Who Owns Ireland's Paedo-Files/ The Pope or the People?
SEAMUS BREATHNACH | 04.02.2008 12:14 | Culture | Education | World
Accessing the Diocese of Dublin's secret files on paedophelia is a question with ramifications that go back to the initial colonising of the island by the Papacy. The theft of Ireland by the Papacy from the native pagans and given to the English (Henry 11) recalls the initial plantation of Ireland by the Norman/French/English Christians. While they now call themselves 'The Irish', the question as to who owns the files relating to criminal matter ('criminous clerks' and paedophiles) has raised the question as to who owns iRELAND, the Pope or the People.
WHO OWNS IRELAND'S PAEDO-FILES? THE POPE OR THE PEOPLE?
--- --- ---
THE CARDINAL, THE ARCHBISHOP AND
THE HISTORY OF DUBLIN’S PAEDO-FILES
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the troble with the Irish is that they have no sense of history. No one in Ireland believes that the Papacy once stole Ireland. It tore it , root and branch, red in claw and tooth, from the native pagan peoples, and gave it to the Anglici-planters, once called Norman-French-English Christians but now called Irish. The theft has come back to haunt the Papacy’s liege people.
Take the row over the files relating to clerical paedophelia in the Diocese of Dublin. On week ending February 2, Cardinal Connell (ex-Archbishop of the Dublin Diocese), sent his lawyers into the High Court to prevent his successor Archbishop Diarmuid Martin from making free with files compiled while Connell was in office. Archbishop Martin has been trying to satisfy demands for openness and candour with respect to the plethora of cases of paedophelia which has plagued his diocese.
Professor Colum Kenny of the Dublin City University (Sunday February 03 2008), described the matter as follows:
Cardinal Connell's court case is not just an insult to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. It is a hammer-blow for the Catholic Church in Ireland. Laity and priests will be appalled that he took the case, due in court tomorrow.
Claims that many of the hierarchy are quietly supporting Connell will disgust (but hardly surprise) most citizens. Irish Catholics have watched the hierarchy make a shambles of the child sexual abuse scandal, and have waited in vain for inspiring initiatives from their bishops.
The gardai should take note. Cardinal Connell is well enough to get involved in a High Court dog-fight over sex abuse files. So he is well enough to be prosecuted if he has covered up paedophilia. The gloves are off. It is past time to investigate the bishops and to charge any who may have helped criminals to evade justice.
Colum Kenny's impatience with the hierarchy is most welcome, and I am sure that he would agree with me when I say that Cardinal Connell's stance is not all that it appears to be.
Cardinal Connell , I would have thought, is fighting for something more than some files that may or may not cause him to appear in an unflattering light. As a pre-Reformation country that has not too long ago struck down the Special Position in Bunreacht na h-Eireann -- a status shared with the East Timorean Constitution -- the legal rights of the Church over the State have never been tested. It is one thing to borrow a constitution, write it up, and tell the world that , like good Americans, we also have a 'written constitution'; it is another thing to give those words meaning.
Anyone who has listened to John F. Kennedy (on YouTube) spelling out the American position on the ‘absolute separation of Church and State’ will soon know what I mean about imitation and creation.
Take for instance the notion that in our written constitution we have a 'Separation of Powers'. It has been my experience that no such things exist except in places where it does not matter. The Catholic Church in Ireland is obviously and unquestionably the most single and pervasive power in the state, and nowhere does it abide by any separation of its power. In so far, therefore, as it informs the secular state it also subverts it from executing its secular duties. Hundreds of charities, for example, which total some 25 billion euros each year, remain unregistered and unpoliced by secular powers; in Foregin Affairs ,which serves the Church on such a broad front, maximum discretion is guarded with respect to church interests; in Education, we have seen the appalling dependency of the State on the so-called magnanimity of the Church to provide education; in Justice the whole treatment of paedophiles and the distortion of the whole Criminal Justice System everywhere in favour of the Church, is also aparent to anyone who wants to know. At the top of all these areas, no such Separation of Catholic Power exists except on paper, and no assertion of secular standards are possible as long as that obtains.
In the present case , concerning the disposition of clerical files relating to pedophelia, of course Mr Michael Woods and his generous committe should have negotiated these matters with an eye to the secular rights of the Irish people and not , as has been the case, with an eye to doffing the cap to the most powerful empire in the world.
In Ireland it is not generally realised that the pre-Reformation Catholic state still persists in its absolute hegemony over any secular status the Republic of Ireland flatters itself it enjoys. I think this is what Cardinal Connell is intimating, but few people know the scope of his claims.
That we are down the years still talking about such things is but one indication of the church's powers over the secular powers , that Cardinal Connell disagreed with the former Minister for Justice Michael McDowell as to real status of canon law in the Republic mahy be regarded as another, but more importantly than these is the everyday power the Cahtholic church exercises over ordinary people in all the dioceses and parishes throughout Ireland as well as all those institutions that make up the Republic. In this regard one does not have to talk at lengh about secret societies, whether Opus Dei or the once hated but now prodigal society of Freemasons, one does not have to point out the power of Jesuits , Redemptorists, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc., etc., or their influence over the political parties, the media, the police, journalists, the profession of lawyers and judges, the civil service, the hospitals, the unions, and all the ethics committees that ever existed in Ireland. Their ubiquity is obvious to anyone who knows anythng about Irish society.
