Separation of Church & State Much?

Moral high ground=Roman Catholic Church and it's now putting all its considerable bullying power into ensuring the citizens of the US are not all treated equally.

Well, Catholic laymen are treated equally as long as they’re heterosexual of course. The males of the cloth can be of either persuasion. Mainly homosexual as it appears that a higher than average percentage of them died from AIDS in the eighties. 4 times higher than the general population as a matter of fact. But lay Catholic homosexuals or LGBTs are not entitled to marriage or child adoptions or child fostering.

And as to female Catholics? Don’t get me started on the second class citizens who can’t participate fully in its machinations with not even rights to their own bodies. Whatsoever. Particularly when it comes to breeding. No matter how brutal and reprehensible the inpregnation or the age of the female. And the piece de resistance was the church’s threat of excommunication for all involved in supporting an abortion following the rape of a nine year old girl by her stepfather. It seems their hypocritical advocacy for the rights of children ceases when the child exits the birth canal.

And I haven’t even touched on the consistent and pernicious paedophilia which has been rampant in their ranks for centuries and is only now seeing the light of day.

By its very nature the church attracts the sexually dysfunctional and deviant. Who call the shots. Who hold sway over the legislation of the US government.

And no one is calling them out on it.

No, instead they wield enough influence to affect health care coverage for those deemed not quite human or equal. The poorest, most marginalized and most needy.

Whatever happened to “the meek shall inherit the earth’?

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

And hark! that faint, oh so faint whisper of "liberty and justice for all"?

PS I have previously posted on the Catholic Church here in these posts.

Me and Mother Church

There were many nudges along the way. Many ‘clicks’ – you know, that little ting, like a bicycle bell, a little alert that the world and more specifically Mother Church was not as sane and sanctified as all around me believed.

I think my first awakening, or more a little frisson, was at the Catholic Convent School I attended. We would go to mass in the convent chapel on a fairly regular basis. None of us were allowed near the sacred place, the altar. We couldn’t touch anything, the vestments, the altar cloths, the hardware, or go anywhere in front of the altar rail. The nuns, of course, were allowed to launder and steam-press the precious linens, and they did so in gratitude and humility, being the brides of Christ.

They couldn’t serve at Mass. But my ten-year-old brother could. He was an altar boy and had higher standing than any of the nuns and of course stood head and shoulders above us, the convent girls. In the eyes of Mother Church. My filthy, nasty, little brother was now on Godplanet while those of us sans penis were consigned to the trash heap outside the altar rails? Ting.

And then there was the matter of my mother’s last ‘confinement’ – a lovely old-fashioned word. She was forty-three. I was thirteen. On a blog entry a while ago, I wrote about an experience she had with a ‘young pup’ of a priest, whilst in this pregnancy:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Bit of Mutton


My mother told me many things,
When breathing deeply of the morning air
As we walked together to First Friday Mass
So our souls would be saved at the last minute.
No matter what we did in between.

Our Lord had promised this, you see.
If we made nine of these First Fridays in a row.
And we did. I don’t remember the masses
I remember our walking and talking
And how we would breathe together.

She would swing her arms and look to the still
Early sky. Breathe, she said, breathe.
It’s good to get the early oxygen into the blood
And leave all the men in the house behind us.
It’s a change for us women to be alone together.


She believed and carried me on the wings
Of her belief in Our Lady first and Our Lord second.
Until the great man behind the red curtain
Told her it was a sin to eat meat on Friday
Even though she was expecting her last.

She was forty-three then, saying she was thirty-nine
And had an irresistible craving for the meat.
She was outraged she told me, that this
Young pup of a priest could tell an aging
Expecting woman her soul was damned.

Forever, she said to me, in spite of the
Nine First Fridays, for eating a piece of meat.
She would burn in hell for all eternity.
How could he know, this young pup,
Of varicose veins and a tired swollen body?

Life is a terrible mystery, girleen,
I don’t know what to make of it at all
I just can’t make sense of him telling me that,
Me old enough to be his mother, that I was
Now damned and going to hell for a bit of mutton?

