Paul Malpas

I wonder whether last night’s (1st May 2012) BBC Northern Ireland television expose (to be repeated on BBC 2 tonight, 2nd May 2012) of all things clerically abusive in Ireland and directed in the main at Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic Church’s main man, could possibly be the forge out of which the last nail was hammered which will eventually fix down the lid of the coffin on this stuttering fart of a prelate.

My old mate from America, Tom Doyle was in it, jostling to be the first man in the queue at the forge.  Tom is a Dominican priest who told the American bishops 26 years ago that what they were doing in covering up this abuse scandal was wrong.  They ignored him and side-lined this once ambitious and learned man and eventually stopped paying him and cancelled his pension.  Tom, a high ranking Canon Lawyer, now travels the world giving expert testimony in courts and on the media pointing out in a very clear and precise way the damage these blundering priests are doing to their religion and flock.

Brady whilst admitting his presence in the Father Smythe case that rocked Ireland nearly 20 years ago, but only in the face of overwhelming evidence, has said he was only at the original enquiry in 1975 as a priest notary and it was not his position to publicise his knowledge.  He did not even report his findings to the parents of Smythe’s abused children and he went on abusing for another 15 or so years, whilst Brady lived in Rome, burnishing his canonical reputation.  His position was clear he said, he had to report to his superior, the bishop, and that was that as far as he was concerned.  Pontius Pilatus comes to mind.

However it is not enough to say he did his duty.  As a priest and a man of God he should surely have allowed his own private person to take an interest.  Brady , at that time was a 36 year old canon lawyer and teacher, he was no slip of a lad fresh out of seminary.  He was a mature Catholic priest with, you would hope, a conscience.  He could surely see a wrong but did nothing to counteract it other than report it to his superior.  A little like the Nazi philosophy to its followers,  it was to this level that the Church had fallen.

So to act as a good centre half in the face of this unfair criticism of Brady, the Vatican wheels out Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  The CDF is the Vatican’s latter-day Inquisition and was headed for many years by the present pope, Benny 16 and is now presided over by the disgraced Californian, Cardinal William Levada.  Scicluna said at the time when the  first evidence was introduced two years ago ” I think he (Brady) fulfilled his duty well”.  He has not learnt and he repeated his mantra again this morning.

Then onto the Pat Kenny programme on RTE 1 came Bishop Gerry Clifford, the mumbling Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, a Scicluna think alike, who said that 1975, when Brady was implicated, “was in a different era, with a different ethos” and so the the turgid rubbish keeps spewing from these advanced cleric’s lips.  Will they never ever learn.  He said the damage to the victims was not realised in those days and it was not treated  seriously.  What shite, the Church knew about its long lasting damage at least in the 4th century at the Synod of Elvira in Spain where the first recorded response to clerical abuse was discussed and legislated against and also in the proceeding 17 centuries following that, where they have tried and failed to grip the problem and failed because of  the transient bishops need to retain power.  Brady will not resign, although age and confidence have deserted him.  The only thing keeping him in place is his own need for power, defending the indefensible is his ethos.

Bishop Clifford’s only answer to his circumlocutor Kenny, who really lost his chance to hammer the man because he got lost in his own verbosity, was to say that if the same thing happened today it would be Brady’s or a modern day priest’s responsibility to go to the local Safeguarding Commission and report it there, if his bishop played a deaf one.  The local Safeguarding Commission would take up the cudgel on the priest’s behalf and stop the rot.

To this statement I have a real problem.  I have had experience of a Safeguarding Commission albeit in England and I doubt it is any different in whatever diocese you go to, they are all trained in the same response.  My experience was in the Salford Diocese, a bunch of dudes I have written about at length, managed and run by priests with a sprinkling of lawyers looking for Vatican recognition and a heap of professionals in the field of Child Safety, who are only looking for additions to their curriculum vitae and could not give two damns about abused children and vulnerable adults.