By freely offering the files for scrutiny, Bishop Martin adroitly avoids the public issues which are paramount to defining the nature of the Republic vis-a-vis the RC Church. Appearing as the cooperative agent of Rome, while retaining hegemony, whether real or imagined, over the Republic is the best strategy, especially when the country is not in the mood for hierarchical claims.
In all began in ancient Ireland, in the foruth century to be precise. The Christian church had just turned into the official alter ego of the Roman Empire at much the same time as St. Patrick was pushing Christianinty against a pagan wall in Ireland.
Then about 750 or some time thereafter a document known as the Donatio Constantini made its way into Canon Law. One rarely comes across the IRISH discussing such a document -- simply because they mostly never heard of it. Nevertheless, this document was important for two things: it was the greatest forgery ever perpetrated on the Christian World and it claimed Ireland as Fief of the Roman See.
Even though Ireland had many a holy Roman sandle on its neck, it was never became a colony of the Roman Empire. There were those who wished it had been so -- for it might have benefitted from that great division of Roman labour that made the Empire famous. But this was not to be: the Irish were Gaelic-speaking pagans with their own religion and a priesthood called Druids.
On foot of this unknown document , the Donatio Constantini, Pope Adrian IV -- the Enlglishman-Pope -- decided in 1155 to draft a letter to his compatriot Henry 11. And in it he more or less gave Ireland away. Henry 11 became the ‘Lord of Ireland’ by Papal consent. Of course , a few centuries later Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland and down to 1922 Ireland was attached to the British Crown. The question of course the Irish should be asking themselves -- for one can be sure Cardinal Connell has asked it -- is: was the Vatican’s original claim extinguished by the unilateral acion of Henry VIII? And , of course, the answer is ‘No; it wasn’t’.
Everyone knows that the Free State Irish expelled the British and claimed the island for the Irish, that non-Gaelic brood of British, who over the centuries attached themselves to pagan soil with hoops of Catholic steel.
So, does the Vatican actually still own Ireland? Is it in international law a residual Fief of the Vatican? And what , if anything, have the two constitutions (that of 1922 and that of 1937) got to say about it.
As I have already said, the Irish never really had a sense of history, so, surprise, surprise, neither of the constitutions say anything about the claim of the Donatio Constantini -- not even that it is a forged document -- or about Laudabiliter 1155, the document that sold out the Gaels and started a war between the Norman Christians (now Irish) and the Gaelic pagans (rubbished with the Mammoth for over 500 years). Indeed, it was Laudabiliter that brought the present race of Irish hither. Initially, they were a go-between the Gaelic pagans and the Pope’s and the King’s joint armies. That’s why they were called ‘the middle nation.’
While the 1922 Constitution which, for the first time in Irish history, gave birth to an Ireland owned by the ‘middle nation’, it says nothing of either its shady past or its anti-Gaelic history. The 1937 Constitution (De Valera’s Bunreacht na h-Eireann), remains silent about such an ancient claim, while everything from the Preamble to the Social Directives supports it. People say that Dev gave the Constitution first to the Pope (notwitshtanding the words that ‘we the People of Ireland give to ourselves….bla,bla,bla ) and it came back with an inscription of a Special Position allotted to the RC Church. The RC Church enjoyed this Special Position up to quite recently when, by consent, it was struck down to appease the howls of the Northern Irish. It was never called into question as a constitutional concept, but that does not mean that ,had it remained, it could never have been so. Indeed, such a ‘might-have-been’ is most striking in the present situation, where Cardinal Connell claims privilege above and beyond all the other Constitutional provisions.
To the wider point, as to the ‘ownership’ of the Republic of Ireland, the Irish State (the Free State or the Republic) has never asserted its hegemony on behalf of the people over the RC Church and if no one else knows about it, I suggest that Cardinal Connell does. Shooting the British was one thing, standing up to the holy Romans is quite another day’s work for a people who -- let us admit it -- were called into being by the Roman Church in order to transplant the Gaelic pagan population!
In practice, and on a more practical level, all political parties in Ireland know whom they serve -- the Church or the people. In the recent decision to defray the debts accruing to clerical paedophiles, the matter, whatever one may otherwise think, was settlede by an obvious expression of solidarity/sovereignty of the Church over the State and over their victims. The important thing was that the decision was made without any party or Parliamentary dissent. It ranked well with those other tell-tale and silent decisions which never appear to trouble Irish intelligence -- such as the decision to give Bunreacht na h-Eireann to the Pope before the people, the decision to ratline Nazies, to dispose of children in the ‘50s to Americans, to invite thousands of Poles over their quota into Ireland -- two further measures of social engineering thought through by the Catholic Church without one word of comment as to their prorpiety in Parliament. Further, the whole process of criminal procedure, which took from the people the moral right of public condemnation, was engineered in favour of the Church. The same necessary scepticism must now apply to the files respecting those files in possession of the Archbishop of Dublin.
