Derelict and Delinquent

The men of god have been making the news headlines again. Not for helping the poor, visiting the imprisoned, tending to the sick or anything decent like that. No, for the men of god it is the same old, same old: guided by the holy sperm they are back in the public spotlight for raping the nation’s children.

Reports into clerical molestation of children are all too frequent these days. Ferns, Ryan, now Murphy, the latest to remind us that in our midst lurks a malevolent army of rapists blessed before battle by their leading chaplains and absolved of sin after it. As a society we are forced to endure these reports, our disgust supposed to be assuaged by meaningless apologies from the clerical commanders. Yet the vile leaders like Bishop Magee remain in place, the institution to which they belong still legal.

These never ending reports only tell us that we look at the problem, make recommendations, write about it, wring our hands on television and radio, and end up permitting the institution responsible to carry on, its structure uninfringed, its leadership intact. We know that within the loins of the Catholic Church a beast is stirring, ready to rape again. Yet it remains a legal entity with state approved involvement in our schools.

Child rape and its cover up are endemic within the Catholic Church in Ireland. It should now be banned and membership of it proscribed. At the end of World War 2 the SS was declared a criminal organisation and those who fought in its ranks denied pension rights and other entitlements that Wehrmacht troops could avail of. Not everyone who fought in the Waffen SS behaved disgracefully. But the institution had little in the way of defence against allegations of endemic criminality. By now a powerful case can be made that the church is a criminally perverse institution which contributes nothing to society. It can give no moral guidance. What could it possibly know about moral guiding? Immoral riding is more to its liking. At best its leading figures have time and time again demonstrated that they know not the difference between right and wrong. A less benign but better grounded view would deem them accomplices before and after the fact in the persistent rape of children.

There is plenty of legislation on the books for dealing with the nation’s criminal gangs. Why should the criminal institution that is the Irish Catholic Church be exempt? Why aren’t its leaders hauled before the courts and tried for collusion in the rape of society’s children? There has to be an effective means for dealing with the custodians of child rape. It is not that the bishops need to be interned without trial. There is an abundance of evidence against them that could be used in the Central Criminal Court. They would receive more justice in criminal law than their victims ever benefited from in canon law.

There should be no special privilege for these people because of religion. Religion is nothing but an opinion. That it should have an exalted status over and beyond other opinions which protects it from probing and democratic scrutiny is corrosive of the societal good. When Michael McDowell as Justice Minister told Cardinal Connell in the wake of the Ferns Report that the church’s canon law had all the status in Irish law of the rules governing membership of a golf club he was defending a very important secular tenet. Connell of course was outraged. He wanted canon law to be treated as if it were the law of a separate state.

To the extent that Connell was justified in what he said the Church and its canon law should be treated as a rogue state. It should be pursued like a pariah, its leaders and operatives afforded no cover, given no sustenance.

A priest hunt against all who practice priestcraft should be avoided. Not every cleric is a fiend. There are some, a minority no doubt, who are in the Church because they are motivated by a love of a god who on occasion they believe they see in the person of another in need of succour. They neither participated in nor approved child molestation. They may not have spoken out when they should have but the anonymous pressure of the group can be stifling and it would be punitive to select these clerics out for anything other than mild rebuke.

The vile cabal of bishops and their lewd but lesser lieutenants are what needs to be hauled before an Irish Nuremburg for their crimes against the humanity of our children. Figuratively they should go to the gallows where the drop will bring them to their own moral level. Derilect and delinquent their place in society is apart from it.

10 comments:

  1. bring back the penal days ,jeeesuuss Id be up for a bit of priest /dickie dodger (nun) hunting,I would,nt even charge, marty f

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  2. I picked my daughter up from school back a few years ago i think she was around 10 years old at the time.... she said to me walking over rhe road the girl in my class her dad died last night, i said what age was he i think 33/34/ i said it must be cancer or a heart attack. the next day it was all over the papers, that peter mc closkey, he was abused at 13.. which the story is very shocking...he went to donal murray the bishop of limerick. and was told more anless drop ur case our legal them are the best... he was found the next day by his family dead in the shed....