In my case the fumbling idiot of a priest I reported to agreed with my accusations saying he had heard of the abuser for the whole of his twenty five years as a priest.  Wherever these holy men got together on retreat or at the golf course, they whispered and tittered about the goings on of my man but did nothing about it.  This fool said that their files were clean yet the whole bloody diocese knew of the satanic deeds of this monsignorial monster.  This just sums up the corporative philosophy of the Church and in the years to come when the filth that is the Catholic Church is finally exposed, it will be this philosophy that drained the life out of the Vatican and made millions just like me, who had devoted their lives to its teaching, receive the bravura to walk away to their own personal, mental and philosophical peace.

If you wish to read more on this subject google “Clerical Whispers, 2nd May 2012″ and try and watch BBC2 repeat tonight Wednesday 2nd April 2012.

My darling wife of almost 40 years and myself have been enjoying full time life in Ireland, this land we considered our spiritual home, for the last seven years and before that part time for yonks, going back into the 1960s.  In all that time nothing really has changed, some people got a little uppity when money was flowing like the Niagara Falls in full spate, during the era known as the Celtic Tiger years, but all in all those years of excess passed our little town of Boyle by.  A few profited and lost but most carried on struggling as they have always done.  There was a lot of losers, in the main young married couples who were forced to pay hyper-inflated house prices and are now in hyper-negative equity, to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand euro, which they will spend the rest of their lives recovering from, if indeed they ever do.  I said nothing has changed, but for a few greedy bastards in Dublin who forced the situation in the good days, although they have had some come-uppance, are still left with a nice little pile under the mattress.  This cabal of high ranking politicians, civil servants and bankers have been screwing this state since DeValera learnt to write his signature on Government documents and they are the only winners and always will be if we kowtow.

I have no real complaints, if we take the above mentioned filth out of the equation but I was also caught up in this octopus like struggle against ever diminishing financial returns and I know how soul destroying it can be.  However the people are lovely and the countryside is beautiful and I am glad we made the move.

Unfortunately there is one thing I have noticed and which I was not aware of when living in England and that might be because as we get older we have more need to contact government and public sector departments.  My wife certainly has because she decided, shortly after coming here, to devote her life to the needy in our little society and decided to use her talents, carefully honed on the cut and thrust of rearing a family in England.  She became a volunteer information provider at the Boyle branch of the Citizens Information Centre dispensing information and advice to the mass of disadvantaged people trying to work their way round the well wrought maze of social protection, health, taxation and employment legislation that had been succinctly brought together by successive governments to, at the very least, confuse the most able in our society.

All the departments in these government organizations had been filled over a number of years by a class of people who were more interested in collecting their hefty wage packet at the end of each pay period than in giving  sometimes vital help and service to the public.  When times became hard and although they had to take cuts in pay which were nowhere near as bad as those employed in the public sector, they , themselves, hardened their outlook on the deserving outside world.  Their philosophy was, “I’ve got a job, I’m not earning as much as I used to, so fuck everyone else.  Why should I bother my arse helping other people and as for these volunteers, who are doing it for nothing, fuck them.  They are only keeping my mate out of a job”

More and more, every day, this philosophy, this canon, was adopted by every public service in the land.  They became experts at obfuscation, delay, the need for consultation with their seniors, buck-passing and general zombie-like behaviour which has enraged those who look for help.  Now this unresponsive behaviour might well come as a result of policy from the upper echelons of their departments but it does show how these people are willing to embrace this negative atitude to their fellow man.  It is amazing how they can sleep at night with this antisocial mantra praying on their minds.

Examples of this behaviour are numerous in every department, in all taxation departments whether the money is being paid to them or especially when they have to pay rebates this total lack of spontaneity and interest is apparent.  Throughout all departments of the HSE and especially in the department responsible for the issue of medical cards to the old and needy for free medical assistance this philosophy reigns.  Mr James Reilly TD, Minister for Health in Ireland said yesterday “Those who are most vulnerable get looked after” but this is patently not true because Helen has been fighting for the renewal of medical cards for a needy and vulnerable mid-70s couple on limited funds for four months after they had tried unsucessfully themselves for three months prior to asking for help.  Note that this is a renewal not an application and Mr Reilly’s department in Finglas just sit there in dumb isolation offering anything but progress in the matter.

Other departments now just do not bother to answer the phone, thus saving themselves the problem of thinking up an excuse.  The Small Claims court and the Department of Social Protection who deal with the bulk of benefits must sit in an office 200 yards down the road from their previous handsets, they just do not answer enquiries.  If they do this, of course, they do not have to embroil themselves in other people’s problems, but is that not why they are there?