What Cardinal Connell is calling into question is a pre-Reformation power. Put another way, if the Republic of Ireland was really a modern secular state or an ‘independent’ state, or, indeed, one that had in spirit as well as in words a ‘Separation of Powers’, if, indeed, it shared any of John F. Kennedy’s convictions as to the ‘absolute’ separation of Church and State, then it would not be dithering as to whether it should seize files relating to the commission of crimes. The AG's office and the DPP’s office and the Gardai would simply get on with it and treat clerics the same way as any other persons suspected of crimes should be treated.
But this ,as we all know, is not the case. The State's anaemic institutions constantly needs either permission from the Church itself or from some High Court Judge to do its job. The notions in the 'written' constitution, therefore, that 'no one is above the law' or that law should be administered fairly and the like are, like the doctrine of the Separation of Powers, a lot of words, mostly used in imitation of other civilisations rather than sustaining any Irish convictions.
It is a pity, but authentic societies cannot live indefinitely on the art of borrowing. Invariably, inevitably, they have to grow up…. Just like those other countries who show them the way!
Seamus Breathnach
www.irish-criminology.com
--- --- ---
THE CARDINAL, THE ARCHBISHOP AND
THE HISTORY OF DUBLIN’S PAEDO-FILES
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the troble with the Irish is that they have no sense of history. No one in Ireland believes that the Papacy once stole Ireland. It tore it , root and branch, red in claw and tooth, from the native pagan peoples, and gave it to the Anglici-planters, once called Norman-French-English Christians but now called Irish. The theft has come back to haunt the Papacy’s liege people.
Take the row over the files relating to clerical paedophelia in the Diocese of Dublin. On week ending February 2, Cardinal Connell (ex-Archbishop of the Dublin Diocese), sent his lawyers into the High Court to prevent his successor Archbishop Diarmuid Martin from making free with files compiled while Connell was in office. Archbishop Martin has been trying to satisfy demands for openness and candour with respect to the plethora of cases of paedophelia which has plagued his diocese.
Professor Colum Kenny of the Dublin City University (Sunday February 03 2008), described the matter as follows:
Cardinal Connell's court case is not just an insult to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. It is a hammer-blow for the Catholic Church in Ireland. Laity and priests will be appalled that he took the case, due in court tomorrow.
Claims that many of the hierarchy are quietly supporting Connell will disgust (but hardly surprise) most citizens. Irish Catholics have watched the hierarchy make a shambles of the child sexual abuse scandal, and have waited in vain for inspiring initiatives from their bishops.
The gardai should take note. Cardinal Connell is well enough to get involved in a High Court dog-fight over sex abuse files. So he is well enough to be prosecuted if he has covered up paedophilia. The gloves are off. It is past time to investigate the bishops and to charge any who may have helped criminals to evade justice.
Colum Kenny's impatience with the hierarchy is most welcome, and I am sure that he would agree with me when I say that Cardinal Connell's stance is not all that it appears to be.
Cardinal Connell , I would have thought, is fighting for something more than some files that may or may not cause him to appear in an unflattering light. As a pre-Reformation country that has not too long ago struck down the Special Position in Bunreacht na h-Eireann -- a status shared with the East Timorean Constitution -- the legal rights of the Church over the State have never been tested. It is one thing to borrow a constitution, write it up, and tell the world that , like good Americans, we also have a 'written constitution'; it is another thing to give those words meaning.
Anyone who has listened to John F. Kennedy (on YouTube) spelling out the American position on the ‘absolute separation of Church and State’ will soon know what I mean about imitation and creation.
Take for instance the notion that in our written constitution we have a 'Separation of Powers'. It has been my experience that no such things exist except in places where it does not matter. The Catholic Church in Ireland is obviously and unquestionably the most single and pervasive power in the state, and nowhere does it abide by any separation of its power. In so far, therefore, as it informs the secular state it also subverts it from executing its secular duties. Hundreds of charities, for example, which total some 25 billion euros each year, remain unregistered and unpoliced by secular powers; in Foregin Affairs ,which serves the Church on such a broad front, maximum discretion is guarded with respect to church interests; in Education, we have seen the appalling dependency of the State on the so-called magnanimity of the Church to provide education; in Justice the whole treatment of paedophiles and the distortion of the whole Criminal Justice System everywhere in favour of the Church, is also aparent to anyone who wants to know. At the top of all these areas, no such Separation of Catholic Power exists except on paper, and no assertion of secular standards are possible as long as that obtains.
In the present case , concerning the disposition of clerical files relating to pedophelia, of course Mr Michael Woods and his generous committe should have negotiated these matters with an eye to the secular rights of the Irish people and not , as has been the case, with an eye to doffing the cap to the most powerful empire in the world.
