"Liberal" and Green Support for Paedophilia? [Part 4]

The Irish Church and the Sexual Revolution (plus "Conclusion")

Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland

Part [4] of "Liberal" and Green support for Paedophilia? is a continuation of Part [1], Part [2] and Part [3] and ends the article.

(6) The Irish Church and the Sexual Revolution

There were no equivalents in Ireland to the USA’s Father Paul Shanley or Belgium’s Bishop Roger Vangheluwe and Cardinal Danneels.(See Part [3]) Obviously there were cases where children were sexually abused by Irish priests or religious. However no clerical abuser gave public lectures to clergy and laity in which he defended sexual relationships between adults and adolescents (as Fr Paul Shanley did). And there was no Irish catechism like the Belgian “Roeach” containing drawings of naked children who were making statements like: “Stroking my pussy makes me feel groovy,” “I like to take my knickers off with friends” etc. In Belgium, after Alexandra Colen made futile attempts with other parents to get the catechism withdrawn, she decided to sever all ties with the Catholic education system and set up a homeschool together with other parents, so that their children would be educated in a Catholic environment.

In Ireland Catholic traditionalists often expressed frustration with the inadequacy – and inanity – of post-Vatican II religious teaching in schools, but they were not faced with THAT type of problem.  The saga of Bishop Brendan Comiskey and “child- abuser” (more correctly adolescent-abuser) priest Fr Sean Fortune is relevant here. Brendan Comiskey had to resign as Bishop of Ferns in 2002 following claims that he had not dealt adequately with allegations of abuse made against Fr Fortune. In his resignation statement he said that he had tried everything in his management of Fortune but found him “virtually impossible to deal with”.  When Fortune committed suicide shortly before facing trial, he left a note in which he claimed that hehad been raped by Bishop Comiskey! So we are NOT talking about the kind of cosy friendship that existed between Cardinal Godfried Danneels and the paedophile Bishop Roger Vangheluwe in Belgium. (Alexandra Colen writes:  Mgr Roger Vangheluwe, the pedophile child molesting Bishop of Bruges, was the supervising bishop of both institutions – the Catholic University of Leuven and the Seminary of Bruges – whence came the editors in chief of this perverted “catechism” textbook.)

However from the 1960s – and especially after the Vatican II – the Irish Church was buffeted by waves of change which it proved unable to cope with. Most of the problems related to sex. In July 1968, in his sensational encyclical Humanae Vitae (‘On Human Life’) Pope Paul VI went against the advice of his own commission and proclaimed that the act of love must always be open to the possibility of procreation. ‘Natural’ methods of fertility control could be used but in Mary Kenny’s words the Pope’s ruling could be summed up in the phrase, ‘Give God a sporting chance’ – the pill and other forms of artificial contraception were out. This created a great furore. Many Catholic couples had been the pill in anticipation of its approval and many priests were coming to the view that the case for contraception, responsibly used, was reasonable. However conservative members of the hierarchy notably Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and Bishop Cornelius Lucey of Cork came out strongly in support of the encyclical. 

As in other countries, this controversy worsened the conflict between liberal and conservative parties in the Church that was to have momentous consequences. Subsequently there were two referendums in 1983 and 1995 to amend the Constitution in order to allow divorce, the second of which saw a narrow victory for the divorce lobby – and this is often cited as marking the end of Catholic Ireland. (Following the ‘yes’ vote, Conor Cruise O’Brien declared that Ireland was at last ‘a fit country for Protestants to live in’.) . The prominent feminist nun (and distinguished historian) Margaret McCurtain, spoke out for personal choice and for the division of Church and State on issues like divorce. There was an ongoing bitter controversy for decades concerning abortion. However where allegations of child abuse by clerics are concerned, the issue of homosexuality is the key one and this is what links developments in Ireland to those in Belgium, the USA and indeed worldwide.

Ireland may not have produced a cleric like Fr Paul Shanley who flaunted his homosexual lifestyle and gave lectures to clergy – and Bishops – on the joys of same. However in “Goodbye to Catholic Ireland” (pages 355-57), Mary Kenny details how some “liberal” Irish priests began to stretch the boundaries of  what was acceptable in the area of sexual relationships.  She quotes as a characteristic example of the new liberal tone among the clergy a strong article in the Furrow in 1979 about the pastoral care of homosexuals written by Redemptorist priest Father Ralph Gallagher.

“Father Gallagher questioned in this ground-breaking article, the traditional Christian view of homosexuality as being ‘contra naturam’: the theory he said was undergoing serious review. ‘Many debates on homosexuality reveal prejudice, fear and unsupported statements rather than the elements of reason and freedom which, theoretically are the basis of ethical analysis  … Homosexuals should not be judged to be immoral any more than a blind person if prenatally the visual tracts are not complete.’  …Some of the unhappiness of homosexuals was, in part, the fault of the Church. ‘The alienation and loneliness of many homosexuals have been contributed to in no small way by the attitude of society and of the Churches.’ We should be cautious in our use of scriptural texts about homosexuality ….Ralph Gallagher warns his fellow clergy; we must challenge the notion that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil or ‘imperfect’. Homosexuality must be seen as part of a proper understanding of sexuality ‘in its wider sense’. And this wider sense was arising because sex was no longer simply about procreation: birth control had altered perspectives. ‘We must take cognisance of the changed emphasis on procreation in a theological understanding of sex. It can no longer be regarded as the single dominant norm by which all sexual behaviour is judged. The reality of personal sexual encounters is too wide to be compressed into the univocal notion of procreation.’

