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The opposite of good is not evil - it is indifference. And we here in Ireland must never be indifferent when it comes to the banality of evil. The root of all evil is the love of money, and the Roman Catholic Church truly loves power and wealth. But, as Lord Acton wrote in 1897 opposing the doctrine of the Pope’s infallibility: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you super add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” I don't believe, however, that there can be a 'radical evil' a phrase used by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in “Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone” (1793). He wrote: “The depravity of human nature, then, is not so much to be called badness, if this word is taken in its strict sense, namely, as a disposition (subjective principle of maxims) to adopt the bad, as bad, into one’s maxims as a spring (for that is devilish); but rather perversity of heart, which, on account of the result, is also called a bad heart. This may co-exist with a Will [“Wille”] good in general, and arises from the frailty of human nature, which is not strong enough to follow its adopted principles, combined with its impurity in not distinguishing the springs (even of well-intentioned actions) from one another by moral rule. So that ultimately it looks at best only to the conformity of its actions with the law, not to their derivation from it, that is, to the law itself as the only spring. Now although this does not always give rise to wrong actions and a propensity thereto, that is, to vice, yet the habit of regarding the absence of vice as a conformity of the mind to the law of duty (as virtue) must itself be designated a radical perversity of the human heart (since in this case the spring in the maxims is not regarded at all, but only the obedience to the letter of the law).” I suspect that even the most rabid Christian Brother, well-intentioned Nun or, for that matter, a Roman Catholic Priest, probably did not consider themselves as 'evil' or guilty of committing an evil act, but rather as a well-meaning Christian Person, protecting the integrity and purity of their Church. The problem with the Roman Catholic hierarchies is that those at the top are distanced by design and dynamics from those at the bottom. The whole Christian Clerical education system is fine- tuned towards producing brainwashed, useful idiots, to serve the dysfunction of an over-centralised Vatican. Trainee priests were needed to fill those necessary lower niches, but were required to be useful idiots so as to not even think beyond the specialisation. Christian Seminary Colleges never have been, and probably never will be, a magnet for education in the liberal arts tradition of being politically subversive enough to actually question authority, much less challenge it. After all, the Pope’s rule is absolute as are his religious decrees with papal infallibility being dogma in the Catholic Church. The conceit of the Roman Catholic Church is that it is a hierarchy based on the relentless advance of the best and brightest - a meritocracy. It is hard to identify radical evil in the system itself but relatively easy to see the banality of indifference and wilful ignorance regarding the suffering of others. After all, suffering runs through the Christian creed. Let’s also not conceal the fact that suffering is something complex, enigmatic and intangible that must be treated with full respect and compassion and even with awe. The Catholic Church teaching is that “Through suffering, human beings are incorporated into the pain of Christ. Suffering gives rise to love for those who suffer, a disinterested love to help them by relieving it”. The real banality of evil is personified in the defenders of the Catholic Church regime which has many such defenders but no defence. One such defender is Bill Donohue who, since 1993, has been President of the The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, (often shortened to the Catholic League) in the United States. The Catholic League considers itself to be an American Catholic anti-defamation and civil rights organisation. Recently, Bill Donohue has been trying ever so hard to discredit the newly released Pennsylvania grand jury’s report, (which can be found here https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/report/) documenting thousands of examples of American Catholic Church Priests sexually abusing and raping thousands of children. The indifferent Catholic League under Bill Donohue's leadership is often criticised for its ultra conservatism and for its combative responses to high-profile media stories. Besides education campaigns, the group issues condemnations, defends all Catholic Priests against accusations of child sexual rape, fights proposed legislation to prevent it and threatens legal action against what it sees as bigotry against Catholics, irreverence against religious figures, and attacks on Catholic Church dogma. Mr. Donohue argues that a lot of the reported abuse shouldn’t even count since not all victims were penetrated and some weren’t even pre-pubescent. He’s also said that rape also occurs elsewhere, so the Catholic Church’s scandals aren’t really that big a deal and, as most of the rapes didn’t occur in the past few years, everyone needs to lay off the clerics. Mr. Donohue continues, when we read that a Cardinal asked young seminarians to sleep with him, thus corrupting them before they became ordained, and when we read that a few Pennsylvania Priests used sacred objects like the crucifix to molest (rape) their victims, we cannot plausibly say that this is simply the work of men gone bad. No, it is the work of the Devil/ Satan. What other source would provoke such monstrosities? It’s the No True Scotsman fallacy all the time, Mr. Donohue says -the moment a Catholic priest crosses the line, he must not have been truly Catholic. So the “No true Scotsman” or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalisation from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric. For example “no true Scotsman would do such a thing”- Person A: "No Scotsman puts raisins on his porridge.” Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts raisins on his porridge. "Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts raisins on his porridge.” i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group. Indeed, Mr. Donohue goes on to say that the Roman Catholic Church was the saviour of the orphan children, and, in fact, of all children, whether in care of the Church or at home with their families. Mr. Donohue has also said that the raped children were ‘spiritually uplifted’ after their encounters with the pedophile priests. He argues that everyone is in what he calls a “Moral Panic” over the Roman Catholic Church: “The Catholic Church has never had a monopoly on the mistreatment of some young people, yet that is what is being promoted today. Why? To feed an anti-Catholic moral panic. He continues to say that the media, both domestically and internationally are focusing exclusively on abuse of minors in Catholic institutions and stubbornly refusing to credit the Catholic Church for reforms that have made today’s Catholic settings among the safest places for children in order to perpetuate an irrational fear that the Catholic Church poses a unique threat to the safety of children. Donohue asks the question, “How come the media and international media are not reporting on that?” In October 2009, Bill Donohue said that the Roman Catholic Church has a "homosexual", not a "pedophilia", problem. The Catholic League defended its attacking of Church critics on the grounds that they were "a menace” to the Roman Catholic Church. On May 20, 2009, Reuters reported the results of a nine-year investigation by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which looked into decades of the endemic sexual abuse and rape of children in Catholic-run reform schools in Ireland. In reaction to this report, popularly known as the Ryan Report, Bill Donohue issued a statement downplaying the seriousness of the cases, questioning the inclusion of “voyeurism” and "inappropriate sexual talk" as instances of sexual abuse along with the more serious charge of rape. Bill Donohue pointed out that rape constituted only 12% of the listed sexual abuse cases in the Ryan report and that priests committed only 12% of the listed rapes—the other 88% were committed by lay persons and Religious Brothers. Since the Ryan Report was released, Bill Donohue has been defending the Irish Catholic Church and claiming that much of the outrage is 'moral hysteria'. While stating that he agrees that rape and physical abuse are wrong and that he would not defend those actions, he says the report has conflated those abuses with 'lesser' forms of punishment and is therefore not as serious. He also says many of the purported forms of abuse found by the commission were present and acceptable in the time period. Bill Donohue has also claimed that the mass disposal site of babies’ corpses found in Tuam, Ireland, was ‘a myth’ and ‘a hoax’, and that the Tuam Mother and Baby Home atrocity is 'fake news.’ I wonder what he will say when the bodies of over 1,800 babies are recovered from the septic tank soon, and to their still living brothers and sisters and even mothers. Which was the most disturbing passage in the whole thing, the denial of the babies flushed into a septic tank or Tuam Mother and Baby Home didn’t exist. Let’s not pause before our answer is given, and in that pause you are afraid that someone is going to try to cover for what happened. Mr. Bill Donohue is surely trying to avoid reality and judgment. All he really does is to cause more pain and suffering on those like myself and thousands of others that lost family members in such places and survived. This truly is The Banality of Evil, as espoused by the likes of Bill Donohue, and by both his insufferable Catholic League and the wider unendurable Roman Catholic Church. Apart from what Bill Donohue says or thinks, we only have to look at the main point of the debates about the Catholic Religious Institutions in Ireland whose history is one of relentless cruelty and pitiless pain inflicted on the inmates at the hands of the Irish Religious Orders : brutal rapes, murderousness beatings, callous torture and even merciless death. It is very clear that violence, torture, and murder were part of the system from the very beginning. One only has to read The full Ryan Report to understand this - every Religious Run Institution in Ireland had a problem. Now, sadly, we know that probably every Catholic-run Religious Institution throughout the world had the same problems. The Roman Catholic Church may feel comfortable in their power, but they are always apprehensive, and the more international stories that come out about their malfeasances, the more they live in fear. I try never to write a word or a line without some doubt and hesitation, but write I will, just to make sense of it all. Here in Ireland (in the very recent past) Irish Clerics swarmed the streets of every city, town, village and hamlet of Ireland. Many of the Clerics were irresponsible and drunk on priestly power and the People lived in fear of them. Even the Irish Police could exercise little, if any, control of them as the institutional and individual Irish Police also lived in fear of them. But while blowhard plutocrat like Mr. Donohue demands equal rights for the American Catholic Priests and the Roman Catholic Church’s governing body, I also demand equal rights for the living and the dead Survivors of Clerical Rapes and Murder. Owen Felix O’Neill
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There is Something Rotten in the State of the Vatican.
So the circus has come to town, and the main attraction is an elderly man in his 80s dressed all in white. One of the headlines was “ Holy Father calls abuse scandal “repugnant” in speech to civil authorities in Ireland. I call it “Murder”, the Church loves to use the word “Abuse” because it not as harsh as the word “Rape” This is from - A playbook which was prepared by the Roman Catholic Church, for all their Priests, on how to conceal the truth, these seven steps they must follow:
The main part of this circus was His Holiness, the title "His All Holiness" comes from the worldly royal authority, not from Scripture or the Apostles. The meeting of a few well intentioned Survivors at a well choreographed dance, all eight Survivors stooped to kiss the papal ring, and were star struck at the prospect of meeting the holiest man on earth. One Priest told me, “God most often works through secondary agents, including human beings. The Church especially, since it is “the Body of Christ” who is God incarnate.” The Pope, whose statements are not to be questioned for they come to him from God, according to the Vatican. I, myself am not interested in customs and man-made traditions. The title "All Holiness" is not from Christ or the Apostles. And no amount of rationalisation will justify it's use. The title is blasphemous, idolatrous, and something only a narcissist or psychopath would apply to himself. No one who has fear of God, true piety and Christian humility would ever allow himself this title. The eight Survivors were well rehearsed and selected the day before and told they must bow down and kiss the Pope’s ring. You see this ring is an idol of what the Vatican claims to be an image of the Apostle Peter, sitting in a boat. The gold ring also has the imprint of the name of the present Pope. When you bow down to kiss this gold ring, you break the Second Commandment and you accept and submit to the Apostolic succession of the Popes in Rome. Exodus 20:4-6 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. The definition of a hypocrite is a person who pretends to have certain beliefs, attitudes or feelings when they really do not. So lets look here at a hypocrite, Pope Francis, who says that he cares about the raped children, but he constantly allows his Priests to continue and even covers up for them. Pope Francis pretends to have virtues, moral and religious beliefs, even principles, but he clearly does not actually possess them. His statements when talking to Survivors in private in Dublin, Pope Francis referred to those who cover up child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church as “caca” the Spanish word for shit, but the official translator interpreted it as ‘filth. The eight Survivors told Pope Francis that an estimated 100,000 mothers were forcibly separated from their babies in Ireland. Pope Francis replied “As an act of healing “we ask you to make it clear to the elderly and dying community of natural mothers and adoptees, that there was no sin in the reunion.” I wonder how he, Pope Francis would say to my Mother, Nora, or my Brothers and Sisters, who were tortured, raped and died in the Religious run Institutions of Ireland, that they were confined to, having committed no crimes, marked by their unimaginable suffering and mine. Or for that matter the tens of thousands of other children and women, who were hunted down, humiliated, raped, bludgeoned to death, and carted off as slave labourers, many stolen and sold abroad. A few were murdered, many raped and dumped like thousands of other Mothers and their Children in unmarked mass graves, and cesspools, septic tanks at the back of Religious run Institutions in Ireland. But the Irish Church’s crimes had been far worse, in all the Religious run Institutions, and the suffering of those that survived such Institutions was and is immense. Will the Silence be ever lifted, the untold stories of thousands of children, raped during their time in the Industrial Schools. The three Christian Brothers in my Industrial School who held down a eleven year old boy as they took turns raping and sodomising him. I later cleaned up after them and offered what comfort I could, to the boy, I was only twelve, the same thing happened to me the year before. We didn't speak about what had happened, no boy talked about such things, if he did he would be beaten almost to death, and in a few case were beaten to death, it was all part of our daily lives. My psychiatrist wanted to help me to heal and recover from my darkest secrets. Sadly no male wants to talk about sexual violence on themselves, especially those boys, now men from the Industrial Schools. In all cases the men will take their shameful secrets, their own brutal rapes, never to share to their worthless graves. It was telling that there was no mention by the Pope of the 1,800 plus Babies and Children disposed of in a septic tank in Tuam, County Galway. The Pope claims he knew nothing about that, how sad, another cover up by the Irish Catholic church, or the infallible Pope is fallible. Nor was their no mention, of Ireland’s “notorious Mother And Baby Homes where thousands of babies and children and their mothers died, from beatings, torture, murder, rape, even experimented on, as well as thousands of their Mothers”. All buried in mass cesspools at the back of these Religious Institutions. Wasn’t it also very grand of Pope Francis to tell Mothers now after all those years, the Mothers of the Mother And Baby Homes, whose children were stolen and sold as sex slaves, “that there was no sin in now looking for their children.” One Survivor said the Pope sounded “genuinely shocked to hear about the 12,000 babies who died from neglect and the other 60,000 banished babies and the tens of thousands of babies murdered during the vaccine trials. According to the Survivors, the Pope lifted his hands to his head in shock”. But shocked he wasn’t, he was shocked because he knew the game was up, he asked himself, that religion does this to children and mothers, he momentarily forgot, maybe a touch of dementia after all he is over 81 years old, and he had to remind himself that he is the current head of that cult. The eight Survivors were absolutely delighted with the meeting as each received a medal from the Pope with an image of