Paul Malpas

I retired at the relatively early age of 59 on the eve of my 60th birthday.  I retired because I did not like what work had become but I had assiduously applied myself to the task and had a modicum of success and vowed my next few years were for Helen and myself.  I was reasonably young and had most of my faculties intact but I was obviously needing something to do and I naturally knew what it was.  I wanted to write, not rubbish, but something with a little quality attached either in phrasing or ideas or both.

So after a period of thought and preparation I set about writing the memoir of my life, not a great life but one with some interest even to the casual reader, let alone my children for whom the tome was originally prescribed.  I started it in the winter of 2006 and quickly found out that I could write more easily at night time when it was quiet and there was no distraction.  So with a little planning and preparation I set to.  I was amazed; the words tumbled out of my mind onto the page almost quicker than I could write.  In those days and even today with some scripts, I had to put pen to paper first before transferring them onto the typed page.

So as England was trounced by Australia in five Ashes test matches over that deep dark winter, I crafted 130,000 words of my own to describe myself and my forebears.  I wrote it in about four weeks and then asked Helen, my devoted wife of 39 years, to type it out, because her earlier training, before she started on me, was in that direction.  She knocked out about 60 pages in quick time before she tired of the task, or possibly of me, who stood at her shoulder and glowed as she committed my words to the screen and she told me that I would have to finish the job myself.

For me the size of the imposition was gargantuan, never having used a keyboard previously but in true surveyor’s style, I split the work into sections and vowed to complete 20 pages per day, in double line spacing, about 6000 words per session.  I had it done in a little over three weeks and I was a proud man until I started reading and editing which then took me the best part of the next three years before I was happy enough to let others read it.  It was received well by some and not by others.  I could not help being critical of some stages and some characters in my life.  I was brutal but probably factual in parts but I knew I was not quite there yet.

Sometime between 2009 and 2011 my painfully typed memoir disappeared off my computer screen, why or how, I do not know but into the ether it went.  I had made a typed copy but for tinkering purposes I missed it.  I was always adding words or subtracting sentences and it was lovely to play with it.  I am no expert in computers and it probably is in there somewhere that the intrepid expert will  easily extricate.  One day I might give the task to some familial great in the field to find but I have kind of resigned myself to retyping and not without a little pleasure at the thought, because in retrospect some sections need revisiting and rewriting from a different angle.  However that is a promised duty for when I run out of steam and not now when I am so busy with other ideas.

So come the winter of 2009 I was in a writing desert, wanting to write but trying to find a medium, finding a way for others to read my thoughts.  The urge to write is an amazing need in one so struck.  You are impelled by some intangible force to get words on paper, not particularly to earn money, though that would be nice, but that others could benefit from or be critical of your fine turn of phrase and laugh or at least smirk at the humour of your thoughts.

It was then I was struck by an idea mooted by my son-in-law, although he was referring to it in a business sense.  Blogging and how it could help people in business.  I signed myself up as a non-paying customer of a symposium he was about to give on the subject and after 10 hours of education, I realised this idea was for me.  It also taught me a few insider tricks in how to make the blog more available to others.

Within a couple of days my daughter and husband had set me up with a vehicle to put my words on and after a very shy and tentative start I was into my stride very quickly, helped by the antics of the Catholic Church and the publication of the Ryan Report into clerical abuse in Dublin, which gave me an ocean to trawl through for ideas from the very start.

I realised  quickly the subjects to steer clear of.  My scrapbook was full of poison pen letters and anonymous phone calls and threats of all descriptions, including three from the local rag here in Boyle, who were considering suing me for defamation.  Funnily enough I also received a threat from a bumbling priest in Manchester who was going to sue me for “deformation”.  My mind has boggled ever since.  Certainly the parish pump is a no go area if you want a quiet life, especially in small town Ireland.  There are still people seething from stuff I wrote regarding the local scene two years ago, it does not matter that it was the truth but for them to be confronted with it, was not quite on.

