gdp's Comments

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Ireland abandoning religion faster than almost every other country - Republic of Ireland, Local & Na

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 18:38:55 +0000

This survey is flawed because the word 'religious' has all sorts of suggestive connotations and not everyone who could be so characterized would readily self-identify as such. I can just imagine many of my co-parishioners asking themselves, 'Religious? Oh no, not me. I just go to Mass and pray the Rosary'. It would have been more meaningful if the survey has asked whether the individual practices a faith, if he/she believes in God or an afterlife, and if he/she prays regularly, etc.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Ireland abandoning religion faster than almost every other country - Republic of Ireland, Local & Na

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 18:26:33 +0000

Mantus: "The percentage of accused priests in the US is about 10 percent or 10,969[...]So pedophiles’ in the clergy are at a rate 20-200 times greater than in the general population" This is a non sequitur. The figure you give relates to *accused* priests (innocent until proven guilty, remember?) not priests who have been convicted of an offence, which is undoubtedly much less. Anyway can I ask for a scholarly source for this claim? The John Jay survey found that 4% of US priests serving between 1950 and 1992 had been accused of abuse. You're wrong to assert that priests are more likely to be paedophiles than the adult male population as a whole. This article in Newsweek (a highly liberal anti-Catholic publication) argues that the opposite is true: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/07/...

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Polls show that Protestants are not fascists - Letters, Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 03:09:03 +0000

Stalin's Soviet Union, a member of the Allies, killed over 40 million people. Much worse than Hitler.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Why we cannot afford to keep our schools apart - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 22:24:07 +0000

Christieboy, I am not aware of any evidence that the children were intimidated or were made swear an oath forbidding them from reporting Smith's crime to the authorities, or indeed anyone else. You are confused as to the exact nature of the oath prescribed. Here is a press release from the Catholic Communications Office a few months ago: The following is a correction note from the Catholic Communications Office regarding the Irish Indepedent article "Revealed: Oath taken by Smyth, children, and Brady" by Breda Heffernan published yesterday, 18 March 2010. In relation to the wording of the oath involved in the 1975 enquiry involving the then Fr Seán Brady and concerning Fr Brendan Smyth, the published words used in yesterday’s Irish Independent (18 March 2010) were incorrect. The wording of the oath is as follows: “I [name] hereby swear that I have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that I will talk to no-one about this interview except authorised priests.” In addition, the following sentence was included in the second oath: “So help me God and these holy Gospels which I touch.” Authorised priests in this case refers to the personnel who were taking evidence. The intention of the oaths was to avoid potential collusion in the gathering of the enquiry’s evidence and to ensure that the process was robust enough to withstand challenge by the perpetrator, Fr Brendan Smyth. It was understood by canonical personnel in Ireland that the oaths were no longer binding when the taking of evidence from all witnesses was complete

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Why we cannot afford to keep our schools apart - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:05:06 +0000

"The shameful behaviour of Cardinal Sean Brady was recently exposed where he intimidated two child victims of the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth into silence" I am not aware of evidence that those children were intimidated into anything. Oaths of secrecy are temporary and are only used for information given in ecclesiastical trials; they do not preclude anyone from reporting crimes, or giving information, to the police.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Why we cannot afford to keep our schools apart - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:01:48 +0000

"it uncovered thousands of cases of sexual abuse and cruelty against Catholic children in Catholic run Institutions" No it didn't. There were 88 claims of sexual abuse from the pre-1960s, 119 from 1960 to 1969, 37 from 1970 to 1979, and nine from 1980 to 1989. A third of those complaints referred to lay staff (care workers, cleaners pupils etc) As David Quinn pointed out in Studies magazine: "As mentioned, a total of 1,090 former residents of the institutions reported to the Ryan Commission. Between them, they named 800 alleged abusers in over 200 institutions. But there was very wide variation from institution to institution in terms of the amount of abuse taking place in each of them, something that the executive summary of the Ryan Report, which is what most journalists will have read, did not make clear. For example, fully 50 per cent of physical abuse reports and 64 per cent of the sex abuse reports heard by the Commission that involved boys, related to four of the boys institutions. The same applies to the girls’ institutions. Three schools account for almost 40 per cent of the physical abuse reports, or 48 reports each, while 19 schools had an average of 2.5 reports each. Sexual abuse was also far worse in the boys’ institution than in the girls’, which is probably to be expected. In the girls’ institutions, sex abuse was normally perpetrated by outside workmen, or by visiting priests or religious, or by foster families, with whom the girls occasionally stayed. A relative handful of individuals accounted for a disproportionate share of the complaints. For example: a total of 241 female religious were named as physical abusers. However, four of these were named by 125 witnesses, and 156 Sisters were named by one witness each. In total, of the 800 religious and others named as abusers, half were named by only one person. It is also worth noting that an institution only received a special chapter in the Ryan Report if it was the subject of more than 20 complaints of abuse. Sixteen institutions, out of the dozens run by the orders, had more than 20 complaints made against them."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Why Orangemen must put best foot forward - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 15:19:23 +0000

