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Nuns, Mothers and Babies in Bon Secours Home, TuamThe 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 2009The 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.
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
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
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 etcWhen 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."
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Showing posts with label Nazis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazis. Show all posts
Monday, August 17, 2020
The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns [1]
Monday, June 24, 2019
Mary Raftery and Blood Libel
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Mary Raftery - "They were calling me a Nazi, citing blood libel"
The late Mary Raftery has been in the news against recently so I am republishing my correspondence with former Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy in 2005.
According to an RTE report on 29 April 2019 Dublin City University "launched an exhibition on the award-winning journalism of the late Mary Raftery. The event coincides with the 20th anniversary of the airing by RTÉ television of her three-part documentary series, States of Fear. The broadcasts prompted the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to issue an unprecedented apology to survivors of institutional child abuse, primarily in Catholic-run industrial schools." RTE goes on to confirm that the university has also unveiled a new journalism industry award, The Mary Raftery Prize, which will be awarded annually to an individual or small team responsible for journalistic work produced on the island of Ireland which, in the view of the judges, combines the rigorous analysis and commitment to social justice which characterised Mary Raftery's journalism and resulted in a significant impact on society. This "rigorous analysis" and "commitment to social justice" included a blood libel against the Christian Brothers while her States of Fear series on RTE was a major factor in the false rape convictions of former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall and of a homeless schizophrenic man Pablo McCabe. Ms Raftery had very little to say about Nora Wall following the overturn of the convictions and nothing about Pablo.[Note 1] He was accused in order to make a rape allegation against a nun look more plausible and his abuse by the two accusers and the State, was of no interest to Ms Raftery. (He was the wrong type of victim!). [Note 2] Once Again - Mary Raftery and Blood Libel "They were calling me a Nazi, citing blood libel, a whole stable of them," she continues. "But there's absolute silence from those quarters since the Ryan Report." (Mary Raftery in Sunday Independent on 4 September 2011). Two weeks later I wrote on my website Actually I am the only person who ever used the term "blood libel" in relation to Mary Raftery and I also commented - with reference to her - that the Nazi pornographer Julius Streicher also used to accuse Jews of murdering Christian children. I have certainly not remained silent since the Ryan Report.[published May 2009] However Mary Raftery is a sacred cow among Irish journalists and feels -with some justification - that they will allow her to get away with any lie! They still are! Rory Connor 26 June 2019 NOTES: [1] For Mary Raftery's grossly inadequate account of the trial of Nora Wall in her book "Suffer the Little Children" see "Mary Raftery and Nora Wall" She leaves out nearly all the relevant facts and makes it sound like an acquittal on a technicality! [2] The only detailed account of Pablo McCabe's role in this tragedy is Breda O'Brien's article in the Jesuit Review Studies in Winter 2006 Miscarriage of Justice: Paul McCabe and Nora Wall CORRESPONDENCE WITH IRISH TIMES EDITOR, GERALDINE KENNEDY1) LETTER TO EDITOR
17 April 2005
Geraldine Kennedy
Editor, Irish Times
Dear Ms. Kennedy,
I am enclosing some articles which I have written concerning Mary Raftery and her accusations of child killing and child abuse directed against the Catholic Church.
In summary:
The Death of Patsy Flanagan
Mary Raftery has accused the Christian Brothers of being responsible for the death of the boy Patsy Flanagan who died following a fall from a staircase in Artane in February 1951. When her "witness" produced three contradictory accounts of the incident (one of which got the date wrong by 5 years), Ms. Raftery tried to square the circle by claiming that a few boys had died in this manner! She produced not a scrap of evidence to support this allegation.
There was an inquest which found the death of Patsy Flanagan to be an accident. Mary Raftery does not mention this in her book. Did she not know about it or did she deliberately conceal this evidence?