So my mind and blogging moved to the international arena and away from the small minds stadium.  I wrote about anything and everything, little ideas wormed their way into my head as I lay, a supine insomniac, in my bed at night and the next day these thoughts displayed themselves onto my screen as I nodded off for want of sleep.

What cheered me and what drove me on was the choice of subjects, especially the Catholic church and its works and pomps for which I had a particular dislike, but the real driver was the feedback.  Over the last 27 months I have met thousands of people through this medium with readers from all over the world e-mailing me and posting comments on the site.  So far people from over 150 countries have contacted me to give me their point of view on a particular subject.  That is the real power of the blog, the fact that there are no boundaries, the whole world is your stage.  Once you have written your piece it is there forever, like an over-abundant fruit tree with a never ending crop waiting to be picked off 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by anybody who chances along.  In that time of 27 months, I have written 177 blog postings containing about 300,000 words with hundreds of thousands of people reading what I have to say.  A tool called Google Analytics tells you exactly how many people read my printed words and how much of it they actually read.  Really useful when you are looking for popular topics to write about, not that that bothers me because I write about things that jar my mind and if others agree or even disagree that is where my pleasure lies.

In all that time two people stand out as really influencing my thought process and making me think seriously about my topics but at the same time distracting me in the nicest possible way from my task of delivering words, having to construct and answer a daily crop of e-mails to them.  However their thoughts, ideas, cajolements and humour have turned me into a far better person.

One of this duo contacted me first out of a need to share his experiences with me after a piece I had written.  This single contact turned into an avalanche of daily e-mails, full of wit, innuendo and downright truth about the revelations coming out of the Catholic Church which certainly attracted the main butt of our humour at that time.  His constant hammering on my computer screen made our main construct into a viable cause and hopefully we will be friends for ever, even after this rash of clerical crap is over.

The main problem with my writing is my lack of subtlety.  My scripts are a blunt force, which makes the point to easily.  I needed  assuagement, like a car engine needs lubricating oil.  My problem was that I did not understand the power of the blog.  I did not realise that you could not just tell it as it was but as the blog became popular I knew that this bluntness could not last because I might be over-stepping that thin, hazy, grey line they call legality.

I was eager to learn because my wealth, however small it might be, was destined for Arthur Guinness’ pockets and not some sidewinding litigant hoping to line his breeches with my hard earned.  A person made herself available, a person with more than a little knowledge of the legal code, a person, who at first, had me cowed with the fineness of her mind, she volunteered to turn my rough Longsight ideas and words into things of beauty and awe.  Her deftness of phrasing was a pleasure to read, her subject easily wrought but it was her humour I craved.  In the midst of all this horror and talk of what legal bods could do to you if you only slightly overstepped this indeterminable line, there was a humour so unlike anything from her ilk, that I had to listen to and take in everything she said.

Eventually her tuition turned me into a far better man and a far more circumspect writer and hopefully I taught her a little of the northern spirit she claimed she had in her genes ( her family having moved from a semi-detached mud hut in Jarrow to a twee bijou residence close to Buck House in the 14th century).  So,  having been edited and tutored to distraction, I write now with ease, splaying silken sentences onto a sensuous screen.  I am no longer the man I was but I thank both my amanuenses for turning me from the guttersnipe I obviously was to a person you could take anywhere.

This week the last chapter of The Murphy Report can now be published.  You remember the Murphy Report, issued in November 2009 and headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, into how the Catholic Church in Ireland dealt with the mass of allegations of clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the period 1975 -2004 and how the Church covered up this abuse.

Chapter 19 of this Report was omitted at the time of publication because it dealt with ongoing prosecutions of clergy and the last and arguably the most serious case was concluded this week and concerned the paedophilic behaviour of a  now laicised priest, 57 year old Anthony Walsh, who received a 16 year prison sentence for 17 counts of sexual abuse on three boys including five counts of buggery on one boy.  The last four years of this sentence were suspended as the judge had received a report from a psychiatrist saying that it was very unlikely that he would offend again.  This was Walsh’s third admittance to state prisons for offences of this nature.

