The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Saturday, December 24, 2011

the first pressies

Christmas Eve at the Chateau.
A rampaging Doctor Barn emerges from the hall.
"Who took the bags off the presents I left under the tree?" he enquires no nonsensally.
Ireland's greatest living poet stirs like Churchill in his armchair.
"They were Easons bags," I announce without looking up from my Shroud Of Turin.
"What did you do with them?" quoth the goodish doctor.
"I threw them out," sez me.
"Why?" wondereth he.
"You will remember my paranoid delusions a few years ago about being hassled by some of Easons book shop Dudes Where's My Car Low Rent Scruff Management And Staff off the premises," sez ,me. "You will remember my fulminous rage about the scruff in the pirate bandana and the bespectacled scruff in the little BMW. You know full well I will not abide Easons employees on the planet nor Easons logos in this house. Yet you left them under the tree in plain view as if Easons was somehow an acceptable part of human experience. So I shot them. I shot them down. The bags I mean."
Doctor Barn sighed with all the heartfelt sorrow of a man in the grip of an extreme pression.
"I was worried when you thought the Arab guys on Grafton Street were an Al Qaeda gang out to get you," he stated reproachfully. "And I'll admit I was concerned when you started saying that Vladimir Putin was sending Russian honeys to seduce you. But Jim this is the limit. Book sellers? Easons book sellers? Trying to take over the world with mind control devices in their books, are they?"
"I don't like em Barn," I expostulated loonily.
"You threw out my Easons bags," he muttered to himself again somewhat unnecessarily.
"I did," I affirmed. "I consigned them to the eternal fire. You see Barn, Easons book shop no longer exists. It is an ex book shop. It is a former book shop. It is a derelict bomb site. Easons book shop has left the building. Easons books shop has gone bust. Easons book shop is propped up by idiot banks but has no life of its own. It is past its sell by date. It is defunct. It is a null book shop. It is closed for the winter. And by that I mean eternity. Easons book shop is a book shop that once was. In the Heelers Universe, Easons book shop is extinct."
"What did you do with the books I gave you?" enquired Doctor Barn suspiciously.
"I binned them."
"You did whaaaaaaaaaat?"
"I told you not to buy me presents from Easons book shop."
"Do you realise I left you 200 quid in the pages of the George Bush book?"
I smiled indulgently at my brother.
"Noble and honorable Doctor Barn," I said softly. "How little you know me after all these years. I never destroy useless gifts from you without first checking that you haven't left some worthwhile gift secreted between the pages. Thank you very much. It was the best present I've received so far. And you even picked out my favourite denominations. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord."

Friday, December 23, 2011

glad tidings

Afternoon at the Chateau De Healy.
Christmas tree lights wink in the hall.
Ireland's greatest living poet thrones in an armchair reading an Ian Wilson book about the Shroud Of Turin.
Jess is lying at his feet swaying her tail.
A hamster sits at his elbow washing her face the way hamsters do with vigorous circular hand motions.
Hamsters have hands.
Perfectly crafted.
Beaky the parrot occupies the other armchair.
I'm hoping he won't get the urge to pooh in it.
He's a parrot who believes in giving in to his urges.
The Dad is pottering around in the kitchen.
Winter light blesses us from the windows.
Outside frosted fields and hedgerows stretch away towards eternity.
Creatures and the creation pause.
All existence draws breath.

the twelve days of Christmas

(The new chart sensation from MC Heelers. Available from Parlophone Records and EMI.)
******
On the first day of Christmas internet spammers sent to me... an online casino link courtesy of some snurd styling himself Ashley May.
On the second day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... another casino link and a bogus offer of free software from Milton Scherbitzky.
On the third day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... another worthless casino link, more bogus software and a fake job offer from a fake Swede fakily called Elsa Svitborg.
On the fourth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... May's silly casino, Scherb's useless software, Svitborg's daft job offer and a brochure from some idiot called Johnny Testone undertaking to enhance the size of my manhood.
On the fifth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... five truly cretinous attempts to gain my bank account details which they pretended had originated with Barclays Bank, also four fake casinos, three free software downloads, two futile job offers and yet another unnecessary offer of assistance for my unnameable part from Johnny Testone. (Actually it has been named. I call it Rodney.)
On the sixth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... sundry fake casinos, worthless jobs, bogus software, Testone's testimonial, the mind numbing banking, and a partridge in a pear tree. No not really the partridge. Actually something from a young scrote signing himself Kenyan Prince and purporting to offer pharmaceutical products which look like viagra, act like viagra, but aren't viagra, at low low prices. That's what came in the pear tree.
On the seventh day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... rubbish casinos, jobs and software, Testone's testicle booster, invidious banking tricksteries, Kenyan Prince's Pharmaceuticals, and the offer of an absolutely sublime top class university degree whose sole prerequisite apparently is a week's study and cash in advance.
On the eighth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... seven casinos a cashing, six jobs a paying, five software downloads, four huge testes, three bankers scamming, two invidious pharmaceuticals, one fake degree... and a stock tip from Denny Toney.
On the ninth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... casinos, jobs and software, massive membranes growing, banking scams a glowing, plus numerous chemicals, stock tips, five makey uppy degrees, four french hens (who apparently want to marry me, or is that Russian hens?) and a turtle dove making a most romantic appeal for help transferring bearer bonds worth 10 million quid from Nigeria which seemed to be offering me the lion's share of the ten million if I would only be so gormless as to pass on my own personal bank account information.
On the tenth day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... nine casinos jingling, eight jobs a bobbing, seven software programmes, six big mickeys, five banking scams, four chemists chemming, three fake degrees, two useless stock tips (and a money transferring turtledove), and an invitation to sponsor an expedition to the South Pole led by Maxwell Zint.
On the eleventh day of Christmas the spammers sent to me... all of the above and an offer of ten thousand genuine viagra pills for free.
On the twelfth day of Christmas the scammers sent to me... (That's enough scammers. - Rodney note.)

the monica leech laugh in

God summons Barack Obama, President Putin of Russia and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for a conference in heaven.
"I've called you here," says God, "because you are the three most influential people in existence. I want you to bring a message to humanity. In a day's time I am going to destroy the planet earth and all who live on it."
The three messengers are whisked back to their respective countries in the blink of an eye.
Barack summons Congress for an emergency session.
"I have good news and bad news," announces Barack in his classic declamatory tones. "The good news is that God exists. The bad news is that he is going to destroy the world tomorrow."
Mr Putin for his part immediately orders top Russian officials to the Kremlin.
"Gentlemen, I have two items of very bad news," intones Mr Putin grimly. "The first is that God exists. The second is that he is going to destroy the world tomorrow."
On his return to Ireland, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin initiates an emergency convocation of Bishops at Maynooth with the Pope and the College of Cardinals sitting in on video link from Rome.
"I have two pieces of good news," proclaims Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. "Firstly, I am one of the three most important people on earth. Secondly, you're all fired."

