Eoghan Harris: What chance had powerless children?
Sunday November 29 2009
Set the phone to wake me for What it Says in the Papers. I am hoping for the vibrant tones of Valerie Cox or Fiona Kelly, voices which give me the vitality to get out of bed. But when I hear the graveyard grind of Niall Kiely, I start to drift off to sleep again.
But just before I go under, I am jolted awake. Buried in Kiely's boring list of second-rate stories from our rivals is a low-key reference to a lead story by Liam Collins in the Sunday Independent. According to Kiely, Collins's story "claims" to come from the forthcoming Murphy report on child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
I wonder why Kiely puts inverted commas around the story. Any good journalist has only to skim a story to see whether it is solid or scuttlebutt. Kiely is paid to tell us whether a story reads like rumour or has sufficient solid detail to make it a major scoop.
So I get up and get a copy of the Sunday Independent. A few seconds' reading confirms that Liam Collins has the scoop of the year. So why didn't Kiely say so and give it due prominence at the top of his preview? Can't he tell a second-rate story from the real thing ?
Pat Leahy, political correspondent of the Sunday Business Post, can. An hour later, on Newstalk's 106 media show, and without the slightest sign of begrudgery or backtrack, Leahy warmly praises Liam Collins's story, not once but twice. And praise from Leahy means a lot.
Pat Leahy is the author of Showtime, easily the most elegantly written of the political books on the market this year. I don't agree with his angle on Bertie Ahern, but he writes with brio and balance. So if your spouse is a political junkie, put Showtime in her Christmas stocking.
After Newstalk I switch to Marian Finucane. None of her panel takes up the Sunday Independent story. Just as well, judging by their just-so contributions on other topics.
Marian's television previewers need a tweak too. No mention of David McSavage's new comedy show, The Savage Eye, starting Monday on RTE2. McSavage is up against both The Apprentice and Frontline. Surely he deserves a small plug from his RTE sponsors?
MONDAY
Spend the day pondering the Sunday Independent preview of the Murphy report. Later I try to lift my spirits with a recording of Seo Man, the superb TG4 documentary on Niall Toibin. And suddenly I am seized with a fit of anger that goes back 30 years.
In 1977, a combination of mad Catholics and cowardly RTE executives conspired to cancel a third series of Niall Toibin's successful satirical show, Time Now Mr T because of a mild skit about Catholic sex education featuring a play on the word "abuse". Meantime Catholic clergy were secretly engaged in the most extreme practices of sexual perversion.
Looking back, I can now see clearly why abused children were airbrushed away. What chance had powerless children when people in comparatively powerful positions like Niall Toibin, producer Brian MacLochlainn and the writer (myself) of a harmless comedy sketch could all be coolly censored without a comeback?
The offending sketch featured Toibin as a female Catholic marriage counsellor who favoured loud frocks. She dimpled at the camera with roguish charm and said: "Tonight I am going to talk to you about self-abuse. When you feel that feeling coming over you, do not abuse yourself. Go out on the street and abuse someone else."
Looking back, it seems incredible that such a simple skit could cause Catholic pressure groups to go puce, RTE to reject a third season, and the tapes of the Toibin shows to be wiped or mysteriously go missing. But, as the phrase goes, resistance was futile.
Like most public institutions at the time, the national broadcaster was seeded with shadowy figures whose allegiance was to secret Catholic pressure groups like the Knights of Columbanus, Opus Dei and many others. These Catholic activists had considerable influence in the Civil Service (notably the Department of Education), Garda and RTE.
And if they could coolly censor a national figure like Toibin, what chance had a poor child?
TUESDAY
The public sector picketers at a local school are decent people. But they suffer from the delusion that they can continue to be paid 26 per cent more than the private sector. Alas, their leaders lack the moral courage to give them a reality check.
"Lions led by donkeys" comes to mind. Like many leftish cliches about the First World War, it lacks truth. Many of the generals were good. But war had become bogged down in trenches back in the American Civil War and tanks were still new-fangled toys. But "lions led by donkeys" certainly applies to the public sector workers. Last weekend, the Shannon, the Lee and sundry swollen rivers gave the public service a chance to shine.
A smart union leadership would have done an Eoin McNeill and called off the Rising (strike) at the last minute. Not sent a quarter of a million to a media death at the Battle of Newry. Had they called it off, they could have walked into the partnership talks flexing a lot of moral muscle. If they do it again, they are done for.
WEDNESDAY
The Irish Times, with a large public sector readership, has a thorny path to tread in covering the strike. But today's Irish Times editorial does not evade its duty to the wider community and says: "When all the rhetoric and special pleading by TU leaders is stripped away, what is left is the unattractive face of me-feinism." When a friend tells you the truth, it is wise to listen.
THURSDAY
Justice Yvonne Murphy dispenses justice. Minister Dermot Ahern and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin say what has to be said. But, as Eamon Keane remarks on Newstalk, we are now grateful to people for simply doing their duty.
All afternoon the recriminations roll. But like many people I am still recovering from the Ryan report and have little reaction left. Nevertheless, on Prime Time, Maire Keenan, a psychotherapist, makes me pay attention.
Again and again she asks the archbishop what special circumstances combined to create the conspiracy of collusion and cover-up in the Catholic Church? Dr Martin has no answer. Who has? Historians need to do some hard graft. Meantime, here are my own tentative conclusions.
Three things corrupted the Irish Catholic Church since the State was set up: the Eucharistic Congress of 1932; the Constitution of 1937; and the accession of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in 1940. The Eucharistic Congress gave the Church public profile, the Constitution gave it State status, and Archbishop McQuaid gave it a Stasi to snuff out dissent, staffed by clerical spies and craw-thumping lay touts. All fed the Church's appetite for absolute authority without any answerability.
You don't have to be Paisley to point out that power without responsibility has been the prerogative of the Scarlet Woman throughout the ages.
The predictable result was first the Church Arrogant, after that the Church Abusive and finally the Church Criminal.
Luckily, the Irish Republic does not have to wait on Judgment Day.
Originally published in
