'We've Been Treated Like Monsters' - Sisters of Charity in fear of media and bewildered by negative coverage

 

NUNS OUT OR ELSE GOVERNMENT'S OUT!

(A) INTRODUCTION

Michael Kelly, editor of The Irish Catholic writes on 19 May 2022: 

The Religious Sisters of Charity, who agreed to hand over their hospital and the site of the new National maternity Hospital, are fearful of the media and feel bewildered that they have been so badly portrayed in the public eye since deciding to transfer ownership of St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. The Government this week signed off on the deal.

"You would think we were evil", a source close to the Sisters told the The Irish Catholic this week on on condition of anonymity. "We've been treated like monsters. In no way do they want the Church involved in any way [in the running of healthcare].  Yet many, many people experienced the care and work that the Sisters had done - many in the Irish population experienced care and concern and compassion. Yes there were some exceptions but for the most part the good that was done was amazing," the source said

The Religious Sisters of Charity began caring for cholera victims in Ireland in 1832 and in 1834 set up St Vincent's Hospital and since then have been "dedicated to providing the best possible healthcare in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and in the homes of the sick. The nuns are also known for their work among prisoners and the homeless as well as in education, counselling and emigration. It is distressing that people would think so badly of us. I'm more concerned for the people who are saying these things than for us," [!] continued the source.

"The Sisters are absolutely terrified of the media and the way they have been portrayed. The notion that a young person listening to this, what idea of Christianity do they go away with?" she said.

My Own Suggested Answer: Is this "source" Sister Stanislaus Kennedy by any chance? I have posted previous articles about the Sisters of Charity and Sister Stan - the latest being "The Folly of the Sisters of Charity (and other Nuns)" However the most relevant response to this question is contained in the Introduction and in part D ("Eloi and Morlocks") of my article "The Decadence of the Sisters of Mercy" 

What idea of Christianity do young people go away with? the Sister asks. One of two things: (i) either they believe the atrocity stories published by the media about the Sisters OR (ii) they regard you as cowardly fools who practise a decadent kind of religion that prevents you from defending yourselves!

(B) Why are Sisters of Charity "Treated like Monsters" by Media and Politicians?

The leaders of the Religious Sisters of Charity (like their Sister of Mercy colleagues and other nuns' leaders) have spent many years trying to ingratiate themselves with our new secular overlords - and made themselves ridiculous in the process. They now find themselves spurned by Traditionalists and Liberals alike! Consider the following:

• "The nuns are annoyed and they consider some of the comments that have been made as being defamatory. I think their attitude now is ‘let the State go off and build their hospital on their own land’." (Valerie Hanley, Mail on Sunday, 23 April 2017) 
  The leaders of the Sisters of Charity should have done this and allowed the the anti-clerical mob of politicians and media to experience the fruits of their own bigotry. Instead they caved in to the mob, handed over property worth hundreds of millions of euro for the new National Maternity Hospital and announced they were withdrawing from their own St. Vincent's Hospital!

• Also in 2017, the Sisters were libelled by journalists and politicians who claimed that they owed €3 million to the State - when the State actually owed the nuns €2 million! As per the same article in The Mail on Sunday: "the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement brokered by Kieran Mulvey." 
  Did the Sisters complain or sue for libel? No they told the State it could keep the €2 million it owed them - that will teach the liars about the joys of Christian Charity!

• I have no inside information about the Sisters of Charity but I was told there was a conflict within the Sisters of Mercy about how to treat false accusations. I was told that the dispute pitted older Traditionalist Sisters against "Liberal" colleagues - and the Liberal ones won! I suspect that the same applies to the Religious Sisters of Charity'.

• In 2015 the Sisters' most prominent representative Sr Stanislaus Kennedy announced that was going to vote in favour of same-sex marriage in the forthcoming referendum. She was, of course, "bravely" repudiating Catholic moral teaching and defying the Hierarchy in favour of a group whose cause was supported by every main political party and by the mass media. 

• In 2017 the same Sr Stan reacted to the storm of anti-clerical hatred and lies directed at the nuns by describing it as "Elder Abuse"! [See Depiction of Sisters of Charity like ‘Elder Abuse’, says Sr Stan ] In my article "The Folly of the Sisters of Charity" I wrote that "No Jewish woman face to face with anti-Semites would make that kind of "mistake" and the VERY Charitable Sisters thereby demonstrated their unfitness to survive in the modern world!" 

However- see APPENDIX at end of this article!

(C) Civil War within the Pro-Choice Lobby - an Opportunity for Church??

I think it was Iona Institute Director David Quinn who described the Maternity Hospital debacle as a "civil war within the abortion lobby". Public figures who are strong supporters of abortion rights (plus those who normally take no part in the debate) have found themselves obliged to state that the allegations against the Sisters of Charity and claims of a Catholic Plot to influence the ethos of the NMH are rubbish. Is it too much to hope that this gives an opportunity to the Sisters of Charity (and other female Religious) to restore their reputation in the eyes of the public? 

Well yes I think it is too much to hope! Irish nuns have gutted their morale and their self-respect by decades of grovelling before the Secular Power. Now that the latest outbreak of anti-clerical hysteria is disappearing from the front pages, the Sisters will likely retire into their shells - until the next wave of media hysteria forces them out again! However it may be possible for other parts of the Catholic Church to take advantage of the current opportunity to make the truth known!

Some Unusual "Supporters" of the Catholic Church

(i) In an article in Irish Independent on 5 May 2022 Health Minister Stephen Donnelly (Fianna Fail) said some people had been making "false claims" about the National Maternity Hospital project. "There are people who are making really serious claims that are really worrying people. These claims are false and in many cases they have been told repeatedly that these claims are false." Mr Donnelly said that the Catholic Church was not involved in the project and there would be no religious interference at the hospital....."The Vatican has nothing to do with this. What the Vatican thinks about our national maternity hospital is irrelevant." [NOTE 1]

(ii) In Irish Independent article "Five-year row over maternity hospital now looks like time wasted on someone’s culture war"  Ellen Coyne writes: "Many people are asking why the land the hospital is being built on can’t just be given to the State. Wouldn’t that make things much easier? [Prime Minister] Micheál Martin argued in the Dáil that the hospital land is in public ownership in all but name, as it is being leased for the negligible rate of €10 a year for 299 years. It is worth explaining that what many regard as the best maternity hospitals in Ireland are built on land that the State doesn’t own. These hospitals – like the Coombe, the Rotunda and the existing NMH – are voluntary hospitals. This means that while they get most of their funding from the State, they are run by private bodies....Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said nobody is trying to use a compulsory purchase order on the Rotunda or the Coombe, which operate on land the State doesn’t own."

(iii) However Ivana Bacik, leader of the Labour Party claims “There are concerns about the lingering ethos of the Sisters of Charity". But according to Ellen Coyne: This is a common claim, but one that is described as a “red rag” to those at St Vincent’s who are “seething” over the way the hospital is being portrayed. A senior source at Holles Street [the current National Maternity Hospital] said they believed that claims of religious interference at the new hospital were part of “the biggest misinformation campaign in Irish medicine”.

(iv) Mary Brosnan, director of midwifery and nursing, says. “Because we don’t have strong politicians, we have weak, fearful politicians who are afraid of losing their seats and of women’s opprobrium.” Staff at Holles Street are dismayed, feeling they are fighting a tide of misinformation about the new hospital. Campaigners tweeted pictures from a protest outside an NMH board meeting this week, holding posters declaring that “nuns who sold babies” are to be “gifted” a hospital. This is false not only because the Sisters of Charity will have zero involvement in the new hospital, but also because the hospital will not be “gifted” to anybody. The State will own the hospital building. [ ‘We have a fortnight to get the truth out there’: As Holles Street creaks at the seams, staff battle ‘myths’ by Ellen Coyne]

(v) Younger female staff [at the existing National Maternity Hospital, Holles St] are horrified by the rhetoric in their WhatsApp groups, where friends ask if the nuns are trying to “steal” a hospital. Walking this reporter [Ellen Coyne] through the hospital Brosnan will sometimes pull a midwife aside at random and ask her if she has “any concerns about religious interference at St Vincent’s?” Some look askance. A few cast an incredulous look at the Irish Independent, as though to confirm such a question is genuinely being asked. Emma, a midwife working on the infamous Unit 3, laughs with derision. “No,” she says, “I’m not worried about nuns.” [Above article by Ellen Coyne]

(vi) Professor Shane Higgins, Master of National Maternity Hospital: Higgins is dismayed by politicians who he says are “not doing due diligence” before making claims about the hospital. “They’re willing to just repeat whatever has been said to them by the loudest voice, which is typically and usually Peter Boylan’s,” Dr Higgins says. “I don’t understand why Peter Boylan is continuing to peddle the narrative that he’s been peddling for years about ‘the nuns’, knowing that they’re gone, knowing that they won’t have any influence on anything … he’s out there, he has a very large soapbox upon which to stand...