In Ireland it is not generally realised that the pre-Reformation Catholic state still persists in its absolute hegemony over any secular status the Republic of Ireland flatters itself it enjoys. I think this is what Cardinal Connell is intimating, but few people know the scope of his claims.
That we are down the years still talking about such things is but one indication of the church's powers over the secular powers , that Cardinal Connell disagreed with the former Minister for Justice Michael McDowell as to real status of canon law in the Republic mahy be regarded as another, but more importantly than these is the everyday power the Cahtholic church exercises over ordinary people in all the dioceses and parishes throughout Ireland as well as all those institutions that make up the Republic. In this regard one does not have to talk at lengh about secret societies, whether Opus Dei or the once hated but now prodigal society of Freemasons, one does not have to point out the power of Jesuits , Redemptorists, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc., etc., or their influence over the political parties, the media, the police, journalists, the profession of lawyers and judges, the civil service, the hospitals, the unions, and all the ethics committees that ever existed in Ireland. Their ubiquity is obvious to anyone who knows anythng about Irish society.
By freely offering the files for scrutiny, Bishop Martin adroitly avoids the public issues which are paramount to defining the nature of the Republic vis-a-vis the RC Church. Appearing as the cooperative agent of Rome, while retaining hegemony, whether real or imagined, over the Republic is the best strategy, especially when the country is not in the mood for hierarchical claims.
In all began in ancient Ireland, in the foruth century to be precise. The Christian church had just turned into the official alter ego of the Roman Empire at much the same time as St. Patrick was pushing Christianinty against a pagan wall in Ireland.
Then about 750 or some time thereafter a document known as the Donatio Constantini made its way into Canon Law. One rarely comes across the IRISH discussing such a document -- simply because they mostly never heard of it. Nevertheless, this document was important for two things: it was the greatest forgery ever perpetrated on the Christian World and it claimed Ireland as Fief of the Roman See.
Even though Ireland had many a holy Roman sandle on its neck, it was never became a colony of the Roman Empire. There were those who wished it had been so -- for it might have benefitted from that great division of Roman labour that made the Empire famous. But this was not to be: the Irish were Gaelic-speaking pagans with their own religion and a priesthood called Druids.
On foot of this unknown document , the Donatio Constantini, Pope Adrian IV -- the Enlglishman-Pope -- decided in 1155 to draft a letter to his compatriot Henry 11. And in it he more or less gave Ireland away. Henry 11 became the ‘Lord of Ireland’ by Papal consent. Of course , a few centuries later Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland and down to 1922 Ireland was attached to the British Crown. The question of course the Irish should be asking themselves -- for one can be sure Cardinal Connell has asked it -- is: was the Vatican’s original claim extinguished by the unilateral acion of Henry VIII? And , of course, the answer is ‘No; it wasn’t’.
Everyone knows that the Free State Irish expelled the British and claimed the island for the Irish, that non-Gaelic brood of British, who over the centuries attached themselves to pagan soil with hoops of Catholic steel.
So, does the Vatican actually still own Ireland? Is it in international law a residual Fief of the Vatican? And what , if anything, have the two constitutions (that of 1922 and that of 1937) got to say about it.
As I have already said, the Irish never really had a sense of history, so, surprise, surprise, neither of the constitutions say anything about the claim of the Donatio Constantini -- not even that it is a forged document -- or about Laudabiliter 1155, the document that sold out the Gaels and started a war between the Norman Christians (now Irish) and the Gaelic pagans (rubbished with the Mammoth for over 500 years). Indeed, it was Laudabiliter that brought the present race of Irish hither. Initially, they were a go-between the Gaelic pagans and the Pope’s and the King’s joint armies. That’s why they were called ‘the middle nation.’
While the 1922 Constitution which, for the first time in Irish history, gave birth to an Ireland owned by the ‘middle nation’, it says nothing of either its shady past or its anti-Gaelic history. The 1937 Constitution (De Valera’s Bunreacht na h-Eireann), remains silent about such an ancient claim, while everything from the Preamble to the Social Directives supports it. People say that Dev gave the Constitution first to the Pope (notwitshtanding the words that ‘we the People of Ireland give to ourselves….bla,bla,bla ) and it came back with an inscription of a Special Position allotted to the RC Church. The RC Church enjoyed this Special Position up to quite recently when, by consent, it was struck down to appease the howls of the Northern Irish. It was never called into question as a constitutional concept, but that does not mean that ,had it remained, it could never have been so. Indeed, such a ‘might-have-been’ is most striking in the present situation, where Cardinal Connell claims privilege above and beyond all the other Constitutional provisions.
To the wider point, as to the ‘ownership’ of the Republic of Ireland, the Irish State (the Free State or the Republic) has never asserted its hegemony on behalf of the people over the RC Church and if no one else knows about it, I suggest that Cardinal Connell does. Shooting the British was one thing, standing up to the holy Romans is quite another day’s work for a people who -- let us admit it -- were called into being by the Roman Church in order to transplant the Gaelic pagan population!
