BishopAccountability.org
	A Year of Religious Scandal Ian Healy December 26, 2009 http://healium.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/a-year-of-religious-scandal/ I think we can all agree that 2009 has been a very difficult year for the Irish Catholic Church, if not the most difficult. Ireland has always been a country in which the Church had great power. Obviously this isn't wholly true, but we can say that the majority had great respect for the Church, whether out of will or fear. Personally, I think it was fear more than anything. The standard "Diddly-i" Irishman was transformed into a overlord-fearing wuss, mostly by years of drilling horrible images into the minds of young children in Catholic-run schools. We've been raised to believe that pain is the saviour, that we have to have an absolutely miserable life before achieving a better one in the next world, that we'll burn forever in the depths of volcanic Hell, whipped and beaten by a red Minotaur/Ned Flanders/Devil May Cry-esque big gay thing with a forked tail For years, it has been a societal standard to show your face at mass on a Sunday morning, or face excommunication by the "pious" altar-lickers, who are just a little bit too eager to help out. So much so that usually they are a lot more "sinful" than the non-attendees. The priest himself has always been feared, for it was perceived that he was the local gate to heaven. Egg his house and you're fucked. I could go into a lot more detail, but I've already gone miles off-topic. I think its fairly obvious about the influence the Church had in this country, and I say "had" reluctantly, because we're only changing our attitudes very slowly. May 20th, 2009. A date that should probably have stuck in all of our heads, but it didn't. That ordinary Wednesday saw the Catholic Church getting rocked to its core. The publication of The Ryan Report into child abuse made headline news worldwide. Five Volumes of consistent blackening of the Church's name, made freely available online, should have done much more damage to the reputation of the Church than it eventually did. Damning, cold, hard evidence was produced against religious figures from around the country, who committed the most vicious acts of abuse against innocent children. It was topical for about a fortnight, before slowly dying down, much to the joy of the Catholic Church who never seem to take any responsibility. The problem is that few people read this Report and discovered what true atrocities were committed to children placed in the "safe" hands of the Church. The average Irish Catholic still does not understand what really happened, and perceives the Report as uncovering a few slapped wrists of children, but it was much more sinister and has left those grown-up children scarred for life. For the level of uproar caused, the church got off pretty much scot-free. It was only with passionate interviews on shows like The Late Late, and later The Frontline, that the point actually hit home for many people. Yet still the Church was left practically unscathed. The biggest insult of all was the compensation to abuse victims. The Church threw salt into the wounds of the abuse victims by being stingey with compensation, coaxing the taxpayer to pay the majority of the payment. The Church again covers its head in the sand and waits for everything to solve itself. The Church is always a "poor, feeble organisation". How could they even begin to pay compensation to their victims? Oh wait, try their countless assets. But no, we must pay for their mistakes as they avoid the problem. Three people who weren't happy about this at all were Cormac Flynn, Paul Dunbar and Gráinne O'Sullivan. These three consequently set up CountMeOut following the Ryan Report scandal. This landmark website offered people the chance to officially defect from the Church in 3 simple steps. In fact, its easier than 3 steps! The topic of defecting has always been a cloudy subject, with no real information on it. With this website, anyone from Ireland could log on, simply fill out a few details, print a letter and sent it to their bishop to be counted as officially defected. As of now, 5,357 people have officially defected through their website. It may not seem like much, but it is a pretty big number in such a country as ours where the Church has such fear instilled in us. The site has been receiving airplay on shows such as The Frontline ever since, showing that RTE isn't afraid to publicise something of negative effect to the church, something which wouldn't have happened easily. Remember the complaints about discussing condoms on The Late Late Show not so many years ago? Suddenly, details of another report emerged; The Murphy Report into child sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese. This Report emerged soon after the Ryan Report, but was only officially released on November 26th, 2009. Again, this Report is available freely online but will only be read by a minority. I have two PDF summaries of this Report still sitting on my desktop, and perhaps some day I'll be able to read them from start to finish. Personally, I felt sick after reading the summary on just the first priest and could read no more. The general public will not fully know what these men of the cloth really did, because the Reports are too sickening to read. These "men" were nothing more than sick paedophiles, preying on innocent children of innocent parents who put their trust fully into these "holy" figures. Why would they have had any reason to think that these priests, these public figures of the Catholic church, would be conducting sick acts of sexual abuse and molestation on their young ones? These priests went to horrible extents to get their little sexual kick. The very brief amount I read documented a priest who had a swimming pool for "selected young boys only". In that backyard of his, he molested those poor kids. I mean, how is the Church still functioning? Only four Church leaders have resigned since the Report. The rest will hide their guilt. Why would people still go to mass and support this corrupt organisation who, again fail to take the blame for anything? From my understanding, mass-going numbers have actually increased. Reports on the news showed old biddys seeing no wrong in the abusers. And we all know that the elderly have the most power! Don't ever mess with the elderly! Still, every now and then there have been a few little victories. To see people my own age, and some much older, questioning the Church and highlighting their many faults in the media, well that just warms my heart. It gives me some hope for the future How could the year finish without another scandal of sorts? While the Pope was walking up an aisle to conduct the annual Christmas Eve mass, a woman, Susanna Maiolo, jumped the barriers and tackled the Pope to the ground, filling the area with shocks and gasps from the audience. You can see the video here. Personally, it looks to me like the security guards pulled him to the ground. But our resilient Ratzi got up straight away and continued with his walk. Susanna tried to do the same thing last Christmas, before being grabbed by security guards. The official Vatican statement afterwards read "The woman who pushed the pope appeared to be mentally unstable". Now, maybe she was, but my first thought was that the Church is covering its own arse again. Obviously she had to be in the wrong. She must have been mentally ill to attack King Of The Paedophiles. She couldn't have been one of the countless people that are enraged by the two Reports published into child abuse, and the scandals which they revealed.
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