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Pat Rabbitte Chair of Child Protection Agency Tusla
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According to the website of the Child and Family Agency Tusla
"Mr. Pat Rabbitte has served as a public representative for 30 years. He is a former Irish Labour Party politician who served as Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources from 2011 to 2014, Leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2007 and Minister for State for Commerce, Science and Technology from 1994 to 1997."
Tusla go on to expand on Mr Rabbitte's career in more detail and mention that he "was appointed Chairperson of Tusla by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Dr Katherine Zappone". Dr Zappone was a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2004 when they declined to investigate the journalists and broadcasters who were making false allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers. (This is the subject of my article "Blood Libel in Ireland...") Tusla do not however mention Pat Rabbitte's role in the fall of the coalition Government headed by Albert Reynolds in 1994, following a grotesque allegation made by Rabbitte in Dail Eireann that targeted Cardinal Cahal Daly and Attorney General Harry Whelehan as authors of a non-existent conspiracy to protect a paedophile priest.
As Minister for Communications in 2014, Pat Rabbitte reacted to RTE's libeling of John Waters and other members of the Iona Institute as follows :
Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte is to relax the rules that require broadcasters to ensure nothing can be aired that can be regarded as “reasonably” causing offence.The move by Mr Rabbitte comes amid the continuing controversy over damages paid by RTÉ to six people including members of the Iona Institute and columnist John Waters.The payment of about €85,000 followed an interview on RTÉ’s The Saturday Night Show with performer Rory O’Neill, otherwise known as drag queen Panti Bliss, who accused certain named individuals of homophobia.
While Mr Rabbitte said the defamation laws are outside his remit, he told the Dáil he intends to relax certain aspects of the Broadcasting Act.
Quoted in Irish Times article ‘I’ve been beaten, spat at, chased, harassed and mocked’ subheading Gay TDs tell Dáil of treatment as Rabbitte says broadcasting rules to be relaxed
So the then Government Minister's reaction to a successful libel action against the State Broadcasting Company was to try to make it more difficult to sue RTE in future. If RTE had libeled the above-mentioned Gay TD - Fine Gael's Jerry Buttimer - Pat Rabbitte's reaction would have been very different. It fact it would have been the opposite!
The following discussion includes the views of the late UK cultural historian Richard Webster on Pat Rabbitte and his conspiracy theory concerning Cardinal Daly and Harry Whelehan. See Comment number 11.*** No Irish historian seems to have gone into that amount of detail concerning Rabbitte's antics - which is surprising because Webster didn't write that much about the affair!
*** It should have been number 1 but the Moderators originally declined it. I was perhaps lucky that another person made a thuggish comment about the Church that was published and may have opened the door for me!
Rory Connor
9 June 2020
At the end of December 2009, BBC journalist and broadcaster William Crawley did a round up in his Blog of the Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year , the first of which was Sex scandals rock the Catholic church. He wrote:
This was the most difficult year for the Irish Catholic Church for as long as anyone can remember. In May, the Ryan Report made headline news across the world when it revealed that rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in schools and orphanages run by the Irish church over seven decades. Two months earlier, Bishop John Magee was forced to "stand aside" from the management of his Cloyne diocese, in county Cork, after an investigation, published the previous December, found that his diocese had put children at risk by failing to follow child protection guidelines.
Things got considerably worse for the church with the publication, in November, of the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Dublin. Judge Yvonne Murphy chronicled an organised cover-up of child abuse allegations in the diocese spanning a period of nearly four decades. In the wake of the report's publication, there were unprecedented calls for the Pope's diplomatic representative, the Papal Nuncio, to be expelled from Ireland, after it emerged that he failed to correspond directly with the Commission of Investigation. Four bishops named in the report resigned, many said belatedly. A fifth bishop, Martin Drennan of Galway, has so far resisted the growing clamour for him to also step down.
The archbishops of Armagh and Dublin visited Pope Benedict, who expressed his sense of shame and outrage at what was exposed in the report, and Ireland was promised an historic pastoral letter from the pontiff setting out in detail how the church proposed to deal with the crisis. At the end of the year, commentators were predicting the greatest organisational shake-up of the Irish Catholic church for centuries.