The story that the Pope said Mass for William's victory is apocryphal and likely not true.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Why we cannot afford to keep our schools apart - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 15:14:38 +0000

No, integrated education is not a good idea. What we need is a breakup of the controlled sector. I suggest selling schools back to the churches, community groups, parental associations, cultural groups etc. Then implement a Swedish style system where the government gives each parent one voucher per child (to cover the average cost of educating one pupil for a year), and allow the parent to redeem the voucher at any school of their choosing. That would mean a parent could send their child to an Irish-medium, Chinese language, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic etc educational institution. This would take away power from bureaucrats and return it back to parents. United in diversity is better than one size fits all.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Nationalists must articulate a future that’s all-inclusive - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 13:31:43 +0000

BTW such comments were quite mainstream in pre-WW2 Europe. Churchill was in doubt about the alleged peril Jews posed to Britain.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Ian Paisley rapped on Pope remarks - Local & National, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 15:10:59 +0000

True but you can't count it like because not everyone in the population is equally and so rawly exposed to children. The Catholic Church had a near monopoly in the care and education of children in the Republic of Ireland. In the United States, teachers likewise make up a massively disproportionate share of abusers. And almost all of this abuse is historic, when there were a lot more clergy than there are today...in the 1950s one in eight secondary school children went on to become priests.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Ian Paisley rapped on Pope remarks - Local & National, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sat, 3 Jul 2010 14:46:47 +0000

According to the Sexual Abuse and Violence Report in Ireland (SAVI) commissioned by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, only 1.8% of all abuse in society was perpetrated by diocesan clergy. While this is still deplorable, I do think the media tends to ignore other victims. Derek Leinster, a Protestant abuse victim wrote in the Irish Times last year about how Protestant victims of institutional abuse have been totally ignored by the Irish media: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/...

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Ian Paisley rapped on Pope remarks - Local & National, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sat, 3 Jul 2010 14:42:53 +0000

Atheist Brendan O'Neill has some good comments: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/artic... "Even in Ireland, whose image as a craic-loving nation has been replaced by the far-worse idea that it was actually a nation of priest rape, incidents of sexual abuse by priests were fairly rare. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was launched by the Irish government in 1999 and delivered its report last year, intensively invited Irish-born people around the world to report on incidents of abuse in Irish religious-educational reform schools, where the majority of clerical abuse is said to have occurred, between the period 1914 to 1999. For that 85-year period, 253 claims of sexual abuse were made by males and 128 by females. It is important – surely? – to note that these are claims of sexual abuse rather than proven incidents, since the vast majority of them did not go to trial. The number of sexual abuse claims in these institutions fell for the more recent period: for males, there were 88 claims from the pre-1960s, 119 from 1960 to 1969, 37 from 1970 to 1979, and nine from 1980 to 1989. The alleged sexual-abuse incidents ranged in seriousness from boys being ‘questioned and interrogated about their sexual activity’ to being raped: there were 68 claims of anal rape in reform institutions for boys from 1914 to 1999. Not all of the sexual abuse was carried out by priests. Around 65 per cent of the claims pertain to religious workers, and 35 per cent to lay staff, care workers, and fellow pupils. Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. But given the findings of Ireland’s investigation into abuse in religious-educational institutions, is there really a justification for talking about a ‘clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel’? As Ireland is redefined as a country in recovery from child sexual abuse, and the ‘scandal of child rape’ spreads further through Europe into Germany and Italy, it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education. [...]In Ireland, for example, the state has explicitly invited its citizens to redefine themselves as victims of authority rather than as active agents capable of moving on and making choices. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse discusses at length the ‘debilitating’ impact that abuse can have on individuals, to the extent that many of Ireland’s social problems – including unemployment, poverty, drug abuse and heavy drinking – are now discussed as the products of Ireland’s earlier era of abuse rather than as failings of the contemporary social system. This, I believe, is why claims of sexual abuse in Ireland’s religious-educational institutions were so much higher for the period of 1960 to 1969 (nearly half of all claims of sexual abuse against boys during the period of 1914 to 1989 were made for that decade). It is not because priests suddenly became more abusive in the 1960s than they had been in the far harsher Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, but because the people who attended the institutions during that period were in many ways the main targets of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. They would have been in their mid-40s to mid-50s when the commission began in 1999 and many of them had suffered long-term unemployment, health problems, and other disappointments. Reporting their misfortunes to the commission offered them the chance, not only of getting financial compensation, but also of validating their difficult life experiences as a consequence of their having been abused. In a grotesquely convenient marriage, the state redefined social problems as consequences of Catholic abuse and the individual redefined himself as a sufferer from low self-esteem who did not bear full responsibility for the course of his adult life. In such a climate, not only are incidents of abuse by priests more likely to surface, but they are also more likely to be heavily politicised, turned from undoubtedly distressing and possibly criminal acts into modern-day examples of evil capable of distorting society itself. Thus did the contemporary cult of victimhood ensure that Catholic abuse was blown out of proportion."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Nationalists must articulate a future that’s all-inclusive - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sat, 3 Jul 2010 14:13:33 +0000