I assure you, if this is derailed every single member of staff in this hospital and I’d say the vast majority of St Vincent’s will hold him wholly responsible for damaging women’s health for the next 20 years,” Prof Higgins said. [Above article by Ellen Coyne] [NOTE 2]

 (vii) Fifty-two doctors, including Higgins and three other former masters as well as many staff who currently work at Holles Street, signed a letter pleading for the project to go ahead. [Above article by Ellen Coyne] An article in Irish Independent on 6 May 2022 "What the Row is All About - and Who Says What" gives further details. It listed the more than 50 doctors who signed a letter in support of the new Hospital stating that it was "manifestly false" to claim that full State ownership was the only way to avoid religious interference in the new National Maternity Hospital. They included "Professor Shane Higgins, current Master of the NMH; Dr Michael Robson and Prof Declan Keane former Masters of the NMH". The article also quotes Dr Rhona Mahony, former Master of the NMH "Let it be said absolutely today, every procedure that is permissible under Irish law will be performed at the new maternity hospital on St Vincent's campus." 

My Comment

Many people who have no allegiance to the Catholic Church (or would not normally involve themselves in a public dispute concerning religion) now feel compelled to speak out against anti-clerical fanatics whose antics are delaying  the establishment of the new hospital. This is something that our Church should build on!

(D) Against the Hospital 

(according to Irish Independent article, 6 May 2022 "What the Row Is All About"  

Dr Peter Boylan - former Master of the National Maternity Hospital

"If it's to be independent, it should not be owned by another entity." According to David Quinn (in "No Reason to fear Nuns Under the Hospital Bed" 15 May 2022): 

Boylan told the [Oireachtas Health] Committee last Thursday: "It's about time we stood up for ourselves as a people, faced down the church, and said "We need that land thank you". In this case, however there is no church to stand up to; it has already gone. [See also NOTE 3]

Roisin Shortall - Leader of the Social Democrats

"What is known about the new company, St Vincent's Holdings, to which the Government is handing over control of a €1 billion publicly funded hospital?

"Our Maternity Hospital"

A grassroots campaign group that says it is "against Church ownership of women's healthcare."

PLUS: All other opposition parties including Labour and Sinn Fein. HOWEVER the Irish Independent article also points out that while the coalition Government of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party support the project, this is "with the exception of a number of government TDs who are still raising concerns about the project." This is a reference to the Green Party and indeed two Green Party TDs Neasa Hourigan and  Patrick Costello were suspended from the Green Party for six months because they supported a Sinn Fein motion  calling for the new NMH  to be built on land owned by the State. 

(E) CONCLUSION - Sinn Fein and Opponents of Hospital and Church

A few comments about these opponents. 

David Quinn's abovementioned article "No Need to Fear Nuns Under the Hospital Bed" is subtitled "Concerns about a caring, religious ethos at the new national maternity campus resemble the furore of McCarthyite America". He  writes: "Like Senator Joseph McCarthy seeing Communist plots everywhere in the 1950s, we are now being led to believe that sinister nuns will one day succeed in dragging Ireland back to the past, all because the naive refused to heed the warnings." 

The Political Parties opposing the project are almost identical to those who in 2017 accused the Sisters of Charity of owing €3 million to the State - at a time the State owed €2 million to them! See Part B above - "the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement.." We are talking about people who utterly reckless as to the truth of their allegations - and who made no apologies once their lie was exposed. 

These are the parties that are most likely to form a coalition with Sinn Fein if and when that party wins our next General Election. OK Fianna Fail is an exception BUT Sinn Fein is well on its way to replacing FF as THE "Republican Party" in the State. Moreover Fianna Fail's willingness to participate in a reckless anti-clerical lie, is a potent symbol of its decline. [NOTE 4]

Regarding my reference to "lie": I suppose that an Honest Bigot - a  left-wing or 'liberal' equivalent of Rev Ian Paisley - could believe in a Catholic Plot to control the ethos of the New National Maternity Hospital. But how is it possible to believe that the nuns owed millions to the State when the reverse was true?? Anti-clerical hatred is similar to the anti-Semitic variety. I doubt if an anti-Semite says to himself: "I know this story about Jews is false, but I'll publish it anyway." Self-deceit and believing what one wants to believe, are more complicated than that. But the description "liar" is still valid and I apply it to the afore-mentioned politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats.

NOTES

[1] But perhaps Stephen Donnelly is a secret admirer of the Catholic Church? He has neither thanked the nuns for their gift of hugely valuable land for the new NMH nor for their two centuries of service to Irish women. However - as noted in the article by Ellen Coyne, Philip Ryan and Eilish O'Regan - "more than €50 million  has already been spent in preparing the site of the new hospital building."  In the eyes of the State, our anti-clerical fanatics have become a serious nuisance who must now be discredited!

[2] The current master of the NMH at Holles Street, Dr Shane Higgins, told the [Oireachtas Health] committee: “It has been difficult to hear claims both in the media and in this room that my fervent support for the proposed move to Elm Park is some kind surrender to the church. Legitimate concerns are welcome and deserve every consideration, but we must also deal in facts, and I am alarmed by the combination of emotive misinformation and misunderstanding that prevails.” From article by Eilish O'Regan: Release ‘Vatican papers’ on New NMH, Former Master Demands

[3] In her article Maternity Hospital Debate Hijacked by Fear and Loathing, Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan wrote on 18 May 2022: 

"On Monday, while the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group was declaring itself “a secular organisation”, Dr Peter Boylan tweeted pictures of Catholic paraphernalia – a wooden crucifix, a Zambian mission hospital collection box, a notice about the streaming of Sunday Mass, apparently in a corridor – which he said were taken an hour before in the “fully secular” (his quotes) St Vincent’s Hospital.

Among the inevitable angry responses calling for a shutdown of all religious iconography and chaplains etc, a staff member calmly noted that the picture selection was from the private hospital where she often uses the oratory for some peace and quiet. Meanwhile the SVHG chair was assuring people that all religious iconography at St Vincent’s public hospital will be removed in the coming months."

Something other than "misunderstanding" lor even "normal" bias is on display here!

[4] In Part D ("Bethany Mother and Baby Home - a PROTESTANT Institution") of article Deaths of Children in Mother and Baby Care Homes (did they die of starvation?) I wrote: 

I was slightly surprised to see that the Protestant Bethany Home was also the subject of false allegations of starving children - coming mainly (of course) from Sinn Fein but Deputy Niall Collins of Fianna Fail makes a contribution as well by referring to Marasmus as "a form of malnutrition". This seems to be the sole Fianna Fail contribution to this brand of hysteria. It does indicate that irrational attacks on the Catholic Church have a way of spreading.- and corrupting the entire society.

Are Fianna Fail now trying to match the Sinn Fein/Labour/Far Left brand of anti-clerical hatred? If so they will lose some core supporters and likely fail to impress the haters anyway!

APPENDIX regarding History of Sisters of Charity & Voluntary Sector

In part B above, I refer to the folly and cowardice of the current leadership of the Religious Sisters of Charity. However, it is only fair to recall their very different history. In his article Nun Better for Generosity, Charity and Care in the Sunday Times on 8 May 2022, David Quinn wrote:

For most of the last 300 years the voluntary [i.e. non-State] sector has been run by religious organisations both Protestant and Catholic. The Religious Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent's Hospital on its original St Stephen's Green site in 1835. It was run by women, for women. From a feminist point of view, you would think this is a good thing, but not when those in charge are nuns apparently. 