a priest for ever

In Dachau concentration camp there were four thousand priests. They were beaten: they were chained: they were knocked down and kicked: they were starved. Battered and exhausted they were offered their freedom if they would deny Christ. In 1942 eight hundred died of hunger, and in that year one of those four thousand gave in. As he left a friend said to him: "You are a priest for all eternity." He answered: "But the hunger!" Yet even in that camp another came forward to take his place.
Karl Leisner, a deacon in the Munster diocese, was arrested at the end of 1939. In December 1940 he was sent to Dachau. This cheerful optimistic young man had always shown in his actions his burning love for God. One of his dearest friends was Saint Stephen, and like him, he was "full of faith and the Holy Ghost." As with Saint Stephen, persecution only increased his love: "I see heaven opening and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." In the camp he worked from morning to evening, to make this vision true. He gathered others round him and, playing a harmonium, taught them the Catholic Youth Movement songs. A priest wrote, "When I arrived at Dachau on the feast of the Name of Mary, 12 September 1941, Karl was the first to take an interest in me and put me in the way of things. He slipped five Marks into my hand so that I could buy what I needed, at the same time giving me his own piece of bread from his locker."
Karl became very ill with a highly dangerous form of tuberculosis. His greatest desire was to enter eternity a priest for eternity. The others discussed the possibilities of an ordination in that camp at Dachau, so that, where everything to do with Christ and His priests was despised and vilified, a new priest might be born. But Karl was dying and there was no Bishop.
Then, in September 1944, Gabriel Picquet, the French Bishop of Clermont Ferrant, was brought into Dachau as a prisoner. He joyfully agreed to perform a secret ordination, if the Bishop of Karl's diocese would give permission. A petition was sent to the Bishop of Munster in a letter addressed to Karl's parents. The camp thrilled to the answer: "I gladly give you my permission, on condition that the proper ritual is observed and that it can be certified as valid for the future."
They began to organise everything necessary for the ordination. Women acted as secret messengers between the local priest at Dachau and Cardinal Faulhaber at Munich. They brought back the "raw materials" for the prisoner priests to work upon, so that all the details were in order, pontificals, holy oil and so forth. One priest who was from Trier, worked on the mitre; a Benedictine cut a crozier out of oak wood, and carved upon it the episcopal arms with the inscription, "Victor in Vinculis;" the episcopal cross and ring were smithied in the armaments workshop by a Russian; all, of course, in the greatest secrecy for fear of the camp authorities.
The day chosen was Gaudete Sunday in Advent 1944. On the Saturday there was a secret rehearsal in the "chapel" - Room 1 of Block 26. The Bishop wore only a surplice and his mitre. Karl remained seated as he had not the strength to stand. It was the end of his six year retreat - six years learning the virtue of patience. It had indeed been a hard seminary.
The ordination itself was a very moving sight. Because of Karl's physical weakness, only his oldest friends amongst the prisoners had been invited. But there were also present the thirty theological students, so that when they were priests, they might have the memory of this day. The Bishop was wearing his pontifical robes with the trousers of his prison uniform showing underneath. Karl, pale and strained and shivering in his zebra uniform, was beside the altar. Next to him stood the thirty surviving priests from the Munster diocese. All the others stretched out their arms in common prayer. There was complete silence. "Veni sancte spiritus..." For the first time all realised the fullness of the truth that a priest's ordination is a baptism of blood for all eternity. The bound hands were anointed with holy oil so that they could bless the very men who had chained them, and offer sacrifice for those who despised them. "Men revile us and we answer with a blessing, persecute us and we make the best of it, speak ill of us and we fall to entreaty. We are still the world's refuse; everyone thinks himself well rid of us."
When it was all over, the newly ordained priest and the others embraced - his face radiant with thankfulness and joy. Then they went to breakfast, a real love feast provided from the gift parcels of some of the priests, who also served the Bishop and Karl. Both as a testimony and as a memorial of this unique occasion, a Carmelite brother had printed a beautifully designed certificate, which was signed by the Bishop and the senior priest in the Block.
The day of his ordination had been so terribly exhausting for Karl both in mind and body that it was two weeks before he had the strength to offer his first Mass. This he at last did on the feast of his friend Saint Stephen. That first Mass was also his last. By the time of his release on May 4th 1945, he was still alive it is true, but only just. He had to be taken at once to hospital.
The last weeks of his life, which he spent in the Planegg sanatorium in Upper Bavaria, showed how deeply he had grown in love, in happiness, and in his longing for eternity. There, after all those years, he was reunited to his parents and his brothers and sisters. He died in his mother's arms on Sunday August 12th. "I see heaven opening and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."
His body was taken to Cleeve in his home country. For the people on the Lower Rhine the day of his burial was like the day of his first Mass. The red roses of martyrdom and the green palms of victory were laid on the coffin which held his body wrapped in scarlet Mass vestments. Great crowds flocked to his funeral from every part of the Catholic Lower Rhineland - crowds so deeply moved at this showing of God's power that they could only bow down in silent adoration.

(From: Christ In Dachau, 1952 edition, published in England by the Newman Bookshop, Oxford; and in America by the Newman Press, Maryland. The book consists of translations of German language accounts written by concentration camp survivors. These accounts were taken from Seiger In Fesseln, published by Herder in Germany in 1947, and from Christus in KZ, published by Otto Muller, Salzburg, in 1946.)