Atheist Brendan O'Neill has some pertinent comments: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/artic... "Even in Ireland, whose image as a craic-loving nation has been replaced by the far-worse idea that it was actually a nation of priest rape, incidents of sexual abuse by priests were fairly rare. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was launched by the Irish government in 1999 and delivered its report last year, intensively invited Irish-born people around the world to report on incidents of abuse in Irish religious-educational reform schools, where the majority of clerical abuse is said to have occurred, between the period 1914 to 1999. For that 85-year period, 253 claims of sexual abuse were made by males and 128 by females. It is important – surely? – to note that these are claims of sexual abuse rather than proven incidents, since the vast majority of them did not go to trial. The number of sexual abuse claims in these institutions fell for the more recent period: for males, there were 88 claims from the pre-1960s, 119 from 1960 to 1969, 37 from 1970 to 1979, and nine from 1980 to 1989. The alleged sexual-abuse incidents ranged in seriousness from boys being ‘questioned and interrogated about their sexual activity’ to being raped: there were 68 claims of anal rape in reform institutions for boys from 1914 to 1999. Not all of the sexual abuse was carried out by priests. Around 65 per cent of the claims pertain to religious workers, and 35 per cent to lay staff, care workers, and fellow pupils. Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. But given the findings of Ireland’s investigation into abuse in religious-educational institutions, is there really a justification for talking about a ‘clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel’? As Ireland is redefined as a country in recovery from child sexual abuse, and the ‘scandal of child rape’ spreads further through Europe into Germany and Italy, it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education. [....]This, I believe, is why claims of sexual abuse in Ireland’s religious-educational institutions were so much higher for the period of 1960 to 1969 (nearly half of all claims of sexual abuse against boys during the period of 1914 to 1989 were made for that decade). It is not because priests suddenly became more abusive in the 1960s than they had been in the far harsher Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, but because the people who attended the institutions during that period were in many ways the main targets of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. They would have been in their mid-40s to mid-50s when the commission began in 1999 and many of them had suffered long-term unemployment, health problems, and other disappointments. Reporting their misfortunes to the commission offered them the chance, not only of getting financial compensation, but also of validating their difficult life experiences as a consequence of their having been abused. In a grotesquely convenient marriage, the state redefined social problems as consequences of Catholic abuse and the individual redefined himself as a sufferer from low self-esteem who did not bear full responsibility for the course of his adult life. In such a climate, not only are incidents of abuse by priests more likely to surface, but they are also more likely to be heavily politicised, turned from undoubtedly distressing and possibly criminal acts into modern-day examples of evil capable of distorting society itself. Thus did the contemporary cult of victimhood ensure that Catholic abuse was blown out of proportion."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Nationalists must articulate a future that’s all-inclusive - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 19:37:33 +0000

Arthur Griffith made explicitly clear in the Resurrection of Hungary that he ultimately favoured a Republic but seen a dual-monarchy system as the only practically acheivable form of real autonomy, considering the restraints of the contemporary political structures. Austria and Hungary shared one monarch (Emperor) with two seperate parliaments. Unless you are proposing that the Republic of Ireland restore the Queen as head of state (something most Irish people would oppose), then the two situations are not analogous.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Lie about the past and you will be doomed to failure ... like England - Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.c

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 18:40:29 +0000

I seen this statement on the Telegraph site... “I’ve checked out the six volumes of Churchill’s Second World War and the statement is quite correct – not a single mention of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ’six million’ Jewish victims of the war. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; Churchill’s Second World War totals 4,448 pages; and De Gaulle’s three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages. In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ’six million’ Jewish victims of the war.”

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : Polls show that Protestants are not fascists - Letters, Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 18:33:42 +0000

oh really? check this out.... http://themonarchist.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-did...

Frontpage Magazine : Allied in Anti-Semitism – the Irish Connection Part II

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:00:07 +0000

The Limerick Jews mostly went to Cork, where they were warmly welcomed. Gerald Goldberg later became the Lord Mayor of Cork.