Sister Stanislaus and Sister Conception
Mary Raftery has, on several occasions, accused Sister Stanislaus Kennedy of failing to act when she was informed of child abuse in the 1970s in St. Joseph's orphanage, Kilkenny. The social worker who is supposed to have informed her, wrote to the Irish Times to say that he himself was unaware in 1977 that sex abuse was involved and that he only became aware of this in 1995 i.e. nearly 20 years after he is supposed to have informed Sister Stan (Letters page 22 December 1999). This precisely matches what Sister Stan said when Mary Raftery first made her allegation (in the States of Fear series and the book Suffer the Little Children). Yet Ms. Raftery repeats the accusation in her article on 3 March last. She makes a similar accusation against Sister Conception and the late Bishop Birch, in spite of the fact that on 1st March the President of the High Court Mr. Justice Finnegan, specifically exonerated them in his judgment in the case of R. Noctor-v.-Ireland, The Attorney General and Others. (Mary Raftery does not dispute his judgment concerning this issue; she ignores it).
Mary Raftery claimed that Sister Stanislaus had denounced a civil servant on the Kennedy Committee for failing to give credit to the Church for its social work. The three civil servants at the relevant meeting told journalist Breda O'Brien that no such episode had occurred. (One also wrote to the Irish Times to confirm this). This is by no means the most serious allegation made by Mary Raftery. It is important because it can be easily shown to be a lie. And the lie is obviously linked to other tales told by Ms Raftery about Sister Stan and about the Catholic Church.
Brother Joseph O'Connor
A far uglier lie is Mary Raftery's attack on the late Brother Joseph O'Connor who was the Christian Brother responsible for the Artane Boys Band. She claims he was a vicious child abuser. She alleges that a man abused by him was so distraught that he hung around the Mater Hospital for days when Brother O'Connor was dying. He then went into the hospital and lifted the sheet from his body to confirm that Brother O'Connor was dead. BROTHER JOSEPH O'CONNOR DID NOT DIE IN THE MATER HOSPITAL. (The same question arises as with the inquest on Patsy Flanagan - did Mary Raftery not bother to check this extraordinary story or did she conceal evidence?)
I assume that Mary Raftery tells lies about Brother O'Connor for the same reason she tells lies about Sister Stanislaus i.e. they are both well known Catholics and demonising them is a way of getting at the Church.
Nora Wall
Mary Raftery's treatment of the Nora Wall scandal in her book is grossly misleading. She fails to state that Nora Wall's two accusers had made a string of rape allegations against various people. Above all she fails to mention the main reason for the collapse of the trial i.e. a man read an article about the case in The Star newspaper and recognised one of the women as the person who had made a false allegation against himself!
I was told by one of Nora Wall's defense team (Sean Costello of Frank Ward and Co. Solicitors) that she had been convicted because of a climate of hysteria created by the media and SPECIFICALLY BY THE STATES OF FEAR SERIES!
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Clericalism
In his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", William Shirer has this to say about Hitler's favourite anti-Semite Julius Streicher:
"A famous fornicator he made his fame and fortune as a blindly fanatical anti-Semite. His notorious weekly Der Stuermer thrived on lurid tales of Jewish sexual crimes and Jewish "ritual murders"; its obscenity was nauseating even to many Nazis".
Ms. Kennedy, if even some Nazis were nauseated by Julius Streicher, what is Mary Raftery doing writing for the Irish Times? Do you believe that anti-clerical hatred is morally superior to the Nazi variety? You will note that they both involve lying allegations of sexual crimes and of child killing.
I intend to distribute this material as widely as possible. If yourself or Mary Raftery feel that any of it is mistaken, please let me know within the next week and I will take your views on board. In the meantime I will send this to the National Union of Journalists only.