Now even the Citizens Information service is suffering from this same disease.  When my wife first joined this organization whose ethos was to help the disadvantaged of society she found the bottom layers consisted of an admirable bunch of unpaid volunteer information providers doing their best for others but when she had to go upstairs to talk to the paid management level she found the same malaise, the same disinterest as in other branches of the public service.  The management were only there to propagate their own positions, they were not interested in the ethos or the progress of their organization nor did they have the skills to improve or even carry out their departments purpose which is to empower citizens in their rights and entitlements.  These managers could at their best only organise meetings to discuss nothing but just to be there.  Results did not enter the equation.

In all my wife’s four years in this most unenviable of tasks and with every public department she applied to, she was initially  surprised and then desparately worried at the lack of any determination and application in these sectors.  She found the levels of interest and help abysmally low.  There was no enthusiasm, care or willingness from the public face of these departments.  Nobody could  bother their arses when it came to solving a problem or even to consider the sad cases that she put before them.

For Ireland to drag itself out of this morass it finds itself in, something first has to be done to reset the moral compasses of those that languish in the public sector, which I understand is approximately half of the working population of this country.  A stiff task for any body especially that inert body they call the Dail but  hopefully there might be a latter-day Daniel O’Connell in our midst.

Anne Harris, the Editor of the Irish Sunday Independent calls them the “coping class” and the Irish Times calls them “the squeezed middle”.  They are the ordinary working people of the country who go to work, pay their taxes and vastly increased taxes they are, after the bankers, developers and successive governments have flagrantly ruined the financial basis of our country.  These people are bringing up their families on an ever decreasing income but on the whole behave themselves and just get on with life as best they can.  These are the people any government would expect to bring them out of a crisis.  They do not rebel, they might moan but generally they just get on with it.

Recently however this vast majority, this huge uncomplaining mass of people, have been starting to think and to wonder why it always is, when trouble abounds, they are the first people to get their arses kicked.  The answer is of course that like the family dog, their arses are kicked because they are there and the government and establishment hope they will remain there.  But there are signs, faint signs possibly as yet,  but signs that this tolerant behaviour is being cast aside and the average thinker wonders whether it is because the plutocracy’s chickens are coming home to roost.

Various things have been happening in this big wide world of ours recently  to suggest that the wealthy, the bourgeoisie, the establishment who never suffer in the hardtimes, have had their day after their various antics have come to light and no longer will the coping class just cope, they will rebel with disasterous effect on those who choose to govern.  Even the big prop of our capitalist classes has had its strength eroded mightily.  The Christian Church, that harbinger of decent life and a definite ally of the system so far, has blotted its copybook and dampened its trousers in its headlong pursuit of hedonistic values and can no longer be relied on to capture the imagination of people.

It is well known that the press have had a very powerful grip on the minds of most for a long time and the government and establishment have been using this grip to their advantage.  The popular press have been feeding garbage and titillation to the people for a long time and helping to keep the public’s eye off the bigger picture which is the rape of the many by the few.

However the Tory inspired Leveson Inquiry into media culture and ethics, and its relationship with the police and politicians, is bringing more unexpected worms out of the woodwork than Mr Cameron really wanted when he set it up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that brought down that superb merchant of trash, twaddle and sleaze, The News Of The World.  An interesting thing here, and it shows the rubbish that this weekly newspaper set out, was when the Murdoch’s, in their zeal to regain lost ground, closed the newspaper down.  Their customers of trite did not switch to another paper but just stopped buying an alternative.  It shows what that group of people wanted with their Sunday breakfast.

One of the above worms mentioned by that most unlikely of witnesses called by the inquiry, Mr Paul Staines or his alter ego Guido Fawkes, the archblogger, was in his condemnation of the British press.  He told the story of photographs of Mr Christopher Myers, one time aide to William Hague the Foreign Minister, who had been sharing a room with his boss whilst out on the hustings, which had come into Mr Staines possession and placed Mr Myers in a compromising situation.  Now I am not interested in the ins and outs of Mr Hague and his friends because all that has been mulled over in the press for years, but these photographs are interesting.  Mr Staines sold these photographs to the News of the World for £20,000.  At that time Andy Coulson, one time editor of the paper who had resigned because of pressure from the phone hacking furore and was now David Cameron’s press advisor seems to have used his influence to persuade the paper to spike any story that could come out of the photographs.  The photographs were never published and Mr Hague gave out a press statement about his happy marriage and all the papers covered it, but again the News of the World fought shy.

