Sean Brady Steps Down

[T Fearon]

You're right,people like Muppet cannot see that I have fully acknowledged the Catholic Church's mishandling of child abuse and that two current Bishops, namely Brady and Mc Areavey have with deep remorse , admitted that they did not fully consider the impact on the victims,and have apologised profusely.

They also see no failure on the part of parents who drive their young children to meetings with the clergy and agree to absent themselves from the meetings,without making it their business to find out what this was all about.I find that bizarre.

Throughout these threads I have not seen one morsel of a convincing argument to change my views.

[muppet]

You're right,people like Muppet cannot see that I have fully acknowledged the Catholic Church's mishandling of child abuse and that two current Bishops, namely Brady and Mc Areavey have with deep remorse , admitted that they did not fully consider the impact on the victims,and have apologised profusely.

They also see no failure on the part of parents who drive their young children to meetings with the clergy and agree to absent themselves from the meetings,without making it their business to find out what this was all about.I find that bizarre.

Throughout these threads I have not seen one morsel of a convincing argument to change my views.

Brady hasn't shown anything like genuine remorse. His wishy washy 'apology' wasn't matched by any actions on his part and was simply for people like you. His apology asked for forgiveness, which of course is for his own benefit, and demonstrated a complete lack of moral courage. It certainly meant nothing to the victims who saw his refusal to resign as offensive.

Back to the parents, maybe they were impressed by Brady the same way you are. Maybe they accepted his word and his sincerity, the same way you do. Even if they thought something might be wrong they probably thought they were committing a sin by thinking such a thing. This was precisely how the likes of Smyth operated. He preyed on the devout. You, while accusing the rest of us of being anti-Catholic, are blaming the devout for their own stupidity.

[T Fearon]

At the end of the day the church and parents both made mistakes both took the wrong decisions,but they should not be crucified for it.

[muppet]

At the end of the day the church and parents both made mistakes both took the wrong decisions,but they should not be crucified for it.

Are there any other scapegoats for Brady's failures in 1975 and his moral cowardice since?

[T Fearon]

Apportioning blame to both church and parents is not scapegoating either parties,merely stating a fact.What more would you like Brady to do forty years after he had a very minor influential role in a truly horrendous scenario nearly forty years ago?

[muppet]

Apportioning blame to both church and parents is not scapegoating either parties,merely stating a fact.What more would you like Brady to do forty years after he had a very minor influential role in a truly horrendous scenario nearly forty years ago?

Brady hasn't done anything remotely helpful at all, unless you count fooling a minority of easily led people like yourself into thinking he has. In fact he has been so successful at this that you attack the devoutly Catholic parents of abused children and blame them. Their only mistake was being devout.

Try this Tony. Brady knew Smyth was a child abuser in 1975. He himself had established witnesses and he himself silenced them. Meanwhile the parents of the children who were abused in 1976, 1977, 1978 and so on up to 1992 knew nothing in 1975, as the abuse of their children hadn't happened yet. But Brady knew.

For 40 years he knew that he had helped cover up solid evidence of Smyth's abuse and had ignored evidence of at least 3 other abused children. Yet all the while he remained silent. And you blame all of the parents, some who probably still know nothing, instead of the one man who had the complete picture put in front of him, and failed all those children so miserably.

[T Fearon]

Bullshit, he came across Smyth once in his life and I'm sure he thought he would have been adequately d
ealt with, it's not as if he electronically tagged Smyth in 1975 and monitored his every move thereafter, you are waging a bizarre personal vendetta at this stage.

[ludermor]

Bullshit, he came across Smyth once in his life and I'm sure he thought he would have been adequately d
ealt with, it's not as if he electronically tagged Smyth in 1975 and monitored his every move thereafter, you are waging a bizarre personal vendetta at this stage.

is that why he covered up for Smyth?

[muppet]

Bullshit, he came across Smyth once in his life and I'm sure he thought he would have been adequately d
ealt with, it's not as if he electronically tagged Smyth in 1975 and monitored his every move thereafter, you are waging a bizarre personal vendetta at this stage.

'came across Smyth once in his life'? You make it sound as if he met him once in a queue for the bus..

FFS He was the investigator into accusations of Smyth's abuse Tony. He was also Secretary to the Bishop, so he would have known what was going on in the Diocese. He wasn't on Craggy Island removed from everything.

He interviewed two boys abused by Smyth. He failed to tell the parents of one of them.

He was given the names of at least 3 other children who were alleged to be abused by Smyth. He never contacted them or their families. Their abuse continued for years. This alone is absolutely shocking behaviour from a man of responsibility.

He got the two boys who did speak out to sign oaths of silence. This was morally reprehensible. We also know that this was against the law at the time. We know that between himself and Monsignor Donnelly, they assured Boland's father that Smyth would never be a threat to children again. We know he couldn't have got that more wrong. We know he succeeded in covering up the activities of Smyth, that he knew about.

