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The now diminished figure of the Pope, stands on the centre stage of this gigantically built altar complex in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, speaking down to the huddled, sparsely populated masses below, his amplified voice is echoing in the vastness and emptiness known and loved by generations of Dubliners as the Phoenix Park. In support of their Pope, Francis is flanked by various fanatic followers, like Cardinals, Bishops and Priests. The depiction of the crowd is also highly stage-managed by R.T.E State Television and the main stage is camouflaged with papal paraphernalia.
The front segment of the crowd are other Priests, Nuns and dignitaries, all cheering and clapping in unison. The elevated viewpoint of the R.T.E State Television camera has the effect that the grandness of the occasion is not matched by the sparse crowd, vast areas of the main Dublin park lie empty. But also, by filming from high above, the people gathered in the Park remain, in the eyes of the viewer, an anonymous mass whose purpose that day was to support their Pope. The problem was that every time the R.T.E State Television cameras pulled away to look at the crowd, the Roman Catholic Church was already crumbling, and the indifferent Irish people could finally see it. By the time the Pope was making his inconsequential speech, the game was up. Fear could be seen if one looked at the images transmitted live on R.T.E State Television. Even the propagandistic R.T.E State Television couldn’t hide the fact, that there were few of the 500,000 attending the Papal Mass. It slowly dawned on the producers that the crowd was terribly small, less than 130,000, when considering that in 1979, that crowd was 2.5 million people attending the same event. All that tax-payer money spent by the Irish State, and millions more by the greedy R.T.E State Television, hoping to sell the rights to a flop. A few minutes into his final blessing from the Pope on the artificial stage and the insincere and meaningless speech. The insignificant Pope spoke with a hollow voice, a very small section of the crowd started hissing. It was an unusual sound that crept from the back of the crowd, but couldn’t be heard towards the front row. It was like a near silent wave crashing into a stone shore, crying to be heard. The sound of his Irish and International crowd booing and hissing in condemnation finally reaches the Bishops, even the Pope is aware now, R.T.E State Television cameras captured the facial expressions, which is now one of disbelief. This was after all Catholic Ireland, or so they the colourful, Bishops who were dressed in ostentatious clothing with their gold bling decorations. The Bishops appeared fully conscious of the virtue of their gayful finery, parading and mincing across the open stage as if in a fashion or drag show in Paris. The Bishops thought, by bring this vintage Holy Pope, in dazzling white, they assumed, he would knock some sense into these heathen Irish masses. For a brief moment, the sound coming from the frightened Bishops was so high pitched that it had the characteristics of a panic. The R.T.E State Television cameras started shaking, they as part of the coverup were stunned. All that tax-payer money spent, needlessly, a good all Ireland GAA Final had a far bigger crowd and was more lucrative, as would any pop concert by any second rate acts, who could pull in bigger crowds, we Irish love the craic. The signification of the sparse crowd in these moments caught by R.T.E State Television cameras are important, as if to signal that the Irish Catholic Church was dying, coming to a bitter end, the game is over. The Bishops haven’t quiet got it yet, even after the two most recent referendums, the Same-sex Marriage Referendum and The Abortion Referendum, both carried by nearly 70% approval by the Irish People. Everybody knows, except the Irish Catholic Church that the two recent referendums was really a referendum on the Irish Catholic Church and they lost. But the Roman Catholic Religious walls, were falling in front of their very eyes, it’s as if the Pope, Bishops, and Priests and now the audience know this, that the final curtain is about to fall, and won’t be raising anytime soon, if ever. R.T.E State Television cameras searching for appropriate subjects and paid righteous talking heads speaking in tongues, propagandists trying desperately to put a positive spin on a sinking churchtanic. The era of Catholic Ireland is dead and gone and is to be buried with McQuaid in his crumbling crypt, in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin. Yet shivering prayers nor fasting, will never heal the wounds of decades of torture, rape, murder and clerical malfeasance, nor continuing to hide the thousands of murdered children, disposed off, flushed into many a septic tank, at all Religious run Institutions in Ireland. The mothers, their children, worked and were starved to death, are dead and gone, but not forgotten. Tuam has gone about the world like an ill wind, it’s name forever tarnished and associated with a septic tank. This is not the time to pray, but weep at the religious deception, the clerics deceit is coming to haunt and shame the living. But their corrupt god will not be coming anytime soon to save them from their final