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	Celebrity Priest Who Was Attacked for Speaking out against Child Abuse By Ryle Dwyer Irish Examiner June 20, 2009 http://www.examiner.ie/story.aspx?id=94526&m=5.3.6.0&h=celebrity-priest-who-was-attacked-for-speaking-out-against-child-abuse WHILE Eamon de Valera was dreaming of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, young boys were being flogged and buggered by a sordid assortment of perverted clergy and depraved Christian Brothers. He should have known what was going on, but he chose to ignore it, just as we are ignoring things now. Edward J Flanagan, who was born near the Galway village of Ballymoe in 1886, emigrated to the United States in 1904. He studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1912 and went to minister in Nebraska. In 1917 he founded a home for homeless boys in Omaha, and later set up Boys Town about 10 miles outside the city in 1921. It was a town for boys between the ages of 10 and 16, with cottages, a school, chapel, gymnasium and other facilities for those boys to learn a trade. "There is no such thing as a bad boy" was one of the famous phrases associated with Fr Flanagan. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" was another. Fr Flanagan saw Boys Town as a home for the boys. There were no fences to stop them from leaving. "You do not wall in members of your own family," he said. He became celebrated as a national hero in the United States during his own lifetime. In 1938, Spencer Tracy starred as Fr Flanagan in the movie Boys Town, which was filmed on location in the town by MGM whose president, Louis B Mayer, decided to shelve the film after it was made. "It will never sell," he said. "There's no sex." But he was persuaded to release it by its two main stars, Tracy and Mickey Rooney. It became a great box office success. Tracy won the Oscar for best actor. In his acceptance speech he talked about "Fr Flanagan, whose great humanity, kindly simplicity and inspiring courage were strong enough to shine through my humble effort". Fr Flanagan became an international celebrity as a result of the movie. In 1946 he returned to Ireland for a visit, and was treated as a dignitary. However, he was horrified at some of the country's industrial schools and reformatories, and he made no secret of his displeasure. "From what I have seen since coming to this country your institutions are not all noble, particularly your borstals, which are a disgrace," he told a public meeting at the Savoy cinema in Cork on July 7, 1946. "You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it." They could have done something, but nobody did. Fr Flanagan was one of the world's foremost experts on the training of boys, but people did not want to hear his message in Ireland, especially after he complained publicly on his return to the United States. "The cat o' nine tails, the rod, and the fist is used in reform schools" in Ireland, he complained. His remarks prompted a debate in the correspondence columns. "I am glad Monsignor Flanagan had the courage to make that statement, for painful as it is to read, it is justified," Maud Gonne MacBride wrote. "The publicity may jolt our government out of its attitude of smug complacency." When the matter was raised in the Dáil, Justice Minister Gerald Boland was dismissive. "During his recent stay in this country Monsignor Flanagan did not see and did not ask to see any of the prisons or the borstal institutions," the minister said. "I am surprised that in these circumstances an ecclesiastic of his standing should have thought it proper to describe in such offensive and intemperate language conditions about which he has no first-hand knowledge." The minister said he had not commented on Fr Flanagan's remarks in Ireland, but thought he should reply to what he had said in the US. James Dillon of the opposition objected because Boland had not checked to verify if the American press had reported Fr Flanagan accurately. But the minister was not put off. "All I have got to say is that these schools are under the management of religious orders, who are self-effacing people and who do not require any commendation from me," Boland said. "I have no doubt from the type of statements made by the monsignor when he was in this country that the report which I have seen represents what he did say when he landed on the other side." Although most Irish politicians did not have the guts to stand up to the Catholic hierarchy, Gerry Boland was never afraid to do so. He balked when Fr John Charles McQuaid tried to stitch into the 1937 constitution a clause that not only stipulated "the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church," but would also have gone on to characterise the Catholic Church "as a perfect society, having within itself full competence and sovereign authority, in respect of the spiritual good of man." De Valera initially went along with the idea, but Boland threatened to resign and leave the country with his whole family if it were included in the constitution. He said it would be an insult to all the great Protestant Irish people who had ever lived. At Boland's insistence, de Valera backed off and stood up to both McQuaid and Cardinal MacRory. He actually enlisted the support of the Pope behind their backs. By 1947 James Dillon was even more critical of Fr Flanagan than Boland. "Last year," he said, "Monsignor Flanagan turned up in this country and went galumphing around and read a book and got his photograph taken a great many times and made a variety of speeches to tell us what a wonderful man he was, what marvels he had achieved in the United States of America, and he then went back to America and published a series of falsehoods and slanders." IN HIS own colourful way, Dillon suggested Fr Flanagan should have the moral courage to correct publicly "the grave injustice he has done not only to the legislature of this country but to the decent, respectable men who are members of the Irish Christian Brothers, to the warders in our prisons and to the warders in the borstal, and to the other individuals who are looking after young persons in the various places of detention provided by the State". People would now like to have us believe the politicians did not know what was going on back then in the various institutions, but those on both sides of the Dáil chose to ignore Fr Flanagan's warnings. Today children account for nearly 40% of all those in consistent poverty and 30% of children in disadvantaged schools are leaving without adequate literacy, yet our budget priorities are effectively scrapping those organisations that seek to protect them. "We must lead by example," Finance Minister Brian Lenihan declared in April when he announced he was cutting the pensions being paid to sitting members of the Oireachtas. But now the Government is promising to do that at the end of this Dáil. Currently it is only proposing to cut those unjustifiable pensions by 25%. This isn't even half-ass leadership. It's just a quarter of an effort. 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