He accepted the position as Cahal Daly's replacement in 1994, knowing Daly had resigned for not having adequately dealt with Smyth, without coming clean about his own failure to deal with Smyth. He then callously refused to release records to one of the victims he sworn to silence for 13 years, until 2010. I am guessing this is illegal under the 1988 Data Protection Act and probably the 2003 version as well.

Finally when the truth all came out, he saw no reason to resign. He hasn't gone to the police despite knowing they interviewed everyone involved in the interviews in 1975, except him. The police didn't know he was there until the 2010 release of documents. It is easy to surmise why he didn't want them viewed by anyone.

But to cap it all, Tony Fearon the Wizard of witch hunts, and Chief Officer of Outrage, accuses me of a vendetta for pointing out the above facts.

[T Fearon]

Bullshit.He spent a large part of the post Smyth saga (and I cannot see how he could have encountered this vile individual again) heading up a college in Cavan followed by many years at the helm of the Irish College in Rome.Naturally like all humans he doesn't crow about his mistakes,but he has acknowledged these and countless more people came to know about Smyth in the intervening years.Brady abused no one and no one goes through life without a skeleton or two in the cupboard , so get over it , persecute the actual abusers.

[Lar Naparka]

Apportioning blame to both church and parents is not scapegoating either parties,merely stating a fact.What more would you like Brady to do forty years after he had a very minor influential role in a truly horrendous scenario nearly forty years ago?

Tony,  did you ever had a chat with  your parents, or anybody of their generation, about the role of the Church in Irish society back in the 70s?   
If you had, you'd know why the parents of the boys involved did not question the motives of Sean Brady  and his accomplices when they moved in to protect a psychotic paedophile and allow him to continue his attacks on defenseless children for another 18 years or so.
Better still, if you were to ask people of your grandparents' generation to tell you about the absolute power  of the Church over the lives of ordinary people in their younger days, you'd get a rude awakening. Or at least you'd have a better understanding of the almost absolute power of the hierarchy over the mind and morals of the general public.
You  seem to blame the parents of Brendan Boland for not taking further action when the infamous interview was concluded but you should realise by now that no parent of any of the hundreds of children abused by dozens  of clerical paedophiles took any action either. Nobody would defy the church or question the motives of any holy man of god.  It just wasn't done.
When former president, MaryMcAleese brought up the subject of child abuse with the then Archjbishop of Dublin, Desmond Connell, the b*stard laughed in her face and told her straight that the state would never move against the church - or something like that.
A mixture of arrogance and incompetence has brought the church to its knees today and the  failure of the powers that be to comprehend the changes taking place will cause further damage unless and until the likes of Brady, Connell and Comiskey are removed from the scene.
Mind you, the two Martins seem to be genuine articles and Pope Francis has made a promising start but there a lot of lost ground to be made up.

[T Fearon]

I we'll remember the mid 70s,at that time I was being educated in a catholic college by the Vincentian Order,so I know what the situation was.I'm sorry to inform you that the clerical power wasn't quite as absolute as the myth.I saw one parent having to be restrained from having a go at a priest and that was after his son had served mass and said priest was lecturing him and other altar boys as if they were adults on morals.I saw another parent call the priests from a rival college every unprintable name under the sun,after a Mc Rory match.

But if you're saying the parents were afraid to challenge the clerics that does nothing to exonerate them from their share of the blame.No parents were more devout than my own,but I'm damn sure my late mother would have made it her business to find out what was going on if I as a young boy had been summoned to meet the clergy.

[LCohen]

What is this about "career" Ffs any cleric would tell you that elevation to parish priest status is a poisoned chalice (pardon the pun) never mind Bishop,Cardinal or Pope! Thankless task,no family support and relentless criticism from not least anti Catholics.

The man was caught up in a dreadful scenario not of his making and being human did not want this particular skeleton to come out of the cupboard to bring further shame upon a church that's reeling due to its mishandling of child abuse.This does not make him a decent

the whole sga of child abuse is full of people caught in dreadful scenarios not of their own making. The key os to bring to book those in a position to to stop those scenarios from arising to have the intellect and decency to act as they must.

I understand the Church attempts to advance intellect and decency so one would hope that the recipients of this learning and guidance would have acted as they must

[LCohen]

Bollix.The man midjudged a situation when a comparatively inexperienced cleric, like any of us he does not wish to draw attention to this.

At what stage after the original catastrophic incident did he attempt to either put things right or at the very least stop them getting worse?

[LCohen]

Bullshit, he came across Smyth once in his life and I'm sure he thought he would have been adequately d
ealt with, it's not as if he electronically tagged Smyth in 1975 and monitored his every move thereafter, you are waging a bizarre personal vendetta at this stage.

This really is an advertisement for the morality preached and taught by the church

To pretend that Smyth is somebody Brady "once met" is an immoral piece of attempted evasion. I can't imagine many will be fooled by it