Mary Kenny comments that Hugh Hefner had said that after the pill, sex was about recreation, not procreation – and now here was a Redemptorist using (perhaps unconsciously) the ideas of the founder of Playboy magazine as source text. Father Gallagher himself had been deeply impressed by a letter from a homosexual who had struggled with his orientation and who wrote, ‘The most important thing that happened to me was the realization that homosexuality was natural for me and from God.’

Kenny comments [ my emphasis]: “As the 1960s slogan had it – if it feels good, do it! What feels natural is natural. The crucial change that the 1960s had brought about was this shift from reasoning to feeling.”

The development of feminism within the Catholic Church also led in some very strange directions. The Furrow began to show the influence of feminist theologians such as Rosemary Radford Ruether. ‘Patriarchy’ within the Church was the target and the idealised image of the Blessed Virgin as a role model was inextricably linked with the asceticism of the Church fathers. (As per Wikipedia:  “In 2005 Ruether presented to an audience at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles her view that "Christianity is riddled by hierarchy and patriarchy” and that this created a social order in which chaste women on their wedding night were "in effect, raped by young husbands whose previous sexual experience came from exploitative relationships with servant women and prostitutes."  ….. "modern societies have sought to change this situation, allowing women education, legal autonomy, paid employment and personal freedom. But the sexual morality of traditional puritanical patriarchal Christianity has never been adequately rethought." ⁾ 

 According to an article in The Furrow by Helen Sheehy in 1985 we needed a complete revolution in the male-dominated Church. ‘Todays sexual ethic promoted by a male celibate Church finds no answering chord in the hearts of many women . Feminist theology seeks to re-image God.’  This new image was not to replace Father with Mother: we really required freedom from God. ‘Ruether maintains that that the substitution of a female for a male image only serves to perpetuate a parent-child relationship to God, which she deems to be inimical to autonomy. Behind her thinking lies a valid desire to dismantle a patriarchal system of government in the Church.’  

According to Mary Kenny: “Behind Ms Ruether’s thinking, also was Freud, who considered the concept of God a form of infantilism, and Sartre, for whom ‘autonomy’ was the purpose of life. There were many other articles on these lines and they indicated how the cookie was crumbling.”

The fact that The Furrow “a monthly journal for the contemporary Church” would publish such ideas and such authors is an indication that something other than “tolerance” is at work here. In the “About Us” section of its website, “The Furrow” highlights some of its famous contributors over the years. Among them is Mary McAleese former President of Ireland and a much more mainstream figure than a radical feminist theologian like Ruether (who is not listed). However the views of Mary McAleese indicate just what is regarded as “mainstream” in modern Ireland. According to her Wikipedia article (treating the period after she was President): [12]

“In a radio interview discussing her book Quo Vadis? Collegiality in the Code of Canon Law on 28 September 2012, said she was concerned at the growing number of young men, and in particular young gay men, who take their own lives in Ireland. She said that when the research is broken down, it shows that young gay men are one of the most risk-prone groups in Ireland. McAleese said many of these young men will have gone to Catholic schools and they will have heard there their church's attitude to homosexuality. "They will have heard words like disorder, they may even have heard the word evil used in relation to homosexual practice," she said. She went on to say "And when they make the discovery, and it is a discovery and not a decision, when they make the discovery, that they are gay, when they are 14, 15 or 16, an internal conflict of absolutely appalling proportions opens up". She said many young gay men are driven into a place that is "dark and bleak". McAleese said she met the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Charles John Brown, shortly after Easter to raise with him her concern about the growing number of suicides among young men in Ireland.” [My emphasis]

The influence of the Catholic Church has been in steep decline for the past 30 years or so, yet Mary McAleese sees no contradiction in blaming the Church for the increase in the number of young gay men who are committing suicide! Is this female logic?  Not really – but it is definitely feminist logic!

The willingness of liberal theologians in the Catholic Church to pander to gay and feminist lifestyles and to their ideologies of victimisation has consequences in the real world also. In an interview with the Irish Times shortly after he retired as Bishop of Killaloe, the VERY liberal Bishop Willie Walsh made perhaps the only comment in his episcopal career that had the potential to displease his fellow liberals in the Church and the media: [13]

I’m very nervous about saying this – it’s an issue that hasn’t been faced – but practically all the abuse that I’ve come across has been abuse of boys, and boys of 14, 15 years old. [my emphasis] Now, that raises some serious questions, and if you really went into them you would be accused of mixing up homosexuality and paedophilia. If a priest abuses a 16- or 17-year old, is that homosexual? It’s certainly not paedophilia. Where does the division come? It is a very hazardous area – and there’s no question in my mind that I’m not equating homosexuality with sexual abuse by priests. No, I’m not. But I’m saying that at a certain point the distinction is not that clear.

The reason that “it’s an issue that hasn’t been faced” is that Bishop Willie’s media admirers have no wish to face it. It’s a great pity that the Bishop himself made no attempt to refer to the elephant in the drawing room it until he was safely retired, but better late than never!