Yours sincerely,
Rory Connor
11 Lohunda Grove
Dublin 15
Appendices:
(1) Mary Raftery and The Death of Patsy Flanagan - Debate Raftery vs Breda O'Brien -Nov 1999 to Jan 2000
(See also) The Death of Patsy Flanagan: Blood Libel and The Christian Brothers - Debate in Sun Independent Nov/Dec 1999
(2) Mary Raftery and Sister Stanislaus Kennedy(1) AND Mary Raftery and Sister Stanislaus Kennedy (2)
(3) Mary Raftery, Sister Conception and Bishop Birch - April 2005
(4) Mary Raftery and Brother Joseph O'Connor - March 2005
(5) Mary Raftery and Nora Wall - March 2005
2) REPLY FROM EDITOR
THE IRISH TIMES
The Irish Times Limited, 10-16 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2
Telephone: 6758000. Fax: 6719407
Email: edsoffice@irish-times.ie
EDITOR'S OFFICE
Mr. Rory Connor
11 Lohunda Grove
Dublin 15
April 21st 2005
Dear Mr. Connor,
Thank you for your letter of April 17th and its attachments.
I note from your letter your accusation not just that Mary Raftery has been mistaken in much that she has written but that she has written as fact things that were untrue and that she knew to be untrue.
As you are also seeking a response from her, I will pass on a copy of your letter to Ms. Raftery but I will not be responding myself to the points you have made because the allegations are clearly defamatory.
Yours sincerely,
Geraldine Kennedy
Editor
3) MY RESPONSE TO EDITOR
29 April 2005
Geraldine Kennedy
Editor
Irish Times
Dear Ms Kennedy
Thanks for your reply dated 21 April which I received on the 26 th.
I actually sent all of the material to Mary Raftery by registered post on 18 April. I also copied it to the National Union of Journalists as I believe that Ms. Raftery must have breached every article of their Code of Conduct. I have not yet received a reply from her and I am now distributing this material as widely as possible. I understand that the NUJ will only accept a complaint if it comes from another journalist so I am concentrating on journalists.
Yes I believe that Mary Raftery is not just mistaken but is telling deliberate lies. A blatant example is when her "witness" to the death of Patsy Flanagan tells three contradictory stories (one of which gets the date wrong by 5 years). Instead of withdrawing her allegations Mary Raftery tries to square the circle by claiming that more than one boy died in this way in Artane (i.e. by falling from a staircase)!
Mary McCarthy once said about the Stalinist Lillian Hellman : "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." That neatly sums up my attitude to Mary Raftery.
Yours sincerely,
Rory Connor
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Monday, August 8, 2016
Concordat between Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 1933 and Attempted Concordat with Soviet Union (1920s)
According to the summary in Wikipedia - "The Reichskonkordat ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State (and later Pope Pius XII) Eugenio Pacelli on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of President Paul von Hindenburg and the German government. It was ratified September 10, 1933 and it has been in force from that date right up until the current day. [My emphasis].The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. When bishops take office Article 16 states they're required to take an oath of loyalty to the Governor or President of the German Reich established according to the constitution. The treaty also requires all clergy to abstain from working in and for political parties. Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the Church including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI. The Nazis planned to eliminate the Church's influence by restricting its organizations to purely religious activities." [end of Wikipedia quote]
The 1933 Concordat has always been controversial among historians - for obvious and perfectly respectable reasons - but has also been used by anti-clerics to suggest that the future Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli who signed in his capacity as Secretary of State to Pius XI, was some kind of Nazi supporter (or "Hitler's Pope" as John Cornwell put it). What is almost invariably ignored in these discussions is that Achille Ratti (who became Pius XI in 1922) and Eugenio Pacelli who would succeed him as Pius XII in 1939, had been heavily involved in trying to negotiate a Concordat with the Soviet Union in the 1920s! In fact it was Pius XI's predecessor Pope Benedict XV, who employed Achille Ratti (then Papal Nuncio to Poland) to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy. ***
Like the Nazis in 1933, the newly created Soviet Union in the 1920s was trying to make itself respectable in the international community while at the same time, the Catholic Church was trying to protect the rights of Catholics in these newly minted totalitarian states. The Vatican's attempt to come to terms with the Soviet Union should be open to the same objections as its negotiations with the Nazi regime but in practice the former negotiations are almost invariably ignored. No doubt this is partly due to the failure of the negotiations with the Soviets, but is this really the main reason? Surely historians who express very negative views of the Reichskonkordat and impugn the motives of Pope Pius XI and his Secretary of State, should at least refer to their previous behaviour in relation to the Soviet Union; was THAT motivated by sympathy with Communist dictatorship.??
