Church’s hierarchy shows its colours

By Ryle Dwyer
Irish Examiner
July 25, 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/churchs-hierarchy-shows-its-colours-276515.html

An arrogant Church hierarchy has a long history of scapegoating and trying to cover up serious scandals, says Ryle Dwyer

RECENT revelations about the mother-and-baby home at Tuam — where 796 children died between 1925 and 1961 — shocked people, but few seemed surprised, because there had already been so many shocking revelations about abuse in Church-run institutions. Indeed, comparisons are being made with Nazi Germany.

During the Second World War John Betjeman, the British press attaché in Dublin, depicted the Catholic hierarchy as the real power in Ireland. “We should bother less about relations, good or bad, with the Government and more with relations with the Catholic Church,” he wrote in March 1943.

The same month Roland Blenner-Hassett, one of three undercover agents stationed to Ireland by the Office of Strategic Services —the wartime forerunner of the American Central Intelligence Agency — depicted the hierarchy as essentially fascist in outlook. He thought this posed a threat because Irish censorship had been so rigid that Irish people had little understanding of the true nature of fascism.

“I am convinced that what the Irish Church hopes to see as the outcome of this war is the military defeat of the Axis, followed by peace between the Allies and semi-authoritarian regimes in Italy and Germany,” Blenner-Hassett wrote. He went on to suggest that the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, could cause trouble over partition unless Irish neutrality was essentially discredited in the US.