 (7) CONCLUSION

Pope Benedict was absolutely correct when he said in December 2010 that:

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a "better than" and a "worse than". Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today ………

Our modern day liberals and anti-clerics have either forgotten what they and their predecessors were saying in the 1970s – or they are being deliberately dishonest!

Among the details they have managed to forget are:

•     The fact that a pro-paedophile organisation The Paedophile Information Exchange was a member of the British “National Council for Civil Liberties” (now called “Liberty”) until 1983 and was closely association with the gay liberation movement in the UK.[Part 2]

•       The fact that two leading feminist politicians Harriet Harmann and Patricia Hewitt cut their teeth as leading lights in the NCCL at precisely the time that organisation was associated with the PIE. (Curiously enough the NCCL cut PIE loose shortly after Harmann and Hewitt left to pursue their political careers.) [Part 2]

•       The fact that it was only because of the intervention Mary Whitehouse in 1976 that the government-funded gay charity “Albany Trust” did not publish a booklet provided by PIE and the Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) group. The reason the Trustees gave for declining to publish the booklet was that it wasn’t sufficiently “objective”. It is difficult to know what sort of “objectivity” they had expected from the two paedophile groups but presumably they did not want to credit Mary Whitehouse with their change of mind! [Part 2]

•      The fact that the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was a member of one of the biggest gay rights movements in the world – the International Lesbian and Gay Association – right up until 1993. [Part 2]

•  The fact that in 1977, a French petition against age of consent laws was addressed to the parliament calling for the abrogation of several articles of the age-of-consent law and the decriminalization of all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen (the age of consent in France). This was signed by such luminaries as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and André Glucksmann, Roland Barthes, by the novelist/gay activist Guy Hocquenghem, the actor/play-writer/jurist Jean Danet, writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, writer Philippe Sollers, pediatrician and child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and also by people belonging to a wide range of political positions. [Part 1 - NOTES]

•  The fact that Fr Paul Shanley the priest at the centre of the USA’s  paedophile hysteria, was for decades a liberal and gay icon who was finally removed from his “gay outreach” ministry in 1979 because of protests by Catholic traditionalists. Because he remained a Catholic priest, his former liberal friends later used his lifestyle to demonise him as a paeophile and to demonise the Catholic traditionalists who had always loathed him! [Part 3]

 It is very strange that former IRA-man and hunger striker Anthony McIntyre’s choose to denounce Pope Benedict on this issue in his blog “The Pensive Quill” (article entitled “Papal Bull” dated 26 December 2010). You would expect him to have some familiarity with the views of Labour Party stalwarts Harman and Hewitt as both had been Secretaries of State in the British Government and the NCCL had been vocal on the human rights issue during the IRA’s 30 year terror campaign. Moreover when a poster on The Pensive Quill referred to the 1977 petition to parliament from several French intellectuals - including Sartre and Foucault -  Anthony McIntyre defended Foucault and minimised the significance of the petition. I tend to assume he would not have done this except in a context where the petition was being quoted to show that Pope Benedict was correct in his description of 1970s attitudes to paedophilia.  Has Anthony McIntyre broken with the IRA only to replace the British Government with the Catholic Church, as the supposed fountain-head of all evil?

During the several years of violence that preceded the foundation of the Irish State in 1922, the Catholic Church was the sole force that united constitutional reformers with revolutionaries of every persuasion. This was a major factor in ensuring the survival of democracy in Ireland. In contrast, during the 30 year IRA campaign in Northern Ireland from 1969, both the Provisional and the Official IRA were anti-clerics whose attitude to Catholic Bishops was not very different to that of Dr Ian Paisley. For operational reasons both IRAs made some effort to conceal their antipathy during the years of terror and violence. Hardly had Taoiseach Albert Reynolds got the peace process under way in 1994 but (former Workers party TD) PatRabbitte felt free to destroy his coalition government by peddling fantasies about a conspiracy between Church and State to protect Fr Brendan Smyth. And now Anthony McIntyre has courageously broken with his former terrorist colleagues but continues to subscribe to a similar type of fantasy!

NOTES:

[12] Wikipedia article on Mary McAleese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McAleese

The Wikipedia article also contains the following:

In 1998, she met the Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, on an official visit to the US. In an interview in 2012 she said that Law told her he was "sorry for Catholic Ireland to have you as President" and went on to insult a junior minister who was accompanying the then president. "His remarks were utterly inappropriate and unwelcome," she said. McAleese told the cardinal that she was the "President of Ireland and not just of Catholic Ireland". At this point, a heated argument ensued between the two, according to McAleese.

By any chance did Mary McAleese express to Cardinal Law the same kind of “compassionate” views that she articulated in 2012, and could it be that it was that kind of “compassion” that annoyed the Cardinal?

[13]  extract from “The Bishop Who Speaks His Mind” , by Kathy Sheridan, Irish Times, 6 November 2010. Article is behind Irish Times firewall but can be viewed at
http://www.irishsalem.com/individuals/Politicians%20and%20Others/bishop-willie-walsh/bishopwho-speakshismind-06nov10.php

Cardinal George Pell and His Accusers [1]

Cardinal George Pell

George Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia  from 1996 to 2001 and Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014. He was created Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He is the Catholic Church's most senior official to be convicted of child sexual abuse. In June 2017, Cardinal Pell was charged in Victoria with multiple historical sexual assault offences; he denied all charges. On 11 December 2018 he was found guilty on five charges related to sexual assault of two 13-year old boys while Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell lodged an appeal against his conviction to the Victorian Court of Appeal, which dismissed Pell's appeal by a majority of two to one in August 2019. (Justice Mark Weinberg strongly dissented from the other two). On 13 November 2019, the High Court of Australia  granted Cardinal George Pell special leave to appeal his convictions. The appeal is to be held in March 2020.

