Fibber Magee

By AM Monday, July 25, 2011

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Well, well, well, Bishop John Magee. Truly you are one of the most glorious examples of supreme idiocy in human history. As proven by you actually thinking you might fool all in the end, including God – Sinead O’Connor

John Magee is the type of bullshitting reprobate any gang would like to have on its books. Probably explains why he joined one and went places within it. Devious and dishonest he can be relied upon to place the interests of the illicit fraternity above and beyond that of its victims. There is, it seems, honour among fiends.

An ambitious character, Magee was described by former Vatican official, Don Diego Lorenzi, as something of a yes-man, always eager to get the bishop’s hat and perform as a toady to do so. An inveterate liar he was even caught out spoofing about the discovery of the body of Pope John Paul 1 in 1978, only days into his papacy. Initially having told the world it was he who he found the body, he later conceded it was discovered by a nun but fell back on the lame excuse that ‘I did find the body of His Holiness. I just didn't find it first.’ Something that every loser could claim in a race; they were really first, just that somebody else crossed the line before them. At least it removed facing the difficult question of what a nun had being doing in the papal bedroom at such an unbecoming hour.

The Irish Independent homing in on the theme of dishonesty added that while ‘it is impossible to know how seriously he took the authority of the elected government of this State … he had no compunction about lying to one of its ministers.’ It now causes us to reflect on Magee’s meeting with Bobby Sands as the IRA prisoner lay dying on hunger strike. What lies we may wonder did he tell Bobby.

He lied to the HSE by telling it that all cases of abuse were being reported to the Garda. It is now clear that two thirds of these cases were in fact not reported to the Garda and none at all to the HSE. Archbishop Dermot Clifford condemned Magee's "outright lie" as "indefensible." The Irish Catholic Church fits over him as snugly as a glove given that it too, according to Vatican backer Breda O’Brien, ‘needs to stop hiding and come out and tell the truth.’ All of which lends weight to the charge of Sinead O’Connor that ‘as Catholics … we can plainly see our church has been hijacked by liars.’

The only papal secretary to have served with three popes he is the central figure in the Cloyne scandal. It is his Vatican history that has, in the words of one journalist, ‘brought the child abuse scandal to a new level internationally.’ The 341 page report by the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne was damning of him. It stated that he ‘was the head of the diocese and cannot avoid his responsibility by blaming subordinates whom he wholly failed to supervise.’

Conspiring with superiors in Rome he cooked the books by putting together an accurate report for the Vatican on clerical abuse in Cloyne while falsifying the report he kept as diocesan records. Cartel Vatican and its canon law, he knew would do nothing about the matter, but Irish authorities and civil law he presumed would have acted. He cannot plead a mistake; he knew exactly what he was doing. The Gardai have already recommended that Magee be charged with withholding information that would have been of material assistance. The DPP declined to proceed.

Amazingly the excuses and pandering still continue to flow: The Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien insisted that ‘John Magee is not a monster.’ If true the word monster no longer has a meaning. If O’Brien makes such a claim on the basis that he is too banal an old codger to be capable of generating monstrosities the counter readily comes from Hanna Arendt’s ‘the banality of evil.’ Bluntly put, Magee did not give one toss for the children of Cloyne. He could not care in the slightest if priests raped kids six ways to Sunday so long as they did not wear condoms while doing it. God works in mysterious ways.