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  3. Tony, a sad outcome to a life blighted by the monstrous men of the cloth.

    Marty, go for it - they deserve all the stick they get

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  4. A brave piece AM. It seems a descent to the depths of depravity is often bizarrely preceded by a proclamation/assumption of moral superiority on the part of the perpetrator/abuser. I wonder did these abusers specifically enter the church in order to be in a position to abuse. Or did they enter for other reasons and realise once there they were in an institution where they could unleash their darkest desires with impunity. How many of these abusers and their protectors have condemned consensual sexual relationships, gay marriage etc over the years.

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  5. PM, my own view is that the Church offered the abusers a massive opportunity to ply their trade, rather than them being of sound disposition at the time they joined but later going bad. I think that is one reason behind the decline in people going into the priesthood - not as easy these days to get away with child rape. So for sbusers the advantages of joining the priesthood are curbed. Therefore they have to look elsewhere.

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  6. Despite going to a religious school that has since been described as "a hotbed of pedophilia" (St.Peter's, Wexford) at the time I was there and despite the fact that I am a revolutionary socialist, I am today a practicing catholic.

    Something I find hard to explain myself. I worship in a Friary that is untainted by any of this horror.

    The worst that happened to me in my school days was getting my arse pinched by a raping man of the cloth who has since done time (not near enough IMHO).

    We knew what was going on from first year, but had neither the vocabulary to explain it, or anyone, parents, lay teachers or anyone outside who wanted to know.

    When this latest report (finally) came out I had to turn off my computer, the radio and basically bury my head for 36 hours or be overcome with blind rage. It's the moral indignation from people and institutions who were silent at the time that gets to me the most.

    I would like to see a mass resignation of all bishops and priests who are in anyway guilty by association followed by criminal proceedings where applicable.

    Rory

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  7. Great article.. Brehon law. The law of the People. End of Story. Gods laws have been sodomized and manipulated to produce a class of mindless baby producing system perpetuating drone/dronettes.

    We are all in this together don't forget.

    I don't think a man will realize the pain, grief, dis pare that he has created until he's witnessed it first hand, or had a gruesome awakening to it.. Ie..

    Punishment should fit the crime.

    There is something working away in the background that we all know nothing of, this is the reason its so hard to understand what's going on..

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  8. It's the likes of Enda Kenny suddenly getting on his high horse that sickens me. He of the Party of Oliver J. Flanegan and extreme catholic conservatism. They should all be silent and wearing sackcloth and ashes instead of making political hay.

    Rory

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  9. The question still needs answering, "Why will this institution be allowed to survive and, eventually, once again thrive?". Adlai Stevenson said that people "get the government they deserve". Well, the Irish people have the church they deserve. Clerical abuse, in my time, was absolutely and openly rampant. The dirtier secret is that EVERBODY knew. Not just the peelers, local authorities etc but parents and guardians of those abused. The perverse fact is that we allowed our children to be abused. We have a "sentimentality" toward children that masks a ferocious resentment. Our entire attitude toward children needs to be challenged. Not much as changed in my opinion - spoilt stupid one minute and the shite beat out of them the next. This is still common practice. Pull down the Church Church and send them back to Rome in chains? Sign me up. Within 10 years some other "St Patrick" will be back selling the same old story and away we go....The problem is staring back at us in the mirror when we have a shave in the morning but we don't want to look at it.

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  10. http://countmeout/.ie for all those wishing to leave the church! i find it disgusting that a rotten organisation like the catholic church 'claims' me as a member,bunch of scumbag rapists, we talk about what they did and we use words like abuse and molestation it was RAPE,WHOLESALE RAPE! bastards is there not sufficient anger in the country to sort these bastards out,all they're interested in is money,they surely dont believe what they preach? they certainly dont practice it,they've ruined this country and they preach to people about fucking morals! i hope the catholic church withers and dies and rots in 'hell'..scum

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