The High Court acquitted Cardinal Pell of all charges on a unanimous verdict by all 7 judges. I am doing  a second article Cardinal George Pell - Acquittal and Continued Hysteria [2].

(A) Parallels with Ireland (and UK)

At least eight Irish Bishops (including all four Archbishops) have been subjected to false allegations related to child sex abuse - either of being pedophiles themselves or of covering up child sex abuse. This includes the late Cardinal Archbishop Cahal Daly who was Primate of All Ireland and John Charles McQuaid, Primate of Ireland and the best known Irish Catholic churchman of the 20th century. I wrote about this in 2017 in a comment on an article in America Magazine concerning Cardinal Pell [see section (E) below]. There is a more up to date version here
Eight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland

There are also similarities with the case of former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall who was found guilty on a second charge of raping a child even though the initial charge was clearly bogus - and the jury acquitted on that count. (The entire case then collapsed due to the stupidly of the accusers in giving a post-conviction interview to a newspaper that exposed both as serial accusers!) Cardinal Pell was convicted on the unsupported testimony of one accuser even though several previous allegations against him had been found to be false. [see section (D) ] 

Hysteria generated by the media played a major role for Nora Wall and Cardinal Pell. An Irish Times editorial on 17 December 2005 entitled "Nora Wall" stated that: The charges were laid at a time when allegations of the abuse of children in institutions had entered the public domain. The case was heard within a month of the broadcast by RTÉ of the [3 part] States of Fear programmes. The jury could not but have been affected, it seems, by the horrific abuse exposed in that series and by the complaints of the child victims that no-one listened to them. Cardinal Pell was likewise subjected to a vicious media assault for years before his trial in 2018. [See section (B) ] 

In addition to being convicted a few weeks after the States of Fear series, Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe were initially accused within months of the broadcast of RTE's broadcast of a different bogus documentary "Dear Daughter". As per Wikipedia on Nora Wall:

In February 1996 RTÉ broadcast "Dear Daughter" – Louis Lentin's TV documentary about alleged abuse in St Vincent’s residential school, Goldenbridge, Dublin, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy. It featured the story of Christine Buckley who had been there in the 1950s.The documentary concentrated on allegations made against one Mercy nun Sister Xavieria. The programme claimed that, on one occasion, Christine Buckley had been caned by Sister Xavieria so severely that the entire side of her leg was split open from her hip to her knee. She said that she was treated in the casualty department of the local hospital and believes that she received 80 to 120 stitches.

No medical evidence has ever been produced to support this claim.The surgeon who ran the casualty department at the hospital has made a statement which renders it highly unlikely that such an incident ever took place. The surgeon pointed out that caning would not have caused a wound of this kind, which would have required surgical treatment under a general anaesthetic and not stitches in a casualty department.

Yet the allegations against the Sisters of Mercy were widely believed at the time. In his essay "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly", UK cultural historian Richard Webster states that "in the wake of the broadcast, atrocity stories about Goldenbridge and other industrial schools began to proliferate".

There is also a clear parallel with Operation Midland in the UK, a hysterical child abuse witch-hunt conducted by the Metropolitan police in London from 2014-16. In this case the motive was Class Hatred rather than the Anti-Clerical variety and the targets were leading Tories (Conservatives) or "Cultural Tories" rather than Catholic Bishops.  As per Wikipedia:
Once Operation Midland was underway, the police began their focus on the men whom [Carl] Beech had implicated as being members of a VIP paedophile ring – amongst those he had named included the former Members of Parliament Harvey Proctor and Greville Janner, the former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, the former Prime Minister Edward Heath, the former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall, the former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service Maurice Oldfield, and the former Director-General of MI5 Michael Hanley.

In July 2019 false accuser Carl Beech was sentenced to 18 years in prison on 12 counts of perverting the cause of justice and one of fraud. It was by no means a typical ending to a false allegations saga and it may mark a turning point in the UK!

(B) Demonised by "Liberal" Media because of Catholic Orthodoxy

According to Bill Donohue President of the Catholic League in The War Against Cardinal Pell  (20 July 2017)

We know one thing for sure: Pell was demonized when he offered his account [to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse].  Indeed, as a reporter for one Australian newspaper put it, he has “appeared at a parliamentary inquiry and a royal commission and before an audience of abuse survivors who reflexively hiss, howl and heckle.” Yet he always honors requests to speak.....

Few Australian reporters have been as dogged as Andrew Bolt in covering the Pell story; he writes for the Herald Sun. He has long noted the media bias against Pell. In 2016, he wrote, “There is something utterly repulsive about the media’s persecution of George Pell. There is something also very frightening about this abuse of power.” On July 3, 2017, Bolt said, “The media commentary suggests there’s little chance Cardinal George Pell can get a fair trial.” What concerns him is the temptation to make someone in the Church hierarchy pay for the sins of others. “He himself may be innocent,” Bolt says, “yet could be punished as a scapegoat.”