In practice, and on a more practical level, all political parties in Ireland know whom they serve -- the Church or the people. In the recent decision to defray the debts accruing to clerical paedophiles, the matter, whatever one may otherwise think, was settlede by an obvious expression of solidarity/sovereignty of the Church over the State and over their victims. The important thing was that the decision was made without any party or Parliamentary dissent. It ranked well with those other tell-tale and silent decisions which never appear to trouble Irish intelligence -- such as the decision to give Bunreacht na h-Eireann to the Pope before the people, the decision to ratline Nazies, to dispose of children in the ‘50s to Americans, to invite thousands of Poles over their quota into Ireland -- two further measures of social engineering thought through by the Catholic Church without one word of comment as to their prorpiety in Parliament. Further, the whole process of criminal procedure, which took from the people the moral right of public condemnation, was engineered in favour of the Church. The same necessary scepticism must now apply to the files respecting those files in possession of the Archbishop of Dublin.
What Cardinal Connell is calling into question is a pre-Reformation power. Put another way, if the Republic of Ireland was really a modern secular state or an ‘independent’ state, or, indeed, one that had in spirit as well as in words a ‘Separation of Powers’, if, indeed, it shared any of John F. Kennedy’s convictions as to the ‘absolute’ separation of Church and State, then it would not be dithering as to whether it should seize files relating to the commission of crimes. The AG's office and the DPP’s office and the Gardai would simply get on with it and treat clerics the same way as any other persons suspected of crimes should be treated.
But this ,as we all know, is not the case. The State's anaemic institutions constantly needs either permission from the Church itself or from some High Court Judge to do its job. The notions in the 'written' constitution, therefore, that 'no one is above the law' or that law should be administered fairly and the like are, like the doctrine of the Separation of Powers, a lot of words, mostly used in imitation of other civilisations rather than sustaining any Irish convictions.
It is a pity, but authentic societies cannot live indefinitely on the art of borrowing. Invariably, inevitably, they have to grow up…. Just like those other countries who show them the way!
Seamus Breathnach
www.irish-criminology.com
SEAMUS BREATHNACH
e-mail:
sbreathnach@eircom.net
Homepage:
http://WWW.IRISH-CRIMINOLOGY.COM
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HOW THE PAPACY ACTUALLY STOLE IRELAND AND PLANS TO STEAL EAST TIMOR
27.02.2008 22:08
There are many people -- educated English and Irish men among them -- who could not believe that the Pope of Rome would do such treachery as to start and support an unjust war for over almost a thousand years. ‘No way’, they claim, ‘ could the Catholic Chruch start a war and then hide its misdeeds.’ This denial is partially due to the relentless efforts made by the Irish Church members, powerful men in all forms of Irish education, to keep the truth from an unquestioning public. As far as corporate propaganda is concerned the Roman Chruch has no peers.
The documents demonstrating these matters are many and scattered over several centuries and languages. But the main documents which demonstrate without doubt the treachery of the Papacy are now a matter of public record. And five of these documents from the mouths of those most closely associated with the the sale of Ireland can be found on the following WebPage.
Directly because of the Papal Bull ‘Laudabiliter’, the native Gaelic people were pitted against the Norman Christians and then against the transplanted Christian English. The struggle continued until the native Gaelic pagans were obliterated — since when, to the present day, not a thousand families in Ireland can speak Gaelic, contempt for the language being universally shown in the Jesuit-owned third level schools, colleges and universities, where hardly a fluent lecturer can be found.
After the Reformation, of course, the thousand year war instigated by the Papacy continued as between English Protestant and ‘Irish’ Catholic.
Anyone who has a sense of humour should read how Fianna Fail — the Church’s party in Ireland — keeps going all the way to East Timor. No one quite knows why. The Vatican take is that these Irish people, who have been fighting for so long for Catholic conquest and Emancipation , have something important to tell the East Timorese. The smart money is on the notion that the Irish are doing what they know best; they are doing the work of the Pope , and are really in East Timor to steal it, just as Ireland was stolen.
If anyone doubts the documents relating to Ireland, which was, perhaps, one of the first countries to fall to the blackguard Church of Rome, let him read the history of Ireland and refresh himself as to the intermittent risings and skirmishes, endless burnings and hangings, and thousands -- maybe milliions of Irish people -- torn from their roots and sent as felons to American, Australia and througout the world. Irish Catholicism is living proof of the fact that ‘crime does pay’. For a shilling a houshold, Pope Adrian IV sold Ireland into slavery to his fellow countryman, Henry 11, and the enormity of the bloodshed that was to follow from generation to generation, until from each county the native pagan people were uprooted, demoraliosed, demonised and destroyed.
Anyone who cares to read these documents will find in them a paradigm for colonial Christianity everywhere and its racial hatred of the simple native peoples who have dared to think differently to that of Rome.