COMMENTS: This is a selection from the 21 Comments the story attracted. I am Kilbarry1
Comment number 1. At 12:06 1st Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain. [See Comments number 10 and 11]
Comment number 3. At 22:35 1st Jan 2009, LucyQ wrote:
......... The #1 Irish story of last year and in fact the past few hundred is the ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy. I simply cannot fathom how it is that anyone can so easily believe that gods, leprechauns, life after death or any aspects of magical enchantment that is the bases of religious belief is true other than in literary fiction. Any pope, priest or other clergy that claims to specific evidence of any of the above is lying. Reasonable, intelligent adults surely know better than to be emotionally bullied by such silly talk any longer.
Today is the day that the Irish Blasphemy Law comes into play. As if the cops don't have enough on their hands in dealing with serious crime now they have protect religious superstition from those who would shine the light of truth on the fantasies. Aren't people embarrassed by this? BTW it is impossible to blaspheme against something that doesn't exist.
Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes to counter the crazy new law.
Comment number 4. At 00:24 2nd Jan 2009, mccamleyc wrote:
Normally with petulant teenagers it's best to ignore them, but in Lucy's case I'll make an exception. Why do people who believe in nothing care so much what other people believe?
Except of course Lucy has her own little made up belief - "the ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy", for which of course there is precisely no evidence.
Comment number 10. At 00:33 3rd Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
There are now 9 comments. Mine was the first 2 days ago now but is still "referred to the moderators". In the meantime you published the patently ludicrous comment that there is "ongoing, systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."
That is the kind of attitude dealt with by Richard Webster in "The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch-Hunt" which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2005. It is the kind of hysteria that enables people to conjure up child abuse conspiracies - and even use them to bring down a Government, as happened in Ireland in 1994.
Since the late Cardinal Daly figured in that conspiracy theory, this is a good time to consider how it could have happened.
Comment number 11. At 00:45 3rd Jan 2009, Kilbarry1 wrote:
Perhaps my original comment (no 1 above) was simply overlooked? If so here it is again:
The life and death of Cardinal Cahal Daly provide a link between your first and last stories of the year. In his article on child abuse panics "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" UK cultural historian Richard Webster also recognised the importance of the Cardinal's story. The following is an extract:
Another country which has developed a particularly intense and dangerous crusade against child abuse is the Republic of Ireland. Here, as in almost every modern instance, the collective fantasy which has been progressively developed has a core of reality. The beginnings of the story go back to 1994 when the authorities in Northern Ireland sought the extradition from the Republic of Father Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest who was facing a number of counts of child sexual abuse to which he would eventually plead guilty. It would appear that he had previously been protected against allegations by his own Norbertine order, which had moved him from parish to parish as complaints arose, and failed to alert the police.
Perhaps because of the age of the allegations, which went back twenty years, there was a delay of several months during which the Irish attorney general took no action in relation to the extradition request. Unfounded reports began to circulate in Dublin that the process was being deliberately delayed in response to a request made at the highest level by the Catholic Church. An Irish opposition deputy, Pat Rabbitte, then referred in parliament to the possible existence of a document that would ‘rock the foundations of this society to its very roots’. He apparently had in mind the rumoured existence of a letter written by the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Cathal Daly, to the attorney general in Dublin. In this letter the Cardinal had supposedly interceded on behalf of Father Brendan Smyth and requested the delay in his extradition which had in fact taken place.
No evidence has been produced that any such letter ever existed. Yet, as a direct result of the rumours which now swept the country, confidence in the ruling establishment was undermined and the Fianna Fail government of Albert Reynolds fell, amidst talk of a dark conspiracy involving politicians, members of Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbus and others. This conspiracy was allegedly seeking to cover up the activities of paedophile priests.
Webster's essay is taken from his book "The Secret of Bryn Estyn" about a child abuse witch-hunt in North Wales in the 1990s. This was directed at LAY child care workers not religious. However Webster - who is probably an atheist - sees the connection with the anti-clerical hysteria that has torn this country apart since 1994 and of which the late Cardinal Daly was one of the first victims.