Amanda Vanstone is not a friend of organized religion, but in her coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald she noted that “What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages.” She adds that “The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial.” She freely admits that she and Pell have “widely divergent views on a number of matters,” but having “differing views isn’t meant to be a social death warrant for the one with the least popular views."........

The principal reason why Pell is hated is because he is a larger-than-life Australian cleric who strongly supports the Church’s teachings on sexuality. Quite frankly, he is an inviting target in a land where expressions of anti-Catholic bigotry are ascendant. Carl E. Olson writes in the Catholic World Report that “much of Australia seems to have held on rather tightly to its suspicion, dislike, and even hatred of the Catholic Church.” Olson quotes one of his Aussie correspondents. “The Australian leftist establishment hates him, the gay lobby hates him, the atheists, liberal Catholics and feminist ideologues hold him in contempt and he has taken on the Italian mafia in trying to reform the Vatican finances."

(C) Justice Mark Weinberg (Victoria Court of Appeal) Dissents regarding Pell's Conviction

[Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large on "The Australian" and a former Editor-in-Chief. On 24 August 2019 The Australian published his article "How Faith Was Lost on Judgment Day for a State Legal System"]

Justice Mark Weinberg’s dissent is long and closely reasoned, ensuring grave doubts about Pell’s guilt will not be dissipated by the 2-1 verdict against him. 

The 2-1 Victorian Court of Appeal dismissal of George Pell’s appeal against his sexual offences convictions may settle Pell’s guilt in the eyes of the law, but this contested judgment cannot constitute an enduring settlement or convincing argument in relation to Pell’s guilt.

It is an extraordinary judgment. The power, logic and suasion lies in the 200-page minority judgment by Mark Weinberg, a former commonwealth director of public prosecutions and the most experienced of the three judges in criminal law. Weinberg’s dissent is long and closely reasoned. Weinberg has ensured that grave doubts about Pell’s guilt will not be dissipated by the 2-1 verdict against him.

Weinberg has undermined the assumptions of the prosecution case as accepted by Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Chris Maxwell, president of the Court of Appeal. Given this minority judgment, Pell’s legal team is likely to take recourse to the High Court.

In upholding Pell’s appeal and in the arguments he made, Weinberg raises the implication an innocent man is being convicted and this, in turn, raises far wider questions. Can the public have faith in the criminal justice system of Victoria? The majority case, obviously, must be accepted. But a reading of the entire judgment suggests the majority case is flawed and less convincing than the minority.

The Pell trial has never been about the egregious crimes of the Catholic Church in relation to sexual abuse of children. It is about only one issue: whether Pell is a sexual predator. Yet these two elements seem difficult, almost impossible, to separate, and this tension seems embedded in the legal process and Court of Appeal decision.

On May 9 last year [2018] on the occasion of Weinberg’s retirement from the Supreme Court and appointment as a reserve judge, Paul Holdenson QC gave the address and began with these words: “Your Honour was undoubtedly the best criminal appellate advocate of your generation.” Given that unassailable testimony, Weinberg’s judgment warrants substantial evaluation. It cannot be ignored.

Weinberg goes to the narrow basis of the prosecution case: “In the present case the prosecution relied entirely upon the evidence of the complainant to establish guilt and nothing more. There was no supporting evidence of any kind from any other witness. Indeed, there was no supporting evidence of any kind at all. These convictions were based upon the jury’s assessment of the complainant as a witness and nothing more.

“Mr Boyce (for the prosecution) in his submission to this court did not shrink from that having been the entire prosecution case at trial. Indeed, as indicated, he invited the members of the court to approach this ground of appeal in exactly the same way. He asked this court to focus upon the complainant’s demeanour in assessing his credibility and reliability and to treat that matter as decisive.

“In my view, Mr Walker (acting for Pell) was justified in submitting that the complainant did, at times, embellish aspects of his account. On occasion, he seemed almost to ‘clutch at straws’ in an attempt to minimise, or overcome, the obvious inconsistencies between what he had said on earlier occasions and what the objective evidence clearly showed.”

These judgments cannot be separated from the social upheaval as exposed by the 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that documented extensive crimes of sexual abuse by institutions, notably the Catholic Church, serial cover-ups, abuses of power and refusal to believe the victims when they came forward.

The royal commission correctly condemned the criminal justice system for being “ineffective in responding to crimes of sexual violence”, with Justice Peter McClellan praising the victims, saying: “They deserve our nation’s thanks.” Late last year Scott Morrison captured the essence of the transformation with his apology to the victims, saying: “I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you.”

And the judicial majority believed the victim against Pell. The prosecution depended on the complainant’s testimony, delivered by video in the first trial. Because it was recorded and used in the second trial there was no second cross-examination. No other evidence was required, no witnesses, no corroboration. The Ferguson-Maxwell majority had no doubt. They accepted the prosecution argument that the complainant “came across as someone who was telling the truth” — that he “was clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth”.

His word was accepted over that of Pell and the substantial body of evidence produced by Pell’s legal team. That team outlined in evidence 13 factual obstacles in the path of conviction with the Ferguson-Maxwell majority rejecting all 13.

One lawyer close to these events told me: “The word of complainants is now regarded as near infallible.” During the trial various inconsistencies by the complainant were explained away by the prosecution as the established reactions by sexual abuse victims.