I got up and walked out of that box so I did.
I did not want the penance or the forgiveness
For this great sin. I walked all the way out the door
And came straight home this past Saturday
And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But that wasn’t the end of it in this pregnancy for my mother. In those days, in Ireland, when women had difficulty in childbirth, when labour ceased or there was fetal distress or a myriad other challenges, and the woman happened to be Catholic, a Caesarian section was forbidden by the Catholic Church in collusion with the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Dublin. The procedure approved was the Symphysiotomy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphysiotomy. See the section on Irish women.

My mother had horrific side effects after the birth of my sister. Her pelvis was shattered and she was unable to sit, walk or stand for six weeks. My sister had to be bottle-fed and my brothers and I took turns with this as my mother was unable to sit and hold her baby and my father was of the era where his masculinity would be suspect if he was ever caught holding an infant. After several months of agony my mother had another operation which involved breaking her pelvis yet again so that this time the bones would knit correctly. She never fully recovered and was not too long for the world afterwards.

When my sister was nine months old and my mother had the use of her legs again, she asked me to accompany her for a special service in the church. Women only and the holy priest officiating.

Childbirth was considered ‘unclean’ then so she had to be cleansed from her unholy act in a ritual called ‘Churching’ – now obsolete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churching_of_women

And I could go on, but as this is far too long as it is, I’ll stop and continue some other time.

So ask me again why I no longer believe in The Great Invisible Cloud Being?

Does The Horror Ever End?

News out of Dublin is that a report on further abuses of children by the Catholic Church is going to horrify everyone with the depth and magnitude of it all.

The good news is: that this statement was made by Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin and from the pulpit of the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. Taking ownership, as it were, for destroying the lives of thousands of children.

The bad news (apart from the obvious atrocities) is: that there seems to be an underlying issue of self-service to this admission of guilt:

"We have no time to waste," Martin said yesterday. "There is a dramatic and growing rift between the church and our younger generations, and the blame does not lie principally with young people. Our young people are generous and idealistic but such generosity and idealism does not seem to find a home in the church."

He also illuminated the recruitment crisis in Irish Catholicism, in a country that once used to export its priests and nuns all over the world. "In the [Dublin] diocese there are 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40. In just a few years we will only have a little over 200 diocesan priests to minister to our almost 200 parishes."

Read all about it in The Guardian here

Ah, qu'elle surprise!, the attendance at church by the young Catholics of Ireland is abysmal and the attraction of new vocations just about zero.

I did the math and came up with this:

Low attendance+low number of clergy=empty collection plates.

A few of my family have been severely affected by clergy abuses, but those are their stories and not mine.

All I can recall is this drunken old priest hearing confessions when I was a child, nodding off over my recounting of my 'sins', asking me to repeat how saucy I was to my mother, how I stole the sweetie off the counter at the post office, and then snoring while I tried to wake him - "Father, Father?" to give me my penance so that I could fulfill my obligation before I left the church. Secure in the knowledge that if a bus knocked me down on the way home I didn't have to suffer in the fires of hell. For ALL eternity.

As a dear friend from Ireland always maintains: Ireland: The greatest open air lunatic asylum in the world.

Amen to that, brother, amen to that.

Guilty, sez Lahey

Do you ever wonder, like I do, when these former princes of the Catholic Church admit to limited paedophilia charges as the former Bishop Raymond Lahey has done, and so quickly, as to what deeper and more horrific crimes against children are not being admitted?

As if by this very admission there is a huge cover-up? And then this is followed up by maybe a slap on the wrist of a year's incarceration?

This deviant so-called human being was caught importing images, videos and texts involving male children, some estimated to be as young as 8, on his laptop. I wouldn't call him an animal, because I have yet to hear of any animal raping the young of its own species. He was caught by Canadian Customs and promptly reported to the police after the images were discovered upon his return from a trip to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, noted so called "sex-tourism" destinations. Though sex is hardly a term I would want to use. Predation, paedophilia and child rape destinations, surely?

So little regard ever given by the Catholic Church to these little children, used, abused and possibly subsequently killed. Certainly maimed for life. To satisfy some brief, casual lust of some high-ranking deviant cleric who quickly moves on to the next unfortunate child, blithely unfeeling as to the pain and damage he is causing to his God's creatures.

Anyone I know of who has been a child victim of such predations, has not sued and has no intention of it due to the machinations and onus of proof and years of legal wrangling involved. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Suffer little children indeed.