Footnote: The British historian Michael Burleigh, himself no friend to the Catholic church, has pointed out that the Nazis when trying to destroy Catholicism, initially sought to foment public distrust for priests by claiming all priests were child abusers. To do this the Nazis recycled old accusations of child abuse, exaggerated current accusations, and invented new ones. I would suggest that in contemporary Ireland, media groups have behaved in a similar manner. Perhaps those who work for The Irish Times, Independent Newspapers, the broadcaster RTE, and The Daily Mail would deign to reflect on this. Remember. I haven't accused the Irish Times, Independent Newspapers, RTE, or the Daily Mail of telling a single lie. I have accused them of colluding in a project to destroy the Catholic church. I have accused them of manipulating the news to attain their own societal agendas. And I have accused them of ignoring 99.99 percent of the truth about sex abuse. The truth being that 99.99 percent of sex abuse cases do not occur at the hands of clerical or religious people. Here is the news. This is an age of massive sexual dysfunction. It is an age of massive sexual dysfunction not because people are Christian. It is an age of massive sexual dysfunction because vast numbers of people have been rendered sexually incontinent by a media engendered culture of atheistic hedonism. The truth the media don't want you to hear is that 99.99 percent of sex abuse cases occur in the family home behind closed doors. JH

the truth about cats and dogs

Strolling past the porno mags in the Topaz garage outside of Naas.
I tut tut epicly.
We'll have to end our relationship with Topaz unless those mags disappear.
You know folks, serial killer Ted Bundy claimed on the night before he was executed that he believed his murderousness had been cultivated by exposure to porno mags.
Topaz can hardly be making enough extra money out of disrupting male and female sexualities in this way, to justify continuing to stock these things if they're actually causing murders.
I reach the end of the aisle and come to the newspaper rack.
A pile of Sunday Independents greets me.
It reaches as high as an elephant's eye.
I look at my watch.
Eleven o'clock at night.
These things aren't selling.
Forty years of claiming to be the most popular newspaper in the country, forty years of kulturkampf against the Catholic Church, and they can't give them away.
"So this is what they mean by calling their rag Ireland's largest circulation weekly," I breathe. "They mean they're leaving hundreds of thousands of them to moulder in garages."

Thursday, December 22, 2011

visionant

the light of a thousand suns
the figure of a man
casting not the shadow of a man
but the shadow of a doorway
none shall enter into the kingdom of the father
but through the doorway that is the sun
christ died
christ risen
christ come
forever and ever
all men
amen
one

the bitter pill

Afternoon at the Chateau.
A newly commissioned Padre who is a relative of mine, is trying to convey the Catholic Church's teaching about the sanctity of life, to some of my trendier more stylish relatives.
He is gently suggesting that contraceptives have no place in God's plan for humanity.
I am a bit surprised because he is a trendy fellow himself.
He was the wildest of us before he had his Christian conversion.
And anyway most Padres tend to stay quiet about the teaching on contraception.
So yes I'm surprised.
The stylish young women are laughing at merrily at the Padre's earnest efforts to reach them.
Then the Padre says:
"Well which members of our family would you prefer not to have existed? Uncle Bernard seems to have made quite a difference to quite a few lives, doesn't he. He was number nine in his family. With contraceptives he's not around and neither are any of you who happen to be his children. And your cousin Doctor Barn is a bit of a living legend isn't he? Nice fellow. Have you noticed? I'm fond of him. I mean I'm glad he's alive. He was number six on our family. The youngest. With contraception neither of those would have been around. Personally, I'd have missed them. Neither would your mother my Aunty Mary. I think she was number eight in her family. Think of the lives she's touched. Not just yours. But the school kids she taught. And the reaching out she did to special needs kids. And all the stuff none of us know about but only suspect..."
And for the first time in thirty years gentle travellers of the internet, I saw a look of confusion course across the vivacious confident features of the young and the restless.

the monica leech laugh in

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is looking out the window of a plane at Dublin airport.
"What are you looking at?" asks his personal secretary who is travelling with him.
"I'm looking at that other plane to check if I'm on it," answers Archbishop Martin truthfully.

the 23rd psalm

the lord is my shepherd
there is nothing i shall want
fresh and green are the pastures
to which he leads me
he brings me alongside the most beautiful rivers
shining bright with glorious peacefulness
to restore my weary spirit
he sets me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake
yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death
i will fear no evil
for you are with me lord jesus
your shepherd's staff and your rod of kingly authority
they comfort me
you have prepared a table for me
in the presence of my enemies
my cup runneth over
surely goodness and mercy will follow me
all the days of my life
and i shall dwell in the house of the lord
forever

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

jess with the sheep on christmas day


one abyss calls to the other

By Nanda Herbermann
(Arrested for Catholic activities and Detained in a Concentration Camp by the Nazis.)
***********************