(Actually the consequences for Albert Reynolds and the then Attorney General Harry Whelehan were worse. In general the fact that someone could use false claims of a child abuse conspiracy to bring down a Government, set a ghastly precedent for our society).
Comment number 12. At 01:33 3rd Jan 2009, romejellybeen wrote:
LucyQ Please!!!
"The ongoing sytematic abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."
How dare you smear the good name of priests in this manner. You have absolutely no proof what so ever that the abuse is "ongoing." MCC and Kilbarry1 are absolutely correct to jump to the defence of poor, innocent clergy (in the exact same way that they didnt jump to the defence of victims of that abuse. In the same way that they didnt want fair play and a fair hearing for the abused.)
Please correct your statement to, "The ongoing systematic COVER UP of the abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy."
You have absolutely no way of providing proof that sexual abuse by clergy is either 'ongoing' or 'systematic.' No one has.
However, the cover up by the Bishops and the Vatican is much easier to prove. You'll find plenty if you just google any combination of - abuse, Vatican, cover up. MCC and Kilbarry1's moral indignation may then be tempered.
I know what was whispered at Deanery and Diocesan meetings over the gin and tonics 20 years ago, 10 years ago and five years ago. I know how many priests knew.... and, through fear, said nothing. I was there. [My emphasis - RC]
They do not need apologists or self perceived Knights in shining armour to jump to their defence. They need to confess to their people that they share the guilt, to admit that they were frightened and to ask forgiveness FROM THEIR PEOPLE.
Their people WILL forgive, and then the Church can begin to be healed.
Comment number 16. At 03:03 5th Jan 2010, Kilbarry1 wrote:
romejellybean wrote: I know what was whispered at Deanery and Diocesan meetings over the gin and tonics 20 years ago, 10 years ago and five years ago. I know how many priests knew.... and, through fear, said nothing. I was there.
I was there myself 40 years ago in a religious congregation of Brothers that ran industrial schools. (Diocesan priests would rarely be involved in that work.) It is true I was only there for 3 years and not involved in residential institutions. However I lived in a few different houses of the congregation, including one very large one, and I was with Brothers who had been teaching all their lives in every type of institution. I can assure you that I never heard such conversations.
I have been out of touch with my former colleagues for a very long time now but I understand that the situation is similar to that of the Christian Brothers i.e. practically every Brother who ever worked in a residential institution was accused of child abuse. In Artane allegations were made against about 75 Brothers. After a 3 year investigation involving 10 Gardai, ONE prosecution was approved and one Brother was eventually convicted of indecent assault. (See article in Irish Independent on 4 September 2003
Ten gardai, a three-year inquiry . . . but only one prosecution )
Assuming the proportions were similar in my own congregation, it is hardly surprising that we did not whisper the stories over our gin and tonics, or even Guinness.
Comment number 17. At 09:29 5th Jan 2010, graham veale wrote:
I think it's important to remember that abusers wouldn't be uniformly distributed across the Church. That's like saying 3 in 100 people have Swine Flu, then assuming that there are 9 pupils in my School with Swine Flu as it has 300 pupils. Some groups of 100 will have more than the average, some less.
So Kilbarry and RJB's experiences are both noteworthy. But neither can extrapolate out to the whole Church from their own experience.
(It's also worth considering that abusers would be drawn to, and survive in, areas were their risks were low. That may mean that we are more likely to find them in certain diocese compared to others.)
Comment number 18. At 01:03 6th Jan 2010, mccamleyc wrote:
I only ever heard rumours about one priest and that was about a month before it became public and obviously the complainant was in legal discussions at that stage. Perhaps there were loads of people who knew about these things but the great majority of priests I know weren't aware of them. And RJB I'm not saying you are a liar before you conclude that - I'm just agreeing with Graham that it wasn't my experience.