The congregation was established in 1815  by Mary Aikenhead. It played a leading role in the fight against a terrible cholera outbreak in Dublin in 1832. The nuns were asked by a group of laypeople to take over the running of the Temple Street Children's Hospital in 1876. Three years later they set up the country's first Hospice for the Dying, Our Lady's in Harold's Cross, Dublin.  

To this day they are involved in prison ministry, education, assisting the homeless, helping immigrants, offering mental health support and fighting sex trafficking...

David Quinn also quotes Sam Coulter-Smith, a former Master of the Rotunda Hospital (and a Protestant) in praising the role of the voluntary hospitals in the Irish health-care system. Professor Coulter-Smith said: "Pretty much everything good that has come out of the health service in Ireland in the past 300 years, has come out of the voluntary service." He expands on the theme in a new book: Delivering the Future: Reflections of a Rotunda Master. The Rotunda [founded 1745] is the world's oldest maternity hospital in continuous operation, and traditionally has had a Protestant ethos. Several Church of Ireland clergy are on the board of governors.

According to David Quinn, Coulter-Smith thinks it is a good thing that the relocated NMH will still be a voluntary hospital because he believes these institutions are generally better than their HSE-run counterparts. He argues they are faster to react, less tied up in red tape, and can respond to emergencies better than the HSE system. 

Indeed, in Part C above I quoted Health Minister Stephen Donnelly (Fianna Fail) saying that "nobody is trying to use a compulsory purchase order on the Rotunda or the Coombe, which operate on land the State doesn’t own." But will that last, if and when, Sinn Fein comes to power?? [See also NOTE 4 above]

The Folly of the Sisters of Charity (and other Nuns)

 

Nuns who Trashed their own Reputations in order to "Heal Pain" of Accusers!

In July 2021, Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar decided to bolster the chances of his Fine Gael party in a by-election by throwing  a few scraps to anti-clerical voters. He suggested that ownership of the National Maternity Hospital was still a problem and that any obstetric or gynaecological service that was legal in the State would have to be available in the hospital at its new site. (See part D "The Dishonesty of Leo Varadkar" of article Leo Varadkar, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital ). Liberal priest Fr Brendan Hoban accused Varadkar of throwing "the equivalent of a grenade" into this so-called controversy, the salient points of which were settled years ago. However Varadkar knew he was in a win-win situation. He realised that the Sisters of Charity were not going to defend themselves so there was no danger of losing any votes. In 2017 the Sisters' most prominent representative Sr Stanislaus Kennedy reacted to a storm of anti-clerical hatred and lies directed at the nuns by describing it as "Elder Abuse"! [ See Depiction of Sisters of Charity like ‘Elder Abuse’, says Sr Stan ] No Jewish woman face to face with anti-Semites would make that kind of "mistake" and the VERY Charitable Sisters thereby demonstrated their unfitness to survive in the modern world!

(A) Irish Catholic Nuns and 'Appeasement' - "A clever plan to sell out your friends in order to buy off your enemies" 

The quote is from a British journalist in The Guardian in 1939 and is a good description of the tactics of the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Presentation Sisters, Ursulines etc over the past 25 years. I wrote about it in a number of essays on this Blog including "The Decadence of the Sisters of Mercy" and also the article entitled "Sisters of Mercy" on my old website (not Blog) IrishSalem.com. The latter article also includes the related antics of other Congregations of female religious. The endless repetition of the same misguided tactics over a period of a quarter of a century suggests that "naivety" is NOT  a sufficient explanation! 

What follows is my attempt to summarise 25 years of Nuns' folly:

SISTERS OF MERCY

(i) The first apology by the Sisters of Mercy followed the February 1996 broadcast by RTE of the documentary "Dear Daughter" regarding atrocities allegedly committed by the Sisters at Goldenbridge industrial school. These allegations included a nun Sister Xavieria beating one girl (Christine Buckley) so badly that she needed about 100 stitches in her leg. It was an obvious lie - as pointed out by Richard Webster and by a contemporaneous article in The Sunday Times.  

"No medical evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this bizarre claim. The surgeon who ran the casualty department at the hospital in question has given evidence which renders it highly unlikely that such an incident ever took place. Apart from anything else, the surgeon points 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 although the evidence suggests that the woman’s memory was a delusion, her testimony was widely believed at the time." [Richard Webster]

 Christine Buckley's risible claims was indeed "widely believed at the time" - mainly because of the equally absurd apology by the Sisters of Mercy. There was supposed to be a discussion within the Sisterhood as to how to handle the allegations. I was told that older Sisters believed the "discussion" was fake, with the outcome determined in advance and that the leadership never intended to condemn the lies or defend their own innocent members!   

(ii) Second Apology by the Sisters of Mercy: Richard Webster wrote that "In the wake of the broadcast, atrocity stories about Goldenbridge and other industrial schools began to proliferate." It would be more accurate to write that "In the wake of the apology by the Sisters of Mercy.."

Following the documentary and apology, a family accused Sister Xavieria of being responsible for the death of their baby daughter 40 years before by burning the baby's legs. The Sisters did not admit liability but in October 1997 they paid £20,000 and expressed their "sorrow and regret" to the accusers. After receiving payment the mother gave an interview to the Daily Mirror in which she accused Sister Xavieria of using a hot poker to  murder baby Marion Howe by burning holes in the baby's legs. HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM. [The Mirror, 11 October 1997, article by Neil Leslie]

The Mirror have highly paid lawyers to defend themselves against libel suits but Mirror executives rightly understood that they were dealing with decadent fools who would not fight! The Mercy leadership team made no attempt to condemn the libel or to defend Sister Xavieria. (Perhaps they did not wish to "cause pain" to Christina Howe whose baby had died in 1955).

(iii) Third Apology by the Sisters of Mercy: 

After Nora Wall (formerly Sister Dominic) and her co-accused Pablo McCabe were wrongly convicted of rape in June 1999 the Sisters announced that: "We are all devastated by the revolting crimes which resulted in these verdicts. Our hearts go out to this young woman who, as a child, was placed in our care. Her courage in coming forward was heroic. We beg anyone who was abused whilst in our care to go to the Gardai" (police.) Even after the collapse of the case against the two accused, the Sisters made no effort to apologise to Nora Wall or to withdraw their statement of support for her accusers.

The Sisters' betrayal of Pablo (Paul) McCabe was equally grotesque. In her 2006 article in the Jesuit Review Studies  "Miscarriage of Justice: Paul McCabe and Nora Wall", Breda O'Brien writes:

Paul McCabe addressed a Diocesan Gathering of Mercy Sisters in Gracedieu in Waterford in1988. His account tells of being born in Dublin in 1949 to a single mother. She struggled on until Paul was three, but she ‘had great difficulty in working, paying for accommodation and paying someone to look after me.” Thus he came to live in what was to become known as the “ old St. Michael’s”, a junior industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy in Cappoquin. His memories of that time are “very happy ones of caring and interested women.” He then went to the Industrial School at Artane, Dublin, which he found traumatic, as it had “over nine hundred boys in a very strict set-up.”  

So when Pablo could be depicted as a victim of the Patriarchy, the Sisters of Mercy allowed him to address one of their annual meetings. When he was falsely accused of rape, they threw him to the wolves and sided with his accusers! The very patriarchal Archbishop John Charles McQuaid would never have invited Pablo McCabe to address a meeting of Dublin priests. Neither would he have betrayed Pablo - and one of his own priests - the way the Merciful Sisters betrayed Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe!

(iv) Fourth Apology of the Sisters of Mercy:

In May 2004 the Sisters unexpectedly made what was called their "second" (actually fourth) apology to their accusers. There was no obvious motive for this exercise in self-degradation but the apology was greeted with delight by leaders of "victims" groups - notably Christine Buckley. Shortly afterwards these leaders resumed their attacks on the the very Merciful Sisters. It is arguable that this apology - and the appointment of Diarmuid Martin as Archbishop of Dublin, the previous month - marked the end of any serious effort by the Catholic Church to defend itself against false allegations of child abuse.