Putting the word of the Psalmist, "One abyss calls to the other," at the head of this article has its deeper meaning. The concentration camps, the abyss of fiendish wickedness, have become for me and for many of my companions in suffering a blessed pit of divine mercy. In this abyss of wickedness we came to realise the bottomless pit of divine mercy and unbounded grace. We had to bend low under the cross, but we were then permitted to enter wholly into the world of God's love. If Christ called me to this way of the cross as his disciple, he expected something from me. As God's mercy would surely help me not to break under it. And he did this miraculously. In those moments when I had reached the limit of human endurance, God's mercy would support me.
For eight days I was in solitary confinement in a darkened cell. At all hours of the day the supervisor on duty would come, strike me on the head and kick me. My eyes smarted with unwept tears. I heard the sobbing, groaning, the mad screams of demented women being tortured to death, and I thought I could bear it no longer. Then the redeemer, forsaken on the cross, was my hope.
I found strength to carry my cross in Reinshold Schneider's book The Way Of The Cross. Provost Donders of the Cathedral had sent it to me. I kept it hidden in my straw mattress. From there it made its way secretly from inmate to inmate. Surely it brough encouragement to many in their desolation.
At least 70 percent of all German inmates in the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrueck were professional criminals, social outcasts and prostitutes. They no longer knew anything of the cross or the willing cross bearing love which forgets itself, which carries the cross with Christ, and which could still smile even though through tears. But I want to tell here how Christ met those in prison who held fast to him or looked for him, how they experienced again and again his support, his consolation and his love. There was the dear noble Mother Superior from the Sudetenland. She was over 70 years old and delicate. Her refined face bore a saintly glow. She was devoted to all the prisoners and always helpful. Her devout mind was sincerely willing to carry the cross in the imitation of Christ. I see her before me. It was a wet and cold Autumn evening. Barefoot and trembling all over. She asked me: "Pray, pray, that my body will be able to stand it." In consolation I answered that I was willing for three days to offer up all hardships so that she would not break down. She became happy like a child and whispered to me the Magnificat which was her favourite prayer. Often she took one of the weeping prisoners by the hand and tried to comfort her. I venerated her as a saint.
There was Elfriede, the meek little lamb from Cologne, who could be happy and sparkling as is the Rhinelander's way. She worked on the rabbit farm., and she was in her right place with these quiet animals. Her greatest happiness was mediation. In her there were sincere meekness and complete readiness to bear everything. She heroically mastered her way of the cross. But I do not know anything of her fate. She is one of the many untraced ones who had to hold out in the concentration camps until the end of the war.
I remember Angela who was sent to the concentration camp as a hostage for her father whom the Gestapo could not find. She was really like an angel, and deserved her beautiful name well. She spent five years in the camp. Though physically weak, she possessed in her strong soul that faith that moves mountains. Looking at her I was often reminded of the words of the Bible: "God created the weak to put the strong to shame." Often we celebrated our Sunday mass hidden in the furthest corner of the camp in 20 degrees of frost or more. She would put her hands into mine and would rub them first one then the other. Then we sang softly so that the SS guard could not hear us.
When Angela was in the sick bay, Nettchen Alfredine and I went secretly to see her whenever possible, always trying to avoid the SS guard. Nettchen worked in the kitchen. Sometimes she managed to put aside a bit of margarine or some jam for the sick Angela. Then she would have tears in her soft eyes. How homesick she was for her family in Holland. Happily she is reunied with them today.
Here in the concentration camp one found living examples of how to suffer in order to defend the Christian faith, and to die like the great martyrs, nobly and innocently. Among the few Catholic women there were apostles and angels. Conscious of our rock like faith we would recite the Fiat: "If we have to die or be killed here, we shall die praising our lord for choosing us for this sacrifice." In normal life people do not experience so much grace as we did in this hell. Such divine grace and goodness gave us the strength to hold out to the very end. And we knew that in spite of this bitter persecution in Germany, the Catholic church would live.
Often I was inspired by the noble Polish women, who for the most part were deeply religious and trusting in God. On special feast days, in their miserable barracks, they cleverly contrived to hold their communal service after the guard had passed. I once had the opportunity of attending one of their celebrations. Stirred to the depths of my heart I joined them in prayer and song. We all imagined ourselves to be in a church and our Gloria and Credo must surely have reached our lord in heaven. It was bitter for us to have to go without the eucharist. In longing for the Bread of the Angels, our devotion and our love glowed even more brightly.
But those Polish women who were executed! Nowhere else have I seen such composure. This is how martyrs die, I thought. Indeed they were witnesses for their faith, their home, their people. Their suffering and death reminded us to be faithful unto death. "I am going to heaven, Nanda," an elderely Polish woman said to me. She was the mother of four children of whom she had not heard for years. She believed that they had entered heaven long ago. God alone knows what we felt about these shootings. One of these days it might be our turn.
I very much want to tell you about the poor prostitutes and outcasts who were in my care when for more than a year I was their Block Warden. They surely were the poorest of the poor, with no sunshine in their lives. There were young girls and old women. I often thought: "Would it not have been better if you were never born?" They were so difficult to manage, they told lies, were jealous and vindictive. What a miserable lot they were. All one's energy and a great amount of love were required to get along with them. Many of them had contagious diseases, were undisciplined and had grown up in the human underworld, decayed in body and soul, and they bore all the symptoms of their vice. These outcasts displayed an utter indifference and a complete lack of feeling towards themselves and their fellow prisoners. Some behaved without any semblance of decency. The most sensuous experiences were related to the delight of the whole block, and my life was made intolerable by their treacherous and malicious gossip. How well they knew how to steal. Nothing was safe from them. Often they stole my miserable bread ration, even the potatoes from my plate. The camp authorities punished them severely. And sometimes even gave them 25 lashes with the whip. But a few days later they relapsed into their old ways. These should have come into the loving care of understanding people, not to the inferno of the concentration camp. Under the whip, the rubber truncheon, and blood hounds, without faith and without God, they could only become worse.
When I had to take over the exceedingly difficult task of Block Warden in this block, I was horrified. But my requests to the camp authorities to remain in the outdoor labour gang were refused. "You have to take over this job whether you like it or not!" said the supervisor and profoundly unhappy I went to their block. In the evening lying on my bunk, I remembered the words of Saint Paul: "To be everything to everybody." What elasticity, goodness and forbearance, and tolerance of human peculiarities and even of depravity, were necessary here. I was not mature or good enough by far to live according to that principle. A saint was needed such as you were Paul. "With a heart as hard as a diamond but as tender as a mother's," to use the words of the French preacher Lacordaire. I was near to despair when suddenly put into this strange world. But I had no choice except to attempt the task. It was worth it. Many of these lost souls I came to love very much, and they became attached to me with the fullness of their passionate hearts. My proteges were between 17 and 70 years of age. Many of them had celebrated their silver jubilees as prostitutes as they proudly explained to me. And the younger ones? I felt great pity when they told me about their lives and sufferings, their joyless and troubled childhood and youth. They were the children of prostitutes, who had never known their fathers or whose fathers had been living on immoral earnings or had been jailbirds. They had been forced onto the streets when they were only 12 years of age to earn their livings like their mothers. Listening to this, a great love and infinite pity would come over me. Sometimes I could not but wish to draw them to me, these outcasts. I felt the urge to undo some of the wrong that state and society had done to them. I struggled with God for their souls. Many a night I sat by the beds of the sick who writhed and groaned in terrible spasms. I looked into their sorrowful and hardened faces. During their fits I held their hands and comforted them.
There was little Maria. She had lived in the filth of the big cities and her delicate body was worn out though she was only 25 years old. During the day she had to toil out of doors, and nearly every evening she lay on her bunk gripped by severe spasms. I could do no more than give her cold compresses and put my hand on her feverish brow. There were no drugs. When in the evening I used to go to the sick bay to fetch some drugs for at least the worst cases, often enough, I was thrown out with kicks and slaps in my face. "Let them die, those old swine," was the inhuman answer of the SS doctors. Sometimes I was lucky to find the little prisoner nurse Gerda who would give me a sleeping tablet or a tonic on the sly. This Gerda, from Leipzig, did a great deal for the prisoners. But I was talking about Maria. When I was with her during the nights of her attacks, after she had recovered, she would ask me as I sat with my hands folded on her bunk: "Nanda are you praying? Do you think there is still a God who has mercy upon me?" I told her much about God, of his boundless merciful love, told her of Mary Magdalene, of Marguerite of Cortona, whose story had impressed me greatly. I told her of this loving and repenting woman who with purifying penance left sensual love and came to God. Maria listened attentively and after a few weeks she prayed together with me. I taught her many short prayers.
She had to withstand terrible temptations since she had realised how miserable had been her life and what was of real importance in this world. Now she lay dying in the concentration camp, lonely but content and devout, believing firmly in God and her saviour. She died in my arms, lying on the floor, as the doctors and nurses refused to admit her to the hospital. Of this I am sure: She who had repented so sincerely and who had prayed with me so intensely found a merciful judge. I closed her eyes. For the last farewell, before she was fetched to be cremated, I made the sign of the cross on her cold forehead. She lay stretched out on her straw mattress with the sign of deep suffering on her small white face.
There was Lotte, a dark passionate woman of nearly 50 years. More than half her life she had spent in brothels. How often she said to me: "I wish I had your faith." But she learned to believe.
When I came to see her in the sick bay only a few hours before her death - I had to climb through the window - she was hardly able to speak any more. She asked me in a whisper: "Is this really the way to heaven?" I said "Yes," deeply moved, and she shone with happiness and replied: "Thank you." I looked into her face, now quiet and peaceful, but marked by the horrible traces of vice. Sobbing I left the death cell.
I also want to tell you about the fiery Anita. All her life she had lived in fire, earthly fires, that had consumed her heart. It was through the torture in the concentration camp that God's grace had led her to meditation, and shown her the path of heavenly love. One morning she told me with great excitement of a dream which I will try to repeat here literally: "Last night an angel spoke to me. I saw a fire, a very big one. There were many paths through it and there were illuminated signboards To Eternal Love. I jumped into the fire and perished in it." This dream symbolises Anita's life. I thought of it for many weeks, especially when she was deported with a "sick transport," most likely to another concentration camp to be gassed. She had been very unruly and often proved a nuisance to the whole block. Now, purified in the divine fire of God's love, she had become quiet and calm through God's mercy, wrapt in meditation, ready for the last journey. I had to call her at 2 o'clock in the morning for the transport. Surely this meant death, and I was hardly able to speak. It was only now that she realised what was in store for her. She took my hands and said simply: "Don't cry, I am so ready to die now." Yes, sun, moon and stars shone even in Ravensbrueck. But the miracle of God's love came from the ashes of these Magdalenes, stronger and brighter than the lights in the sky.
Finally a few words about poor Else. She had no home in this world, and no friend who cared for her. She never received greetings from home. She had already spent 8 years in the concentration camp. Now she lay ill with an incurable disease in her leg. She would never be able to walk again. I still see her before me lying on her bunk, one leg always lying on top of the other. Prolonged standing - that was one of the penalties here - and marching without shoes or stockings had been fatal for her sick feet. All her joints were badly swollen. In addition she had a serious heart disease. Every evening when the other prisoners were asleep, I went to her stealthily. She had plenty of time, but I had to count the minutes, as the other patients called out for me too. But she was so pleased if I only sat on her bunk for a few minutes. "Tell me about your Christ," she said. "Yesterday you were telling me about his being scourged." So I continued about the crowning with thorns and the way of the cross, his crucifixion and ignominious death. I had to repeat the words of the dying redeemer to the robber on the cross. Then it happened for the first time that I saw tears in her eyes. She too found the way to Christ, seeking and fighting. From now on she bore her cross, her terrible pains, more patiently than anyone. Whenever I renewed her compresses during the day, we would whisper short prayers together. When I was transferred from Block 11, she cried and drew me down to her. I had fight back my tears.
Altogether it was hard for me to leave my prostitutes. I did not like to hand them over to somebody else, because I had tried daily afresh to understand them and help them. I was happy that as God's tool I was permitted to see these people who had been so far away from God, gradually grow into his merciful love. To have fought and suffered together to achieve this is the strongest link in the world.
It was deeply moving when in the depths of the night we would offer up our Te Deum to heaven, in this block of the prostitutes and outcasts. On feast days we would sing at 4 o'clock, before the camp siren broke cruelly into the stillness of the new morning. "Great God we praise thee." We sang not only the first verse, but the second and third too, which I had taught them. In this pitiless misery and horror, we outlaws praised the Lord in his omnipotence and bounty, strong in faith and without faltering. I would not have believed before that people of this kind in their humiliating situation would have been able to perform such an heroic deed. Yes, we joined in the universal Hosannah. Amidst all the horrors of the concentration camp, where all singing, praying and making of the sign of the cross was strictly prohibited.
I am sure that the few prisoners of whom I have told passed straight into God's arms when they died. They would have liked to make a confession to a priest, but this was impossible, as no priest was ever permitted to enter our camp. Surely they, who never had a real home on this earth or real love, entered into their heavenly home. So much good will and such deep contrition will surely have been enough to let these poor erring outcasts find their home in heaven.
Those who had completely despaired were quite beyond consolation. They did not believe in anything any more. They had lost faith in God, fatherland, humanity and home. And many in Block 11 were like that. Their inner state must have been quite heart rending. Man cannot live without hope, especially in such a hell. Thus these pitiable women and girlsoften enough went mad and attempted suicide.
Here everybody bore a heavy cross. The great difference was that some carried it with Christ and others without him. You must possess boundless faith if you do not want to be submerged in despair and bitterness, and sink from one pit to another deeper still. But without this faith something happens to the souls of these hapless wretches which is more cruel more harrowing than all physical maltreatment and material privation.
I can gratefully say that behind barred windows and behind the walls of the camp I met God's limitless grace hourly. These years of imprisonment have for me grown full of life and blessing. For my future life they hold a profound meaning. I hope that for me, and for many others like me, they will be a source of strength for the future. "One abyss calls to the other." The abyss of fiendish wickedness opened up the infinite depths of divine love and mercy.