As for "they didnt want fair play and a fair hearing for the abused" - you have no basis for that statement. If the abused had simply got "fair play and a fair hearing" then we wouldn't have heard about most them because the normal judicial process would have excluded the vast majority of these cases. The normal fair approach is you go to the police with your complaint, they investigate, assess the evidence, present to the DPP who decides whether to bring a prosecution. The great majority of victims whether in the Ryan Report, Ferns or Murphy would never have had a day in court. If the Church had simply dug in its heels and stuck with the sue me approach most of these victims would never have been heard.
Appendix 1
It was Nov 16, 1994, and I was so excited that I made an excuse to get off work and cycled home to watch telly. There was a motion of “no confidence” in Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Albert Reynolds amid controversy relating to his appointment of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court.
There was an allegation that Whelehan had delayed the extradition of Fr Brendan Smyth to the North to face child sex abuse charges. In fact Whelehan had never been made aware of the case. It was further alleged that Cardinal Cathal Daly had put pressure on Whelehan to delay the extradition. Pat Rabbitte, then of Democratic Left, suggested in the Dáil that there could be a letter to this effect in the Attorney General’s office which would “rock the foundations of this society.”
No such letter has ever been found. We are talking George W Bush looking under the desk for the weapons of mass destruction here. But I didn’t really care if the allegation was true or not. It felt true. The Left was doing battle with a nasty conspiracy between Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church, as far as I was concerned.
Wasn’t Whelehan as attorney general responsible for seeking the extradition of Ms X when she travelled to the UK for an abortion? Matter a damn that it was his job to defend the Constitution on which we, the people, had voted. He should have ignored the Constitution, that’s what he should have done, but word was out he was a practising Catholic.
I’ll never forget the speech Labour leader and Tánaiste Dick Spring gave that day. Well actually, I remember nothing about it except its oratorical structure, the build-up to the sudden explosion when he said his party was withdrawing from Government. It helped that Spring was tall and handsome. I was quite sick with excitement and I remember friends calling over so we could crow over it together.
I never stopped to think about the progressive Programme for Government which Labour had put together with Fianna Fáil: the establishment of the Department of Equality and Law Reform, of the Department of Arts and Culture, provision for decriminalising male homosexual acts, provision for a referendum on divorce. I only cared about the optics. Did the Labour leadership feel the same? They’d just had a bruising bye-election result and one of their candidates had lost to then-Democratic Left member, Kathleen Lynch. Were they looking for an out? Albert Reynolds mishandled the situation badly. But what was the point of Labour throwing the whole government down the swanney? Alright they entered a Rainbow Coalition with Fine Gael and DL, but their Spring Tide went right out in the election of 1997...........
I neither understand nor accept Labour’s refusal to discuss Coalition with FF since Spring’s dramatic departure in 1994. I put it down to the fact that their vote is in the middle class just like Fine Gael’s. But a politician friend suggested it was because FF and Labour have so much in common that Labour would lose its identity in coalition with them. THESE are selfish reasons. What we need in politics now, and have needed since 1994, are courage and generosity.....
What the Labour Party is likely to get in the NEXT election is a Sinn Fein government with the Antifa thugs who attacked us as their street-fighters AND Labour (possibly) as a junior partner!
Appendix 2
Historians have practically ignored the role of Pat Rabbitte in the fall of the Fianna Fail-Labour Coalition Government led by Albert Reynolds in November 1994. Yet it was the first time in the history of the State that a Government fell because of mindless hysteria. It was also the first Government to fall as a result of religious bigotry - involving a false claim that the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland had conspired with a Catholic Attorney General to block the extradition of a paedophile priest. Is this why historians don't like to deal with the issue?
Oddly enough you can get more useful information from journalistic fluff like Gene Kerrigan's satirical opus "This Great little Nation" (1999) and lately Shane Coleman's book on famous Irish political gaffes "Foot in Mouth" (Sept. 2006). It's not that these gentlemen are sticking their necks out and risking the wrath of their liberal colleagues. The books are aimed at the mass market of people who like silly stories. This defuses the effect of the scandals related but it also gets around the ideological blinkers worn by more "serious" writers.
