First of all there is no real analysis of what its findings mean. Of course, everyone is outraged; but there is little analysis in terms of the broader issues.

Why was the Criminology Department of Rathmines — the only critical post-graduate school in the Republic — the first casualty of clerical abuses, while with the demise of the one the priests were at the same time inaugurating another department in UCD (University College Dublin), the Bishop of Dublin’s own University? The UCD Department has managed to avoid one word of criticism agaisnt the RC Church throughout the whole process by which , in a touch-and-go manner, the revelations eventually emerged.

It may come as a surprise to some people,but the last President of Ireland and the present one,the two Marys, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese were professors of criminology. The present President was also adviser to the Bishops. My point here is simply that criminology interfaces with both the crime and the powerul pedophile-protecting church, so any appointments made were of some interest to the Church and its secret operatives in Opus Dei who jealously bestrode the corridors of Irish academic power. For it is not only the primary schools that are controlled by the Chruch , but the third level colleges and universities as well. Nothing is beneath the inquistional gaze of the Irish church. Indeed, a hundred years ago they brought down Parnell, the uncrowned king of Ireland for sexual impropriety; he wanted to marry the woman he loved. As the Yeats with some gratification reminds us :

But stories that live longest
are sung above the glass
and Parnell loved his country
and Parnell loved his lass.

Why in the mid 1970s , after two Penal Commissions, no focus or reference was made to what was going on; yet we now know that the Vatican knew about these things, politicians knew about them, Opus Dei lawyers knew about them, and the Commissoiner of the Garda Siochana may have known about them, not to mention numerous Jesuits, priests and nuns?

Why was there no connection made between the decades of secrecy and the widespread power of Opus Dei throghout Irish society? Why are all those involved in advising the Fianna Fail party as well as the Church authorities , not only given to absolute silence throughout, but raised to the bench afterwards? . And what advices did those advisers give for such a long period:? Did they — as with the clerics — not know that raping children was a criminal offfence?:

There is a frightening connection between Church and State in Ireland. Ireland is uniquely the only country in the world that actually constrained its citizens to pay by way of taxation for most of the clerical damages accruing to the victims - a small matter that would have gone as unnoticed as the scandals themselves had it not been for a couple of English reporters.

The real connection between what happened in Ferns and what the Church’s responsibilty for it has never been questioned seriously. According to one Bishop ‘celibacy’ is to blame. But celibacy might be an excuse for adult males to seek out adult females; it can hardly excuse the preponderance of crimes committed on young male children. And in any event ‘celibacy’ cannot excuse the dangerous lies perpetrating the further exploitation of the victims by Bishops holding Doctorates in Divinity. Neither does the slur on homosexuals work.

It is apparent that the real issue is the RC Church’s view of sexuality in the round. Ever since the Christian Conquest of Ireland fertility for the empire has been the main object of Irish sexuality. The unhealthy separation of the sexes in the schools for so long, the setting aside of Sile-na-Gig, the ancient Goddess of sexuality and the exclusive promotion of the Virgin Mary was the making of Irish motherhood. Sex as fertility was monitored on all fronts by a celibate priesthood and this sinister ensemble is reflected in their inability to engage a full healthy heterosexual relationship. Consequently, the victim preyed upon cannot reproduce; the victim was not fully grown or assertive; the victim was captive; and the victim was exploited through his and his parents’ lack of critical awareness. Of course the insult is at bottom an insult to irish womanhood; but even here the implications are not pressed home.

The RC Church in Ireland managed to change the whole criminal jsutice system to avoid guilt. In effect it was an exercise in total immorality for the State not to allow its citizens to raise their opinions and register their abhorrence at the crimes, in the absence of which we have the most suspect political shifts. The argument is totally confined to the great imperial Chruch and its endless lawyers , economists and ministers of State versus the victims. No social scientists are allowed to speak onthe subject, not least becasue the Church has never allowed the species to develop lest it thread upon its universal toes.

The Taoiseach has confided that the Chruch owns over 90% of the State’s schools (from three to four thousand of them) , and , in the face of the findings off the Fern’s Report , has added that Irish education would be impossible without them. it would appear that there will be no effort made for the Irish Republic to change any institutional matter respecting the awful power of the most deeply flawed imperial church in existence.

And with Sinn Fein/IRA now coming in from the cold, their dependence on the Catholic vote — not that they would say boo to the Church if they raped the whole nation — is expected to shore up an already incredibly atavistic society, where, notwithstanding the Fern’s findings, all one hears is empty expressions of outrage — nothing — nothing by way off action orientated reforms.

No; I’m wrong. The dynamic Minister for Justice has promsed that a Circuit Court Judge, Ms Evonne Murphy, will enquire into the proprieties and improprieties (if any) of the treatment of clercial complaints in the archdiocese of Dublin. No one doubts Judge Murphy’s competence or professionalism; but everyone knows that a Circuit Court Judge cannot possibly trump a Bishop, and an Irish Bishop in Ireland at that! Talk about Cardinal Law! Of course the least that should have happened is that she be given the power of a High Court judge. Senior Counsel Sean Ryan was made up before he chaired the Commission on clerical complaints and the author of the Fern’s Report was a retiring High Court judge. So, what is the government up to,in spancelling the investigation it purportedly wants to make thorough? Again , no politicians have anything to say about this procedure, which must make one pause and ponder yet again the whole apparatus of Church and State in Ireland.

One cannot get away from the obvious. The Republic of Ireland may have freed itself from the British Empire,but it never managed to do so from the Holy Roman empire. Indeed, thinking of those three-to- four thousand schools, the power and sway the church has in matters of policy, ethics; the extensive pervasion of the secret society of Opus Dei; the absence of any difference between the parties in the State and the endless arrangements to meet every requirement the Church requires, forces one to an awful — almost Spanish conclusion — that the Irish Church has recently made a phone call to one Generalissimo Franco and that he may soon arrive, if he isn’t already in Leinster House.

http://WWW.IRISHCRIMINOLOGY.COM

Seamus Breathnach

the whole matter botched from beginning to end.