The Brendan Voyage

The Bishop of Ferns, Dr. Brendan Comiskey, has done nothing wrong. We know this because he has told us so. And, as we are all acutely aware, bishops never tell lies.

Wednesday, February 28th, 1996, is a date that will have to be learnt by heart by future generations of scholars studying religion, public relations or comic drama, subjects which are not always three distinct parts of the curriculum. This was the uniquely auspicious occasion when an Irish bishop sat down with a group of reporters and, in theory at least, answered their questions. Humble pie was the dish of the day, a repast that is not at all agreeable to the cultivated buds of your standard prelate palate.

It was almost enough to make you wish that there is an afterlife, just so you could imagine the expressions on the countenances of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop Kevin McNamara, Fr. Michael Cleary et al, as they watched the spectacle during whatever sort of teabreaks one is allowed on a chaingang stoking the fires of Hell.

The location for the extraordinary and historic event was St. Peter’s College in Wexford, a secondary school literally across the road, a mere decanter’s throw from the bishop’s palace.

It was a press conference which couldn’t have attracted more attention if it had been called to announce that the Bishop of Ferns has been abducted by aliens for six hours during the 1989 Gorey Arts Festival, and that samples of his semen, faeces and toejam had been taken from him by a team of midget invertebrates with pincer fingers. (Of course, given what we’ve heard about the apparent extent of Comiskey’s dipsomania and what we instinctively know about Arts Festivals, it is a rash person indeed who would claim that such a press conference will definitely never take place.)

Only the most blindly naïve had expected that we would be treated to a Wexford Opera Festival style display of unrestrained singing by the good bishop. Some of us, though, were taken aback by the sheer audacity of his media coup and the brazen manner in which he tried to sell his stonewalling as an act of impeccable transparency.

In any genuine attempt to comprehensively and candidly respond to the remarkable allegations that have been directed against Comiskey, a press conference would be a mere starting point. By their nature, such presentations are rarely more than tug-of-wars between reporters and their quarry, and between the reporters themselves. They are tournaments, invariably generating more heat than light.

Even before the 28th, however, Comiskey and his publicist retinue let it be known that the St. Peter’s College gig was a one-shot deal. Bishop Comiskey would not be available for comment at any stage afterwards. And for three very good reasons. They didn’t spell them out, but I will. First, he’s a bishop. Secondly, he doesn’t feel like it. Thirdly, who the fuck do these journalists think they are anyway?

In an almost unprecedented display of media co-operation, correspondents from RTE and most of the national newspapers held an early morning pow-wow on the big day, at the Talbot Hotel in Wexford, and collaborated on a shared line of questioning.

The issues arising from Comiskey’s self-confessed mishandling of child abuse accusations against several of the priests in his diocese, were to be the primary focus of this agenda. Tactically, these approaches made a lot of sense in that over-lapping queries were largely avoided. But it was also a risky strategy, prone to easy exploitation in what was to be an excessively formal and bureaucratic encounter.

Incisive supplementaries and clarifications were nigh on impossible. Inquiries deviating from the agreed programme were deemed "out of order", as much by the journalists as by the chair. When asked if he would respond to a series of written questions at a later stage elucidating specific points which emerged during the conference, the bishop’s answer was an unabashed an unequivocal ‘NO’.

In a curious way, Comiskey was well served by the scale and diversity of the allegations, which had been made against him.

Over half an hour before Comiskey emerged in person, the 70-odd pressfolk waiting in and around the corridor of St. Peter’s College were circulated with the 11-page text of his prepared statement. The reporters, their pens scribbling as frantically as kitchen whisks, then pored this over in Trappist silence. Some immediately phoned in its gist to the gist desks of their various publications.

In classic time-wasting fashion, however, the first 45 minutes of what was to be a two-hour press conference were frittered away with Comiskey’s farcically snail-paced public reading of this document. If, as has been suggested, the objective was to facilitate the live broadcast of the statement by various radio stations, he could simply have pre-recorded a taped reading and embargoed it until the appointed hour, if necessary. But that would have defeated the true purpose.