Is this how you interpret the gospels, sir?

The Three Letter Word

I imagine we’re all pretty much immune to further shocks in the continuing saga of the Catholic Church and the systemic abuses which have been ongoing for centuries I would imagine with only the victims of the last fifty years coming forward to shout the truth.

We’ve all been reading the staggering but unsurprising revelation of the child abuse scandals in Germany one literally touching the pope with his brother, Georg Ratzinger, the choirmaster of a group of boys who have now alleged abuse.

Paedophilia charges against church officials continue to surface across Germany, and allegations have included the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, which was led for three decades by Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's brother.

Read more here

But a tiny word caught my eye in the latest church saga in Ireland. Cardinal Sean Brady is now implicated in the massive cover-up of the abuses – you can read about the Irish scandals in a previous post here.

Cardinal Sean Brady was a priest in 1975 when abuse allegations were raised against another priest, Brendan Smyth. At a meeting at that time, Brady asked two victims — boys aged 10 and 14 — to sign letters agreeing they would remain silent. The church did not share the information with police.

Cardinal Brady ASKED two abused children, victims of horrific paedophilia, aged 10 and 14, to sign letters agreeing they would remain silent about their abuse.

ASK, such a tiny word, such unconscionable implications.

Think about it, look at the definitions below.

(1)to make inquiry; inquire: to ask about a person.

(2)to request or petition (usually fol. by for): to ask for leniency; to ask for food

And ASK yourself if they were his equals. ASK yourself if they had a choice.

One Sunday Morning in Youghal - Part 2 of 2

Some of the family with progeny from that time in Youghal (babies missing presumably with other mothers)

See Part 1 here.

You'll know later why this whole day is so vivid in my head. It's hard to believe today, but the mothers would line up all those pushchairs (strollers and prams) outside the church door so any mewling infants or gurgling toddlers strapped into them wouldn't disturb the holy faithful inside.

Then we all trouped in to the vast, incensed, candle-lit space. The men were all on the left of the church. Us women and boys younger than five? six? sat on the right. My first introduction to segregation of the genders.

The organ thumped, the voices of the choir soared above us, the altar was packed with clergy: monsignors, curates, priests, altar boys, swanning about in lace and damask and gold embroidered vestments. The children on the women's side were restless, holding their whinging selves in, while mothers frowned alarmingly at them, picking the younger ones up and holding them tightly like a strait-jacket if their behaviour looked like it might escalate into an embarrassment.

Toys and entertainment or food were not allowed to distract them. And off-site child pens unheard of. We were in the presence of Holy God and all his angels here below. And you needed to learn young, and fast, that Hell awaited any misbehaviour in His eyes.

All those men crowded fetchingly on the altar of The Lord, crashing their thuribles, loaded with incense, and their aspergills, loaded with holy water to be sprinkled on the unclean. I knew the names of everything. I was one of those “Why” children whom my father indulged. Endlessly. In church, I would recite the long complicated names of everything holy to myself along with their definitions. Today I would be called a geek. It kept me amused through those long bouts of endless Catholic liturgies.

When the ninety minutes were up, the last gospel read, the last blessing in that strange language of Latin bestowed upon all our sinful heads and the last collection taken up by the solemn men of the Holy Confraternity we were free to go. We could hardly wait. All restraint was gone, us children plunged from the church in a mass of arms and legs and whoops, leaving our parents to pull up the rear with some snoring or fretful toddlers in their arms and now rocking the abandoned babies in pushchairs and prams crying outside the church doors.

We raced down the steps of the church, shouting, landing on the footpath, some of us turning to wait for the parents who had promised us ice creams for behaving ourselves in the presence of Holy God who watched us all the time and never got bored.

What did we hear first? The terrible thumps, the screeching of brakes, the screams from the top of the steps, too many screams to count. I turned back to the road. And it was just for a moment but I saw. A pair of legs underneath the front of the car with lace trimmed ankle socks and black patent shoes. And behind the driver's side another pair of legs with grey knee high socks and sturdy boy's oxfords. The legs were very still. The driver's head was on the steering wheel, his hands locked in place on each side. He looked frozen. There was blood, there was lots of blood. On the car, in the road. I felt my own blood leave my head and my legs went weak. A strong arm went around me, a hand covered my eyes.