Taken from Christ In Dachau, published in 1952 by the Newman Bookshop, Oxford, England.

heelers interview with irish prime minister enda kenny

I met Enda Kenny a few years ago.
I was put sitting beside him at a dinner party in Athy by a Fine Gael Councillor named Richard Daily Press Release.
I took the opportunity to lobby Enda Kenny briefly.
I told him that a serial killer called Larry Murphy was about to be relased from an Irish jail.
I informed him that Larry Murphy and his friends had kidnapped, tortured, violated and murdered Deirdre Jacob, Jo Jo Dollard, Annie McCarrick and others.
I suggested that Larry Murphy and his friends were members of an Irish devil worship ring which kills for sport.
I reminded him that Larry Murphy was currently sitting in jail letting the clock run down on the paltry ten year sentence a certain Judge Liberal had given him for one of his attempted torturing's, rapes, violations and murders which had been interrupted before he got to the murder part.
I pointed out that Larry Murphy had refused to discuss what he and his friends did to Deirdre Jacob, Jo Jo Dollard, Annie McCarrick and others.
I reiterated the fact that Larry Murphy had refused to accept any of what Liberal Judges and Social Workers call treatment, to address his predilection for kidnapping, torturing, violating and murdering innocent women who have never done any harm to him, or indeed to anyone, in their lives.
Enda Kenny listened to me through it all.
"James," he said finally, "we can do something about this."
Since that conversation Enda Kenny has been elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland.
Larry Murphy, having been set free by the Irish Courts, now stalks the land.
He will pick his next victims at leisure.