See articles by David Quinn in the Irish Independent on 6 May 2004  Victims Welcome Sisters of Mercy Apology (as indeed they might):

The Mercy Sisters yesterday made what they called an "unconditional" apology to abuse victims and have directly appealed to victims to forgive them for any "physical and emotional trauma" they suffered while in their care. The historic apology, which was issued suddenly and unexpectedly, was prompted by complaints from victim groups that an earlier apology, issued in 1996, was conditional and appeared to cast doubt on whether abuses had actually occurred in orphanages and industrial schools. 

AND

The latest apology by the Sisters was really a bolt from the blue. Most other statements of this sort by Church organisations had usually come as a result of intense public and media pressure. This one emerged following a long period of consultation within the Order. [My emphasis]The leadership team of the Mercy Sisters, led by Sr Breege O'Neill, were well aware that their previous apology, issued in 1996, had not been favourably received by victim groups. Although it did not deny that abuses had taken place, and both apologised and sought forgiveness from the victims, just as this one did, it also offered a partial defence of the record of the Mercy Sisters making the apology seem equivocal and conditional to some. 

 This "unconditional" apology was issued after it was clear that the allegations of child rape against Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe were false as was the claim that Sister Xavieria murdered a baby. The Sisters of Mercy "leadership team" led by Sr Breege O'Neill, ignored the protests of the older nuns who were targeted by the sociopaths and abased themselves before power: 

Reading out the statement on behalf of her congregation yesterday, the head of the Mercy Sisters, Sr Breege O'Neill, pleaded with victims to forgive them for any abuses they had suffered. Responding to questions afterwards, she said she accepted that all her fellow sisters could do was to ask for forgiveness and it was up to the victims to give it.

 (v) Reaction of Secular World to Sisters' Self-Abasement

• In 2003/04 one anti-clerical Irish journalist surprised me by publishing some articles about false allegations of child abuse directed against Catholic priests and religious. After the Sisters' fourth apology he reverted to his normal hostile sneering tone. I was told by someone who knew him that he saw the apology as demonstrating that the Sisters of Mercy were imbeciles and responded accordingly!
• A few years ago I corresponded with a much more credible individual who had done a lot to combat false allegations. However, in relation to the Sisters of Mercy, he told me that "I won't stick out my neck on behalf of people who won't defend themselves".
• Nora Wall left the Sisters of Mercy. In 2002 she got an apology and libel damages from the Sunday World, in 2005 a Certificate of Miscarriage of Justice from the Court of Criminal Appeal and in 2016 major damages from the State. The much older Sister Xavieria did not leave the Congregation but I was told that she was deeply unhappy about how she was treated by its leaders.

PRESENTATION SISTERS

(vi) In 2002, 18 religious congregations - including the Sisters of Mercy - agreed with the Governemnt to pay a voluntary contribution of €128 million towards the cost of compensating alleged victims of child abuse under a Residential Institutions Redress Scheme set up by the Government. The Redress Scheme was proposed as a way of compensating "victims" while avoiding putting them through the "trauma" of court proceedings (where evidence of wrong-doing would have been needed.) The Scheme provided for compensation for physical, sexual or emotion abuse or denial of opportunity and the validation threshold was set so low that, in effect, anyone who ever attended an industrial school would qualify for compensation.

The Redress Scheme was a Government initiative and did not require any input from the religious congregations. However in 2001 Sister Elizabeth Maxwell, a Presentation Sister who was then head of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI), had approached the Government with a unilateral offer that the religious would contribute. Her "naivety" ensured that the Government kept increasing its demands and Sister Elizabeth kept abasing herself. An article in the the Irish Times on 1st June 2009 is entitled "Sr Maxwell says 2002 Deal May Have been Inadequate. CORI Figure has 'Open Mind' on Payments" It points out that the highest number of claims originally envisaged was 2,000 but "The Residential Institutions Redress Board ultimately received 14,584 applications by its deadline of December 15th, 2005." 

The Presentation Sister who helped negotiate the 2002 compensation agreement for abuse victims with the Government has said she is keeping her mind “totally open” on what further contributions the religious congregations may make in the context. Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Sr Elizabeth Maxwell said she was “waiting until the meeting with the Taoiseach next Thursday to see what proposals he has’’. Then “the congregations can decide how much they can contribute’’ towards that, she said.

The 2002 agreement was conducted “in good faith’’ at the time, she said, and “on the basis of figures made available to us by the Government and the congregations.’’ Earlier yesterday Sr Maxwell said the 2002 agreement may have been inadequate in the light of information in the Ryan report. Secretary general to the Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori) at the time of the 2002 agreement, she said she was not then aware of the extent of the abuse....

Asked if congregations should hand over €1.5 billion to the scheme, an estimated figure of their value, Sr Maxwell said they had not been asked. “We may arrive at some point like that when we speak to the Taoiseach . . . the Government may not have to forcibly take anything from us.”

A "negotiator" like Sister Elizabeth Maxwell was a gift to Ireland's anti-clerics! In 2017 several politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats claimed that the Sisters of Charity owed €3 million "Redress" to the State - at a time when it actually owed €2 million to them! The Fine Gael Health Minister who knew the truth remained silent - why defend people too decadent to defend themselves against transparent lies? [See section (B) (ii) below]. And indeed the Sisters of Charity followed in the footsteps of Sister Elizabeth, declined to condemn the lie and bowed before the power of the State.

URSULINE SISTERS

(vii) In August 2009, Sister Marianne O'Connor, an Ursuline Sister and then head of CORI accepted an invitation from John Cooney (the journalist who claimed that Archbishop John Charles McQuaid had been a homosexual paedophile) to address his Humbert Summer School.

In her speech Sr Marianne endorsed suggestions that there be a national day of atonement for victims of abuse, and spoke of “a service where a public ritual of reconciliation could occur between representatives of the survivors, the State, the religious and the church”. Noting that her attendance at Humbert was “the first public forum to which religious have been invited since Ryan [report]”, she continued that “I am here, first and foremost, to apologise . . . to do whatever we can to make reparation.” She continued: “We religious are asking for forgiveness . . . Without forgiveness one is stuck, unable to move forward.” Survivors “had the huge challenge, and the huge power, of forgiving . . . But forgiveness, like mercy, blesses the giver and the receiver,” she said. The congregations would “provide money for reparation. But we must do much more than provide money. We must listen and learn, to the degree survivors will permit us, to journey with them as they discover what they need”, she said.

In an article in the Irish Independent on 24 August 2009, the same John Cooney reported on how "victims" had responded to Sister Marianne's touching invitation:

In turn, survivor Michael O'Brien, the former mayor of Clonmel who captured the nation's imagination by challenging the platitudes of Government minister Noel Dempsey on an unforgettable RTE 'Questions and Answers' programme, bowed to the good judge [Ryan] and thanked him "for the momentous work you and your team have done". But Mr O'Brien was only prepared to give conditional pardon to the religious congregations who locked up him and thousands of other children in penal institutions as serfs. He will forgive his oppressors only when he knows in his heart that "these people mean it when they say 'we are really, really sorry'." "I do not want silly apologies. I want to see repentance," he said.

I wrote at the time: "This was the culmination of many years of self-degradation by female religious congregations in the face of false accusers - especially the Sisters of Mercy. They have made themselves ludicrous and thereby have made it impossible for anyone to "reconcile" with them."

(B) National Maternity Hospital and The Folly of the Sisters of Charity

Back in 2017 I made three correct predictions regarding the future of this controversy - in my article Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital [2]. Well they were all the related to the same prediction really!

(i) "If the Sisters of Charity manage to handle the present crisis properly, namely by refusing to make concessions in the face of hysterical attacks, then it could discourage such attacks in future. And that will benefit lots of people apart from clergy or religious."

In that respect I was pleased to read the following in Valerie Hanley’s article in The Mail on Sunday on 23 April [2017]:

A source revealed: ‘The nuns are adamant that they have fulfilled all their obligations under the redress board. When something is repeated enough it becomes fact. There has been an awful lot of vitriol loaded on the nuns. There has been a nonsense argument going on all week and there is no basis for some of what has been said. Some of what has been said is prejudice for things that happened historically. It’s band-wagonism and politicians are running after it. The politicians should be doing better.