This was a filibuster in all but name.

Observe, over the coming weeks and years, as the duration of the Wexford press conference grows and grows in mythic length. It’s already been referred to by one local priest speaking on radio as a session "lasting several gruelling hours". Before long, the odds are that you’ll hear it described as "an afternoon". Then it will grow to "a day". It was none of the above. The dawdling recitation of his carefully-tailored script aside, Comiskey answered questions for no more than one hour and twenty minutes. Subtract from that the pat responses to the softballs he was tossed by a couple of his pals among the assemblage and you’re left with a tally which represents the true time given not only to Bishop Brendan’s public accountability but representing the public accountability of the entire Irish hierarchy, ever. Call it 70 minutes, tops.

Within 24 hours of its release, Brendan Comiskey’s press statement was to become as cherished and revered as the 1916 Proclamation. Most daily newspapers published it in full the next day. Contributors to radio phone-ins quoted from it like the words were etched on stone, not paper.

But for the premium effect, you had to hear it delivered by the man himself, in the glorious technicolour of his throaty Monaghan-burr, with all its startling cadenzas, astonishing stresses and unprovoked emphases. "Hope is THE capacity to overcome even the most TERRIBLE moments ," he expounds, "but I wait with trust FOR truth and love to win through somehow. The people OF Ferns, and indeed, Ireland, are A fair-MINDED people."

Specific allegations are flatly rebutted in the statement. For instance, Comiskey is adamant that he has never refused to be interviewed by the Garda Siochana, that he has never misused or misappropriated diocesan funs, that he has never been arrested in, or deported from, Thailand, and so on.

Nevertheless, while the 11 pages are long on self-justification, and on righteous condemnation of the media, they are short on substantiation and proof, beyond of course the bishop’s own solemn guarantee of veracity.

As we have come to expect from Brendan Comiskey, the statement is artfully crafted but not exactly graphically illuminating. As a media-savvied master showman, Comiskey knows how to sell his own comeback like it’s some sort of Second Coming. Hence the larding of his affidavit with plenty of pious indignation and the sort of Old Testament clap-trap which appeals to Bible-thumpers and sullen youths who’ve spent too long hanging around Forbidden Planet. The result is something that sounds damn close to a parody of Bono’s lyrics on The Joshua Tree.

"It is as a wounded healer that I return," proclaims Comiskey, "limping into the dawn like Jacob, after a night of wrestling with God’s angel and my own demons."

It may read like nothing but horse manure of the apocalypse. The charm lies in the intonation.

Whether by accident or design, the high-ceilinged, wood-panelled assembly hall in which the press conference is held bears an unmistakable similarity to a gigantic confession box. The conventional cubicle design has, however, been modified slightly to accommodate several dozen confessors, as well as the penitent, his solicitor, accountant, doctor, PR team and assorted advisors, all of who have convened at the back of the chamber.

The sacramental atmosphere is enhanced by the demeanour of Comiskey’s longtime friend, confidante and chief communications consultant, Barbara Wallace, who sits alone in a corner with her head bowed prayerfully and her hands joined in supplication between her knees. Our Father of Good Press who art in PR Heaven, Vindication be they name…

At 11.13am, Bishop Comiskey saunters casually in. He’s flanked by a pair of dashing, youthful, all-business clerics of the sort that seem to rustle and swish their liturgical vestments even though they aren’t wearing any. In what looks like a choreographed move, these two henchmen instantly disperse to opposite ends of the room, and sit among the throng of reporters. Maybe the idea is that they’ll act as deflectionary lightning conductors for bolts of journalistic hostility.

The desk behind which the bishop sits is made up of two card table pushed together, one covered in white cloth, the other in green. His feet are obscured from view by two pots of begonias, which are perched on the floor in front of this makeshift bench.