“Come away, come away now,” my father dragged me off, still covering my eyes. His voice sounded strange, strangled, “ I want you to forget all about this. And remember you have to look both ways before you cross the road. Always.”

Years later, I asked him about it. He was upset I had remembered it. He had tried to protect me. Yes, both children, a brother and sister had died. Apparently they had spotted their grandmother across the road from the church and ran to meet her. They were 12 and 10 years old.

On the previous day, the dead boy had shown my little brother how to do cartwheels on the strand.

Suffer the Little Children, Again and Again and Again.

Bishop Raymond Lahey resigned from his post as Catholic Bishop of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly. Just prior to his resignation it turns out his laptop had been examined by Canadian Customs officers as Bishop Lahey was going through Ottawa airport on his return from an ‘unspecified’ foreign country. Lahey was arrested because of graphic child pornography images found on his laptop. Apparently he was in the business of buying, selling and trading in such images for a long time.

I’m not surprised. I’m sure you’re not either.

However, the headlines of the Canadian papers reflect a totally different sensibility.

“Nova Scotia Diocese shocked by bishop’s pornography charges.”

– please note the absence of “child” in this headline. This is from The Telegram, our Newfoundland newspaper. Pristine you might call it. Emphasis mine.

Of course every source I’ve read doesn’t disclose the fact that old Ray denied (way back in 1999) that he was unaware of the horrific abuse perpetrated by a priest who reported to him:

The last Bishop in charge of Father Kevin Bennett , Raymond Lahey, says he had no idea Bennett was abusing young boys.
In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic church on the West Coast kept no records of complaints against him.
Bennett sexually assaulted more than 30 young boys, and they are now suing him and the church.

And said Ray also “forgot” to keep written records of the abuse reported to him. He was subsequently involved in overseeing the settlement of the millions of dollars to these victims. Setting a few dollars aside, no doubt, as start up costs for his new entrepreneurial venture. (OK, I surmise only, but seriously: where did he get the money? From his parishioners? From the Vatican?)

His acolyte, Father Paul Abbass of Antigonish says, on hearing of the arrest of his boss, with shock and awe of course:

“I’m sad, I’m shocked, I think I’m mostly concerned about our people, our priests and our diocese.”

You will note in above statement that there isn't one smidgin of remorse expressed for the abused little children that Bishop Lahey profited on.

Thanks for the Enlightenment, Joey!

With the appalling upsurge in the suicides of TGBLT youth in the states, it is comforting to know that the Catholic Church is opening the arms of understanding, compassion and sympathy as per the doctrine of its Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper channeled through Joey's writing on the topic long before he was a made man.

"To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent".

"As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood."

To be totally simplistic here:

I love the part about the Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper's Sexual Design. Logic says: If (S)he made TGBLT
naughty bits, surely (S)he would want one to use them?

AND as to "disordered sexual inclination" - personally I would be more inclined to apply that to the paedophiliac proclivities of the RC clergy themselves, wouldn't you?

It's All In The Name

I was thinking about names. A friend became a first time grandparent today and her granddaughter has been given a trendy name. You know how that goes. The Conors and the Taylors and the Bethanys and the Jacobs.

In my time, in Ireland, the all-powerful Catholic church had an incredible influence on naming one's child. Always after a saint, sometimes after a holy nun or a holy priest (the adjective 'holy' was always attached to these sainted clerics, along with "Holy God" and "Holy Mary" - God's baby mama.)

Suggestions were made by the clerics and were enforced. The baby was often dragged away to the church as the mother lay recovering from the labour and her wishes disregarded as the priest pronounced his preference over the child's freshly baptized wet head. Seriously. That was so in my case. I joined a multitude of same-names, identified for years by our surnames in schools and offices. Individuality was not encouraged.

Those of unusual names (Olive, Celine, Violet, et al) were mocked by the nuns as being almost Protestant - " Was your mother not of the faith?", "Is your father a West Briton?".

Yanks (Americans) were mocked for naming the boys "Junior" after the father. "Did they not care enough about him to give him his own saintly name?"