Moreover, it appears from these documents that the Pope and his minions have occupied Ireland illegally and unconstitutionally for some fifteen hundred years, since when they engineered Irish fertility to extend their empire through the Irish diaspara. Even to the present day Irish ‘vocations’ have extended throughout the world, the current craze being that of East Timor, where the Minister for Foreign Affairs imagines he has a mandate from the people (but has it actually from the Pope) to interfere in matters he knows nothing of, save to do the same in East Timor as was done in Ireland. The Irish are out in East Timor to steal it and to set up antagonisms on behalf of Catholicism that will last forever. The Christian conquest is a recipe for disaster in the world and while the Popes have hardly ever visited Ireland (or are they likely to visit East Timor), they have drained the country of its people, its wealth and its peace in the most inhuman and relentless manner.
One can only hope that by making these documents available some Irish men will reconsider what their country did and still does in this world. They may even question the entire use of government on behalf of the Vatican.
Seamus Breathnach
Seamus Breathnach
e-mail:
sbreathnach@eircom.net
Homepage:
http://www.irish-criminology.com
The Papacy, Lisbon and the Irish Vote
29.06.2008 23:34
Seamus Breathnach // June 29, 2008 at 2:31 p.m.
The Papacy,
Lisbon and The Irish Vote
Today Saturday 28 June, 2008, in the centre of O'Connell Street , Dublin, there was great rejoicing coming from a shop that was obviously religious. The shop (broadcasting hymns and exhibiting chalk statutes etc.) exhibited a large poster in the front window to demonstrate that a Novena offered up by the Church to enlighten the people of Ireland to vote ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty had been answered. What has been most suspect in the recent Lisbon election is the hidden number of the Novena-faithful. What is confusing is how so many of the faithful could vote ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty so definitely, while their leader, Pope Benedict XVI, could be so circumspectly in favour of a United Europe. It might be remembered that the Pope’s guarded idea of unity comes ‘after’ rather than before the Irish vote! How can such ambivalence and apparent contradiction be explained?
Perhaps some relevant facts about THE IRISH might not be out of place :
1. Since the Middle Ages a Papal colony calling themselves Catholics and forming ‘a middle nation’ (i.e. Between native pagans and ‘real’ Norman English) took over Ireland. These colonists , in contrast to the repressed Gaels, consttute the modern ‘Irish’, and on behalf of the Papacy have governed Ireland vi pulsa and ‘by the grace of God’ (of the Caesarean variety) ever since.
2. Through the Papacy the diocesan Bishops and Parish Priests sperad their control over the island and dislodged the secular native pagan Chieftains. These dioceses and parishes have always formed the most conservative and at times reactionary collective mind in Europe; for it is a mind that has been totally indebted to the Papacy for its very existence and has , in return, submitted to becoming the most perfect instrument of imperial Christian propaganda world-wide.
3. Accordingly, in the Lisbon Vote, we witness the Irish (middle nation) turning its collective back -- or ‘apparently’ turning its back -- on its own leaders, and notwithstanding net receipts of some 32b euros, without which the Irish would still be swinging out of a Castle-Cathedral culture, the pack voted a resounding ‘No’ to Europe: the Irish , for the second time, took Europe’s money on the pretext of having a shared affection and appreciation for it , but once the money spent, like women of an unflattering varitey, they ran to the proteciton of their more enduring master. What tune were they listening to such that could ‘apparently’ divorce themselves from their entire leadership?
4. Sinn Fein/IRA , straight from the very limited and horrifically reactionary streets of Belfast, is the first of such voices to sing ‘No’ to Lisbon, and is the only elected voice. For those who do not understand Sinn Fein/IRA , it would be fair to say that, despite their oft-quoted guff about ‘Marx’, dating from the time when they were underdogs fightingthe RIC from the strongholds of Belfast, they really enjoy the same relation with the Church/State as , perhaps, the Franco regime did back in the ‘30s, their only claim to an ‘educated’ or an informed political consciousness being dependent upon the Catholic priests who have shunted them from barricadeto Parliament. Indeed, there are some who believe that theirreal fight, though dressed up in the rhetoric of some South American countries is not about the ‘working classstruggle’, but was never anything more that a battle for outdated ‘Catholic Emancipation’. Nevertheless, Sinn Fein/IRA, however anxious to distinguish themselves in the Republic of Ireland, would carry little persuasion on their own. So, with whom were they allied? The only real ally Sinn Fein/IRA had in Ireland was the Church. But rather peculiarly, they joined with a total outsider -- a chap called Declan Ganley, (whom no one had ever heard of before Lisbon.) Ganley is an impressive performer. For all the world he has a stride not dissimilar to that of Oswald Mosley. He was the declared leader of a group interestingly called ‘Libertas’, and if little or nothing was known about him or his kinfolk, he was quick to disarm the Irish by assuring one and all of how much of a ‘good catholic’ he is. On the face of it, Sinn Fein and Mr Ganley (who quite assuredly never spoke a word of the Gaelic language that Gerry Adams is so keen to have Northern Protestants speak, or , for that matter, ever played hurling for Oughterard) , plotted from a most opaque if conservative location of the Christian spectrum.
