it together.

I never stopped to think about the progressive Programme for Government which Labour had put together with Fianna Fáil: the establishment of the Department of Equality and Law Reform, of the Department of Arts and Culture, provision for decriminalising male homosexual acts, provision for a referendum on divorce. I only cared about the optics. Did the Labour leadership feel the same? They’d just had a bruising bye-election result and one of their candidates had lost to then-Democratic Left member, Kathleen Lynch. Were they looking for an out? Albert Reynolds mishandled the situation badly. But what was the point of Labour throwing the whole government down the swanney? Alright they entered a Rainbow Coalition with Fine Gael and DL, but their Spring Tide went right out in the election of 1997...........

 I neither understand nor accept Labour’s refusal to discuss Coalition with FF since Spring’s dramatic departure in 1994. I put it down to the fact that their vote is in the middle class just like Fine Gael’s. But a politician friend suggested it was because FF and Labour have so much in common that Labour would lose its identity in coalition with them. THESE are selfish reasons. What we need in politics now, and have needed since 1994, are courage and generosity.....

What the Labour Party is likely to get in the NEXT election is a Sinn Fein government with the Antifa thugs who attacked us as their street-fighters AND Labour (possibly) as a junior partner!

 Appendix 2

This is based on on an article on my old website (not Blog) entitled The Fall of the Government of Albert Reynolds (1994)  AND on Shane Coleman's book "Foot in Mouth" published in September 2006.

Historians have practically ignored the role of Pat Rabbitte in the fall of the Fianna Fail-Labour Coalition Government led by Albert Reynolds in November 1994. Yet it was the first time in the history of the State that a Government fell because of mindless hysteria. It was also the first Government to fall as a result of religious bigotry - involving a false claim that the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland had conspired with a Catholic Attorney General to block the extradition of a paedophile priest. Is this why historians don't like to deal with the issue?

Oddly enough you can get more useful information from journalistic fluff like Gene Kerrigan's satirical opus "This Great little Nation" (1999) and lately Shane Coleman's book on famous Irish political gaffes "Foot in Mouth" (Sept. 2006). It's not that these gentlemen are sticking their necks out and risking the wrath of their liberal colleagues. The books are aimed at the mass market of people who like silly stories. This defuses the effect of the scandals related but it also gets around the ideological blinkers worn by more "serious" writers.

The following is from the chapter in Coleman's book entitled ROCKING THE FOUNDATIONS - PAT RABBITTE

"It was the 16 November 1994 and the Dail [Parliament] was experiencing one of its most dramatic days since the Arms Trial almost a quarter of a century before. The Fianna Fail-Labour Government had been under strain for some weeks over Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Albert Reynolds move to appoint his Attorney General (AG) Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court, despite opposition from Labour. Now the Government was on the verge of collapse over the handling of the Father Brendan Smyth extradition case. there had been a delay of seven months in processing the extradition warrant in the office of the AG. Wild and unsubstantiated rumours swept through Leinster House as to the reasons behind that long delay. One of the unfounded rumours was that the AG's office had received a letter from a senior figure in the Catholic Church which contributed to the delay in the Smyth case.

THE GAFFE

"Pat Rabbitte, then a member of the Democratic Left Party, got up to speak in the Dail during a procedural discussion on the Order of Business. He asked: "Will the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste [Deputy PM] say if. in respect of the recent discovery of documents in the Attorney General's office, there is another document that ought to be before this house that will rock the foundations of this society to its very roots?" Rabbitte added: "If there is such a document its contents should be before this House before Deputy [John] Bruton moves his motion [of no confidence in the government] and we should know now whether the Labour Party has rowed in behind the Taoiseach following the discovery of this document".

THE IMPACT

"The effect on what was already a highly charged atmosphere was sensational. Rabbitte's dramatic use of vocabulary and the suggestion that the very foundations of society would be rocked, suggested scandal at an unprecedented level.

"Rabbitte's party leader Proinsias de Rossa also waded in. "It seems that we are dealing with one of the most sleazy events in Irish parliamentary history. Is it true that a memorandum has been found in the Attorney General's Office which indicates that there was outside interference in the decision by the Attorney General not to proceed with extradition for seven months?

The problem for Rabbitte and Democratic Left was that it quickly became apparent that there was no evidence that any such letter or document existed or had ever existed.

In his immediate response to Rabbitte in the Dail, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds said his efforts to get to the root of complaints about "documents that are supposed to exist in the Attorney General's office" had drawn a blank. " I understand that one of the stories doing the rounds - this is what I was told when I made inquiries- is that there is supposed to be in existence a certain letter which cannot be traced. I requested my office to contact Deputy Rabbitte to see if he could assist us in accelerating our inquiries and he was not in a position to give us much help......All the staff in the Attorney General's office available in the country have been interviewed about this matter and each and every one of them have said that they have no knowledge whatsoever in this regard...No member of the staff who have been interviewed can assist in this regard. They say they have no knowledge of any such letter."

"Such was the level of speculation sweeping Leinster House that day, that the Catholic Primate, Cardinal Daly, was moved to dismiss as "utterly absurd, untrue and a total fabrication" the rumours that he had made representations to the AGs office on behalf of Fr Smyth. "I can't speak for everyone but I am quite certain that nothing is known to me about any approach whatsoever to anyone connected with this case", he said adding: "It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could have invented such a story".