As to us, the same-named girls, we mocked the Assumptas and the Conceptas and the Immaculatas - named for the various life stages of the above-mentioned Holy Mary and more infrequently for the great-aunt nuns who had some influence over the family naming.

My late dear M-I-L approved of the names I had chosen for her grandchildren but could be heard pitifully bleating over the choice made by her other D-I-L.

"Brooke?" she said to me, almost weeping into her afternoon sherry, "What kind of person names her child after a stream, tell me that."

I wanted to quote Bob Dylan and his Times They Are A-Changin' but just clucked in sympathy as I poured us another.

I've known a few who changed their names. I'd always wanted to but didn't have the guts. Tried to in Italy back in the day but was met with derision when I attempted the shift at home so reverted.

It's too late now. Plus I really have grown into it.

Taint

taint


/tānt/

Noun

A trace of a bad or undesirable quality or substance: "the taint of corruption".

Verb

Contaminate or pollute (something).

Synonyms


noun.

stain - blemish - blot - spot - smirch - smear - smudge

verb.

contaminate - pollute - spoil - corrupt - foul - infect

I was posting a link on FB to an article I wrote years ago. About Easter and Tenebrae and the old Irish traditions around this time, like my granny looking at the sun reflected in a mirror in an eastern window of her house to tell the future.

All the awe and mystery and ceremonies and darkness of Easter week. Like my mother hauling me outside on Easter Sunday to watch the sun dance 3 times, even it was only in our imaginations.

And now I find it is all tainted (the only word that came to my mind) with the shadowed abuses and perversions that were taking place just about everywhere the Catholic Church had stretched its obscene tentacles.

And I can't help but imagine what was going on behind the scenes in all the churches and convents and cathedrals and schools and hospitals and orphanages I was in, so many children suffering with no one to hear their anguish apart from their paedophiliac abusers.

Thank you RC church. For destroying my memories and those of so many others. And the lives of all you abused and tried to conceal with the help of your Vatican Overlords. May you all rot in hell, if there`s such a place, which I doubt, you corrupt, evil and perverted institution.

For Sale: 300,000 Babies

I was processing some papers for a dear Irish friend the other day. As I was reviewing the documentation in her file, I was struck once again by how the Irish government (and people) handed over all responsibility for medicine, education, registering of marriages and even the methodology of births (see here for my post on that) to the Catholic church. Shame on my government, shame on the brainwashed people who believed so unquestioningly in this cult. That abused everyone around them through massive cover-ups of their paedophilia and their funnelling of billions of wealth gained from such government-funded enterprises to their leader in the Vatican. And don't get me started on their tax-exempt status around the world.

And if you tell me about missionary work I will tell you that the poor unfortunate children in Africa and other Third World countries do not have access to lawyers or to courts that will hear them.

I am exhausted from all the exposed corruption in the last while as are the rest of you, I am sure. But this latest about Catholic priests, nuns and doctors stealing and selling as many as 300,000 babies in Spain for eager adoptive couples made my already sickened heart retch again. For those sad deceived mothers (shown the same frozen infant's body over and over again to convince them their baby had died) and for those lost babies, growing up outside their country, cultures and families.

Is there no depth to the depravity to which this wretched and corrupt organization won't sink?

Read more about it here.

The Famine and the Laundries

I had a long, long conversation with a good friend in Ireland yesterday about the Ireland we grew up in, the Ireland of shame, guilt and sorrow.

I can't have conversations like these except with "one of my own." One who was brought up with the almighty grip of the Catholic Church running the lives of all around us. A grip that despised women and hated their children even worse. Where sex was a filthy word and if you had a "flirtatious" personality and were incested by your father or uncle or brother or raped by the parish priest you could be committed to an institution that would work you from dawn to dusk. Slavery by another name. Tiny children imprisoned and working their fingers to the bone. The government was complicit in these incarcerations. No surprise at all. Fear was a constant companion. An innocent walk with a father would result in him pointing out some of these grim gray buildings with barred windows in the middle of the country where "bad" boys and girls, some as young as 5, could be thrown, never to see their families again.

My friends, you have no idea. I'm just giving you the very spit of it, a wee taste.

To read more of it go to Bock the Robber's blog today. He connects the Famine (a genocide actually) and the Laundries in a way I've thought of but could never articulate as well as he has. He does it beautifully. Savagely. And succintly.