5. Again one got whiffs of the Franco regime when each debate started. ‘One’s children had to be protected’, was the spiel; ‘democracy (sorry ‘greater democracy’) was at stake’, and Europe’s democracy had to be protected by the ever so democratic Irish. Having spent monies in large quantities, Declan Ganley (the ‘Business-man’ -cum- ‘Good Catholic’) garnered the ‘No’ vote at a time when, by any standards, the government canvassed as if they couldn’t care less -- an attitude that was picked up by most journalists, including Bruce Arnold of the Irish Independent, who rightly excoriated them on this very point. The point is: the government were so lacklustre in their business that one went so far as to wonder why they were so ill-organised.
Ostensibly ,then, the ‘No’ campaign concerned itself with negative fears, while the govern- ment ostensibly did very little that was either meaningful, impressive or, indeed, had the stamp of authenticity about it. So, what, one might ask , were all these fears? There was the amplified fear of Ireland being dragged into war on Europe’s behalf, even though the US, flying out of Galway, had beenengaged in an illegal war for years -- a fact which people temporarily forgot. Then there was the sexual promiscuity - fear , even though no one dared mention ‘clerical pedophilia’, the damages arising from which the Irish taxpayer rejoiced in paying. But this also was never mentioned due to a temporary loss of memory. And there was also a set of assorted ragtag sources of distemper, some legitimate, like the fishermen's griveance and , to a lesser extent, the farmers.
6. Behind all this was an ongoing daily saga for months and years respecting the utter squalor of Irish public life. The squalor was shared incestuously and jointly by the RCC and the so-called secular Republic. This debilitating squalor-fest counterpointed by the anger of the Irish people and the managerial effortery of their leaders. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was, at one stage, preaching a hand-in-glove crusade with Premier Bertie Ahern against Irish crime. It all cadenced when Premier Bertie Ahern ignominiously left office and when the people voted a decisive ‘No’ to Lisbon. One might be forgiven for thinking that it was a kind of ‘curse-on-both-your-houses’ kind of vote.
Nevertheless, it is hardly conceiveable that Sinn Fein/IRA, on their own, or coupled with the ‘dark horse’ Declan Ganley -- from whom they are not as ideologically dissimilar as their representations would lead one to believe -- could have delivered the ‘No’ vote. Something else was needed. And that something else was Opus Dei, the good and pious souls who shunt incessantly between Premier’s Office and Archbishop’s tent. These men (and women), a lot of them living high off the civil service hog of the ‘Yes-Minister’ variety, are never to be underestimated; they are , in effect, experts at calculating ‘who’ should be in office as well as ‘who’ shall remain in office. Such matters are their raison d’etre. They knew what was possible , what was achieveable and what was desirable. They also knew how to achieve it. After all, Opus Dei has kept power in church-laden hands ever since 1922, the only conceiveable ripple in their seamless success being the enigma as to how De Valera managed to dislodge Cumann Na nGaedhael after a decade of faithful Church-service. Some will tell you that it was the 1937 Constitution and the Special Position given by Dev to the Catholic church, or alternatively, perhaps it was due to the special position given by the Pope to Dev in return for drafting the Constitution in accord with Papal principles. Others , of course, will mention the Eucharistic Congress and how the State put the Church’s needs first, a bit like the O’Briens of old giving the only decent castle they had in Cashel to the Pope’s legate ; others still will recall the new Constitution’s ban on secular divorce and the Vatican’s concern to gear Irish fertility towards the American market ; others will recall the gradual monopoly of the hospitals and the schools secured under Fianna Fail hegemony, while others still will reflect upon the censorship laws and a raft of repressive Catholic legislation that kept writers in the doghouse and the religious in powerful positions extending to every nook and cranny of the so-called Republic. For our purposes , it really doesn’t matter; what matters is that everyone in the Republic of Ireland knows as a matter of fact that all elections are won by the Church of Rome and its legion of 'good Catholics'. And , indeed, if Frianna Fail didn’t cowtow to the Roman Church, there were ample brethern among the rank and file of all the other parties, including the Labour Party, who are championing at the bit to emulate Fianna Fail in serving the Church and, in consequence, manage Ireland soley towards that covetted if powerful end.
7. The relevant question for the moment is not so much WHETHER Opus Dei tapped into all the Church's liege parties that were ‘ostensibly’ for the Lisbon treaty, but in respect of which all their followers found just cause to abandon them entirely -- but rather ‘HOW’ did Opus Dei do it without sending out a religious alarm. The answer to this question lies in the most peculiar allignment between the Catholic Church, its episcopacy and the leaders of all the political parties. It is as if they were knowingly caught in a bind and the best way , not to be outflanked by the super-catholic Sinn Fein/IRA for permanent Church favour, what panned out was the best compromise for all concerned.