The following is from the chapter in Coleman's book entitled ROCKING THE FOUNDATIONS - PAT RABBITTE
"It was the 16 November 1994 and the Dail [Parliament] was experiencing one of its most dramatic days since the Arms Trial almost a quarter of a century before. The Fianna Fail-Labour Government had been under strain for some weeks over Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Albert Reynolds move to appoint his Attorney General (AG) Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court, despite opposition from Labour. Now the Government was on the verge of collapse over the handling of the Father Brendan Smyth extradition case. there had been a delay of seven months in processing the extradition warrant in the office of the AG. Wild and unsubstantiated rumours swept through Leinster House as to the reasons behind that long delay. One of the unfounded rumours was that the AG's office had received a letter from a senior figure in the Catholic Church which contributed to the delay in the Smyth case.
THE GAFFE
"Pat Rabbitte, then a member of the Democratic Left Party, got up to speak in the Dail during a procedural discussion on the Order of Business. He asked: "Will the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste [Deputy PM] say if. in respect of the recent discovery of documents in the Attorney General's office, there is another document that ought to be before this house that will rock the foundations of this society to its very roots?" Rabbitte added: "If there is such a document its contents should be before this House before Deputy [John] Bruton moves his motion [of no confidence in the government] and we should know now whether the Labour Party has rowed in behind the Taoiseach following the discovery of this document".
THE IMPACT
"The effect on what was already a highly charged atmosphere was sensational. Rabbitte's dramatic use of vocabulary and the suggestion that the very foundations of society would be rocked, suggested scandal at an unprecedented level.
"Rabbitte's party leader Proinsias de Rossa also waded in. "It seems that we are dealing with one of the most sleazy events in Irish parliamentary history. Is it true that a memorandum has been found in the Attorney General's Office which indicates that there was outside interference in the decision by the Attorney General not to proceed with extradition for seven months?
The problem for Rabbitte and Democratic Left was that it quickly became apparent that there was no evidence that any such letter or document existed or had ever existed.
In his immediate response to Rabbitte in the Dail, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds said his efforts to get to the root of complaints about "documents that are supposed to exist in the Attorney General's office" had drawn a blank. " I understand that one of the stories doing the rounds - this is what I was told when I made inquiries- is that there is supposed to be in existence a certain letter which cannot be traced. I requested my office to contact Deputy Rabbitte to see if he could assist us in accelerating our inquiries and he was not in a position to give us much help......All the staff in the Attorney General's office available in the country have been interviewed about this matter and each and every one of them have said that they have no knowledge whatsoever in this regard...No member of the staff who have been interviewed can assist in this regard. They say they have no knowledge of any such letter."
"Such was the level of speculation sweeping Leinster House that day, that the Catholic Primate, Cardinal Daly, was moved to dismiss as "utterly absurd, untrue and a total fabrication" the rumours that he had made representations to the AGs office on behalf of Fr Smyth. "I can't speak for everyone but I am quite certain that nothing is known to me about any approach whatsoever to anyone connected with this case", he said adding: "It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could have invented such a story".
"The strength of Cardinal Daly's comments left little room for doubt and history has shown them to be entirely accurate....."
Shane Coleman goes on to describe the collapse of the Reynold's government and concludes his article as follows:
"While Rabbitte unquestionably gaffed by going over the top in his comments, it did nothing to stop his rise in Irish politics. Within five years of his party merging with Labour, Rabbitte had become leader of the new party - his robust and colourful debating style [!!] was clearly a factor in his victory."
MY COMMENT in 2007:
This was the real beginning of the Child Abuse Witch-hunt in Ireland. It became clear, first that you could slander the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland with impunity and second that you could profit mightily from so doing. Pat Rabbitte has often claimed that the Catholic Church has not paid enough into the compensation scheme for "victims" of child abuse. For him nothing would be enough. He has helped to create a Compensation Culture that is fueled by a heady mixture of greed, anti-clerical bigotry and blind hatred. It is not only the Church that is suffering from this mania and it will long outlast Pat Rabbitte and his political ambitions.