Consider the facts. The facts are that complainant A made a complaint to police in June 2015 about an alleged abuse committed by Pell 19 years earlier in 1996 against two 13-year-old choristers. The complainant claimed two incidents. The first happened after Pell served Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral when he found the two boys in the priests’ sacristy. There was no evidence Pell had spoken to the boys before.

The prosecution said Pell, in his robes, said something like: “What are you doing in here?” Pell then allegedly immediately undid his trousers, pulled out his penis and forced B’s head close to his genitalia. This took place for barely a minute or two. Pell then allegedly turned to A and forced his penis into A’s mouth. This incident did not last any more than two minutes. Pell then instructed A to remove his pants and more abuse occurred for another minute or two. The boys were reported to be sobbing and whimpering.

A did not complain to anyone on the ride home or afterwards, nor did he ever discuss the alleged abuse with B. The second boy, B, died in 2014 having never made any complaint. When asked by his mother, B said he had never been interfered with. [My emphasis]

In Weinberg’s judgment, he refers to the argument made by Pell’s barrister, Robert Richter, in his final address to the jury reminding them “there were literally dozens of people, including a number of adults who would have been congregating around the area of the priests’ sacristy shortly after the conclusion of Sunday solemn mass. Anyone could have walked into that room at any time and immediately seen what was going on …

“It would be extraordinary to think that he would have offended in the manner described by the complainant with the door even partly open. In addition, there was nothing to have prevented either of the boys from leaving the room while the other was being attacked. There was nothing to suggest that the applicant (Pell) had previously been acquainted with either of them. There was no suggestion that he had engaged in any grooming. There was no evidence that the applicant had ever threatened either boy. Nor had he said to them that they were not to tell anyone what had occurred.”

Moreover, by abusing two boys at once it meant if one made a complaint the other could corroborate it. Richter said only a “madman” would have attempted such abuse immediately after Sunday mass.

The second alleged abuse is even more extraordinary. Complainant A said at least a month after the first incident, again following a Sunday mass at the cathedral, he was processing with the choir back through the sacristy corridor when Pell pushed himself against A on a wall and squeezed A’s testicles and penis over his robes. Pell did not say anything. A did not tell B about this incident.

Weinberg said: “Mr Richter submitted that the complainant’s account of this second incident was so highly improbable as to be incapable of acceptance. The idea that a six-foot four-inch fully robed archbishop in the presence of a number of choristers, including at least several adults, as well as some concelebrant priests, would attack a young choirboy in a public place, push him violently against a wall, grab him hard by the testicles and squeeze for several seconds to the point of inflicting considerable pain upon the complainant was said to border on the fanciful.”

Weinberg resorts to the trial transcript:

Richter: Yes, and out of nowhere the archbishop physically assaults you. Is that what you say?

Complainant: Yes.

Richter: In front of all these people?

Complainant: Yes … Yes. And it happened like that. It was such a quick, um, quick and cold, callous kind of thing that happened. It was — it was over before it even started and it was — I was isolated in a corner for literally seconds. Um, there were people sporadically walking down the hallway and um I was obviously not being looked at, at that time, because somebody would have, hopefully would have reported it.

Richter: So the archbishop in his full — oh you said and, of course, the choir numbered what, about 50 people?

Complainant: I would say so.

Richter: And in the middle of that, number of people, the archbishop in his full regalia shoves you against the wall violently, yes?

Complainant: Yes.

Richter: Which hand did he use?

Complainant: I’m not certain.

In relation to the second incident Weinberg was withering in comments going to the integrity of justice in Victoria: “The complainant’s account of the second incident seems to me to take brazenness to new heights, the like of which I have not seen.

“I would have thought any prosecutor would be wary of bringing a charge of this gravity against anyone, based upon the implausible notion that a sexual assault of this kind would take place in public and in the presence of numerous potential witnesses. Had the incident occurred in the way that the complainant alleged, it seems to me highly unlikely that none of those many persons present would have seen what was happening, or reported it in some way.”

The implication cannot be missed: Pell should not have been brought to trial on the second incident, let alone convicted. Weinberg said it was “not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt” of Pell’s guilt on the second offence.

In reviewing the trials, Weinberg said: “Objectively speaking, this was always going to be a problematic case. The complainant’s allegations against the applicant were, to one degree or another, implausible. In the case of the second incident, even that is an understatement.”

The Ferguson-Maxwell majority saw a different reality. To them, there was nothing in the complainant’s answers to suggest “he had been caught out or had tripped himself up”. Indeed, they saw his uncertainties on issue after issue as “a further indication of A’s credibility”. The majority said the complainant’s explanation of what he could remember and what he could not “had the ring of truth”.

In relation to the second incident they accepted totally the complainant’s version, saying “there was nothing inherently improbable” about his account, and rejected the claim the incident could not have gone unnoticed by others.

In his trial submission Richter said a large number of “independently improbable if not ‘impossible’ things” would need to have had to occur within a very short timeframe (perhaps 10 minutes) “if the complainant’s account of the first incident were true”. A long list followed.

It included evidence by the assistant priest, Charles Portelli, and sacristan, Maxwell Potter, to the effect that they accompanied Pell after mass and that it was, in effect, impossible for him to have found himself alone as described by the complainant. Weinberg said: “Even a mere ‘reasonable possibility’, unrebutted by the prosecution, that what Portelli and Potter said might be both truthful and accurate, would give rise to a complete defence and would necessitate an acquittal.”