"The strength of Cardinal Daly's comments left little room for doubt and history has shown them to be entirely accurate....."

Shane Coleman goes on to describe the collapse of the Reynold's government  and concludes his article as follows:

"While Rabbitte unquestionably gaffed by going over the top in his comments, it did nothing to stop his rise in Irish politics. Within five years of his party merging with Labour, Rabbitte had become leader of the new party - his robust and colourful debating style [!!] was clearly a factor in his victory."

MY COMMENT in 2007:

This was the real beginning of the Child Abuse Witch-hunt in Ireland. It became clear, first that you could slander the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland with impunity and second that you could profit mightily from so doing. Pat Rabbitte has often claimed that the Catholic Church has not paid enough into the compensation scheme for "victims" of child abuse. For him nothing would be enough. He has helped to create a Compensation Culture that is fueled by a heady mixture of greed, anti-clerical bigotry and blind hatred. It is not only the Church that is suffering from this mania and it will long outlast Pat Rabbitte and his political ambitions.

And today 14 December 2020, I see no reason to change my views. After the next General Election we are likely to have a Government headed by Sinn Fein. The Labour Party may be junior partners in such a Government but they have gutted their integrity and are incapable of reining in their masters even if they want to.

Appendix 3 The Dismissal of Matt Russell

(from article on my old website  Pat Rabbitte and 'The Passion of Nora Wall' )

Matt Russell was the senior civil servant in the Attorney General's office who had the extradition warrants for Brendan Smyth on his desk for seven months. He later explained "I did not give it special priority because I did not identify it as a case which required that priority over other priority work". He told the Dail Committee on Legislation and Security: "In dealing with the volume of work priorities have to be applied.... I worked on the Smyth file at intervals when there was an opportunity to do so." He agreed that in retrospect his judgement was wrong but he did not offer to resign. "I was not made aware of any reason that I should." Matt Russell stayed in place when Harry Whelehan resigned.

What did for Matt Russell was his failure to respond to two letters written by a solicitor on behalf of the victims of Brendan Smyth. The letters were received in November 1994 and January 1995. On the face of it they were ridiculous. They demanded compensation for the victims because of the suffering caused by the original extradition delay. In the light of the reigning hysteria Matt Russell should have taken them more seriously but he favoured the logical approach.

"Furthermore...many more actions are threatened are threatened by solicitors letters than are commenced, and in view of the tenuous nature of the claim I thought this might well occur in this case."

Matt Russell was perfectly logical and perfectly correct in his view of this claim. However such considerations are irrelevant in a witch-hunt and he was forced to tender his resignation to Taoiseach John Bruton on 29 May 1995.

In the Dial on 31 May John Bruton gloated over his success in removing Matt Russell. "Compulsory retirement, although legally provided for has never been successfully achieved. Whereas Mr. Russell was not prepared to go quietly or otherwise under the previous administration, my actions have resulted in his immediate retirement from the civil service. That speaks for itself."

It certainly did. John Bruton, a decent and honourable man, was boasting about the results of a process that caused the fall of a Government, the resignation of a High Court President and the forced retirement of a senior civil servant. Unprecedented events caused by hysteria alone........

Since some people may still be reluctant to attribute these events to hysteria it is useful to check on how the authorities in the UK viewed the issue. After all, they were the ones who wanted to extradite Father Brendan Smyth. If there was a conspiracy between Church and State in Ireland, then the judicial authorities in the UK were the target of said conspiracy.

The following are extracts from the House of Commons Hansard Debates for 21 November 1994:

Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Attorney-General what representations his Department received from the Catholic Church in respect of Brendan Smyth; and if he will make a statement.

The Attorney-General: None.

..........

Opus Dei

Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Attorney-General what is his policy in relation to employing members of Opus Dei in his Department.

The Attorney-General: There is no specific policy in relation to the secondment of Opus Dei members to my Department. The civil service does not discriminate on grounds of religion.

If it were not so politically incorrect, one might imagine the Whitehall mandarins being quietly amused at the antics of their ridiculous ex-colonial subjects.

"New caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child" indeed - should they ever have let us go?

CONCLUSION:

This is an extract from an essay on my old website "The Passion of Nora Wall"

Epilogue: Harry Whelehan and Nora Wall

These extraordinary events have received rather cursory treatment from historians of modern Ireland. In particular the role of Pat Rabbitte has been air-brushed from the story. However in his book "The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000" Diarmaid Ferriter makes this significant comment:

"Some became angry when that when Harry Whelehan was questioned and denied the existence of a Catholic conspiracy within the Attorney-General's office, he felt the need to defend his right to be a practicing Catholic."

This issue had never before arisen in Irish politics. The first President of Ireland was a Protestant. During the de Valera era, Jews played a prominent role in Fianna Fail (whose founder Dev, had been a close friend of John Charles McQuaid when the latter was President of Blackrock College) and there had been Jewish Lord Mayors of Dublin and Cork. The disgusting attacks on Harry Whelehan indicated that religious hatred was making its opening debut in Irish public life. The fact that it took the form of anti-clericalism rather than anti-Semitism made it acceptable to many liberals.