The nuns are annoyed and they consider some of the comments that have been made as being defamatory. I think their attitude now is ‘let the State go off and build their hospital on their own land’. [My Emphasis]

That’s all very well and I couldn’t agree more BUT the Sister’s comment is being made anonymously. My own fear is that – under pressure – the Sisters of Charity will cave in and authorise an amendment to the National Maternity Hospital Agreement approved in November 2016. In that case, their critics will rejoice and declare themselves victorious and vindicated. In previous comments I have detailed how the Sisters of MERCY were savaged because of their constant attempts to ingratiate themselves with people who hated them. I also have an article on the subject here: Sisters of Mercy

I hope that the Sisters of Charity now understand the dangers of Appeasement – defined by one British newspaper in 1939 as “A clever plan of selling off your friends in order to buy off your enemies”. (For the Sisters of Mercy, that worked the same way it did for Neville Chamberlain!)

But of course my hopes were vain and the nuns caved in!

(ii) I wrote in 2017 about  the repeated claims by politicians and journalists that the Sisters of Charity had failed to pay the balance of €3 million “compensation” that they “owed” the State. Health Minister Simon Harris said that the two matters should be considered separately. What two matters? On 23 April [2017] the Mail on Sunday (journalist Valerie Hanley) reported:

The Department of Education has confirmed to the Mail on Sunday that that the nuns’ legal costs for the Ryan Commission will be offset against the €3 million of payments for abuse victims that are outstanding. While these costs have not been finalised, media reports that were based on briefing documents have estimated them at €5 million, a sum that would more than wipe out the outstanding bill that they owe.

Crucially, the department has confirmed that the reason for the delay in resolving the problem is nothing to do with the nuns, but is down to its own officials figuring out the final costs of the congregation’s legal representation at the Ryan Commission…..

Yet, as Ms. Hanley pointed out, the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement brokered by Kieran Mulvey. Did the Minister for Health not liaise with his Education colleague? Or did he decide to sidestep the issue – on the basis that discretion is the better part of valour when faced with anti-clerical hysteria?

Back in 2017 I wondered what would have been the attitude of Jews if they had been attacked in similar fashion? Suppose that a Jewish group had offered to donate land for a hospital under precisely the same conditions as those agreed in November 2016 between Holles St and St Vincents. Suppose that the media and politicians erupted with hate-filled lies – including claims that the Jewish group committed “atrocities” against children, “experimented on [a child] for vaccine trials” and owed the State €3 million. Suppose that the Government Ministers responsible failed to defend the Jewish group against the lies and it was left up to a Daily Mail journalist to find out – via a Freedom of Information request – that the Jewish group owed nothing and had actually overpaid!

I wrote that this would never happen because the Jewish group would immediately defend its slandered members and take legal action against those responsible. Anti-Semites know this and are very mindful of the risks they would be facing. So Anti-Semites have to be very careful – but NOT anti-clerics and in particular not anti-clerics who tell lies about nuns. The leaders of female religious congregations have always preferred the Appeasement approach. This has worked for them in much the same way it did for Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s i.e. it encourages further attacks from people who recognise moral cowardice when they see it. 

Thus Leo Varadkar's recent attempt to win votes in the Dublin Bay South by-election by bullying supine nuns!

(iii) An article in the Irish Medical Times “A Complicated Delivery” by editor Dara Gantly on 10 May 2017 concluded as follows:

…What is of further interest now is that the Minister [for Health] wants to begin a “broader conversation” about the structure of our health service, including the role of voluntary hospitals and the interest religious congregations have in them. This has been happening in education (slowly mind), so we should not be too surprised to see it start in Health.

“That is a good thing and I want to separately put in place a process to facilitate that broader conversation which is long overdue and which will, rightfully, take some time,” Minister Harris has noted. ..

I wrote in 2017 "And what will be the nature of this conversation IF Minister Harris sees that the Sisters of Charity and the Church will not stand up for themselves but will attempt to conciliate the mob? When politicians and the media claimed that the Sisters owed €3 million in “compensation”, it was not the Minister for Health, but a Daily Mail journalist who queried the Department of Education and discovered that the Sisters owed nothing and in fact had over-paid! 

"If the Sisters of Charity attempt to appease the mob in relation to the National Maternity Hospital, then reason and logic will NOT feature in the future “broader conversation” referred to by Simon Harris!"

And so it has turned out!

The Sisters Surrender to the Secular Power!

On 31 May 2017 Sr Mary Christian, Congregational Leader of the Religious Sisters of Charity issued a Statement confirming that the Sisters were withdrawing from any involvement in St Vincent's Hospital that they had founded in 1834 - and also confirming the abandonment of the hospital's Catholic ethos:

The Religious Sisters of Charity will end our involvement in St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and will not be involved in the ownership or management of the new National Maternity Hospital.....

Upon completion of this proposed transaction, the requirement set out in the SVHG Constitution, to conduct and maintain the SVHG facilities in accordance with The Religious Sisters of Charity Health Service Philosophy and Ethical Code, will be amended and replaced to reflect compliance with national and international best practice guidelines on medical ethics and the laws of the Republic of Ireland.

The SVHG Board, management and staff will continue to provide acute healthcare services that foster Mary Aikenhead’s core values of dignity, compassion, justice, quality and advocacy....

Nobody was fooled by this pious invocation of the name of their foundress. It was clear that they were surrendering to the pressure (and blatant lies) of a secular mob. Their cowardice ensured that the attacks on them would continue - even to the present day!  

(C) CONCLUSION:

In 2017 I referred to an editorial in the Irish Medical Times (10 May)  entitled  “Minister Build That Hospital” subtitle Sorry episode has revealed much that is ugly about modern Ireland and quoting Doctor Ruairi Hanley

….Regrettably, there is another factor in this dispute that has taken us beyond mere clinical disagreement. Over the past month, a baying liberal cyber mob has entered the fray and all sense of perspective has been lost. Please note, I am not referring here to those colleagues who have genuine concerns about this project. As already stated, I disagree with these people, but I respect their view.

No, the group that I find beyond parody are the extreme liberal, Catholic-hating online brigade who appear to think that a giant abortion clinic is the most important priority for South Dublin. I suspect some of these people will not be satisfied until a few nuns are imprisoned and the Catholic Church is effectively eradicated from any involvement in Irish society.

Liberal outrage

The vicious, obnoxious tone of some members of this new mob is truly appalling. They have turned on Dr Rhona Mahony, an outstanding and dedicated obstetrician who is a role model for Irish women. But, let’s be honest, the cool gang could not care less about the facts. Once they heard mention of nuns the red mist descended and it was then we moved to a classic liberal outrage contest.

For these individuals, online perception is always more important than clinical outcome. In their world it is apparently acceptable for this project to be sabotaged, with negative consequences for women and children, so long as a few elderly nuns get a good cyber-kicking.

Naturally, if the mob gets their way the hospital will be delayed at a cost of tens of millions of euro to the taxpayer. In my opinion, this would undoubtedly be the most expensive act of online ‘virtue signalling’ in human history. [RC My emphasis]

As an aside, I make no apologies for pointing out that the Catholic Church has done enormous good work in healthcare for the poorest in society over the past century, even if I am one of the only doctors in Ireland willing to say this publicly. [RC My emphasis]….. 

Indeed Doctor Doctor Ruairi Hanley was "one of the only doctors in Ireland willing to say this publicly." This was an Editorial in the highly prestigious Irish Medical Times written about a controversial topic and during the height of the controversy. So how many Comments did it attract? Precisely one - from my NON medical self! 

Why were other doctors so reluctant to stick their necks out? I suspect that it was only partly fear of the "baying liberal mob" that Dr Hanley refers to. There is also the fact that the Sisters of Charity refused to defend themselves and abased itself before said mob - as Irish nuns have been doing for the past quarter century!  Leo Varadkar felt free to insult them again in order to please anti-clerical voters in the recent Dublin Bay South by-election. He knew there would be no comeback from the nuns - least of all from Sr Stanislaus Kennedy whose "progressive" reputation COULD have enabled her to embarrass Varadkar, had she not opted to stay silent! 