He said their evidence in relation to Pell “remaining on the steps after mass was, in substance, ‘alibi’ evidence” concerning the first incident. The judicial majority rejected this. The issue here is whether Pell was in the priests’ sacristy alone and robed for the critical few minutes during which he committed the alleged offences.

The Ferguson-Maxwell judgment said it was “open to the jury” to find the assaults occurred in that five to six minutes before the “hive of activity” described by other witnesses began. They said the jury was entitled to doubts about Portelli’s evidence and, taken as a whole, it did not cast doubts on the complainant’s evidence.

Referring to the defence, Weinberg said: “This trial involved a most detailed and comprehensive challenge to a prosecution case. That attack was largely based upon the unchallenged testimony of a significant number of witnesses, all of whom were of good character, and reputable. It was not suggested that any of them had lied.

“Those who recalled relevant events had good reason to do so. Mr Walker (for Pell) submitted that the evidence that they gave, whether viewed individually or collectively, was more than sufficient to establish that the complainant’s account, in its specific detail, was ‘realistically impossible’. In substance, Mr Walker submitted that this has always been a weak case, built upon an account by the complainant that was itself highly improbable.”

Weinberg said the prosecution did not address Richter’s argument about “compounding improbabilities”.

But he alluded to the heart of the matter by inferring the answer the prosecution would surely give was that the “complainant’s evidence was so compelling, so credible, and reliable that any notion of compounding improbabilities would be overcome”.

In short, all paths lead back to the same place: the complainant must be believed. The prosecution and the appeal majority put much emphasis on the complainant’s demeanour. Weinberg attacked the legal basis behind this.

“The High Court has observed that it can be dangerous to place too much reliance upon the appearance of a witness, rather than focusing, so far as possible, upon other, more objectively reliable matters,” he said. “These might include, for example, contemporary documents, clearly established facts, scientifically approved tests and the apparent logic of the events in question. Empirical evidence has cast serious doubts upon the capacity of any human being to tell the truth from falsehood merely from the observations of a witness giving evidence.”

He referred to research by the Australian Law Reform Commission that “almost universally concluded that facial reaction and bodily behaviour were unlikely to assist in arriving at a valid conclusion about the evidence of most witnesses”. Yet the judicial majority was confident, in the extreme, about its assessment of the complainant’s demeanour saying he “clearly” was telling the truth. No room for doubt there.

Weinberg said the events had taken place 20 years earlier. That alone had to raise questions of memory reliability. When Pell’s team said that B’s denial to his mother of ever being abused should be given weight, the prosecution said it must be put aside entirely — this was now known as characteristic behaviour of victims. [My emphasis]

When Richter challenged the complainant’s failure to have ever discussed the abuse with the other boy, the complainant said they wanted to “purge” it from their systems and the prosecution argued this highly emotional exchange was further evidence of a truthful witness. The prosecution argued the complainant’s evidence had “grown in stature” during the trial and that merely viewing his recording of evidence would, on its own, show why the jury had convicted.

Weinberg was unpersuaded. He said: “Mr Walker (for Pell) submitted that on a fair assessment of the complainant’s evidence, both through reading the transcript and through viewing his recorded testimony, he had frequently adjusted, added to, and indeed embellished the account that he originally gave to police in 2015 … Indeed, on occasion he gave answers that not even he could possibly have believed to be true.

“I am quite unconvinced by Mr Boyce’s submission that the complainant’s evidence was so compelling, either when viewed as a whole, or when regard is had to his distressed response to Mr Richter’s vigorous cross-examination, that I should put aside all of the factors that point to his account as being unreliable.”

Weinberg raised a potential problem for Pell in the trial. Richter’s argument was that the abuse had been impossible in any realistic sense given the evidence. “However, there was a risk that it set a forensic hurdle that the defence never actually had to overcome,” Weinberg said. The onus was on the prosecution to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, not on the defence to show it was impossible for the offences to have occurred. 


Lindy Chamberlain Case and High Court Justice William Deane
 In summary, Weinberg said that Bret Walker SC, acting for Pell, had identified a sufficient body of evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the verdict and that he would set aside the convictions. In conclusion he referred to the Lindy Chamberlain case when Justice William Deane of the High Court would have allowed the appeal from a jury decision.

Deane made the critical distinction — it was not about saying a person was innocent when found guilty; it was about saying the person had not been proven to be guilty according to the test required by the criminal justice system. Deane felt, despite the jury’s verdict, the evidence did not establish Chamberlain’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

“I find myself in a position quite similar to that which confronted Deane J,” Weinberg said. He believed there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit the offences. That meant he had to be acquitted.

The split Victorian Court of Appeal judgment exposes a split over the law: are complainants about child sexual abuse to be accorded a higher status of believability despite evidence that would normally cast reasonable doubt? The Weinberg judgment raises the most serious questions about the test used not just in Pell’s conviction but about how the law is to be applied.

PAUL KELLY

(D) Other Sex Abuse Allegations Against Cardinal Pell

Bill Donohue President of the Catholic League listed these in a July 2017 article "The War against Cardinal Pell"  

• [In June 2002] a Melbourne man said he was abused by Pell in 1962 at a camp when he was 12; Pell was studying for the priesthood. The case was thrown out when nothing could be substantiated. Not a single person who worked at the camp supported the charges, and all of the signed statements were favorable to Pell. The accuser had been convicted 39 times for offenses ranging from assault to drug use. Indeed, he was a violent drug addict who served four years in prison. He drove drunk, beat people, and took amphetamines.