St Patrick on it, how very nice, a (f…ing) tin medal of a fake Saint, that was blessed by the Pope as was the Survivors, their blessing would now heal all their pains, they were told by a witness, an Italian Priest, but first he told them, they must go to confession. The Pope said the failure of the church authorities to deal with a long history of the abuse of children in their care – “these repellent crimes” – was a source of “pain and shame”. How ironic of Pope Francis speaking about failure to deal with the abuse of children in our care, we now have world headlines-“Vatican Official Claims Pope Francis Knew Of rape allegation against an American Cardinal” The American Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick of Washington, raped both his nephew for over twenty years and dozens of young seminarians under his care. For his punishment of raping of dozens of young men and his nine year old nephew, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was told by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, “to serve a lifetime of penance and prayer, and to no longer celebrate Mass in public or travel.” If the world headlines are true, or remotely true, it’s very explosive-The sex -abuse scandal has come for the Pope Francis- A letter calling for his resignation shows how serious his crisis of credibility has become. Now here is what Pope Francis says—- "I won’t say a word about it’: Are you serious Pope Francis!!, the Pope’s sudden silence on abuse claim letter is an outrage- The Vatican Official, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano says, “Pope Francis knew of sexual misconduct allegations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, since 2009.” Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as Cardinal only last month, (July 2018) after a US church investigation determined that an accusation he had sexually raped a minor was very credible. Since then, another man has come forward to say Cardinal McCarrick began raping him starting when he was 11years old, and also several dozen young former seminarian students have said Cardinal McCarrick abused and sexually raped them when they were in the seminary, training as Priests. Cardinal McCarrick forcing the young seminarian students into his bed at the college, were he raped them. But wait a minute Pope Benedict XVI sanctioned Cardinal McCarrick in 2009. Which means the Vatican knew since 2009, that is ten years ago. So something strange and wonderful happened as the mass began in the phoenix park Dublin, the conclave of gossiping Bishops, of 9 Cardinals, 100 Bishops with 2,600 priests. They could see from their high altar, the horror as they looked out collectively that the 500,000 crowd of people expected was non existent. The vast park was sparsely crowded. This revealed their desperation, and at times even panic, in frantic manoeuvring to leave, to hide. The Bishops paced around the high altar in a frenetic, manic state of stasis, the shock of so few attendees at their circus was to much to behold. This panic at the sparsely populated mass was an earthquake for the Roman Catholic Church. Now the numbers, so according to the Irish Police, under 130,000 attended the Pope’s Mass in the Park in Dublin. A break down in the numbers is even worse, over 7,000 were Police and trainee Police;- 2,500 Fire officers, and Ambulance personal on standby;-12,000 were the military on standby;- 20,000 Park Stewards;- Over 18,000 were from Religious Orders who traveled from around the world to attend. 3,000 were the world’s press;- 9 Cardinals, 100 Bishops with 2,600 priests and deacons distributing Holy Communion. Irish Government Officials and International Officials, 1,500;- 25,000 were also from Catholic Schools, like choirs, and their parents. So subtract 91,000 in Total and you have maybe 39,009 who attended the Mass a total disaster for the Roman Catholic Church. Owen Felix O’Neill The Complicit Irish Police (An Garda Síochána).
It is only with a scrupulously honest debate about our past that we can talk about our future in a very thorough way. We need a historical colloquium on examining the role between the Irish Catholic Church and the complicit Irish Police (An Garda Síochána). We also need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with Survivors who are identified as victims of gross human rights’ violations by the Irish Catholic Church being invited to give statements about their experiences, and with the hearings open to the public. The perpetrators of violence should also give testimony and be denied requests for amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution. All the Irish Catholic Church agencies and the Irish Police agencies must open their archives to an inter-disciplinary team of renowned researchers. Both the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish Police should immediately stop destroying all archives with their incriminating documents, and give a full account of those which have already been destroyed and who ordered the destruction. For a long time, the Irish Police denied its past collaboration with the Irish Catholic Church - a past in which they gave full immunity -in both written and verbal form - and gave free rein to the worse atrocities committed by the Irish Catholic Church in their Religious-run Institutions. There is a doctrine of international law that allows an accused to avoid prosecution for criminal offences by granting immunity. There are two types of immunity. The first is Immunity ratione materiae or functional immunity, which can be granted to people who perform certain functions of state. The second is personal immunity, or immunity ratione personae. This was an immunity granted to certain Church Officials because of the Holy Office they held, rather than in relation to the act they committed. Any Irish Cleric who, in performance of his Church duty committed a criminal offence, was immune from prosecution. This was the secret agreement between the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish Police and rubber - stamped by the elected and inept Irish Government. The virtually ineffective Irish Institution of State had considerable de jure power but little de facto power, because all the levers of power were held by the Irish Catholic Church. The incompetent Irish Government rarely (or never) disagreed with the more powerful organ of the Irish Catholic Church, but chose instead to lockstep with it and adhere to and emulate its actions. The immunity, given by the Irish Police and applied to the acts of individuals, is an attribute of state, and it is based on the mutual respect they had with the Irish Catholic Church in their Religious-run Institutions. It is a fact that the incapable Irish State regularly asserts that every Roman Catholic Church official acting in a Church capacity was, and is, immune from any form of state prosecution..Though in recent years a few token clerics have been prosecuted through the Irish Courts, and given laughable sentences in relation to their crimes, and because they were clerics. And only because of the Irish public outcry when it for example became know that one Priest, the prolific Fr. Brendan Smyth had raped over 400 plus boys across Ireland in a raping spree for over 40 years, moved from parish to parish with the blessings and help of the Catholic Bishops who knew about all the children he raped. Another Priest, Seán Fortune of Wexford, and the specific charge that he was accused of was- the homosexual rape and sexual molestation against 29 different boys. He faced 66 charges, Father Seán Fortune was never tried, and committed suicide before any charges were proved against him. These are just two of the many Priests that the Irish Catholic Church couldn’t put the fix in for, there was a sigh of relief in Church quarters with the timely death of Father Seán Fortune. The other few thousand Clerics, who were in the same boat as Smith and Fortune have got away with their crimes against Children, with again the active support and backing of the Irish Catholic Church and its Bishops. The Constitution of Ireland at one time recognised the special position of the Roman Catholic Church, so it was written into our very own Constitution - by themselves. An air of triumph reigned in the highest echelon of the Irish Catholic Church, with their belief that their Christian doctrine was, and is, far superior to all others and indicated their pejorative view of the Irish Constitution. Another secret agreement of Personal Immunity was conferred on the leaders of the Irish Catholic Church. It was immunity given by the civil, criminal, and administrative jurisdictions in Ireland to all senior Irish Church Officials holding a particular office. Under this immunity, the private residence, papers, correspondence, and property of a Church official would enjoy personal immunities which were inviolable. This is what the Irish Police (An Garda Síochána) upheld and knew, and it is why when the worst atrocities were being perpetrated by the Religious-run Institutions, the Irish Catholic Church knew they didn’t have to worry; their secret agreements held firm as the conniving Irish State was powerless to proceed against the might and power of the Irish Catholic Church. While proselytising Irish politicians in Ireland in recent years assumed responsibility for the Irish Catholic Church’s crimes, other pillars of Irish Society have been slower to confront their past. We must remember that no line can, or should, be drawn under the Irish Catholic Church’s monstrosities for which the Irish police force of the time were partly responsible. During the Irish Catholic Church’s reign, An Garda Síochána played a prominent role in the rounding up of women, girls and helpless children in their thousands. None had committed any crimes, but crimes were about to be committed against them: rapes, torture, beatings and death. In Catholic Ireland the chauvinistic Irish Police were allowed to arrest people on suspicion that they were about to do wrong, such as committing the sin of holding hands with your lover, kissing, dancing, putting on makeup, not covering your hair in church, talking in church, or not showing deference to the jingoistic Catholic Clergy by doffing your hat or bowing your head. This gave both the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish Police huge powers. All local police stations throughout Ireland had to draw up a list of people in their locality who might be suspected of being enemies of the Irish Catholic Church. Once compiled, this list was given to the local Parish Priest, who in turn sent a copy to the area’s Bishop and then up through the hierarchy which had the power to do as it liked. This is how hundreds of thousands of women and children were removed from their communities and locked away into the hellholes that were the Religious-run Institutions. The Institutions were deliberately barbaric, and were run by Clerics who could disguise their violent nature by simply wearing religious dress. As well as the daily flogging and torture of women and children, the Religious-run Institutions were very basic and sparse. The provision of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, towels, combs and toilet paper was unheard of. Food and drink were of an extremely low standard and there was never enough. The pugnacious Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, was one of the most feared men in Ireland running, as he did, both the Irish Catholic Church and the ineffectual Irish Government with ruthless efficiency and with fanatical devotion to both the Irish Catholic Church and Rome. He had the direct help of the Irish Police (An Garda Síochána), which in its earlier years was headed by the renowned fascist Eoin O’Duffy, the Garda Commissioner (Irish Police Chief), and his gang (Blue-shirts) which was strongly supported by the Irish Catholic Church. O'Duffy advocated fascist policies and during the Second World War held negotiations with politicians in Nazi Germany about the possibility of persuading