What also came out of last weeks press runs was the bravery of Richard Ingrams, who has been pushing boundaries for over 50 years, first with Private Eye and now for the last 20 years with his monthly magazine The Oldie.  He tells the story of another man long encumbered by innuendo and gossip about his perverted sex life but who always managed, being a pillar of the establishment, to keep his story out of the newspapers.  Jimmy Savile, that doyen of Tory Party ministers, who told everybody he came into contact with on these matters that if he went down he would bring the upper echelons with him.  The Oldie ran the story of the BBC scoop that never was.  The story of Jimmy Savile and pubescent girls from a remand home in Essex, whom he used to invite into the BBC studios and abuse them during breaks in his television rehersals, was withdrawn at the last minute by BBC senior management because it implicated both the BBC and two living celebrities.  Now everybody needs to be concerned at this facet of his libido because Savile’s whole persona, created from 25 years at the BBC, was in his handling and dealing with children and if this story is true, and I think it is, his whole image would need to be removed from public life. Rumours of this man’s mores have been circulating for years.  Even I ran a story on 23 April 2010 on this topic and Jimmy Savile’s contribution which was backed up for me by a restaurateur in the New Forest who often used to cook for Ted Heath, when Jimmy brought a new batch of boys down for Ted to savour.

The real problem with all this news is that it is getting to close for comfort for those at the top of the tree, those who have been, by doubtful means, controlling your every breath.  Take for example that thorn in the side of the Scottish legal system, Mr Robert Green and his campaign for justice for Hollie Greig, a young Scottish Downs Syndrome girl who was horribly abused for many years by a large ring of top of the range paedophiles in Aberdeen, which included judges, police officers, social workers and teachers. He was recently found guilty of breach of the peace at Stonehaven Sheriff’s Court after undergoing something like 20 court appearances, costing well over £500,000 in public money and involving 64 prosecution witnesses and engaged the services of most of the top brass of the Scottish Justice Department.  All this for a breach of the peace hearing.  The only top dog who did not appear was the former Procurator Fiscal of Scotland, Elish Angiolini, whom Robert wanted to call as a witness but was not allowed by Sheriff Principal Edward Bowen, who at the trial did not declare his relationship with Angiolini.  This was the same Elish Angiolini who resigned in mysterious circumstances last May when supposedly at the height of her powers as Procurator Fiscal.

Robert however has now managed to pin down Miss Angiolini and has had a file opened on her and been granted a crime number by Lothian Police.  Now where does Angiolini live but in Dunblane, scene of terrible circumstances 16 years ago, when a lone gun man, Robert Hamilton, shot and killed 16 children and a teacher.  Hamilton was a suspected paedophile who was implicated with George Robertson, or to give him his full title, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, one time Labour Defence Secretary and Nato Secretary General, who disappeared off the radar very quickly in 2004.  George also lives in Dunblane, along with, it seems, some very important people.  Not bad for a town of 8,000 inhabitants.  I wrote a blog posting about this particular coven entitled Paedophilia, The Hollie Greig Scandal, The Dunblane Massacre And The Scottish Cabal on 4 April 2010 which proved to be the most popular piece I have ever written.  It is still there in the top 3 most widely read blogs of mine after two years and so are all these people we have spoken about, but there time will come.  Their chickens will eventually come home to roost especially when the coping classes rise up.