• [In 2013] Pell was accused of doing nothing to help an abused Australian boy who pleaded for help in 1969. But Pell’s passport showed that he lived in Rome the entire year. [As per Wikipedia "During the course of the (2013 Victorian Parliamentary) Inquiry, a victim of a paedophile Christian Brother at St Alipius Primary School claimed that in 1969 Pell heard him pleading for help a few weeks after he had been raped. Pell denied the claim, which was later discredited when Pell produced his passport to confirm that he was not living in Australia that year.]

• At a later date, Pell was accused of chasing away a complainant who informed him of a molesting priest. The authorities dismissed the charges after discovering that Pell did not live at the presbytery in Ballarat where the encounter allegedly took place. The accuser was later imprisoned for sexually abusing children. [As per Wikipedia, Pell submitted evidence that he did not live in Ballarat or in that presbytery at the time, and the counsel-assisting noted in her final submission that "Cardinal Pell's evidence about his living arrangements and duties in 1973 and 1974 make it less likely that he was at St Patrick's presbytery late in the afternoon on a week day."]

• In a high profile case, Pell was accused of bribing David Ridsdale to stop making accusations to the police that he was abused by his uncle, Gerald Ridsdale, a notorious molester priest. The accusation was investigated and Pell was exonerated. [As per Wikipedia, Counsel-Assisting Gail Furness conceded in her final submission to the royal commission that, given it was already known to Pell that Gerald Ridsdale was subject to police investigation, and David Ridsdale had requested a "private" rather than police process "it is not likely that Bishop Pell would then have thought it necessary to offer Mr Ridsdale an inducement to prevent him from going to the police or public with his allegations", and Ridsdale could have "misinterpreted Bishop Pell's offer of assistance".]

• Pell was also accused of joking about Gerald Ridsdale’s sexual assaults at a funeral Mass in Ballarat. But there was no Mass that day and the priest whom Pell was allegedly joking with was living someplace else when the supposed incident took place.

(E) Allegations against Irish Archbishops (and a Cardinal!)

I commented on an article in America Magazine "Cardinal Pell Professes Innocence on Sex Abuse Charges" (29 June 2017) pointing out some similarities with the situation in Ireland.  

There have been numerous false allegations of child abuse against Bishops (including 3 Archbishops and a Cardinal) in Ireland. This is an extract from my comment on a 2011 article on the Association of Catholic Priests website 
Two Reflections on Dr. Magee’s Interview. Brendan Hoban and Margaret Lee
[Bishop of Cloyne John Magee resigned in the wake of a claim that he had failed to deal adequately with allegations of child abuse against his priests. ]

Father Hoban
"Regarding the “culture of deference” you are aware that the media have been telling obscene lies about priests and bishops since at least 1994. I have written an essay about false sex allegations directed at SEVEN Irish bishops between 1994 and 2008. These comprise Bishop Magee himself (accused twice in 1994 and 1999), the late Archbishops Cahal Daly, John Charles McQuaid, and Thomas Morris, Bishops Brendan Comiskey and Eamon Casey and the late Bishop Peter Birch.

"You are aware that Bishop Magee himself was the target of the initial libel in April 1994 when the UK Guardian was forced to apologise for claiming that an unnamed Irish Bishop was a member of a paedophile ring. 

"A few months afterwards the government of Albert Reynolds collapsed as a direct result of Pat Rabbitte’s suggestion that there was a conspiracy between Cardinal Daly and Attorney General Harry Whelehan to prevent the extradition of Fr Brendan Smyth. This was followed by an obscene media onslaught against Bishop Comiskey when he went to the USA for treatment for alcoholism. In 1999, TV3 had to apologise for a second (and unrelated ) slander against Bishop Magee while shortly afterwards John Cooney published a biography of Archbishop McQuaid in which he accused him of making sexual advances to underage boys. (This allegation as rejected even by reviewers who praised the remainder of the book!). You are aware that Cooney was made Religious Affairs correspondent of the Irish Independent a few years after the publication of his scurrilous book. (Try to imagine a journalist who similarly slandered a former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, being appointed to the staff of the Irish Catholic.)"
COMMENT on 13 July 2017: I suspect the allegations against Cardinal George Pell, former Archbishop of Sydney and then Melbourne, fall into the same category. Of the Irish hierarchy mentioned above, ALL were either Archbishops (including one Cardinal) OR very well-known Bishops. Obscure prelates seem to be safe from this type of claim!

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.

1. GUARDIAN APOLOGY TO BISHOPS FOR PAEDOPHILE RING CLAIM [April 1994]

    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!

2. CARDINAL CATHAL DALY ACCUSED BY PAT RABBITTE, (Nov. 1994) 

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."

3. BISHOP BRENDAN COMISKEY ACCUSED BY GAY BYRNE [OCTOBER 1995]

[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."

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?

4. TV3 APOLOGISES TO BISHOP OF CLOYNE JOHN MAGEE [SEPTEMBER 1999] 

[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!

5. JOHN CHARLES McQUAID LIBELLED BY JOHN COONEY

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

6. BISHOP EAMONN CASEY. 

[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!