the most shocking thing about the latest cloyne report release

The most shocking thing about the latest extracts from the Cloyne Report, released by our government in an attempt to malign the Catholic Church at Christmas, was the fact that the anti Catholic Irish Independent, the most anti Catholic newspaper group in Europe, didn't even feature the rehashed tissue of lies on its cover.
This is a first, gentle readers.
In thirty years of slandering the Faith of our Fathers, Independent Newspapers has never failed to run such a story on its covers.
Can it be that they've started to notice the ongoing consequences of their  bigotry?
Could they really be aware that their negligible readership collapses even further every time they smear our ancient, beautiful and true religion?
I've always sought to point out that these bigots are not sensitive to public perceptions.
They have sought the destruction of the Church even as their net indebtedness passed the two billion dollar mark.
We are nothing to them.
They regard us as farm animals to be led into the broad sunlit uplands of feudal service to Tony O'Reilly's moth eaten family.
Yes folks, Independent Newspapers has traded without readers for thirty years.
Their circulation figures and their much less publicised sales figures are equally false.
Independent Newspapers was enabled to continue its war against the Catholic Church for the last three decades without readers only through the most egregious accountancy tricks, oh and through the largesse of our corrupt kleptocratic Fianna Fail and Fine Gael governments giving them limitless sums of tax payers' money for utterly unnecessary Health Board advertising, and of course through the lavish generosity of idiot banks advancing two billion dollars for Independent Newspapers' decrepit faux commercial adventurism in the sure hope that when the idiot banks inevitably collapsed because Independent Newspapers and their ilk will never repay their ridiculous debts, our aforementioned corrupt kleptocratic Fianna Fail and Fine Gael governments will mortgage the nation and its future, to bail out those self same banks and to keep Tony O'Reilly and his latest trophy wife and their horrendous brood, in BMWs.
F--k.
That's two billion in losses that we know about by the way.
The real figure will be much much higher.
But I digress.
The real news is this.
Today the Irish government released a new trumped up Report designed to malign the Catholic Church at Christmas for its handling of old sex abuse cases.
And the Irish Independent hid it on page nine.
They're scared.
The little b-st--ds are frightened.
At last.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

results of the heelers enquiry into the cloyne report

1. The Cloyne Report, compiled by Judge Yvonne Murphy and unnamed associates in the Irish Courts Service, purports to be an investigation of the Catholic Church's handling of sex abuse cases in a particular region of Ireland. The report is more correctly understood as a show trial conducted by secret committee with Judge Yvonne Murphy  as its figurehead, and no representation or cross examination permitted on behalf of those Judge Yvonne Murphy and her friends are seeking to ruin.

2. Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report focusses on the Church's handling of unproven allegations against 19 priests dating from 1996 to 2009. Only one of these priests has ever been convicted of any crime. Judge Yvonne Murphy crassly seeks to blame the Church for the failure of the Police, the State, the Judiciary and the Courts to secure prosecutions over the other, often tenuous, allegations against the remaining 18. In a spirit of malicious and injudicious vindictiveness she refuses to consider the possibility that any allegation against any Catholic priest could be false. She also refuses to consider the preponderant responsibility of the Police, the State and the Judiciary to secure convictions when such allegations emerge. She utterly fails to extend her scrutiny over those who make such allegations but never trouble themselves to go the Police. In every instance, she concludes that any appearance of inaction over a sex abuse allegation against a priest must be blamed on the Church rather than on traditional law enforcement agencies. This reasoning on the part of Judge Yvonne Murphy is calculatedly malicious.

3. The real targets of Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report are not the 18 priests against whom sex abuse allegations have been made in the Cloyne diocese. The real targets are ordinary Bishops and priests against whom those wishing to destroy the Church have formerly laboured in vain to contrive criminality. Judge Yvonne Murphy uses and abuses her powers as compiler of this Report to devise guilt for any Bishop or priestly colleague of these 18 priests who knew of the allegations against them and did not go straight to the police. She broadens the whole notion of guilt regarding sex abuse so that anyone in the land whom she or her friends wished to destroy, could be labelled a concealer of child abuse. Any of us would be guilty under this standard of judgement. But of course Yvonne Murphy and her friends only wish to destroy those of us who dare to proclaim the truth of the Catholic faith. This casually invidious and utterly unjust ascription of wrongdoing to Bishops and priests who may or may not have known of unproven allegations against the 18, is the key methodology used by Judge Yvonne Murphy in order to criminalise a generation of priests and Bishops out of existence. With godlike mania, she has invented criminality for all of them, and with demonic certitude, she has pronounced them all guilty.

4. I say it again. The real targets of Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report are the vast majority of noble, courageous, holy, honorable and self sacrificing priests and Bishops, the ones who minister tirelessly at our births, our marriages, our funerals, and our prayer services, and against whom no genuine sex abuse allegation has ever exist. Judge Yvonne Murphy has invented a new definition of sex abuse in order to net them. Judge Yvonne Murphy now insists sex abuse has been committed by any person not handling a report of sex abuse the way she arbitrarily and retrospectively claims reports of sex abuse should have been handled. She constructs this notion only so that it may be applied to the Catholic Church. As I've said before, if it was applied to the rest of us, the whole country would be in jail. As would Judge Yvonne Murphy and her friends. Certainly it would mean jail for life for those Judges who refused to convict Judge Brian Curtin when he was caught paying to see children raped on the internet. I would assert gentle readers, that Judge Brian Curtin's crimes alone make negligible anything that is alleged against any priest in the Cloyne Report. Judge Yvonne Murphy has broadened the conception and connotion of guilt vis a vis sex abuse so that literally anyone could be arrested. But she and her friends are only hunting Catholic priests and Bishops. So the rest of us are safe as long as we don't go having Christian conversions. This is the nature of tyranny. It is arbitrary and it is unjust and it is merciless. I tell you she is doing this in order to eviscerate the Catholic Church of its best and brightest. She is doing this in order to feed the pure fiction that sex abuse cases within the Church exceed the level of those outside it. There is no other reason for what she and her friends in the Judiciary and government, are doing.

5. The explicit purpose of Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report is to manufacture guilt for the innocent.

6. Those impugned in the report are given no right to refute the largely nefarious allegations against them.

7. Those impugned in the report have been given no right to cross examine their largely anonymous accusers.

8. Those impugned in the report have been given no right of appeal against the tendentious and injudicious conclusions of Judge Yvonne Murphy.