On a wooden stand in the background, over his right shoulder, there’s an elaborate bouquet of what look like orchids. "A thank-you present for years of unstinting service from the hotels and off-licences of Wexford," quips a local newspaper hack.

Comiskey is a portly man but no longer an ale whale by any means, having shed up to two stone since his days as an intensive farmer of the fuzzy foam. Wattles quiver beneath his chin. His cheeks are gaunt. His hair has silvered considerably. But the most striking feature of his up-close appearance is the extraordinary greyness of his flesh.

As he assumed his seat, he could, in fact, pass as a black ‘n’ white hologram from a 1940’s movie were it not for the celestially dazzling collar and cuffs, bullion-bar cufflinks and a glittering Episcopal ring the size of a small family car.

Inevitably, the monochrome photographs in the next day’s newspaper captured none of Comiskey’s pallid, wan sickliness. He merely looked clean-shaven, clear-eyed and strong-hawed. The perfect portrait of pure trustworthiness and immaculate sincerity.

After a brief conflagration of flash bulbs, the meeting is called to order by Fr. Peter O’Connor, an Enniscorthy curate and the assistant diocesan press secretary, who stands at a small, white-clothed table a few feet to the bishop’s right. With Comiskey’s senior media manipulator, Fr. Walter Forde, otherwise engaged at the funeral of IRA suicide bomber Ed O’Brien in Gorey, it has fallen to Fr. O’Connor to preside over the press conference. He does so in a spirit of complete neutrality, detachment and rigorous pursuit of the truth. Yeah, and I’m hotly tipped to become the next papal nuncio.

Fr. O’Connor may well have joined the priesthood to help the poor, tend the sick and preach the gospel but today his duties are of a more worldly variety.

Fresh-faced enough to suggest that he is relatively newly emerged from the seminarian processing plants where idealistic young men go to be relieved of their idealism and youth, Fr. O’Connor is nevertheless ageless in that sinister fashion so characteristic of officious curates everywhere.

Physically, he’s a dead ringer for Frank Sidebottom. He’s been blessed with head of prodigious circumference but little neck which is crammed into his collar like a napkin through a napkin ring, and crowned with a hairstyle that was last in fashion during the opening months of the Council of Trent.

His voice is the regulation Jesuitical honk – haughty, authoritarian and excruciatingly nasal. He repeatedly refers to his boss like he was a Native American medicine-man of some sort, revelling in the exotic name of "Doctor Cum Osskeee."

When the question-and-answer portion of the conference begins, however, Fr. O’Connor proves himself to be a redoubtable force. He controls and commands the unruly hacks like a petulant High Infants teacher, with a ferocity and ruthlessness that would’ve marked him out for a life with the Sisters of Mercy if only he’d had the wherewithal to pass the medical.

"Shhhh! Shhhh! You’re out of order!!!" he shrieks stridently whenever anyone dares to speak out of turn, flapping his wings like a seagull mired in a petroleum spill.

At one point, it looks as if he’s about to fire a duster at RTE’s Joe Little for the insolence of suggesting that Bishop Comiskey hadn’t fully answered one of his question. On reflex, I gulp down the piece of gum I’m chewing rather than run the risk of being expelled and forced to stand outside the classroom door.

Questions are only accepted from journalists who raise their hands and do not speak until they’re beckoned to do so by Fr. O’Connor. If a reporter tries to enlarge a query with ancillary clauses, Fr. O’Connor helpfully intercedes and says, "That completes your question, okay!".

Still, some hacks do manage to infiltrate the system. One of the earliest probes from the floor concerns whether or not Bishop Comiskey intends to seek legal redress to "restore his good name" and, if so, against which publications will he take action?