And today 14 December 2020, I see no reason to change my views. After the next General Election we are likely to have a Government headed by Sinn Fein. The Labour Party may be junior partners in such a Government but they have gutted their integrity and are incapable of reining in their masters even if they want to.
Appendix 3 The Dismissal of Matt Russell
Matt Russell was the senior civil servant in the Attorney General's office who had the extradition warrants for Brendan Smyth on his desk for seven months. He later explained "I did not give it special priority because I did not identify it as a case which required that priority over other priority work". He told the Dail Committee on Legislation and Security: "In dealing with the volume of work priorities have to be applied.... I worked on the Smyth file at intervals when there was an opportunity to do so." He agreed that in retrospect his judgement was wrong but he did not offer to resign. "I was not made aware of any reason that I should." Matt Russell stayed in place when Harry Whelehan resigned.
What did for Matt Russell was his failure to respond to two letters written by a solicitor on behalf of the victims of Brendan Smyth. The letters were received in November 1994 and January 1995. On the face of it they were ridiculous. They demanded compensation for the victims because of the suffering caused by the original extradition delay. In the light of the reigning hysteria Matt Russell should have taken them more seriously but he favoured the logical approach.
"Furthermore...many more actions are threatened are threatened by solicitors letters than are commenced, and in view of the tenuous nature of the claim I thought this might well occur in this case."
Matt Russell was perfectly logical and perfectly correct in his view of this claim. However such considerations are irrelevant in a witch-hunt and he was forced to tender his resignation to Taoiseach John Bruton on 29 May 1995.
In the Dial on 31 May John Bruton gloated over his success in removing Matt Russell. "Compulsory retirement, although legally provided for has never been successfully achieved. Whereas Mr. Russell was not prepared to go quietly or otherwise under the previous administration, my actions have resulted in his immediate retirement from the civil service. That speaks for itself."
It certainly did. John Bruton, a decent and honourable man, was boasting about the results of a process that caused the fall of a Government, the resignation of a High Court President and the forced retirement of a senior civil servant. Unprecedented events caused by hysteria alone........
Since some people may still be reluctant to attribute these events to hysteria it is useful to check on how the authorities in the UK viewed the issue. After all, they were the ones who wanted to extradite Father Brendan Smyth. If there was a conspiracy between Church and State in Ireland, then the judicial authorities in the UK were the target of said conspiracy.
The following are extracts from the House of Commons Hansard Debates for 21 November 1994:
Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Attorney-General what representations his Department received from the Catholic Church in respect of Brendan Smyth; and if he will make a statement.
The Attorney-General: None.
..........
Opus Dei
Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Attorney-General what is his policy in relation to employing members of Opus Dei in his Department.
The Attorney-General: There is no specific policy in relation to the secondment of Opus Dei members to my Department. The civil service does not discriminate on grounds of religion.
If it were not so politically incorrect, one might imagine the Whitehall mandarins being quietly amused at the antics of their ridiculous ex-colonial subjects.
"New caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child" indeed - should they ever have let us go?
CONCLUSION:
This is an extract from an essay on my old website "The Passion of Nora Wall"
Epilogue: Harry Whelehan and Nora Wall
These extraordinary events have received rather cursory treatment from historians of modern Ireland. In particular the role of Pat Rabbitte has been air-brushed from the story. However in his book "The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000" Diarmaid Ferriter makes this significant comment:
"Some became angry when that when Harry Whelehan was questioned and denied the existence of a Catholic conspiracy within the Attorney-General's office, he felt the need to defend his right to be a practicing Catholic."
This issue had never before arisen in Irish politics. The first President of Ireland was a Protestant. During the de Valera era, Jews played a prominent role in Fianna Fail (whose founder Dev, had been a close friend of John Charles McQuaid when the latter was President of Blackrock College) and there had been Jewish Lord Mayors of Dublin and Cork. The disgusting attacks on Harry Whelehan indicated that religious hatred was making its opening debut in Irish public life. The fact that it took the form of anti-clericalism rather than anti-Semitism made it acceptable to many liberals.