Life in Ireland is no different to life in England except really in two different ways.  The casual immigrant, as I class myself as being, one who never did his homework before coming here, one who classed Ireland as his or her’s spiritual home and had to get here come what may, all of a sudden runs up against matters that do not seem to make sense.  Take for example the Health Service here.  If you step outside your door intent on a visit to the doctors, the euros start to clock up.  If the doctor is at his surgery and you nod in his direction he charges you €40 if you are lucky, then there is another €20 for a blood test and when you go to the chemists with a prescription you can be charged anything.  I remember being asked for €193 for some pills for my wife.  There is also 50 cent government  levy on each type of medication you walk away with.  I did not of course pay the €193 but handed same back to the pharmacist explaining how my wife has decided to take the old fashioned remedy and chosen to ignore her complaint because in most cases complaints fade away unless they are very serious and then the doctor or pharmacist cannot really help.  All pharmaceutical products and doctors work on the fear factor to cower you in to partaking.  Why cannot they set up a National Health Service here.  A think tank of doctors and health professional spent a year recently looking into this ideal and came to the conclusion that the transition could be done smoothly and at no real cost if the motivation was there but it isn’t and the consultants and medical practitoners continue to make hay without any real discipline as they have always done so.

So with these kind of costs clicking up like a till register in a superstore, the potential patient has to be quick on his feet to avoid bankruptcy and like most problems Irish there is of course a way round the problem but you need to take a combined 3rd level course in computers and psychology to prevail.  Either that or take a lesson off the simple man in the street who at all times and in every country has found out a way round every barrier known to man.  So within weeks after taking some very intense lessons on life and how to live it, stood at the various bars around town, I passed my examination with flying colours and now the mazuma stays in my pocket and does not grace the doctors.  This medium is not the place to relate the secrets in which I matriculated but if you, like me, will stand at the bar or better still sit on a high stool at your favourite watering hole and invest in copious quantities of Arthur’s finest cordials, your investment will be well rewarded.

Another happening yesterday made me stop and ponder on the conundrums of Irish life as opposed to the puritan English.  Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein TD and Deputy Leader of her party, and champion of all that is foolish about her party, stood up in the Dail and roundly criticized the Coalition’s minister for Social Services, Joan Burton, for once again attacking the very poor in this country.  The reason for this broadside was the fact that under the present rigourous belt tightening that the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition Government is imposing on the inhabitants of this fair isle, Joan was looking seriously at the social service payments paid to thousands of parents throughout the country for Communion and Confirmation dresses hopefully intended for their little cherubic daughters to go lightly tripping up the aisle of their parish church on those two annual sacramental days ordained by Holy Mother the Church.

Now I do not know how the lads fare out in this fashion parade and I hope they are not left with their arse hanging out of a scraggy pair of trousers they have worn every day for the last two years, but yesterday in the Dail only Communion dresses were mentioned.  It might be a case of the Government giving early lessons in cross-dressing which would ease their financial problems no end with the thought of the word gender being thrown out of the window and the lack of need for distinguishing the sexes.

However the thought that these little Catholic children of Christ are getting free party dresses while the poor Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian and all the other myriad of religious and non-religious parents do not get even a sock fills me with distaste.  Is it a fact and so I was told since being knee high to a grasshopper, that the Catholic religion is God’s chosen course and that all the rest of them and now me included, are damned or is the Catholic Church in Ireland after years and years of abusing these little children getting more than its fair share of the financial cake?

Now it is obvious to the casual observer that because of this clerical abuse of the little children of Christ and their abuse of so many things, in so many walks of life, that the attendances at mass are dwindling and that the congregations at Catholic churches now seem to be limited to people over 70 years old who stopped thinking about their redemption 40 years ago.  So why should it be that the thrusting and vital young parents of today, who only see the inside of a church at Baptisms, Communions, weddings and funerals find the need to equip their loved ones in the finest couture the government can buy.  The answer is obvious, because it is there.  Once you see an apple on a tree it is nature’s course to want to pluck it.  The communion dress serves a variety of purposes and if the mother is wise she will design the dress that it fits the child for every social occasion for the next seven years and after puberty is passed, can be cut down by the able and made into very decent curtains for the back bedroom.

Last year the average payout per child was €242 and Joan said yesterday, whilst under constant attack from that party who value family life above everthing else, she might have to limit the payment to €120.  Tell me why in this day of total financial insecurity, where handicapped children are being denied their basic rights, where every government penny is counted, is it even thinking of giving parents, who never dream of going to church, unless there is a party afterwards, €120 towards a new frock.  I am not annoyed, I am slightly shocked but I am also completely dumfounded.