the Irish Republican Army to undertake a policy of sabotage against Britain. O'Duffy helped establish the Fine Gael Party, which is one of the main political parties in Ireland today. Because of the secret agreements with both the Irish Government and the Irish Police (An Garda Síochána), the Irish Catholic Church was free from any review by the law courts of Ireland. This effectively meant that the Irish Catholic Church became a law unto itself, and remember this - the Irish Catholic Church appointed every sitting Judge in the land. Thus it was that the Irish Catholic Church became justifiably feared by almost every member of Irish Society. Is it not time now for the Irish Police to be honest and accountable, to open up their secret archives to a wider Irish public and to talk about their role in enabling the Irish Catholic Church. We need the reconstruction of the Irish court system as an important first step in this direction. Unfortunately, many perpetrators - the people who carried out harmful, shameful and illegal criminal acts and their enablers in the era of criminality - have never been tried or punished for the chronicle of abuse, rape, murder and terror. The Roman Catholic Church of Ireland ordered, organised and condoned a substantial number of heinous crimes. The most notable of these took place in the Religious-run Institutions in which hundreds of thousands of our fellow Irish citizens were systematically raped, tortured and murdered or died from their abuse and mistreatment. The true number of victims may never be known since much of the evidence was deliberately destroyed by both the Irish Catholic Church and the Irish Police in a cynical attempt to conceal and erase evidence of their outrageously evil crimes. Owen Felix O’Neill I’m often asked (as recently as a few days ago), “Why didn’t the local population help when women and girls were dragged away from their families and communities and shoved away into the nearest Magdalene Laundry?”. It’s a fair question, but it doesn’t have an easy answer. I only have to think of my own mother and sisters and the manner in which they were shut away in Magdalene Laundries where they were to rot and die. I have always said that it is very important to remember and revisit the past, so we can have a better understanding of the future.
The extent of the Irish population’s involvement in turning-in their own women - daughters, mothers, aunts, sisters - because they were pregnant (or the family just wanted to get rid of them for some other reason) will be a shock to many, but not to any of the victims who survive to this day. Many women and girls were betrayed by their nearest and dearest and immediate family as well as by their Irish neighbours. Many rural parishes took part in the hunt for imaginary Jezebels, the name associated with fallen or abandoned women and used by the Irish Catholic Church as a synonym for a sexually promiscuous woman and as an excuse for controlling women. Even the act of dressing up in her finery and putting on makeup could lead to a woman or girl being called a painted woman or prostitute. A whole apparatus was set up to hunt down these women and girls.The hunt was normally fronted by the local parish priest, who supervised and conducted nighttime watches, using local informers and even the local police if necessary, as well as a few well-intentioned gossipy women and local righteous men. These hyenas were actively and willingly involved in pulling these women and girls out of their own communities., They were simply seized, roughed up and delivered to the nearest Magdalene Laundry. The local people who participated in this orgy of betrayal volunteered willingly and without coercion, although many were induced with the promise of free drink and sweets. Some participated in the scheme out of blind obedience or job ambition and in need of a reference from the local parish priest. Various other reasons were also at play, including Catholic ideological schooling, local peer pressure, getting rid of a local scandal such as an unwanted baby being born to a woman or girl out of wedlock and, for some, the pure pleasure of sadism and personal gain was sufficient incentive. Additionally, the being awarded with a mention of honour at Mass the following Sunday was surely of supreme importance to many. There is no doubt that the great majority of women and girls who ended up in the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland perished as a consequence of local betrayal. The local population’s involvement in turning over these women and girls who sought their help is something that is rarely discussed today, but needs to be talked about. When the women and girls disappeared from their local communities -communities in which they grew up, went to school, played with their friends, and lived with their extended families - their disappearance was only ever spoken of in hushed tones. Sadly these women and girls would rarely, if ever, see their families or communities again. We here in Ireland badly need an honest debate and a prolonged bout of real soul-searching about the role that the local population (including the local police and other professionals), had in sending their daughters, mothers, aunts, and sisters to the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland. Over the life of the Magdalene Laundries, well over 100,000 girls and women (who had committed no crime) were enslaved in a life of imprisonment with punitive labour and brutal hardship in these religious-run workhouses. Many of the girls and women would die from overwork in this involuntary servitude and many died from beatings inflicted by their religious jailers. Then, to compound the horror, their bodies were unceremoniously dumped into mass disposal sites on the religious laundry grounds. The few ‘lucky’ ones who survived would go on to lead wretched lives burdened with the guilt of being outcasts from their own families, local communities and friends. Historical truth is not always pleasant, and those who