8. Regarding this ambivalence of the political party leaders, practically every commentator will tell you frankly that the government ran a shambles of a campaign. (The press is also part of the religious culture that obtains throughout the warp and weft of Irish life. They , too , indulge in theatre, by prying, but not prying deeply or relentless enough. In this respect, if it had not been for members of the British media, Catholic pedophelia in Ireland would never have been revealed!) The parties openly went through the theatre of criticizing each other for not being in earnest about returning a ‘Yes’ vote. Notoriously, some of them even broadcast the fact that they had not read the Treaty. Put it all together and you get Holy Roman Irish theatre - and on reflection, it all weighs in the balance. The Government and the ‘opposition’ parties threw the election to allow the Vatican to pronounce its veto on the European Community. Barusso probably was the safeguard to allow the theatre to have full effect and, at the same time, secure a second bite at the cherry for the Catholic Irish.
9. What all these things taken individually point to is a rather impoverished cultural and intellectual society, a society not at all informed in the proper areas and sadly if curiously lacking in the hard questions when it comes to the nub of secular politics. Who, for example, is Declan Ganley? What are his American interests? Why should being a ‘good Catholic’ require mention if not to cover a trail that might open up greater questions? And why spend over a million Euros on saying ‘No’?
10. Taken together, however, they offer us the true contours of a much more sinister reason for the ‘No’ to Lisbon vote. After the election the triumph of the most reactionary religious and conservative cabals in Britain and throughout the Roman Catholic world is not insignificant. Neither is it insignificant with what lack of conviction all the Irish parties portrayed their alleged desire for a ‘Yes’ vote. On reflection, it can well be argued that the whole Irish campaign was a Holy Roman stratagem, designed to allow the government to appear to be secular and in favour of secular Europe, but which in effect had compromised the election, prefering to obey its Roman masters while relying upon the secular authorities in Europe to reward them further. What the Irish really want, is what the Pope -- now victorious on his own terms -- is quick to tell us; the Pope now wants a unified Europe, but one unified in Christianity. We are back with Charlemagne and the vicious Papal plots against the secular powers of Europe -- where Islam and the Turks are demonised and he crowns Europe as the home of Christianity. Of course the Irish want what the Pope of the day wants; to think otherwise would be outside the ken of either Irish or Polish realpolitik. Which brings us to the Pope’s eulogy for the Irish in Europe, as the softener for having controlled the Irish vote through Opus Dei , the Jesuits and the Redemptorists.
The Pope needed a ‘No’ vote in order to tell Europe that Catholic Europe is still in contention and that he is the head -- the pro-active and conspiratorial head of that Church. Coupled with the Poles’ fervently praying for a ‘No Vote’ and congratulating the Irish, the Novena in O'Connell Street echoes the truth of what had happened. The Irish government, ever ready to do theatre, did what the Pope and Opus Dei wanted. There was nothing senseless about the Irish vote, no more than there was anything senseless about the notice asserting the triumph of the Novena in O'Connell Street.
11. In his speech concerning Ireland’s contribution to spreading the Roman message (the Irish love such assurances), the Pope unfortunately omits some salient facts. He doesn’t mention, for example, that the triumph of the “Irish’ (for which read the Anglici Norman colony in Ireland) Church occasioned the burning to death of native Gaelic Chieftains for saying that there never was a Jesus -- for saying no more, in effect, than what modern-day scholars of the calibre of Francesco Carotta (War Jesus Caesar?) or Joseph Atwill (Caesar’s Messiah) are saying. Secondly, it is in this context that Ireland’s so-called Golden Age of Christianity consisted no more than of really trying to re-sell to Europe that which Europe had already in its wisdom discarded (Christianity). And thirdly, if the Irish played such a Christian role in Europe as the Pope conveniently imagines, or if they had been so ‘Saintly and Scholarly’ rather than an unquestioning colony of liege lackeys of the Papacy, why did Benedict XVI’s predecessors draft Laudabiliter,a Papal Bull that delivered Gaelic Ireland bound hand-and-foot to Henry the 11 to Christianize?
12. Finally, what the Lisbon ‘No’ Vote demonstrates is that Ireland is as impressionable as it is manipulable by the RC Church. Over the decades and centuries it has developed little by way of distinct colonial cultural roots conducive of an enduring or intellectual environment, or , indeed, an environment independent of the Vaticanal or Jesuitical control. Perhaps, after 1,500 years of uninterrupted and unquestioned priestcraft, one should not expect too much from a significantly insecure community and one that is totally lacking in secular and political innovation.
Some people joined Europe — not so much to reform it — but to be reformed by it. I am one of these!But if this cannot be achieved, then Europe might well conceive of moving ahead without a Papal veto on every secular step taken to improve communal life. As James Joyce, Dave Allen, Dermot Morgan and thousands of ordinary Irish people have demonstrated in the past, confronted with such religious intransigence moving out of Catholic Ireland is not always an undesirable option.
Seamus Breathnach
Seamus Breathnach
e-mail:
sbreathnach@eircom.net
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