Leo Varadkar, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital

 

Anti-Clerical Hysteria and the National Maternity Hospital

I have three previous articles that relate to this topic: Sister Stanislaus Kennedy and False Allegations against The Sisters of Charity [1];  Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital [2] and  Kevin Myers and the Age of De Valera and McQuaid  The latter article doesn't mention the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) as such but concerns then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar in 2017 libelling journalist Kevin Myers as an anti-Semite. Kevin Myers is a long-standing supporter of Israel, Varadkar MUST have known that the claim was false but he choose to put himself at the head of a Twitter mob that was targeting Myers at the time. His recent antics concerning the NMH have a similar rationale - the use of media-created public hysteria for political advantage! ..

(A) Background

According to its website the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) situated at Holles St, Merrion Square, Dublin "was established through charitable donations in 1894 and, in 1903 the NMH became a Corporation on receipt of its Charter from the Crown. The legal status of the NMH emanates from the Charter and subsequent legislation and in that respect is along the same lines as the other two major Dublin maternity hospitals." [These are the Rotunda Hospital founded in 1745 and The Coombe in 1826 - all three founded during the period of British rule in Ireland and the latter two before Catholic Emancipation]

"Under the Charter, before its amendment in 1936, the control of NMH rested with the members of the Corporation known as Governors numbering up to 65 but the day to day operational control rested with the Master, an obstetrician and gynaecologist elected by the Governors.  

"NMH was rebuilt in 1930s and this opportunity was taken to amend the Charter by the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin (Charter Amendment) Act 1936 (the “Act”).  The Act which increased the number of Governors up to 100 established an Executive Committee to manage the Corporation's property and affairs. The Governors elect the ordinary members of the Executive Committee at each Annual General Meeting and elect the Master once every seven years." 

The extensive rebuilding of the NMH in the 1930s was largely financed by the (in)famous lottery called the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes but by the early years of this century the accommodation had become inadequate and a move to a much larger site was needed. In May 2013 it was announced that the hospital would relocate to the site of St. Vincent's University Hospital, Elm Park. A new facility would be built on the same campus as St Vincent's Hospital. 

Announcing the move, Fine Gael Minister for Health, James Reilly said the new facility could assure mothers and babies of the best quality care “in a state-of-the-art, custom-built, modern healthcare facility”. The Department said the relocation would address a recommendation from an independent KPMG report, compiled in 2008, which had recommended that maternity hospitals in Dublin should be located close to adult acute services.

The Master of NMH Holles St, Dr Rhona Mahony, said the existing building  was no longer fit for purpose, and the new facility was urgently needed. “The relocation of NMH will address this need and will achieve our strategic aim of close location with St Vincent’s University Hospital,” she said.

(B) 2017 Controversy re Alleged Role of Sisters of Charity in New NMH

St Vincent's Hospital was founded by Mother Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the  Religious Sisters of Charity, on St Stephens Green, Dublin in 1834. The hospital was subsequently moved to its current site in Elm Park in 1970, and in 1999 was renamed St. Vincent's University Hospital, to highlight its position as a principal teaching hospital of University College Dublin. Media reports in 2013 made no mention of any problems relating to the alleged role of the Sisters of Charity in the relocated National Maternity Hospital! The controversy began in April 2017 when a former Master of the NMH, Dr Peter Boylan, resigned from the board over the alleged influence of the Sisters on the new hospital. By 3 May 2017 a petition to oppose their - supposedly - becoming the sole owners of the relocated National Maternity Hospital had been signed by more than 100,000 people.

My article Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital [2] deals with this 2017 bogus controversy - with particular reference to the allegations of Dr Boylan. It should have been abundantly clear from the outset that the Sisters of Charity .would have no role whatsoever in the operation of the NMH. As a result of the thuggish abuse hurled at them they also speeded up their withdrawal from their management role in St Vincent's University hospital. This was an act of folly and cowardice by the nuns that empowered our anti-clerics and pointed towards the recent antics of Tanaiste (Deputy PM) Leo Varadkar!  

Leading "liberal" nun Sister Stanislaus Kennedy described the thuggish assault on the integrity of her colleagues as "Elder Abuse" NOT anti-Catholic or anti-clerical hatred. Her risible response only reinforces the view that the Sisters are incapable of defending themselves and can be abused and insulted with impunity!

(C) Will Sisters of Charity Impose Catholic Ethos on NMH (as per Dr Peter Boylan)?

(i) An article in the Sunday Times dated 1st August 2021 is entitled New NHM Head: Ownership Is Irrelevant and subtitled "Pat McCann says red line for government on who owns the hospital site is not important and that nuns will have no part in how services are operated"

Pat McCann, the newly elected head of the National Maternity Hospital board, has said he will not ask St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) to sell the site to the state because it is “irrelevant” who owns it.

McCann believes that as long as the state owns the hospital building, the ownership of the land is not important. “Where you have a building on a campus like St Vincent’s, it’s very common in Ireland and the UK that there are common services such as egress and car parks. The easiest way to manage that is to have a ground lease,” he said. “The Intercontinental hotel in Dublin is built on ground owned by the RDS, but there is a ground lease and the RDS has no hand, act or part in how the hotel runs its business.”

The founder of the Dalata hotel group has arranged to meet James Menton, the chairman of SVHG, this week “to make sure we’re all aligned on what we’re doing”. He does not intend to meet the Religious Sisters of Charity, who own SVHG, as “they will have no hand, act or part” in the relocated National Maternity Hospital (NMH).....

McCann succeeds Nicholas Kearns, a former president of the High Court, who resigned from the NMH in July and later said the Dublin Bay South by-election “had made things more complicated”. During the campaign, the tanaiste Leo Varadkar said state ownership of the NMH was a “red line” issue for the government. McCann said he “absolutely” supports the current plan for the state to own the new building on a site it will lease for 149 years from SVHG.

“The thing to watch is if there are any restrictive covenants in that lease,” he said. “There is only one: that what goes on the site is the hospital. All [medical] procedures that are legally available in the state will be available there.”

(ii) Previous Head of NMH Board and Master of NMH reply to Dr Peter Boylan (2017)

(from article Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital [2] )

Nicholas Kearns (former President of the High Court) was Deputy Chair - in effect Head - of the National Maternity Hospital Board in 2017 and Dr Rhona Mahony was Master of the Hospital. They replied to an inflammatory text message from Dr Peter Boylan on 23 April 2017.  

"Both the Master and I have received and read your text sent to us at 13.47 today.  We are now asking for your immediate resignation from the Board of Holles St – both because of your public intervention to criticise and oppose the overwhelming majority decision of the Board taken in November last to approve the agreement reached with SVUH for the transfer of Holles St to Elm Park – a vote on which you abstained – and in addition because of the content of your text sent today. “It’s intimidatory tone is most regrettable.”

The National Maternity Hospital also issued a statement:

“Dr Boylan was a member of the NMH Board at all times during the six month period of mediation which resulted in the agreement of 21 November 2016 to co-locate the National Maternity Hospital with St Vincent’s University Hospital. The Board was kept fully briefed on all developments by the negotiating team during that period.

The decisive final meeting of the board overwhelmingly supported the agreement with 25 in favour, two abstentions (including Dr Boylan) and one vote against. [My emphasis] 

Thereafter the agreement was approved by government and planning permission was lodged. Last week, some five months after the agreement was approved, Boylan, without warning, consultation with or notification to the Board, its chair or the master of the hospital, went public in attacking the agreement. Board members have a duty of loyalty to the Board on which they serve and for this reason his resignation has been sought.

An Irish Times article dated  8 December 2018 headed Dr Rhona Mahony says Nuns Will Not Run New Maternity Hospital has the subheading "Holles Street master says Canon Law ‘Irrelevant’ to New Cacility at St Vincent’s campus"

The outgoing master of the National Maternity Hospital has said there will be no religious involvement at all in the proposed new maternity hospital on the St Vincent’s campus. Dr Rhona Mahony, who finishes her term in Holles Street on January 1st, [2019] said it was unfortunate that a lot of people thought nuns were going to be running the new facility...