Excerpt:

Crushed. Demoralised. Three to four million native Irish speakers removed at a stroke. Its culture eviscerated by emigration, starvation and disease, thanks to a government in London that believed in tooth-and-claw laissez faire economics. A government whose only interest was the wealthy merchant classes, and the devil take the hindmost.

This is an Ireland far, far removed from those travel posters and paddywackery.

And the horror percolates downwards through all generations of my country.

Ask anyone there, ask me, what their families did to survive the famine and you will get a blank stare. We just don't know.

One of my family members ran one of those laundries.

And my highschool mini-choir would go to the institutions to sing for the unfortunates. But we were forbidden to speak to them and they to us.

And we knew our fate if we stepped out of line.

Sublime!

I was at The Canadian Opera Company's production of Tosca last night in our glorious opera house.

This is my third attendance of this opera over the years and it was the best production so far. It is a particularly poignant opera for me as it was banned in Ireland for a long time due to its negative representation of the Catholic church.

My father had a love of opera and a fine singing voice and to overcome such censorship of this glorious music, the amateur musical groups to which he belonged would adapt the arias into suitable English and sing these excerpts in local concerts in local town halls. To give everyone a bit of a taste as to what they were missing. I'm talking the twenties and thirties here. In small town Ireland. He never did see Tosca in his lifetime.

I think of him as I let the music swirl around me and allow my senses to be wrapped completely in the power of this particular production. I have the fancy that I go for him as well as for me as he took me to my very first opera when I was fifteen, in Cork's Opera House. A spell binding production of Madama Butterfly. Thank you, Daddy.

And if there are angels, one of them is Mikhail Agafonov, an incredible tenor, an astonishing voice, who played Cavaradossi to a rapturous sold out audience. Bravo!

I cried.

The Fighting Irish

I sometimes go into things expecting huge battles. I don't know where I get this girding-my-loins-for-a-war mentality. Perhaps in childhood. Girl children in my time in the Catholic Ireland I grew up in had to choose their fights carefully. We had outlets on the camogie front, of course, and if you think camogie is like field hockey, think again. if you ever saw a hurling match you'd get the picture.

Camogie was the female version of hurling. Back then, in my time: No protective gear, no fancy sports bras, think thin black plimsolls, skirts (yeah skirts - and underneath regulation bloomers) and best of all? Black nylon stockings! It was a viciously tough game, where ankles were shredded and fights broke out at every game. We did not repress our rage. We took it out on the opposing team in camogie. Of course now they've fancied it all up with helmets and knee pads and ankle protectors and elbow protectors. Not in my time I can assure you. I had a foot broken and a finger broken. Others had teeth smashed, ribs shattered, one girl had two casts simultaneously on her arm and her leg. We raised Irish women right tough in Ireland back then. We came by it well through Cumann Na mBan the Irish women's military organization formed in 1914.

I was all girded up, in my recently new position, to go to battle for a new town hall, a performance space, a meeting place, a community party room. The old space was commandeered by the RC church. Even though the land was originally donated to the RC diocese by their parishioners and the old hall was built free of charge, etc., etc. All over Canada (and I'm sure in other countries too) the RC church is selling off 'their' properties and paying off lawsuits brought by the victims of the heinous perversions and horrors inflicted by those in their employ on innocent children. This whole reactive process by the church makes my lobes explode. Now the seniors, who contributed so much over the years to the support of their local churches, are unceremoniously turfed out of their card games and little tea dances, etc., and have nowhere to meet courtesy of these very same churches. Bloodsuckers. Don't get me started. Well, I have, haven't I? I'll stop now.

So here I am fighting for a space for my wee town so that we could have a non-denominational meeting hall, small, granted, but enough.

I get an estimate to convert an existing building into a wee village hall - the space will be lovely, light and airy - and now - and I'm really over the moon about this - the powers that be approved it tonight.

It turns out I was the only one in this anticipated battle.

Colour me ungirded.

The Use and Abuse of the English Language

Here's the rest of the story.

Now it could be me and the aging process but when I first saw this headline on BBC news today, no less, I immediately thought - is this some dreadful disease that has befallen the clergy of the Catholic Church? Or maybe they're just all aging into their declining years?