It seems that throughout his priestly career the hierarchy of the Archdiocese, in the form of Canons, Monsignors, Auxillary Bishops, Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals, even Pope John Paul II for four years, all knew of this man’s predilictions, from the time he was being educated in seminary, through his priesthood until he was laicised in 1996.  Some 23 years of paedophilic mayhem.

To have a better understanding of this perverts predations, I will put his career into a chronological framework.

1973 -1978.  A Coolock boy, Anthony Walsh, was educated in seminary, visiting various parishes in his role  as lector, acolyte and deacon  and awaiting the definitive call of the bishop, to advance himself to priesthood.  For it is only when the bishop is satisfied that a seminarian will make a good priest does he give this call.  Now it seems that in this five or six year period as a seminarian, rumour abounded of his perverse deeds.  So how did the Bishop, undoubtedly knowing of these rumours, call him to the priesthood unless this type of behaviour was excepted practice for a Catholic priest.

1978.  Ordained a priest and within weeks was abusing one of the altar boys who served at his Ordination Mass and who eventually gained some satisfaction this week.

1978 -1986.  Assistant priest at Ballyfermot Church in Dublin, adjacent to Phoenix Park where he came under the wing of that charasmatic priest Fr. Michael Cleary, the same Fr. Cleary who sang at the Pope’s visit to Dublin in 1981 and who by this time had fathered two sons with his housekeeper.  Fr. Cleary had a radio show and a travelling band of priests who went under the name of “All Priests Show”.  In this band Fr. Tony Walsh was a guitar player and Elvis impersonator.  He was in a very strong position and his seniors did not wish to rock the boat.  He was in charge of a group of 60+ altarboys and was manager of that famous institution in those days “The Children’s Mass” every week at Ballyfermot church.  On top of that he had the run of all the National Schools (Junior Scools) in the area.  For a man of his tendency it could be said  that he was on the pig’s back, if it was not so serious and the fact was it was on childrens’  backs he was.

During all this time he was subject to numerous complaints and allegations but between Fr. Michael Cleary, Monsignor Alex Stenson, the Chancellor of the Archdiocese and Canon lawyer and Auxillary Bishop James Kavanagh, they managed to fob most of these charges off by saying that Walsh was sorry for his sins and that Archbishop Dermot Ryan was dealing with the matter.  For all these abusing eight years nothing happened to Fr. Walsh until he was transferred to Westland Row parish.

1986 -1988.  Esconced in Westland Row parish in the centre of Dublin he continued his merry way abusing young boys until and no longer under the patronage of Fr. Cleary he was removed from parish duties and sent to a monastery or secure institution while Archbishop Connell applied to have him laicised by writing to the Pope for permission.

1987.  Served one year imprisonment for the abuse of two boys in Westland Row

1988 – 1996  For a few years the Vatican vacillated thinking that a longer spell in the monastery might cure him but it was only after four years and appeals by an Archdiocesan committee led by Connell and supported by Bishops Willie Walsh and John MacAreavey that the Pope granted a licence for laicisation.  Their actions would have been commendable during this process if only they had told others but they did not and Walsh landed up at a requiem mass for some old man and was allowed to take part in the ceremony after which he raped the grandson of the deceased in the church toilets after the service.

!996 – 2001.  He spent most of this time in prison for further abuses of young boys having received a six year term for which he served just less than five years.

2002 – 2010 Fighting a legal battle with the barristers of other victims.  He and his defence team trying every trick in the book to thwart the legal process until finally this week justice was eventually meted out and for three Ballyfermot boys who had had their lives ruined by this man 30 years previously and who had gone through various stages of torment, some degree of closure was given.