accountability their eternal ignominy. The tears on every raindrop of the crying children will be seen carried on every incoming tide, their stories will be told, rediscovered as to why that their blood was shed. For this cruel Catholic Ireland, the real patriots died, Emmet, Tone, Markievicz, Ceannt, Connolly, Plunkett, Collins Pearse, MacDiarmada, Casement and many more, and for what, for the illusions of the brave. We can’t return the years again, we mustn’t, but we can ensure that the tens of thousands of vulnerable children, their grieving mothers, both living and dead, their raped daughters, tortured and brutalised sons, will never relive the horrors what was romantic Ireland. What about the Irish Catholic Church and it’s religious retributions?, let’s bury it and them, finally, and after true accountability, lower it into its grave, and teach it’s history to future generations so that it can never raise its ugly head again. To my Mother, Brothers, and Sisters, who I never met, but knew about, who have died in such horror places to which I was born, and incarcerated for 18 years. To the tens of thousands of children and their Mothers who couldn’t make it or fell by the way side, I haven’t forgotten, nor will I, I will be your voice to speak truth. Now I must continue my endless search to find my Mother, Nora, my Brother, Carol;- other Brothers and Sisters I have no name for. I will rescue them and others, to many to count from their mass graves at the back of many an empty Religious run Institution, now overgrown, haunted with the stench and grief of many brutal memories they left behind. My family and others were all brutalised as was I, all in the name of a sick cult. Owen Felix O’Neill
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So once again we have the carousel of the Roman Catholic Church, exposed to more allegations of the rape of defenceless children in America. The world’s headlines scream “ More than 300 pedophile priests sexually abused more than 1,000 children,” with more lies and cover-ups by the Roman Catholic Church in the State of Pennsylvania, U.S.A.. A Grand Jury investigation into six catholic dioceses in the State of Pennsylvania found and reported that the child sexual rape and abuse was covered up by clergy, including Bishops and Cardinals. These 'Men of God' kept it secret as Roman Catholic priests systematically raped children for decades. The F.B.I., after review and analysis of the evidence it received from the Grand Jury, concluded that the material revealed something akin to “a playbook for concealing the truth.” State officials have said that the number of children raped by priests is likely several times higher than reported so far, as is the number of Roman Catholic priests involved.
The publication last week of a long, horrifying report on the behaviour of the church in the state of Pennsylvania followed the exposure of former Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick (whose nickname was “Uncle Ted”) as a serial predator of young boys, including even his own teenaged cousin. The Roman Catholic Church has employed euphemisms for sexual assault, referring to the crime not as rape, but as “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.” The Grand Jury reported that a priest’s repeated and violent sexual rapes of children was referred to as “his difficulties” by the Church. The Catholic Church did not conduct genuine investigations, often limiting actions to asking suspected pedophile priests a few questions and then accepting what the priest said as absolute gospel. If a Catholic Priest had to be removed from his parish, Church officials were directed to announce it as either“sick leave” or to say nothing at all. For appearance’s sake, they were to send the Catholic priest for “evaluation” at a church-run psychiatric facility that, more often than not, concluded that the offender was not a pedophile and could return to ministering to the faithful and where they continued to rape children. That is exactly the same playbook that happened in Ireland and every other country the Roman Catholic Church operates in. If it became known in the community that a Catholic clergyman was a “problem,” the church were to transfer the priest or brother to another location where nobody knew he was a child rapist. That was the norm. As I have hypothesised before, if a secular institution was discovered to have protected more than 300 pedophiles as they sexually raped more than 1,000 children, they would be strung up immediately and the said institution would be burned to the ground. If the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t a religious institution, would we be handling the situation differently? The answer is a resounding “Yes”. A secular institution’s employees and bosses would have been arrested under our (or any other country’s) laws, thrown into prison immediately and the Government would seize all the institutions’ assets and bank accounts and use them to pay restitution to the abused children. The Roman Catholic Church is an organisation uniquely hospitable to sexual predators, even to paedophiles. The facts are simple: the Roman Catholic Church, in every country in the world it operates in, has thwarted laws that would protect children from being raped by their priests, thus allowing Catholic priests to