“So let’s just be very clear. The Sisters of Charity will not be running this hospital. They never sought to run this hospital. They never sought to have any involvement in this hospital and they were never going to have any involvement in this hospital and they do not have any involvement in this hospital,” she told RTÉ’s Marian Finucane programme.

“Telling women stories that this hospital will be run by religious sisters is really damaging. It frightens women because they may believe that services for them will be restricted in terms of not providing termination of pregnancy, not providing contraception, when in fact the opposite is the case....

Dr Mahony said the Sisters of Charity, who own the St Vincent’s campus, have given the land for the new maternity hospital free of charge and are getting out of Irish healthcare. She said the hospital will be run by a lay company operating under Irish law and all services allowed under Irish law including abortion will be able to take place in the hospital. She stressed there will be no religious interference “whatsoever” and that canon law will be “irrelevant” to the ethos of the hospital.

According to the Wikipedia article on the National Maternity Hospital, Dr Rhona Mahony privately complained that "the feminists are going to unravel this fantastic hospital for women"! [1]

(iii) So what was Dr Peter Boylan's solution in 2017 - to avoid the alleged takeover by the Sisters of Charity of the relocated National Maternity Hospital? Well back then he proposed  a Compulsory Purchase Order of land belonging to Elm Park golf club (near St Vincent's Hospital) and linking the new NMH by tunnels etc to St Vincent's . But problems quickly emerged with that "solution". Health Minister Simon Harris pointed out that using a CPO would not be “the ideal solution by any means” because it would mean the project getting “caught up in some potential legal difficulty for a large number of years” In an Irish Independent article on 25 April 2017, Shane Phelan gave an illustration of this difficulty. He referred to the case of Thomas Reid who resisted efforts by IDA Ireland to compulsorily purchase his land in 2011. The matter went all the way to the Supreme Court where Mr. Reid won his case in 2015. 

My own comment at the time was that in the scenario suggested by Dr. Boylan, Elm Park Golf Club would be VERY likely to win a legal battle. They could point out that their land is “on the periphery” (as Dr Boylan states) and that for ideological reasons, the National Maternity Hospital had rejected the offer of a more central site from the Sisters of Charity!

More recently Dr Boylan "revealed on RTE Radio that former Health Minister Simon Harris had suggested to him that the NMH could be co-located at at Tallaght instead" - a proposal that would delay its construction by years and waste millions already spent .However it might all be worth-while to spite the Catholic Church!

(D) The Dishonesty of Leo Varadkar 

In an article in the Irish Independent on Nuns are Being ‘Bullied’ over Land for New National Maternity Hospital, says Prominent Priest, Sarah McDonald writes:

A well-known priest has said the Religious Sisters of Charity are being bullied in the row over the ownership of the land for the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) at St Vincent’s Hospital. Fr Brendan Hoban, a co-founder of the Association of Catholic Priests which represents over 1,000 Irish priests, said “a sustained effort is being made to bully the Sisters of Charity into complying” with politicians’ demands over the valuable 29-acre site.

Criticising what he believes to be a populist anti-Catholic mood of politicians in the Dáil, the Co Mayo priest said he did not think the Sisters of Charity should ‘gift’ the site at Elm Park to the State but should instead sell the site to the State and “use the enormous proceeds to re-direct their own medical services, especially towards the poor.

In his weekly column for the Western People, Fr Hoban noted that when the nuns offered the site adjacent to St Vincent’s Hospital complex in Elm Park, the Government’s only reservation was that the new hospital would be able to deliver the full range of services open to it under the law....

Fr Hoban accused Tánaiste Leo Varadkar of throwing “the equivalent of a grenade” into the mix a few weeks ago when he indicated that ownership was still a problem and that any obstetric or gynaecological service that was legal in the State would have to be available in the new hospital.

Describing the Tánaiste’s intervention as “odd”, the retired parish priest noted that prior to Mr Varadkar’s comments, the only voice objecting to the agreement co-locating the new hospital in Elm Park was the former Master of the Holles Street, Dr Peter Boylan, whom he described as “a persistent Greek chorus of just one”.

He also questioned the reasons for Mr Varadkar’s intervention in light of the recent letter signed by 42 senior clinicians at the NMH, including the current master and three former masters, expressing concern that misinformation and misunderstanding would delay “a vital project to create a world-class maternity hospital for the women and babies of Ireland”. They believe there will be no restriction on treatments and no subservience to religious control in the new hospital.

Suggesting that the nuns are collateral damage of Mr Varadkar’s agenda, Fr Hoban said there seemed to be only one solution. “Let the Sisters of Charity sell the site of the hospital to the state” and let Mr Varadkar explain the consequent loss of millions of euros, he said.

Unfortunately I think it's too late for the solution suggested by Fr Hoban. However the co-leader of the Social Democrats Roisin Shortall has provided a plausible explanation for Leo Varadkar's "odd" decision to throw "the equivalent of a grenade" into the NMH relocation process:

She asked him: “When precisely did you become seriously concerned about the proposed new National Maternity Hospital? In the Dáil last week you told us there were fundamental problems with two aspects of the deal, ownership, and governance. I've been telling you exactly that for the past four years. I'm quite curious about when you finally saw the light.”...

“Work started on the legal framework in 2017, but four years later, there's still no sign of it. You complained bitterly about the proposed 99-year lease, saying it wasn't satisfactory, and that we should own the site, but it was your Government that proposed a lease in the first place.”

Ms Shortall added: “So I'm curious, Tánaiste, as to what prompted you to get to your feet in this House last week to express serious concern. Was there something significant about the timing? I notice it’s an issue that voters in Dublin Bay South care deeply about. Perhaps their concern has been a catalyst for some long overdue action.”

And THAT is why 42 senior clinicians at the NMH, including the current master and three former masters, expressed concern that misinformation and misunderstanding would delay “a vital project to create a world-class maternity hospital for the women and babies of Ireland”. Except Leo Varadkar is not misinformed nor does he misunderstand. Political advantage is far more important for him than progressing the building of  a new National Maternity Hospital!

(E) The Folly of the Sisters of Charity

Back in 2017 I made three correct predictions regarding the future of this controversy - in my article Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, the Sisters of Charity and the National Maternity Hospital [2]. Well they were all the related to the same prediction really!

(i) "If the Sisters of Charity manage to handle the present crisis properly, namely by refusing to make concessions in the face of hysterical attacks, then it could discourage such attacks in future. And that will benefit lots of people apart from clergy or religious."

In that respect I was pleased to read the following in Valerie Hanley’s article in The Mail on Sunday on 23 April [2017]:

A source revealed: ‘The nuns are adamant that they have fulfilled all their obligations under the redress board. When something is repeated enough it becomes fact. There has been an awful lot of vitriol loaded on the nuns. There has been a nonsense argument going on all week and there is no basis for some of what has been said. Some of what has been said is prejudice for things that happened historically. It’s band-wagonism and politicians are running after it. The politicians should be doing better.

The nuns are annoyed and they consider some of the comments that have been made as being defamatory. I think their attitude now is ‘let the State go off and build their hospital on their own land’. [My Emphasis]

That’s all very well and I couldn’t agree more BUT the Sister’s comment is being made anonymously. My own fear is that – under pressure – the Sisters of Charity will cave in and authorise an amendment to the National Maternity Hospital Agreement approved in November 2016. In that case, their critics will rejoice and declare themselves victorious and vindicated. In previous comments I have detailed how the Sisters of MERCY were savaged because of their constant attempts to ingratiate themselves with people who hated them. I also have an article on the subject here: Sisters of Mercy

I hope that the Sisters of Charity now understand the dangers of Appeasement – defined by one British newspaper in 1939 as “A clever plan of selling off your friends in order to buy off your enemies”. (For the Sisters of Mercy, that worked the same way it did for Neville Chamberlain!)

But of course my hopes were vain and the nuns caved in!

(ii) I wrote in 2017 about  the repeated claims by politicians and journalists that the Sisters of Charity had failed to pay the balance of €3 million “compensation” that they “owed” the State. Health Minister Simon Harris said that the two matters should be considered separately. What two matters? On 23 April [2017] the Mail on Sunday (journalist Valerie Hanley) reported:

The Department of Education has confirmed to the Mail on Sunday that that the nuns’ legal costs for the Ryan Commission will be offset against the €3 million of payments for abuse victims that are outstanding. While these costs have not been finalised, media reports that were based on briefing documents have estimated them at €5 million, a sum that would more than wipe out the outstanding bill that they owe.