Again to quote Wikipedia (this time on the subject of Holy See - Soviet Union Relations )
"Worried by the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union, Pius XI mandated Berlin nuncio Eugenio Pacelli to work secretly on diplomatic arrangements between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. Pacelli negotiated food shipments for Russia, and met with Soviet representatives including Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin, who rejected any kind of religious education, the ordination of priests and bishops, but offered agreements without the points vital to the Vatican. Despite Vatican pessimism and a lack of visible progress, Pacelli continued the secret negotiations, until Pius XI ordered them to be discontinued in 1927, because they generated no results and were dangerous to the Church, if made public." ........
The article continues:
"Pius XI described the lack of reaction to the persecution of Christians in such countries as the Soviet Union, Mexico, Germany and Spain as a "conspiracy of silence". In, 1937 the Pope issued the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, which was a condemnation of Communism and the Soviet regime." He did name a French Jesuit to go to the USSR and consecrate in secret Roman Catholic bishops. It was a failure, as most of them ended up in gulags or were otherwise killed by the communist regime."
Note that 1937 was also the year in which Pius XI published his condemnation of Nazi ideology and practice in Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow.) [A five-member commission drafted the latter encyclical. According to Paul O'Shea the carefully worded denunciation of aspects of Nazism was formulated between January 16–21, 1937, by Pius XI, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and German cardinals Bertram, Faulhaber and Schulte, and Bishops von Preysing and von Galen.]
One of the few who does deal with the attempted Concordat with the Soviet Union is the British historian Michael Burleigh in his 2006 book Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda. (see Chapter 3: "The Churches in the Age of Dictators.) Again I quoted from Burleigh's book in a discussion on the Politics.ie website in January 2012 (see under). In contrast to some of the other points I made, there was little or no reaction to this one; presumably this is because most people have no idea that the Vatican engaged in these negotiations!
Rory Connor
Updated 11 August 2016
*** As per the Wikipedia article Pope Benedict XV and Russia "During the winter of 1918–1919, some "twenty [Orthodox] bishops were murdered together with thousands of priests and religious". ... Several Orthodox bishops from Omsk and Simbirsk wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XV, as the Father of all Christianity, describing the murder of priests, the destruction of their churches and other persecutions in their areas."
Politics.ie History Forum "Nazis, The Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse"
Kilbarry1 
Vatican Concordats
While I'm at it,
the following quotation from Burleigh's book concerns the attempts of two
future popes - Pius XI (Achille Ratti) and Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) to
negotiate a Concordat with the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It throws an interesting light on the frequent denunciations of
the Vatican concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933.
Vatican concordats with governments do not imply approval of the governments. Of course there is a danger that a vicious dictatorship will use the agreement in order to boost its international standing - and that is precisely what the Soviet government was trying to do in the early 1920s. Indeed negotiations with the Vatican broke down because several governments - including both Britain and fascist Italy(!) - recognised the Soviet Union in 1924 and the Soviets no longer needed an agreement with the Vatican. However the future Pope Pius XII continued to negotiate even "when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters" !!
.... Both nuncios, Ratti in Warsaw and the younger Pacelli in Munich (until 1925, when he moved to Berlin as nuncio to the German Reich), were closely involved in Rome's diplomatic initiatives with the Soviets. The Vatican initially welcomed the fall of the Romanovs, believing that this would herald a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church in the debris of the Tsarist Empire. Benedict XV employed Ratti to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy.