9. This report has been contrived to get a specific result, ie to ascribe arbitrary criminality to innocent Catholic priests and Bishops, as part of an ongoing anti Catholic kulturkampf in Ireland.

10. Those impugned in the report have not been afforded expert legal representation in order to answer the wrongdoing being contrived against them.

11. The Cloyne report was compiled by Judge Yvonne Murphy, a member of the liberal atheistic pseudo establishment, the same establishment which has delivered the present day society of violent lawlessness to Ireland, and all but plunged us into a new dark ages. It is about as fair a report as I might write were I permitted to stand in judgement on Yvonne Murphy and her fellow conspirators in the judiciary.

12. Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne report takes as its starting point the dysfunctional and opprobrious notion that the Church can be held accountable for failures by the police, the State, and the Judiciary to secure convictions against members of the Church accused of child abuse.

13. Judge Yvonne Murphy further assumes that there can be no responsibility for supposed victims and their relatives who never even troubled to complain to the Police about the supposedl abuse they claimed to have suffered.

14. Judge Yvonne Murphy invents a new standard for the Church. A standard not to be applied to any other institution in Ireland. That is to say she deems the Church guilty of a criminal act if a Bishop to whom an abuse allegation has been made does not himself engage in law enforcement activities. She ignores the responsibility of supposed victims and their advocates to take their own cases to the Police. And she ignores the reality that in many cases victims demand confidentiality from Bishops in whom they confide.

15. Judge Yvonne Murphy takes every allegation against the Church as proven. She creates an assumption of guilt for priests accused of sex abuse. She accords such priests no right to speak for themselves. Her guiding principle is that every allegation is true. Her notion of law is twisted and malign.

16. Judge Yvonne Murphy accords credibility to the most tenuous claims. One person posing as a victim claimed in total that on a single occasion a priest had tried to kiss her. She refused to say what age she was at the time. She admitted she was a teenager. She may have been 19 or 15. She claimed she had not been in fear of the priest. She claimed had told him to f--- off, that she had left the room and that she had never seen him again. Judge Yvonne Murphy considered this claim a genuine example of child abuse. The case ended up in court and this priests name and photograph was published every day for a week in every newspaper in Ireland. At the end of the week a Judge threw out the case, not because of the sheer ridiculous tenuous invidiousness of it, but because before taking her case, the woman had earlier tried to blackmail the priest, approaching him through a third party and demanding money.

17. Judge Yvonne Murphy's report accords credibility as an abuse victim to an adult woman who claimed: "A priest befriended me and I felt so manipulated by him." That's the sum total of what Judge Yvonne Murphy is alleging to be abuse in this case.

18. Claimed sex abuse incidents against a total of 19 priests are investigated in Judge Yvonne Muphy's Cloyne report. Only one of these cases has resulted in a conviction. Some of the cases are clearly manufactured and false. In every case, we encounter the inaction of the Police, the State and the Judiciary, all of whom have the primary role in law enforcement. The inaction, incompetence and arrant corruption of the Police, the State and the Judiciary, is being falsely blamed on the Church.

19. Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has drip fed Yvonne Murphy's contrived and mendacious Cloyne Report into the public domain. He has released it in stages over the past few months. He has done so in order to further contrive as much damage as possible in the public mind for the Catholic Church.

20. Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report is part of an ongoing strategy emanating from shadowy figures hiding within the upper echelons of Irish society and styling themselves atheistic humanists, who wish to destroy the Christian faith in this country.

21. Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report is trumped up, malign, malicious, mendacious, and unjust.

22. Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report is itself a criminal assault upon the person and reputation of the former Bishop of Cloyne Doctor Joseph Magee whom she wishes to destroy for the crime of being a Secretary to Three Popes. His is the scalp du jour for the liberal atheists currently seeking to hijack Ireland.

23.Judge Yvonne Murphy's Cloyne Report is a blatently manipulative attempt to criminalise the Catholic faith.

We Enter Dachau

When we were standing in rows, waiting to be entered on the camp register, one of the SS guards came up and shouted: "Are there any priests here?" In our draft there were murderers and thieves. These he left, and called out the priests, abusing them savagely, spitefully, and striking them too when he chose. But it was Our Lord whom he wished to abuse, the cornerstone which the architects of the Reich had rejected. And yet, they could not circumvent Him! And in blaspheming Him again, whom they had so often proclaimed dead, they reaffirmed that He lived still - lived and showed Himself in His priests.

(By Albert Reisterer. From the collection Christ In Dachau, published by the Newman Bookshop, Oxford, 1952.)

****


Memo to The Daily Mail: Do you see yourselves at all in the behaviour of the Nazis? I am well aware that uniquely among newspapers in the British Isles, the Daily Mail actually supported Hitler at one stage. But I am not referring to that fact. I am referring to your present day attempts to destroy the Bishop of Cloyne. I am suggesting that your ongoing manipulations of the news are tantamount to what the Nazis were doing at Dachau.


*****
(The above was first published in December of 2008. Hence the reference to the former Bishop of Cloyne Joseph Magee who was the media target du jour that Christmas. It was published again in 2009 when Irish media scoundrels were pursuing a different Bishop. This year Independent Newspapers, RTE and the Irish Times have renewed their attempts to vilify Bishop Magee, who is now in retirement. Their intent is as crass, worong minded, dishonorable and mendacious as it ever was.)

Monday, December 19, 2011

sermon

The Padre in Clarendon Street Church spoke quietly from the pulpit.
He remembered working as a missionary in Nigeria.
He recalled meeting a young African who had never seen the sea.
He told us how he had driven that African to the sea shore.
The waves were pounding against the rocks.
It was a splendidly stormy scene.
And the young African got out of the car and began jumping up and down.
"What is it?" said the priest.
"Only God could make this," cried the African joyfully.