evade arrest by simply claiming they are doing the work of God. The deliberate concealment of rape, coupled with allowing the pedophiles access to even more children, is inexcusable. The culture of the Roman Catholic Church is a culture of secrecy and deception that is embedded in its 2,000 year old history. The rape of children is as universal as the Roman Catholic Church. We mustn’t forget that here in Ireland, the Irish Catholic Church raped, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of women and children in their religious run institutions and got away with it. Instead of actually offering any solutions, though, Pope Francis has called for fasting and prayer in his letter addressed to The People of God issued on August 20 2018, writing “Likewise penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.” Pope Francis also said there were efforts underway to do something but they haven’t been implemented as yet. The Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families, which will be held this weekend in Dublin, Ireland, is a huge circus: three American Cardinals have decided not to come, as have hundreds of Catholic clergy, because of their active involvement with raping of thousands of children and covering up their own crimes. As I know, (but few do), a case has been active in the High Court in Dublin for the last few years against the sitting Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, for his own crimes and misdemeanours - a charge of the covering up of known sexual rape of teenage boys in a Catholic Hostel in Dublin where he was a visiting seminarian in the 1960s. The boys Hostel, known as the “Boys Club” was a known magnet for all pedophile clerics who descended on the hostel in droves, encouraged by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Charles McQuaid who encouraged them all to befriend the orphan boys, with food, money, drink, drugs, cigarettes, leading directly to their rapes at the hands of these holy clerics. After eight years of visiting the hostel all Diarmuid Martin says is, “I can’t recall” and “I’m sorry for your pain”, and “I’m sad your experiences and time with us wasn’t a happy one.” This has been the response of the ‘esteemed’ Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, President and host of the World Meeting of Families, respected and admired by his peodphilic priests and laity alike as a true friend and solicitous father. The very idea that a group of celibate misogynistic men and women are advising families is insulting. Imagine opening the state prisons and releasing all the convicted rapists and pedophiles and inviting them to a world meeting for families and their children. The convicted rapists and pedophiles could be encouraged to make laws and advance ideas on how to rape and abuse children, all sanctioned by the Government and the Religious Church. Then the head of the biggest Church in the world, on learning of the outrages - the raping, torture and murder of children committed by his priests and other clerics - blesses the children and his clerics and asks for fasting and prayers from the children, while condemning their mothers and families for talking to outsiders about their rapes. This is precisely what has happened in every country in the world with the Roman Catholic Church. For the Roman Catholic cult that has repeatedly been accused of raping, torturing and even killing children to be having a meeting of Families is like having a fox in the henhouse - you’ve got problems brewing. In other words, having a fox in the henhouse is no different from having a lunatic in charge of the asylum or asking a thief to guard the bank vault, or expecting the wolf to guard the sheep, or asking a monkey to watch your bananas. They all mean the same thing and, in every instance, the watcher can’t be trusted to do the right job. Neither can the Roman Catholic Church, which has been proven time and time again not to be trusted alone with children. An apology doesn’t cut it and neither do empty prayers and fasting. The day after Pope Francis issued the letter referred to above, Jakiw Palij, 95, suspected of war crimes in Poland, was deported from USA to Germany. Germany’s foreign minister was quoted as saying, “There is no cut-off point for historical responsibility. To do justice to the memory of Nazi-era atrocities means to fight against antisemitism, discrimination and racism. And it means standing up to our moral obligations on behalf of the victims and successive generations. The guilt of those who carried out these crimes in Germany’s name will never elapse. The pain continues to be deep.” Imagine the global outcry if it had been suggested post World War II that the crimes of Nazi war-criminals should be addressed by “fasting and prayer” instead of prosecution. To The People of God, Pope Francis wrote, “It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.” If Pope Francis was really serious about condemning “the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable” as he wrote on August 20 2018, he should be calling for rigorous prosecution of those who perpetrated the crimes as well as those who covered them up. Instead he asks the People of God (which includes victims) to pray and fast. Shame on you, Pope Francis. Owen Felix O'Neill |
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