Ian Paisley an inspiration in Irish Catholic Church sex scandals

The most compassionate words I have heard in Ireland on the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal came from the Rev. Ian Paisley.

That may sound utterly absurd, given Paisley's history of anti-Catholic fulminating, but while in Ireland I listened to an interview he gave on Newstalk radio last night, and it left me with an entirely new opinion of the man.

In Ireland, the Church abuse scandal has been reduced to legalistic maneuvers and predictable moral outrage comments. The children who were most affected seem strangely absent from the debate.

It is as if the argument has moved beyond the debate about the thousands of individual destroyed lives and identities shattered by the pedophiles who preyed on them.

All the speculation is about whether one bishop or another will resign, what legal maneuvering going on, were the bishops treated properly.

With all due respect to the bishops, they are not the issue here at all. The best that can be said about the whole bunch of them, with a few honorable exceptions, is that they overlooked evil when it was very evident in their ranks.

They can dance on as many pinheads as they want, but it will not excuse that fact.

Paisley instead went to the heart of the matter.

When he was asked about the Irish incidents he did not embark on a rant about the Catholic Church, which I had fully expected.

Rather, he said, and I paraphrase, that he put aside a quiet moment to pray for all those children whose lives were destroyed, who were unable to understand what had happened to them and to pray for their eventual recovery from their horrific mistreatment.

It was in no way an anti-Catholic statement, or a rant from a man once considered the greatest demagogue in Northern Irish history.

Instead, they were words of sheer wisdom from a man who went straight to the heart of the issue, the young children who faced years of official silence about the abuse that will have ruined many of their lives.

Later on in the same interview, when asked about the importance of the border in Irish life, Paisley was very frank, admitting his stance had changed on the Irish Republic but equally, the Irish Republic stance on Northern Ireland had also changed.

It was the kind of simple but direct analysis that has endeared me to the man.

At the last stage of his life, Ian Paisley saw the light and worked to bring peace to his troubled land.

The fact that he broke with the past and the old hatreds is a measure of the man.

He is an example to all in the Catholic Church who would prefer to sweep the current scandals under the carpet and pretend they never happened.

Ian Paisley spoke up and spoke truth to power when it came to Northern Ireland.

The Catholic Church needs to do likewise.

He should be an inspiration to them, strange and all as that might seem.

Irish Church needs more than Pope's blessing

Posted by Niall O'Dowd at 6/5/2009 11:36 AM EDT

The Irish Bishops have met the pope in Rome today to discuss the horrific child abuse scandal in Ireland. I wouldn't hold my breath that much will change.

This pope has his own issues on the topic, notably allowing Cardinal Bernard Law who oversaw rampant abuse in Boston to come to the Vatican and take up an exalted position there.

In fairness, he spoke out passionately in Australia and America in recent visits about the shocking behavior of his fellow priests who disgraced the cloth -- but there is still a lurking sense that the church does not quite "get it."

Let me introduce them to someone who does -- a close relative in Ireland, a lifelong Mass-goer and communicant who has just given up the Holy Ghost. He no longer is attending Mass, so disgusted was he about what came out in the past few weeks.

He and many others suddenly realize just how dangerous a place Ireland was growing up in the fifties and sixties -- pedophilia and physical abuse of children among the clergy was rampant. The idyllic Ireland of "The Quiet Man" masked a deep and terrifying secret for thousands of Irish children.

The cover-up has now gone right to the top in the Vatican because the truth is too hurtful to face. In Ireland it is now clear over 1,000 pedophiles in clerical garb preyed on children who were the most vulnerable in society, those without parents or from broken homes.

The religious orders at least did the decent thing after Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen forced them to this week -- when they agreed to make much more money available as compensation for the victims.

But there will be more revelations, including I believe, testimony that actual murders occurred, not surprising when you think of the merciless beatings that young children took.

The sad part, as I can attest to, is that there were very many fine brothers, nuns and priests who will be forever tarred with this hideous brush.

Even the pope himself can not wash away that stain.

It was Ireland's Holocaust

Posted by Niall O'Dowd at 5/30/2009 7:19 AM EDT

The Irish Times has a great suggestion in their editorial today (Saturday). The Catholic church in Ireland should pay half of the $1.2 billion in compensation owed to the victims of the industrial school holocaust which saw thousands of kids beaten raped and sodomized by nuns and priests and brothers.
The other half should be borne by the Irish government which I think is fair too -- their decision over decades to turn a blind eye to what was happening to the nation's most vulnerable children was a disgrace in itself.
Any of you who watched the incredible video on this site of an elderly victim of that abuse could not but be moved by his extraordinary account of what happened to him and his family.
Seven children, his one month old sister included, were taken away and separated in various homes across the country. He was raped and sodomized on his second day in one institution -- by the man who the next day gave him Holy Communion.
The man speaking, Michael O'Brien, is a former Mayor of Clonmel, a large town in Ireland and his impassioned plea to the Irish government minister he is addressing wold melt a heart of stone
John Banville was right when he wrote in The New York Times that there was a massive conspiracy of silence, across many sections of society about what was happening in Ireland at the time.
Father Flanagan from Boys Town was the one man who spoke up on a visit to his native country but the establishment ridiculed him.
The whole episode is nothing less than Ireland's holocaust,in the sense that we can be as ashamed of our forefathers who did this as the Germans are about their Nazi forbears. The wholesale brutalization and mass rape and sodomy of generations of the most helpless children in society was carried out with sanction form the highest levels.
It was a disgraceful era.