IRELAND
Bock the Robber
Posted by Bock on June 6, 2014
The bishop of Tuam has released a statement in which he seeks to distance his diocese from the appalling treatment of the women who were locked up in the notorious Mother and baby Home.
In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of Cardinal Cahal Daly, who also sought to distance himself from any responsiblity for the monstrous behaviour of Father Brendan Smyth, the paedophile whose activities brought down a government and first exposed to the world what was really going on behind the veil of sanctity in Ireland.
Daly, you might recall, pointed out that he had no authority over Brendan Smyth, because the priest was a member of the Norbertine order and was therefore under the control of his religious superior within that order. This was why, according to Daly, he could not intervene in the priest’s rape of children. He was powerless to do so.
Oddly enough, this lack of power didn’t prevent Daly’s successor from intervening in the activities of another priest who was also a member of a religious order. Cardinal Seán Brady who, as a young priest, had sworn abused children to secrecy on pain of damnation, had no hesitation in stepping in when Father Iggy O’Donovan, an Augustinian priest in Drogheda committed a transgression in 2006.
His crime? Iggy O’Donovan celebrated an ecumenical service with a Protestant clergyman, in a spirit of reconciliation and solidarity.
…
When Dr Deeny, the Chief Medical Officer, unilaterally closed Bessborough Home because of the number of children it was killing, the Papal Nuncio complained him to DeValera on the order of Bishop Lucey of Cork, even though the home was run by nuns.
The bishops knew everything and the bishops controlled everything. Let us not forget that this bishop of Tuam was the very same one to whom the entire county library catalogue was submitted for vetting. Gilmartin selected the books to be burned, and yet, somehow, Michael Neary would have us believe he was a benign, bumbling old Santa Claus figure who had nothing to do with the systemic oppression of women in post-independence Ireland.
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