Crucially, the department has confirmed that the reason for the delay in resolving the problem is nothing to do with the nuns, but is down to its own officials figuring out the final costs of the congregation’s legal representation at the Ryan Commission…..

Yet, as Ms. Hanley pointed out, the claim that the Sisters owed €3 million, had been repeatedly cited by politicians from Fianna Fail, The Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats and the media as justification for outraged comments about the agreement brokered by Kieran Mulvey. Did the Minister for Health not liaise with his Education colleague? Or did he decide to sidestep the issue – on the basis that discretion is the better part of valour when faced with anti-clerical hysteria?

Back in 2017 I wondered what would have been the attitude of Jews if they had been attacked in similar fashion? Suppose that a Jewish group had offered to donate land for a hospital under precisely the same conditions as those agreed in November 2016 between Holles St and St Vincents. Suppose that the media and politicians erupted with hate-filled lies – including claims that the Jewish group committed “atrocities” against children, “experimented on [a child] for vaccine trials” and owed the State €3 million. Suppose that the Government Ministers responsible failed to defend the Jewish group against the lies and it was left up to a Daily Mail journalist to find out – via a Freedom of Information request – that the Jewish group owed nothing and had actually overpaid!

I wrote that this would never happen because the Jewish group would immediately defend its slandered members and take legal action against those responsible. Anti-Semites know this and are very mindful of the risks they would be facing. So Anti-Semites have to be very careful – but NOT anti-clerics and in particular not anti-clerics who tell lies about nuns. The leaders of female religious congregations have always preferred the Appeasement approach. This has worked for them in much the same way it did for Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s i.e. it encourages further attacks from people who recognise moral cowardice when they see it. 

Thus Leo Varadkar's recent attempt to win votes in the Dublin Bay South by-election by bullying supine nuns!

(iii) An article in the Irish Medical Times “A Complicated Delivery” by editor Dara Gantly on 10 May 2017 concluded as follows:

…What is of further interest now is that the Minister [for Health] wants to begin a “broader conversation” about the structure of our health service, including the role of voluntary hospitals and the interest religious congregations have in them. This has been happening in education (slowly mind), so we should not be too surprised to see it start in Health.

“That is a good thing and I want to separately put in place a process to facilitate that broader conversation which is long overdue and which will, rightfully, take some time,” Minister Harris has noted. ..

I wrote in 2017 "And what will be the nature of this conversation IF Minister Harris sees that the Sisters of Charity and the Church will not stand up for themselves but will attempt to conciliate the mob? When politicians and the media claimed that the Sisters owed €3 million in “compensation”, it was not the Minister for Health, but a Daily Mail journalist who queried the Department of Education and discovered that the Sisters owed nothing and in fact had over-paid! 

"If the Sisters of Charity attempt to appease the mob in relation to the National Maternity Hospital, then reason and logic will NOT feature in the future “broader conversation” referred to by Simon Harris!"

And so it has turned out!

The Sisters Surrender to the Secular Power!

On 31 May 2017 Sr Mary Christian, Congregational Leader of the Religious Sisters of Charity issued a Statement confirming that the Sisters were withdrawing from any involvement in St Vincent's Hospital that they had founded in 1834 - and also confirming the abandonment of the hospital's Catholic ethos:

The Religious Sisters of Charity will end our involvement in St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and will not be involved in the ownership or management of the new National Maternity Hospital.....

Upon completion of this proposed transaction, the requirement set out in the SVHG Constitution, to conduct and maintain the SVHG facilities in accordance with The Religious Sisters of Charity Health Service Philosophy and Ethical Code, will be amended and replaced to reflect compliance with national and international best practice guidelines on medical ethics and the laws of the Republic of Ireland.

The SVHG Board, management and staff will continue to provide acute healthcare services that foster Mary Aikenhead’s core values of dignity, compassion, justice, quality and advocacy....

Nobody was fooled by this pious invocation of the name of their foundress. It was clear that they were surrendering to the pressure (and blatant lies) of a secular mob. Their cowardice ensured that the attacks on them would continue - even to the present day!  

(F) CONCLUSION:

In 2017 I referred to an editorial in the Irish Medical Times (10 May)  entitled  “Minister Build That Hospital” subtitle Sorry episode has revealed much that is ugly about modern Ireland and quoting Doctor Ruairi Hanley

….Regrettably, there is another factor in this dispute that has taken us beyond mere clinical disagreement. Over the past month, a baying liberal cyber mob has entered the fray and all sense of perspective has been lost. Please note, I am not referring here to those colleagues who have genuine concerns about this project. As already stated, I disagree with these people, but I respect their view.

No, the group that I find beyond parody are the extreme liberal, Catholic-hating online brigade who appear to think that a giant abortion clinic is the most important priority for South Dublin. I suspect some of these people will not be satisfied until a few nuns are imprisoned and the Catholic Church is effectively eradicated from any involvement in Irish society.

Liberal outrage

The vicious, obnoxious tone of some members of this new mob is truly appalling. They have turned on Dr Rhona Mahony, an outstanding and dedicated obstetrician who is a role model for Irish women. But, let’s be honest, the cool gang could not care less about the facts. Once they heard mention of nuns the red mist descended and it was then we moved to a classic liberal outrage contest.

For these individuals, online perception is always more important than clinical outcome. In their world it is apparently acceptable for this project to be sabotaged, with negative consequences for women and children, so long as a few elderly nuns get a good cyber-kicking.

Naturally, if the mob gets their way the hospital will be delayed at a cost of tens of millions of euro to the taxpayer. In my opinion, this would undoubtedly be the most expensive act of online ‘virtue signalling’ in human history. [RC My emphasis]

As an aside, I make no apologies for pointing out that the Catholic Church has done enormous good work in healthcare for the poorest in society over the past century, even if I am one of the only doctors in Ireland willing to say this publicly. [RC My emphasis]….. 

Indeed Doctor Doctor Ruairi Hanley was "one of the only doctors in Ireland willing to say this publicly." This was an Editorial in the highly prestigious Irish Medical Times written about a controversial topic and during the height of the controversy. So how many Comments did it attract? Precisely one - from my NON medical self! [2]

Why were other doctors so reluctant to stick their necks out? I suspect that it was only partly fear of the "baying liberal mob" that Dr Hanley refers to. There is also the fact that the Sisters of Charity refused to defend themselves and abased itself before said mob - as Irish nuns have been doing for the past quarter century! [3]  Leo Varadkar felt free to insult them again in order to please anti-clerical voters in the recent Dublin Bay South by-election. He knew there would be no comeback from the nuns - least of all from Sr Stanislaus Kennedy whose "progressive" reputation COULD have enabled her to embarrass Varadkar, had she not opted to stay silent! 

NOTES:

[1] Wikipedia refer to a Sunday Times article dated 23 April 2017  "Bishop says New Hospital Must Obey the Church", most of which is behind a paywall.

[2] This is the text of my Comment on the Irish Medical Times Editorial dated 10 May 2017

Rory Connor

24th May 2017 at 11:54 pm

I couldn’t agree more.

I have a number of comments on this issue on the Association of Catholic Priests website, (topic “Catholic Ethos and Other Mysteries”) the latest one being number 52 which might serve as a summary

http://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2017/05/catholic-ethos-and-other-mysteries/

Sadly the ACP have merged 2 separate although related discussions, so you have to search for the Maternity Hospital one. However it definitely IS worth-while! My own other comments are numbers 20, 25 and 32.

[3] See blog article The Decadence of the Sisters of Mercy and website article The Sisters of Mercy that  - despite its title - also describes the antics of Presentation Sister Elizabeth Maxwell and Ursuline Sister Marianne O'Connor, both former Heads of the Conference of Religious in Ireland. There is something especially grotesque about the antics of the leaders of FEMALE Religious Congregations (although anyone who suspects me of Misogyny should try reading Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Simpsons and our Insect Overlords )