Wrong on both counts as it turns out. It seems that the numbers of clergy are on the decline.

Now what would you have assumed from the headline?

Road Trip Part 3

Travelling all the way to the core of our beings. How many of us get this chance? There are always so many distractions in my life. My work, my writing, my family, community, volunteer, theatre, friends, music. Whirl.

I needed this trip to be alone with myself. An old woman once said to me that to be truly successful in a relationship we first of all need to be totally comfortable with our own vibrations. Four days on the road presented the opportunity to me. Anonymous motel rooms, Carole King and her Tapestry album. J.J. Cale. Christy Moore. Beethoven's Fantasia, the precursor to his glorious Ninth. And on. Backdrop to my thoughts.

I've travelled a lot with others. Partners, family. Sometimes alone. But rarely this alone, no home to leave, the future so uncertain.

My father and I travelled around the Northern United States and Maritime Canada together, many times. I reflected on those times with him. We were thrown together a lot and this normally reticent, proud man would open up to me as much as he was able.

He was a long standing widower, a daily Mass attender, a Knight of Columbanus, a Vincent de Paul collector. He didn't believe in re-marriage although he assured me he had lots of opportunities. Parish priests in Ireland in that era presented him with many available women. I would like to think that it was the undying love for my mother that kept him devoted and celibate to her memory(and of that I have no doubt). But that would not be the truth at all. My father's firm belief was that remarriage created havoc with the original children and he wasn't going to have that kind of discomfort in his life. Plus he'd be taking a chance that it mightn't work out and the neighbours would have a field day with his troubles. So he confided. And I've no reason not to believe him for the time that it was in Ireland then.

I don't want to live his life and wind up as he did with his faith shattered by the freshly erupting scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland then. Shaken to the core particularly by the Bishop Casey scandal (he worshipped Casey). My compassion for Dad was great. He was literally gutted by it all and I do believe his faith in God and the hereafter left him. And I think that in some ways he must have felt he missed all sorts of opportunities that were lost with the noose of his formerly strong faith around his neck. He was a broken man at the end.

I don't want to end up my days alone like him, cursing the darkness and my own belief system that has held me to this independent walkabout. I saw my own defects quite clearly on this trip. I saw him in me also. My rigidity, not suffering fools gladly when they have equal rights on this planet. My intellectual snobbery which intimidates, my "ICanTopThatitis" which is distancing and self-defeating. My thoughtlessness. My arrogance which can be downright funny when I think of it. I need to pay more attention to everyone and everything more often. I need to be more humble.

Thank you, Dad.

(picture taken a few days ago near my house in Newfoundland)

Black and White and Denial All Over - Part 3

See Part 1 here
See Part 2 here

And why was my country of birth ripe for such abuses? The GreatPotato FamineHolocaust in Ireland in the 1840s where up to 4 million people were deliberately starved or forced to emigrate - often on so-called coffin ships which drowned them anyway - changing the very landscape of Ireland utterly and forever in many, many ways.

All of the Irish born people I know and have known, including my own large indirect and direct relatives can't tell you how their families survived this "famine". There is a huge sense of shame some historians have it, and also PTSD. The survivors of this "famine" were ripe for further traumatization by the RC church and strict moral guidelines were laid down. Much of this was based on Jansenism a rigid form of Catholicism with firm rules on sexual behaviour. I remember one of my more open-minded teachers interpreting (scoffingly) the procedure for marital sexual intercourse: no removal of clothing, thou shalt not see the naked body of thy spouse and encouraging the denigration of the products of unsacramented coitus as the "spawn of the devil" to be shunned and despised.

There were 250,000 women and children over a 40 year period processed through the Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, Mother & Baby Homes and “orphanages” and "reformatories" - a total of 72 RC church run institutions across the country.

And as of now, all of this shameful history is not taught in the schools. These girls/women/children/babies are deleted and forgotten. Revisionism at its most extreme. Why? Because the RC church still controls the curricula in schools. And embraces the notion that the Irish should remain ignorant of the horrific crimes committed by those who offer them salvation in the hereafter. The twisted mindsets around these shameful betrayals remain and are continually encouraged. Many of my friends and relatives still participate and donate to this abusive cult. Much like victims of the Stockholm syndrome.