In late 1921, the Vatican offered the Soviet Union humanitarian assistance hurriedly incorporating a broader secret agreement which, capitalising on the disarray of the Orthodox Church would - they imagined - have enhanced Roman Catholic activities in Russia. The aid was provided but the wider agreement remained a dead letter. Assisted by the German Government which saw relations with Russia as a means of terminating Germany's pariah status, the archbishop of Genoa held talks with the Soviet foreign affairs commisar Chicherin on board an Italian cruiser with a view to negotiating a concordat. A further series of meetings took place at Rapallo, based on Vatican calls for freedom of conscience and Soviet demands for diplomatic recognition. Effortlessly overcoming the extreme distaste for German (Jewish) Bolsheviks that he is alleged to have expressed in 1919, Pacelli met Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Union's (Jewish) foreign minister, at the Berlin villa of the brother of the German ambassador to Moscow.
When Mussolini recognised the Soviet Union on 8 February 1924, and was quickly followed by, among others, Britain, Norway, Austria, Greece and Sweden, the Soviets ceased to regard negotiations with the Vatican as important except for the question of aid. Pacelli continued to negotiate with the Soviets in Berlin until mid-August 1925 when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters. However he met Chicherin twice in 1925 and 1927, discovering that his Soviet interlocutors were prepared to concede less and less, and such talks abruptly stalled under Stalin, to whom the Vatican was an irrelevance.
From Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh - Chapter 3 "The Churches in the Age of Dictators", section II - "The Vatican, Communism and Fascism" page 164
Vatican concordats with governments do not imply approval of the governments. Of course there is a danger that a vicious dictatorship will use the agreement in order to boost its international standing - and that is precisely what the Soviet government was trying to do in the early 1920s. Indeed negotiations with the Vatican broke down because several governments - including both Britain and fascist Italy(!) - recognised the Soviet Union in 1924 and the Soviets no longer needed an agreement with the Vatican. However the future Pope Pius XII continued to negotiate even "when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters" !!
.... Both nuncios, Ratti in Warsaw and the younger Pacelli in Munich (until 1925, when he moved to Berlin as nuncio to the German Reich), were closely involved in Rome's diplomatic initiatives with the Soviets. The Vatican initially welcomed the fall of the Romanovs, believing that this would herald a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church in the debris of the Tsarist Empire. Benedict XV employed Ratti to contact Lenin on behalf of persecuted Catholic and Orthodox clergy.
In late 1921, the Vatican offered the Soviet Union humanitarian assistance hurriedly incorporating a broader secret agreement which, capitalising on the disarray of the Orthodox Church would - they imagined - have enhanced Roman Catholic activities in Russia. The aid was provided but the wider agreement remained a dead letter. Assisted by the German Government which saw relations with Russia as a means of terminating Germany's pariah status, the archbishop of Genoa held talks with the Soviet foreign affairs commisar Chicherin on board an Italian cruiser with a view to negotiating a concordat. A further series of meetings took place at Rapallo, based on Vatican calls for freedom of conscience and Soviet demands for diplomatic recognition. Effortlessly overcoming the extreme distaste for German (Jewish) Bolsheviks that he is alleged to have expressed in 1919, Pacelli met Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Union's (Jewish) foreign minister, at the Berlin villa of the brother of the German ambassador to Moscow.
When Mussolini recognised the Soviet Union on 8 February 1924, and was quickly followed by, among others, Britain, Norway, Austria, Greece and Sweden, the Soviets ceased to regard negotiations with the Vatican as important except for the question of aid. Pacelli continued to negotiate with the Soviets in Berlin until mid-August 1925 when the execution in Leningrad of a Polish Catholic priest complicated matters. However he met Chicherin twice in 1925 and 1927, discovering that his Soviet interlocutors were prepared to concede less and less, and such talks abruptly stalled under Stalin, to whom the Vatican was an irrelevance.
From Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh - Chapter 3 "The Churches in the Age of Dictators", section II - "The Vatican, Communism and Fascism" page 164
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