New Catholic Church/ DUP coalition! Is this they way forward?

[deiseach]

Brady if he is to blame,is no more or less so than the victims parents who at the time had exactly the same knowledge as Brady but like him,failed to stop Brendan Smyth.

This is truly loathsome and disgusting. Is there no depth you will hesitate to sink to?

Now there's a rhetorical question if ever there was one.

[T Fearon]

Yes Hardy,Muppet is to be congratulated on exposing the fact that Mr Boland's father was aware.of his son's abuse bit failed to go to the statutory authorities.

[guy crouchback]

do you know what tony i think you should stop now, you have gone too far and its beyond a wind up now. you can keep going of course after all this is just a discussion board but you are really really letting yourself down now.

[T Fearon]

I will stop when someone explains to me how a relatively Junior cleric can be pilloried for alleged inaction over Brendan Smyth but a victim's father with the same knowledge as the cleric is totally exonerated.

[Lar Naparka]

How anyone can compare all of what Brady did, with the victim's father, is as I said, a level of pure evil that I cannot get my head around.

This statement represents a devaluation of language. Both the father and Brady believed that something would be done and were assured by people that something would be done. It is easy to say in 2015 that you would not believe that anything would happen, but that is with the benefit of hindsight.

As for the comparison with Daly. It was appropriate for Daly to resign as he had authority to deal with things and didn't. Brady had been peripherally involved but had no authority to act directly on the problem. The one solid point that you do make is that Brady was in charge when the data release was stonewalled, so it cannot be said that he had come into the job with the intention to sort things out.

With all due respect, so does your second sentence.
Sure, both men expected that something would be done as a result of the investigation, the key point is that they were expecting different  outcomes.
Mr Boland believed that what Fr John B told him was indeed true and that the purpose of his visit was to ensure that Smyth's activities would be stopped.
Brady was a career diplomat and quite a sharp one at that. At the time he was private secretary to the bishop of the diocese. So he was privy to whatever correspondence landed on his desk and he knew the extent of the paedophile problem in Ireland before he set out to silence the Bolands. HJe was a trusted confidente of the bollix who sent him on his evil way.. Logic has no meaning if Brady felt he was on a mission to prevent Brendan Boland and other innocent children being abused by the likes of Brendan Smyth.

[muppet]

Yes Hardy,Muppet is to be congratulated on exposing the fact that Mr Boland's father was aware.of his son's abuse bit failed to go to the statutory authorities.

I have told you many times here that it was the Boland's who went to the Gárdaí.

40 years on and Brady still hasn't gone to the Gárdaí, afaik. If he had any integrity he would present himself for questioning armed with all records of his (and indeed the entire church's) involvement in anything to to with Smyth and/or other abusers.

His weak apology "We are judging the behaviour of 35 years ago by the standards we set today and I don't think that is fair and it's not applied to other sectors of society," is particularly crass given the main reason we are only talking about Brady's involvement in the last few years is:

a) that the church refused to release the records to the Bolands for so long.
and
b) incredibly the church has still not handed over all records to the Gárdaí and the State otherwise it would have shown up earlier.

Brady's modus operandi appears to be: say nothing for as many years as possible then blame the prevailing culture at the time of the event. This from the Primate of All-Ireland, regarding the sexual abuse of children, is unforgivable.

No one is saying Brady is to completely to blame for Smyth's abuse. That is the only argument Tony has left, i.e. pretend that is what everyone is saying. What Brady is to blame for is covering up his failure to take a golden opportunity to stop a serial child abuser in his tracks. He is also to blame for not telling the parents of the other children and thus doing nothing to stop the abuse continuing, which it did in some cases. When, as Secretary to the Bishop, it must have been obvious to him nothing was done, as a decent man and Irish citizen with any remote concern for children, he should have done something more about it. Add to that the lengths to which the church, over which he presided, went to deny a victim his right to see the records of that investigation.

Cui bono?

In my view this cover up had the following effect:

1) Brady - It would obviously have been very damaging if it was made public and thus the secrecy helped him enormously. It may have even been the difference in his various appointments rising to the top cleric in the land.

Verdict - Highly beneficial to Brady

2) The Church in Ireland - While this would have been damaging but if it had been made public at the time of the Smyth scandal, the damage would have been relatively small. By sitting on it for so long it could be argued that it did far more damage years later than it would have, say, in the early 1990s.

Verdict - Increasingly damaging to the church to sit on it for so long.

3) The victims - Smyth abused the children. The church then abused them with their 'investigation' and getting them to sign an illegal  oath of secrecy. The church continued this abuse of victims by not releasing its records. Boland sought, and was entitled to the records of his interview but the Brady led church refused to hand them over for (13?) years. This constituted ongoing abuse of the victims.