rum ironies

Today the Irish Times features copious coverage of the death of the former President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel.
Mr Havel was a hero of the Czechoslovakian defiance of the attempt by Russian Communists to take over the world during the last century.
As news came through that he had died yesterday, word also broke of the death of another famous ruler of another country which the Communists had more success in targeting for enslavement.
Kim Jung Il, President of North Korea, had died of a heart attack.
Kim Jung Il and his family have run North Korea as a province of Communist China for sixty years.
Be in no doubt.
The people of North Korea are in Communist hell.
Which is where the liberal atheistic pseudo elites of the Free World have consigned them.
The only sense that North Koreans are not in hell, is in the sense that God has not abandoned them.
But the rest of us have.
Now get this.
At the same time as Vaclav Havel was, by the grace of God, defying the atheistic Marxists of Russia and China, in leading his country to freedom, Kim Jong Il was collaborating with the atheistic Marxists of Russia and China in inflicting the most hideous Communist enslavement in human history upon the people of North Korea.
It continues to this day.
Kim Jong Il and his father before him, and his son after him, have ensured that North Koreans live in a hellish miasma of despair that would terrify the damned denizens of Dante's inferno.
Yes.
Today the Irish Times reserves pages for its eulogies of Vaclav Havel.
A man they despised during the Cold War.
And for fifty years during the Cold War, the Irish Times and its reporter from Russia Mr Seamus Martin, a full brother no less of Archbishop Diarmuid whom I have called a Soviet era infiltrator of the Catholic Church, for fifty years I say, Seamus Martin and the Irish Times cheered for the Soviet takeover of Mr Havel's country and the world.
The Irish Times did this through fifty years of infantile warnings about the purely imaginary dangers of American imperialism, through fifty years of malign propaganda against the the noble and just State of Israel, and through fifty years of lying about and deliberately concealing the true evil that was the Soviet Union and Communist China.
And today they eulogise Mr Havel as though they had been his pals all along.
As though they had not sought his death and evisceration through their trumpeting of the joys of Sovietism.
As though the Irish Times itself was not directly implicated in the Russian Communist attempt to subvert humanity.
As though the Irish Times itself was not run from at least the 1970's as an espionage disinformation operation, accountable only to Moscow Centre of the Kah Tset Beh.
Well I'm just saying is all.
But I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns.
As though, but that's enough as though's.
What a grotesque insult to the memory of Vaclav Havel to be eulogised on his death in the Irish Times.
Of course the insult is also to our own intelligence.
The Irish Times is gambling that Irish citizens will have short memories.
Their insult to us and to Mr Havel today is not complete however.
For the Irish Times which for fifty years championed and apologised for countries run by Russian Communist and Chinese Communist monstrosities all over the world, can today find no space at all to mention the passing of President Kim Jong Il of North Korea.
No eulogy.
No belated condemnation for this cruel deluded atheistic Marxist Chinese Communist proxy.
Nothing at all for this former hero of the Irish Times.
The irony... is screaming.

strange visitors

come with me
to the darkest most beautiful night
that the world has ever seen
and ever might
we can sit on the straw
we'll get warm from it
and watch the stillness draw
a cloak of peace
through a time of war
lambs are calling in the fields
that this night is forever
and forever yields
to this night
we are there
caught in the warmth
from things that are old
and things that are rare
look look my friend
gold
frankinsense
and myrrh

Sunday, December 18, 2011

the irish times love affair with child abuse

SEX AND THE SINGLE SODOMITE
***

The Irish Times ran an article last week naming a missionary priest in Chile against whom allegations of child sexual abuse had been levelled.
The article claimed the priest had sexually abused a 16 year old boy.
The article further claimed that the priest had sexually abused a 23 year old man, himself a relative of the first victim, who along with the first victim was seeking reparations.
Of course, by the Irish Times own code of morality, sex between any individual and a 23 year old man, should be the business of the two people concerned, and not a subject for discussion in the Irish Times.
Ah yes.
Having spent years telling us that same sex relationships were nobody's business, the Irish Times has devised a new standard for same sex relationships involving a Catholic priest, ie that they are everybody's business and should be publicised in a national newspaper.
In any case, from my cursory reading of the available evidence, it looks like the priest did indeed engage in the behaviour that is alleged.
The behaviour with the 16 year old, if it wasn't entrapment, would appear to be criminal activity.
I'm not sure it warrants his name being publicised all over the nation, and his family being shamed in the manner that the Irish Times has chosen to do prior to any legal trial.
I'm not sure of that.
But from his own words, it looks like he did it.
I mention entrapment because the 23 year old supposed sexual partner of the priest was a close relative of the 16 year old.
The relationship with the 23 year is none of any of our business.
Not mine.
Nor the Irish Times.
Hmmm.
You know folks, the double standard at the Irish Times is quite extraordinary.
The Irish Times named this priest in a national newspaper on the strength of a single allegation of criminal behaviour against him.
Yet the Irish Times has chosen for the past six months to ignore a most invidious and ongoing scandal involving one of its own feature writers.
This Irish Times feature writer has been found having sex with teenage girl children in Dublin.
At least two victims have emerged.
The Irish Times feature writer groomed the children for sex by befriending them through his voluntary work as a sports coach at a Gaelic football club in the city.
The failure by the Irish Times and other newspapers to report on this case frankly, means additional victims may not come forward.
Nor has the Irish Times reported on the continuing inaction of the corrupt Irish Police Force with regard to the allegations against the child abusing Irish Times journalist.
The Police claim that on each occasion when this story has been publicised in any way, the child abusing Irish Times journalist has attempted suicide.
The last public Police statements on the matter, some months ago, suggested that the Irish Times journalist was on the verge of death.
So in the interim, the Police have done nothing.
The story has been let die.
And the child abusing Irish Times journalist is to all intents and purposes very much alive.
Now here's the rub.
Personally, I don't think the Irish Times child abuser should be named and shamed with continuous press coverage such as has been heaped on the tiny minority of Catholic priests accused of similar and lesser crimes.
The Irish Times child abuser has a wife and child.
The children he raped, may think they are in love with him and may somehow hold themselves responsible for his repeated staged suicide attempts.
He has a mother and father and other relatives.
For all these reasons I don't think he should be named or persecuted with a public show trial.
I don't want him to kill himself.
Though he should certainly be investigated and held accountable before the law.
Suicide attempts or no suicide attempts.
He should face justice.
Now consider the media treatment of the tiny minority of Catholic priests guilty of child abuse, many of whom committed far lesser crimes than the Irish Times child abuser, and yet who have been named time and time again in the pages of the Irish Times and other national newspapers as soon as the merest allegations emerge, while the Irish Times in house child rapist who without a shadow of doubt was raping young teenagers in Dublin, (oh far younger than 16 years of age) still goes unremarked, unnamed, uninvestigated and unpunished.
The double standard is grotesque.
Nearly as grotesque as the deliberate concealment of child abuse, something the Irish Times and other Irish national newspapers have been guilty of with gay abandon.
But ah.
That's another story.

heelers origin of species

Well folks.
I used to think Italians were the most beautiful people God made.
That opinion now needs to be revised.
Clearly God had just got his hand in making Italians, when he decided he owed it to himself (and the universe) to start making Koreans.