One wonders whether Walsh gained strength in his defence, from the 2002 indemnity that the Fianna Fail Minister for Justice, The Cahirciveen man, John O’Donoghue, had pushed through the Dail that said that the State would pick up 90% of all costs  arising from clerical abuse and whether any of this fund went towards paying for his long and protracted defence.  Because I am sure that a poor boy from Coolock could not afford this, eight years of legal argument, Elvis impersonator or not and if this fund did figure in his accountancy perhaps in these very straightened times the tax payers of Ireland should be thinking that this daft Kerry man’s idea should be chucked in the bin and the billion euro fund used for something more substantial.

As I said in The Slippery Church blog of 3 February 2010, the bog standard priest in the Archdiocese of Dublin is revolting. There is more fall-out after the O’Mahoney/Drennan schism at Maynooth a fortnight ago.  The ordinary priests of the diocese or at least 25 middle-aged and therefore senior priests are, according to Alison Healy in yesterday’s Irish Times, unhappy at the way Archbishop Martin has not shown any compassion towards the auxillary bishops of Dublin.

It seems that there was a meeting of these 25 mature Dublin priests at Manresa retreat house on 18 January 2010, the minutes of which appear in yesterday’s Irish Catholic newspaper.  This meeting of time-served priests was called to discuss the Murphy Report.  They said of the auxillary bishops that “a grave injustice had been done to men who had loyally served this diocese with selfless commitment and Christlike compassion”.  They also said that Archbishop Martin had tarnished the name of O’Mahoney and that the Church had not engaged in a “cover up”.  They also claimed that Archbishop Martin had a dictatorial manner.  No wonder I accused Archbishop Martin, in my blog Once A Catholic on 7 December 2009, of shilly shallying and talking mumbo jumbo.  With these type of men at your back you would need to watch every word.

Let us get this right.  It is a fact that there was wholesale sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin. The bishops knew about it, certainly the senior priests knew about it and the Murphy Report considers the majority of normal priests knew about it in one form or another but no hand was raised only the hand of the terror stricken abused who were kept quiet for years.  The Murphy Report has made all this public knowledge, the Government agree with it, the Gardai agree with it and Archbishop Martin to his credit has wholeheartedly embraced its findings.

It does show you however, the bishops and senior priests who have been basted with this scandal, this crime, are so remote from their people that unless they go, and go quickly, the Church will fall.  How can these priests say there was no “cover up”, when faced with the facts and the length of time this abuse was allowed to continue unhindered.

Undoubtedly there were good priests doing great acts of Christian work, but while they carried out these acts , they knew.  The numbers are to high to disregard and consider minimal, manageable and acceptable.  In the Dublin Archdiocese at the moment, according to their official website, there are about 650 practising priests.  The Murphy Report states that they received information about 180 abusing priests ( let us say that the falsely accused equalled the number who were not caught at it).  Therefore you can say 28% of priests in Dublin were abusers or to mollify this % a little; let us say that 20 years ago there was 100 more priests in the Archdiocese,say 750, that would suggest 24%.  Let us therefore say for ease of reckoning that the abusers were 25% of the roll.

There is an argument that says that the number of abusing priests is no more than in the lay world and therefore not unusual and should be acceptable.  I cannot accept that because I argue that the Church should have realized the position of a priest was one of responsibility and intimacy and an absolute goldmine for those with abuser tendencies.  There should have been some psychological filtration system in place to counteract this obvious attraction and therefore the % of abusers should have been nil or approaching same and certainly not 25% of the total.  What kind of religion preaches one thing and practices another.  And if the above figures are to be believed, 25% of mature lay men are abusers also and therefore 1 in 4 children are abused.  Someone, somewhere, shoot down my choplogic.  I cannot believe it.  I am totally dismayed.

Working on the principle that the above is wrong but that the facts are right, the answer is that the position of a priest is an absolute must for the determined abuser.  He has no need to hide behind a marriage or be coated with the dirty old man syndrome, he in fact can live out his dreams and desires to his hearts content, providing he is careful and grooms the right children.

The Church should have known and historically probably did and that is why there has been this systemic and atroposic failure and why Archbishop Martin or the Pope has to quickly organize a Night of the Long Knives.