"One of the things I was taught in Minnesota (where he was treated for alcoholism – LF) was that anger and resentment is very, very dangerous for an alcoholic," affirms Comiskey. "I had to struggle with this on many night, as this awful news came back from Ireland about what was going on. I did say this prayer – ‘You alone, God, are mighty. You alone are merciful. Whatever you make me desire for my enemies, give it to them and give the same back to me. If what I ask for them at any time is outside the rule of parity whether through weakness, ignorance or malice, good Lord, do not give it to them, and do not give it back to me’.

"I have handed that whole file over to the solicitor. I don’t do it in any sense of vengeance or revenge. I think you’ll agree that my good name and my good character are essential to my office as bishop. I am praying that I will not get into the role (of litigation) at all, and there are people who can handle that, without anger or bitterness."

Throughout the press conference, Bishop Comiskey’s face is that of the priest who discovers at the moment he tastes the consecrated Eucharist that wax has replaced wafer in the baking of communion hosts.

He grimaces sourly. He winces, blinks and shrivels up his nose in distaste. He nervously scans the horizon. Determined not to betray his nausea, however, he attempts to smile weakly every now and then, but rarely manager more than a grisly rictus.

The central strategy of Comiskey’s fight-back is three-pronged: deny, deny, deny. In his rendering of the whole sorry saga, he is an habitual victim of pernicious media conspiracy and scurrilous scuttlebutt. A good man laid low by malice and a weakness for pint pots. If you don’t accept his own word for it, just ask, eh, the Minister for Agriculture.

"I’m told by a third party that Ivan Yates said, in a conversation with a journalist in Dublin, that ‘Brendan is not an evil man, Brendan Comiskey is a good man’," maintains the bishop. "The Holy See asked me about all the accusations against me, and said, ‘What do you think yourself?’. I said, ‘I believe I’m a good person’. I’ve all the faults and failings of everyone else. I’m a sinner. I have confessed my sins. But I believe I’m a good man and, with the grace of God, I believe I’m a good bishop."

While one is obviously filled with unbridled awe at the thorough and remorseless interrogation procedures of the Holy See, it has to be said that the secular jury is still out on the moral excellence of Brendan Comiskey.

You don’t have to be a law lord, for instance, to realise that his assertion that the couldn’t deal effectively with the child abuse issues because he hadn’t seen the appropriate government guidelines is a proposition which hold about as much water as an incontinent pygmy.

By the weekend following the press conference, the considered opinion of the reporters who have most closely followed the child abuse scandals in Ferns is that Comiskey’s comments on the subject were at best incomplete and at worst hopelessly deficient.

Potentially most damaging is Veronica Guerin’s revelation in the Sunday Independent that the bishop’s "recollection of the circumstances surrounding the controversial ‘Monageer Case’ have been challenged by the former Garda Chief superintendent for Wexford."

Similarly, Comiskey’s rationalisation of his Thailand flings may ultimately contain more holes than a pair of fishnet stockings. In the bishop’s press statement, much is made of an incident in which a carrier bag containing his wallet, passport etc. was stolen on his arrival in Bangkok airport on January 3rd, 1994, on flight TG 911. The implication being that the confusion surrounding this mishap (Comiskey was not allowed through immigration, and was obliged to wait two days in the airport arrival area until another passport was acquired) goes a long way towards explaining of rumours that he had been arrested in Thailand and later deported.

In the Irish Independent of March 2nd, Justine McCarthy reports that Cardinal Cahal Daly has placed on the public record a substantially different account of this incident, an account that the Cardinal said, in the autumn of 1995, had been furnished to him by Bishop Comiskey. Furthermore, when the Irish Independent published what they had learned of the carrier bag story, the date reported was October 9th, and the flight number was TG 910. Were these separate incidents?

Granted, some of the more lurid tabloid reporting of Comiskey’s holiday japes tended, in his absence, to put two and two together to make a rather hideous-looking beast with two backs. But then, Comiskey and friends could’ve easily spared these hacks the exertion of jumping to those conclusions if only they hadn’t been so miserly with the truth in the first instance.

Back in St. Peter’s College, Maeve Sheehan of The Sunday Times invites the bishop to outline the routine of his average day while staying in Thailand.