Compare this to the school curricula in Germany where students there learn about Hitler and the shame and degradation of the extermination camps and the propaganda of Hitler. So that it doesn't happen again.

In Ireland the swelling of Catholic coffers continues and very little restitution has been paid to the many, many victims of its crimes against humanity - and absolutely no one is addressing the multi-generational effect of the original crimes: the secret sales of children with no official records maintained, the life-long slavery and near starvation of "unwed" mothers and the traumatization of babies and mothers torn apart, along with the deceitful and self-justifying lies told to both the sold babies and the devastated mothers. It was all about the selling price of the children and the capitation grants given to these institutions by the government, subsequently funnelled to the Vatican, one of the wealthiest entities in the world.

To be continued.

Symphysiotomy

I was out the other night with a dear friend and talk came around to a horrific procedure called a symphysiotomy that was performed on my mother in 1956. My DF had passed on my information in this blogpost (written in 2007) to a very well known author who has now published it in a book on Irish people's history in the past 100 years.

I read the post again when I got home and found myself still deeply affected. I truly believe I'm beyond anger and hate. Just totally sad at what happened to my mother and all the countless women of her era who suffered so much at the hands of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Here is that post again.

Benny and Maggie

Ladies and Gentlemen:




On one hand I give you Margaret Atwood, esteemed author, who today suggested that Canada should set up a dictat-o-meter.

While Atwood delivered her dictat-o-meter suggestion with humour, it was only after she warned: “The tools for repression and control are multiplying very quickly. Our government: What happened to ‘open and accountable?’ … What happened to democracy?”

and

And she did not spare the current government any pointed criticism, saying they had turned into one that’s all about “airplanes and jails. “The airplanes are useless against the real foes we face, which are scarcity and inequality.”

As for the jails, who will fill them? she asked. “Is it a case of build it and they will come?”

She suspects what they’ll do to fill those jails is just lower the criminal bar so they will have enough people to fill the jails. And then they can say, we told you so.

“Is the big idea really to bankrupt the social welfare system … by spending all of our money on planes and jails?”

Read more here.




And then we have wee Benny. Ah Benny. Dealing with the really serious issues of our time.
Finally, finally, endorsing, OMG, condoms. CONDOMS!!!

Oh. But only for male hookers? Male hookers.

Pope Benedict says condom use may be justified in some specific cases, such as when a male prostitute is trying to prevent HIV infection, in a new interview that has the pontiff deviating from the Catholic Church's line on contraception.

There is such a richness of comedy in this proclamation that I simply can't add any more.

Oh the humanity.

And who would you rather have dinner with?

Rumination

I was thinking. I do a lot of that. I'm over-analytical by nature. Not necessarily a good thing. Well a good thing when it comes to work and earning capacity I suppose. But a poor thing indeed when it comes to relationships.

I get argumentative, I get self righteous. I clamber on to the podium and while not going to the extent of pounding a finger into your chest I mouth off. A bit too much. I could excuse it and tell you I came from an autocratic household of origin where opinions outside of those of the patriarch were not tolerated and often were punished.

But that is a very fragile little hook on which to hang my request for your tolerance. Surely, you'd mutter, with the years of therapy you've had you'd be a little more tolerant of the opinions of others?

I find that as I age I hit a form of crabbiness I used to condemn in others who were older. A thin layer of disrespect for the beliefs and opinions of those who would dare to have the unmitigated gall to disagree with me.

I found this undesirable trait in myself last night while in a conversation with others about the Catholic Church and its disposal of properties for the settlement of lawsuits brought by the victims of paedophilia.

Yeah, we're all sick and tired of that particular issue. But I couldn't leave it alone, I climbed up on the box and proceeded to vent my opinion on the pope preaching poverty and servility while he swans about in custom made red leather shoes and glittery dresses and lives in a palace.

To a bunch of practising Catholics.

Who politely listened while exchanging tiny glances with each other.

Who were tolerant enough of me not to rebut.

And I had the horrifying thought, later, that now I've reached the age where I'm becoming that batty old eccentric with a purple streak of crazy running down her middle.

Just ignore her.

She's loopy but lovable.

Ouch.