acted despicably and inhumanely should be utterly condemned. Yet I hear to this day sentiments such as, “Let bygones be bygones”, expressing a sense that we should forgive and forget unpleasant things that happened in the past.. I wish it was so easy. Was it not the Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana who said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Or, as the American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and author Carl Sagan once famously put it, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” The Irish Catholic Church authorities turned Magdalene Laundries into a profitable industry, in pursuit of income from their unpaid slave labour. This put pressure on local parishes to find and provide ever more women and girls to run their labour camps. Religious servitude included hard labour and was a standard feature in all Magdalene Laundries. Religious penal servitude was never abolished in Ireland but penal servitude itself was abolished in Ireland by section 11(1) of the Criminal Law Act, 1997. It was finally expunged from the Constitution of Ireland by a referendum in 2001, but never by the Irish Catholic Church. Any unmarried woman’s life was perceived as worthless by most Irish Catholic Clerics and this was a prejudice fostered by the teachings of the Irish Catholic Church. Irish people lived in a climate in which hate would be allowed and, indeed, encouraged, to grow. The deadly efficiency of this system of slavery operated by the Irish Catholic Church depended on the enthusiasm and willingness of local informers to be participants while the local parish priests methodically carried out their duties, collecting and exterminating undesirable women and girls, principally from the rural areas of Ireland. I have always had the impression that there was a sense among Irish Catholic Church officials that they lived and worked in a kind of separate environment in which even the laws of the land did not apply to them. How else to explain their horrendous behaviour toward their Victims and Survivors; the rape, torture and murder of women and children, and then the disposal of their remains into mass graves and septic tanks at the back of their Religious-run Institutions. Women outside the control of men (Priests) and the Irish Catholic Church were targeted because they were sexualised and literally demonised by the Catholic Church. Another teaching of the Catholic Church was that women were “weak.” and inferior to their male counterparts. All of this woman-hating rhetoric was, of course, holy and wholesome and good, because the Catholic religion deemed it so. The Catholic Church believed women to be particularly susceptible to evil and thus women had to be exceptionally pious and saintly, and were always to be kept tightly controlled. Nuns themselves believed this to be true. Extraordinary violence was carried out in Christ’s name, with Christian doctrine often a mere excuse for murder and pillage by a group of cultish, closeted, sex cannibals passing themselves of as Priests. It would appear that it was the mandated duty of Irish Catholic Clerics and the wider Catholic Church at the time to drown goodness with an abundance of profoundly immoral and scandalous corruption. Owen Felix O’Neill Let us examine the Irish Catholic Church’s enablers and their vulgarisation of various modern philosophers and the distinguished academics who supported the Irish Catholic Church and their brutal reign in Ireland. Many academics carried overtones of saintliness combined with the suggestion of profound learning, when really they had dubious degrees and ennobled themselves with bullshit. John Charles McQuaid, Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin between December 1940 and January 1972, even selected the editors of every newspaper in Ireland. McQuaid, who once said that brutality is respectful, took all the ingredients of a frightened and ignorant Ireland, mixed old superstitions with Christian superstitions from his cabinet of bigotry and loathing, combined them in his private transmutation lab and turned the idiosyncratic Irish mixture into a honeyed elixir that the Irish masses willingly drank. The Irish Catholic Church learned to hate democracy because, as Nietzsche said, it “encouraged mediocrity.” The Irish Catholic Church wanted a uniquely Catholic Theocratic State, a form of civil government of which God himself (McQuaid), would be recognised as the head. Fear is absolutely indispensable in the founding of a new power and that new power was to be The Irish Catholic Theocratic State - an ecclesiocracy in which Priests ruled in the name of Jesus Christ. For close on eighty years Ireland had such an ecclesiocracy in which the Catholic Bishops were the temporal rulers. The Irish State used the administrative hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church for its own administration, with the administrators being the Clergy who were, of course, also subordinate to the religious hierarchy. The Irish Clerics were an Oligarchy of Ireland, a power structure in which real power rested with a small number of Priests and which involved the rule of the many by the few, some of whom were anointed under claim of divine commission. Throughout history, oligarchies have always been tyrannical, relying on the existence of absolute public obedience and oppression. As can now be seen from recently uncovered scandals, the Irish Catholic Church was no different in that respect. The Irish Catholic Church used their skills for their own benefit, recruiting enablers and volunteers to select the civil servants who would perform judicial, executive, and administrative functions. They also controlled every lever of power in the budding Irish State including the election of parliamentary representatives (T.Ds.), who, once elected, abrogated their legal responsibilities and, instead kowtowed to the Irish Bishops. The Irish Bishops, in effect, appointed all Irish government positions including judges, ambassadors and other