Frontpage Magazine : Allied in Anti-Semitism – the Irish Connection Part II

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:52:12 +0000

Sean Russell was accompanied on the German U-Boat by Frank Ryan, the International Brigade anti-fascist who was imprisoned by Franco and then released into Nazi custody. The following letter was published in the Sunday Independent on January 9, 2005 RUSSELL, KNAVE OR NAIVE? Sir - Sean Russell was a man whom de Valera once considered worth making the effort to save from himself. Russell had given sterling service in the 20th century's first war for democracy - the Irish War of Independence fought to give effect to the democratic mandate of the 1918 Elections. But having failed to persuade Russell to accept the democratic mandate of his later Republican election victories of the Thirties, de Valera was left with no option but to act ruthlessly and with resolve against Russell and his IRA followers. By all means condemn Russell, as I have always done, for his actions in defiance of de Valera, specifically his 1939 bombing campaign in England, followed by his request for German aid to mount an IRA invasion of the North. If Russell's plan had materialised it would have had the knock-on effect of either a German or British invasion and occupation of Southern Ireland, bringing to nought de Valera's skillful safeguarding of this State from both war and fascism. Condemnation of Russell is one thing; character assassination is quite a different matter. Russell was not the Holocaust-championing caricature painted by the so-called "anti-fascist" gang responsible for the paramilitary destruction of his monument on December 30. Nor is your report by Jim Cusack (January 2) accurate in stating that it had previously "been vandalised by communists in the Fifties" because it originally was supposed to have had Russell's arm "raised in a Nazi-style salute". On the contrary, it had originally been a clenched-fist, which was denounced as "communist" by the anti-semitic and clerical-fascist organisation Maria Duce, who then proceeded to amputate the offending Russell arm. The facts regarding Russell and Nazi Germany are as follows: The UK Public Records Office has released files which show that after intensive post-War interrogation of German intelligence agents at the highest level, British intelligence itself concluded in 1946 that "Russell throughout his stay in Germany had shown considerable reticence towards the Germans and plainly did not regard himself as a German agent". In his 1958 novelVictors and VanquishedFrancis Stuart observed of the Russell-based character's outspokenness in Berlin: "Pro-German when it comes to the English, and pro-Jew when it's a question of the Germans". One might be forgiven for dismissing this as another of Stuart's literary inventions were it not for the fact that this assessment was corroborated by a far more significant witness - the Austrian Erwin Lahousen, the first and most important witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in 1945. Lahousen had been head of the second bureau of the German Intelligence Service from 1939 to 1943. A devoutly-religious Catholic, Lahousen loathed Nazism and had been the key figure in an aborted pre-War plot to assassinate Hitler. By common consent, it was Lahousen's evidence at Nuremberg that ensured that Hitler's foreign minister Ribbentrop would be sentenced to death. It was the self-same Lahousen who proceeded to offer the following character reference on behalf of Russell: "The Irishman was a hyper-sensitive Celt who, however willing he might be to use the Germans for his own political ends, regarded the Nazi philosophy as anathema". Lahousen said that "Russell was the only one of the IRA with whom I dealt who was a real Irish Republican of the old school": After what Lahousen described as "one of Russell's fiery denunciations of the Nazi attempts to indoctrinate him", the IRA leader further proclaimed: "I am not a Nazi. I'm not even pro-German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland. The British have been our enemies for hundreds of years. They are the enemies of Germany today. If it suits Germany to give us help to achieve independence I am willing to accept it, but no more, and there must be no strings to the help". This, of course, was extremely naive. As regards his dealings with Nazi Germany, Russell is to be condemned more as a fool than a knave. But notwithstanding that condemnation, Sean Russell is still entitled to the integrity of his reputation, in death no less than in life. Manus O'Riordan, Glasnevin, D11

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : German captains, U-boats and other lies about Ireland - Robert Fisk, Columnists - Belfasttelegraph.c

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:06:21 +0000

The boycott at Fethard on Sea was a disgrace but it was opposed and brought to an end by the Irish government. Many old IRA veterans from all over the county travelled specially to Protestant shops in Fethard on Sea in opposition to the boycott. The woman in question had previously signed an agreement to bring the kids up in the Catholic faith. There was a lot of bitterness between Protestants and Catholics in Fethard going back to Cromwellian times...with bad things committed on both sides.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ : German captains, U-boats and other lies about Ireland - Robert Fisk, Columnists - Belfasttelegraph.c

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:44:27 +0000

"the worst, most disgusting fascists who ever lived" Stalin's Soviet Union, a member of the Allies, was much worse than Nazi Germany and killed far more people. I regard Stalin as much more contemptible than Hitler.