Marking Time

• Have My Say: Power, Authority, Obedience
  The Church-State Complex
  (tags: ireland politics religion society)
• The Cedar Lounge Revolution: What’s past is present - Part 4 - the central question and why the Catholic right keeps evading it.
  Good article, and even better comments.
  (tags: ireland politics religion media)

“This is a pseudonym”. It’s probably the most repeated footnote in the report by the Child Abuse Commision into abuse of children in their care by members of the religious orders of the Catholic Church in Ireland . What a curious task that must have been for the compilers of the report - to come up with suitably anonymous pseudonyms - some light relief as they ploughed through the harrowing details, perhaps as a crossword style exercise during the tea breaks.

Is there not one of you hidden behind those inoffensive pseudonyms who will step out from the shadows to explain yourself? Is there not one of you who will take the consequences as dictated by your Holy Book and the teachings of your Church?

After all, we already know who you are. We, who lived in the communities that sheltered you, we, who bowed in deference before the dictats of your organisations, we, who threatened our children with your wrath whenever they acted up, and we who now proclaim to be shocked, outraged, and surprised, by the horrors that the report lays before us.

• Marking Time: Blog Archive - RTFM
  (tags: religion Law ireland politics)

• The Monageer tragedies - The Irish Times - Wed, May 13, 2009
  "What has been published, after threats of legal action by those criticised, is a travesty. It adds little to public knowledge. And it may worsen a culture of official complacency."
  (tags: ireland politics society censorship Law Rights)

• The Irish Economy: Goodbye to All That
  "All policy wheezes emanating from the commentariat over the next few months should be smell-tested for 07 Nostalgia, and rejected at the merest whiff. We have been there and it didn't work."
  (tags: ireland economics)

• An Irish Town Planner's Blog: Corruption in the process of planning
  "What are local councillors for?" With the local elections coming up I've been thinking much the same thing.
  (tags: Ireland Politics)