Verdict - This constituted a continuation of the abuse of rights of these people and it added insult to awful injury.

The reality is that many in the church do not see the abused children as victims to any degree, they see Brady and the church as the victim. Brady's apology means nothing, as evidenced by its rejection by the abused, until he does everything in his power to get the church to hand over all of the records.

[muppet]

How anyone can compare all of what Brady did, with the victim's father, is as I said, a level of pure evil that I cannot get my head around.

This statement represents a devaluation of language. Both the father and Brady believed that something would be done and were assured by people that something would be done. It is easy to say in 2015 that you would not believe that anything would happen, but that is with the benefit of hindsight.

As for the comparison with Daly. It was appropriate for Daly to resign as he had authority to deal with things and didn't. Brady had been peripherally involved but had no authority to act directly on the problem. The one solid point that you do make is that Brady was in charge when the data release was stonewalled, so it cannot be said that he had come into the job with the intention to sort things out.

With all due respect, so does your second sentence.
Sure, both men expected that something would be done as a result of the investigation, the key point is that they were expecting different  outcomes.
Mr Boland believed that what Fr John B told him was indeed true and that the purpose of his visit was to ensure that Smyth's activities would be stopped.
Brady was a career diplomat and quite a sharp one at that. At the time he was private secretary to the bishop of the diocese. So he was privy to whatever correspondence landed on his desk and he knew the extent of the paedophile problem in Ireland before he set out to silence the Bolands. HJe was a trusted confidente of the bollix who sent him on his evil way.. Logic has no meaning if Brady felt he was on a mission to prevent Brendan Boland and other innocent children being abused by the likes of Brendan Smyth.

Correct Lar, that and also Boland's Dad wasn't head of a church that refused to hand over the records for 13 years.

[T Fearon]

Yes you expect an human individual to willingly draw attention to a controversy he was unwillingly involved in?

[muppet]

Yes you expect an human individual to willingly draw attention to a controversy he was unwillingly involved in?

I expect him to put the child victims first. I expect him to put the suffering of the families first. Their involvement was far more unwilling than his was. I would expect him to have stood up for the brave 14 year old for drawing 'attention to a controversy he was unwillingly involved in' instead of allowing the suffering to continue for decades.

In short I would expect the Primate of All-Ireland to practice a bit of what he preached.

[Oraisteach]

Good man, Tony, but you can't just brush off my match assessment with a 'Rubbish' because, well, it's just that, my view of how the match is going, and it's not going that well for you

But your response does point to a few essential flaws in your position.  Your statement 'Brady, if he is to blame...' is an example.  You are on the doorstep of placing some degree of blame on Fr. Brady, but then pull up short.  As an agent/representative of the church in this case, he has to accept some culpability, but then you argue that his blame is equal to that of the parents.  That is especially weak.  Elsewhere you have acknowledged that it was a different time, some 40 years ago, but one of the features of that time was the faith that ordinary people had in the church and the stranglehold the church had over those trusting people.  To blame them equally, they who were duped by a church that failed them and other parents after them is reprehensible.  This line of attack, quite simply, seeks to blame the victim, a favorite ploy adopted in rape cases.

Then, to characterize Fr. Brady as a 30-something priest is to further diminish his responsibility.  30-something is not 17-something.  He was an adult, plain and simple, trained in canon law, not a mere child like Smyth's targets and was undoubtedly aware of the significance of conducting an inquisition, under oath, behind closed doors, beyond the hearing of the boy's parents.

Also, I don't think anyone is blaming Fr. Brady for creating the Smyth monster; rather, it's that knowing his pedophile proclivity, the church allowed him to prey on other children.  Put simply, the church is in the business of right and wrong.  There is no gray area here.  The church facilitated his reign of terror.  Further, I don't see how blaming the church representative can be construed as 'cowardly' when patently it was the church's failure to act that was cowardly.  And then, you latch on to the incendiary word 'fascist', whose relevance to the case is unclear, except for the irony of the church's affiliation to fascist regimes throughout the last century.

But then you rail against critics of the way the situation was handled as anti-Catholics, which I find
especially abhorrent.  In my experience, it is Catholics like myself who are the most vehement in their censure of how the church deliberately mishandled and concealed this scandal.  To have the bedrock of your faith shaken by people whose primary interest is self-protection and deceit is soul-destroying.  Don't blame anti-Catholics and their so-called 'hate-filled propaganda'.  Consider, instead, the legitimate outrage of good Catholics.