diplomatic posts. and, of course, all the doctors in their Church-run hospitals. They also appointed all the teachers and academics at the schools, colleges and universities of which 99% were controlled by the Irish Catholic Church. They also controlled all media outlets, including the “State-run” broadcasting service, managed the banning of “unsuitable” books, plays, movies and television, exiled famous Irish writers and prohibited visits by international writers. De facto, they controlled the words and thoughts of the Irish people. With no opposition, they went about raping, torturing and murdering women and children in their thousands while their enablers looked the other way. In this ecclesiocracy of Ireland, there was the situation where the Irish Catholic Church leaders assumed a leading role in running the Irish State affairs, and McQuaid and his Clerics felt they were divinely sanctioned and blessed with divine authority to do so. Just as monarchs of old believed in the divine right of Kings, McQuaid and his henchmen believed they had God's mandate to rule and, as McQuaid further asserted, as Archbishop he was not subject to any earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of a Higher Being and thus not subject to the will of his people. This assertion implies that only God can judge an unjust Archbishop and that any attempt to depose, dethrone or restrict his powers would run contrary to the will of Almighty God and would constitute a sacrilegious act. Like an Emperor of Rome, McQuaid maintained that his office and rule was not only divinely approved but also constitutional. The duly elected Government of Ireland shamefully conceded, prostrated itself before him and his Clerics, and accepted his divine right to rule. [The Roman Catholic Church’s notion of a divine right of Kings is traced to a story found in Samuel 1, where the prophet Samuel anoints Saul and then David as Messiah or King over the Land of Israel. The anointing is such that the monarch became inviolable, so that even when Saul sought to kill David, David would not raise his hand to defend himself against him because "He was the Lord's anointed".] Archbishop McQuaid was often heard to say in Latin, “Dieu et mon droit”-“God and my right” - he wanted his followers to believe that he was the Father of the Irish State. McQuaid also said that Archbishops are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, and, even by God himself, they are called gods. (The reference to "God's lieutenants" is apparently a reference to the text in Romans 13 where Paul refers to "God's ministers".) Irish Catholic Priests, en bloc, raped children, marking them as their territory and using their position in God’s light as an excuse to rob babies of their irretrievable innocence. For many decades, no matter how bad it got, the Irish Catholic Church’s enablers also covered it up, in order to avoid prosecution and protect the Church. There is now no longer any question in anyone’s mind that the Irish Catholic Church is a criminal cabal, hiding behind and using religion to commit their most evil deeds of raping, torturing, and even murdering innocent boys and girls and being protected by a network of religious fanatics. We wouldn’t tolerate this behaviour in any other organisation in the world, and yet we allow it to happen in the Cabal Ministry known as the Irish Catholic Church - an organisation that is irreligious, secretive, murderous, evil, treacherous, sadistic, compassionless, and filled with psychopaths. The genetic make-up of these clerics is dramatically different from the rest of us. They completely lack compassion and empathy; they exude glibness and superficial charm under many false fronts; they are ruthless, self-centred sociopaths wrapped in lies. These are their genetic traits. Many of them are also sadistic child rapists who engage in satanic rituals in which children are raped, tortured and murdered. Let’s be honest here: the Roman Catholic Church is a worldwide organisation filled with mind-manipulators and pedophiles. These Christian Criminals are notorious for their hypocrisy, their disdain for the truth, their complete lack of integrity, and their utter lack of compassion or concern for anybody or anything but themselves. They are nothing short of presumptuous, repugnant, and reprehensible. They suffer from general poverty, from moral depravity and insanity and truly exhibit the symptoms of Dissociative Personality Disorder in that they seem to possess no sense of ethics pertaining to the rights of others, especially children. Priests and Nuns are born fabulists, with an imagination unfettered by the laws of logic and probability, they are emotionally shallow and show a lack of guilt even to this very day as, for example, the Nuns who don’t see a problem with having flushed thousands of babies down a sluice into a septic tank in their Mother and Baby Homes and Convents. These Nuns were (and are) psychopaths and notorious for their lack of fear. Why else would they dispose of babies in this fashion? The well- honed tools of the Catholic Church range from untruthfulness and insincerity, to outright pathological lying. It is now a well known fact, accepted world-wide, that Priests are more likely to be pedophiles than any other group. Why do we, as a society, condone pedophilia in the Irish Catholic Church and accept the systematic cover-ups of child rape, murder and other abuse? The Roman Catholic Church has been involved in the organised enabling of rape and murder of children for over 2,000 years. The perspectives of the Roman Catholic Church are so similar because the truth is so evident. The raping of children always starts in the local parish but runs all the way up to the very top, even to the Pope. If people continue to support and give money to the Catholic Church, then they are complicit in the continued ritualistic and systematic rape of children, thus enabling the Catholic Church in its many crimes. Owen Felix O’Neill |
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