I'll say it again, Tony.  You are doing the church's cause no good by shaming victims and appearing to sanction what is, and remains, an ongoing cover-up. 

And in pugilistic terms, Muppet has knocked you out on the merits of his case, but you just don't know it yet.

[AZOffaly]

Biffos is better Muppet.

Biffos are ALWAYS better. As for Tony, lads I really don't know why ye bother. If he means what he says, he's beyond redemption. If he is winding ye up, ye are just facilitating him.

I suppose the one thing we've learned here is that if we ever, ever, ever agree with anything Tony writes here, we should seriously reexamine our own positions

[T Fearon]

Orasteach,Muppet spends his life indulging his obsession ie paedophilia among so called Catholic clerics.

The fact is no one knows what Brady did or didn't do.Was he given assurances by his superiors that they would act on his reports? Did they investigate them (and remember these came from children) and find there was no further evidence to act on?

I too am disgusted by the shameful way abuse was handled in the church.But it is a bureaucracy I which everyone has a place and it doesn't matter whether your 26,36 or 96.

I believe Sean Brady to be an honourable decent Christian man,who like all of us has made mistakes.

By the way if any organisation or individual is accorded too much respect and deference then it is the fault of those who give it.

[Hardy]

By the way if any organisation or individual is accorded too much respect and deference then it is the fault of those who give it.

You're just parodying yourself now.

[easytiger95]

Yes Hardy,Muppet is to be congratulated on exposing the fact that Mr Boland's father was aware.of his son's abuse bit failed to go to the statutory authorities.

I have told you many times here that it was the Boland's who went to the Gárdaí.

40 years on and Brady still hasn't gone to the Gárdaí, afaik. If he had any integrity he would present himself for questioning armed with all records of his (and indeed the entire church's) involvement in anything to to with Smyth and/or other abusers.

His weak apology "We are judging the behaviour of 35 years ago by the standards we set today and I don't think that is fair and it's not applied to other sectors of society," is particularly crass given the main reason we are only talking about Brady's involvement in the last few years is:

a) that the church refused to release the records to the Bolands for so long.
and
b) incredibly the church has still not handed over all records to the Gárdaí and the State otherwise it would have shown up earlier.

Brady's modus operandi appears to be: say nothing for as many years as possible then blame the prevailing culture at the time of the event. This from the Primate of All-Ireland, regarding the sexual abuse of children, is unforgivable.

No one is saying Brady is to completely to blame for Smyth's abuse. That is the only argument Tony has left, i.e. pretend that is what everyone is saying. What Brady is to blame for is covering up his failure to take a golden opportunity to stop a serial child abuser in his tracks. He is also to blame for not telling the parents of the other children and thus doing nothing to stop the abuse continuing, which it did in some cases. When, as Secretary to the Bishop, it must have been obvious to him nothing was done, as a decent man and Irish citizen with any remote concern for children, he should have done something more about it. Add to that the lengths to which the church, over which he presided, went to deny a victim his right to see the records of that investigation.

Cui bono?

In my view this cover up had the following effect:

1) Brady - It would obviously have been very damaging if it was made public and thus the secrecy helped him enormously. It may have even been the difference in his various appointments rising to the top cleric in the land.

Verdict - Highly beneficial to Brady

2) The Church in Ireland - While this would have been damaging but if it had been made public at the time of the Smyth scandal, the damage would have been relatively small. By sitting on it for so long it could be argued that it did far more damage years later than it would have, say, in the early 1990s.

Verdict - Increasingly damaging to the church to sit on it for so long.

3) The victims - Smyth abused the children. The church then abused them with their 'investigation' and getting them to sign an illegal  oath of secrecy. The church continued this abuse of victims by not releasing its records. Boland sought, and was entitled to the records of his interview but the Brady led church refused to hand them over for (13?) years. This constituted ongoing abuse of the victims.

Verdict - This constituted a continuation of the abuse of rights of these people and it added insult to awful injury.

The reality is that many in the church do not see the abused children as victims to any degree, they see Brady and the church as the victim. Brady's apology means nothing, as evidenced by its rejection by the abused, until he does everything in his power to get the church to hand over all of the records.

Devastatingly good Muppet.

Completely agree with AZ - we are facilitating a wind up merchant, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't marvel at the energy, intricacy and malevolence of said wind up. I can only imagine at the mindset of someone who would continually repeat obscenities for kicks - it's actually probably more intrinsically awful than a true believer because

a. a true believer's words can be put down to honest-to-goodness delusions

b. a wind up about a subject like this shows that the WUM himself values absolutely nothing and is scarily empty inside.

[T Fearon]

Yawn. Same old same old.Church to blame for everything,parental responsibility counts for nothing.