"If you’re asking me was I out to consort with prostitutes, I was not," bristles Comiskey in response.

"I didn’t ask you that, bishop," retorts Sheehan, evidently aghast at the very suggestion. But why shouldn’t Comiskey be explicitly asked the question that has been on so many lips these past months? Legitimate suspicions have been aroused, and by the bishop’s own cloak-and-dagger behaviour as much as by the "mischievous and malicious" media.

Yes, it is unreasonable to assume that Comiskey was up to some sort of jiggery-pokery simply because he happened to like holidaying in Thailand. But it is no less unreasonable to baldly declare, as Comiskey does, that he couldn’t have been at any divilment simply because the management of his favourite Thai hotel knew him to be a Catholic bishop.

Automatic faith and trust are no longer available on demand to the Irish hierarchy. I don’t doubt that the hotel staff "used to draw little mitres" on his bills as he presented them, but that can be taken a number of ways.

Irony and sarcasm exist in Thailand too.

Of course, I have no reason to believe that Comiskey was a sex tourist, but we already know that he’s no altar boy either. All the old guff about how he spent his vacations "reading by the pool" certainly appears to be a protest too much. Comiskey was an alcoholic.

Most of the many alcoholics I know tend to indulge, rather than repudiate, their inclination during their holidays.

For sheer gall, though, one would have to applaud Comiskey’s efforts to endow his passion for Thailand with an air of theological respectability, peppering his spiel with incongruous allusions to Thomas Merton, a 20th century Cistercian monk, philosopher, student of Eastern mysticism and general Thailand advocate. This is about as relevant as me telling you (the authentic fact) that the most fervent enthusiast for Thai culture that I’ve ever met is Shane MacGowan.

As if the pudding wasn’t yet egged to saturation point, Comiskey goes on to adduce the media fascination with his lifestyle because of such matters as his frequent holidays in Thailand as a justification for why he holidayed in Thailand so frequently in the first place.

"I went to Kerry last summer for my vacation and I was locked in by members of the media," he contends. "They went around the place for weeks afterwards to all sorts of places, including Pat Spillane’s pub where I’d been drinking. They must have been very disappointed to be informed that what I’d been drinking was Diet 7UP by the pint. The intrusion into my private life was such to make sure that I will take my vacations as far away as possible in the future."

Arguably the most revealing moment of the press conference comes when Senan Molony of The Star inquires if – "in the interests of transparency" – Comiskey will provide documentary proof (cheque stubs, receipts etc.) substantiating his version of the Thailand trips. Molony’s utterances are at first partially obscured by the ever-vigilant Fr. O’Connor, who cuts across to decree that he is allowing the Star reporter only one more question.

"Will you release the records of O’Leary’s travel agent in Enniscorthy in relation to these trips?" asks Molony.

"O’Leary’s travel agent in Enniscorthy had nothing to do with my vacation," replies Comiskey bluntly.

"Next question!" interjects Fr. O’Connor agilely. Another journalist is on her feet before Molony has a chance to protest, and by then a completely new topic is introduced. The request for hard evidence is discarded, just another unanswered question on the floor of St. Peter’s College.

This exchange is typical of the press conference. After months of stalling, Comiskey seems to expect us all to go apeshit with gratitude simply because he deigns to yea or nay one or two details, while refusing to offer any verifiable assistance for an unqualified investigation of the bigger picture. The replies become especially vague and fragmentary when relating to the more complex issues such as the chronology of events surrounding the child abuse allegations, and the administration of diocesan finances.

If nothing else, though, it is fun to hear a Prince of the Church trying to outline the grave reasons why he needed to buy an apartment in Donnybrook valued at £86,383 when he already had a palace in Wexford. His dual purpose, would you believe, was "to provide accommodation for me on my frequent visits to Dublin while carrying out my duties as bishop and also (provide) a home for me on my retirement." Unfortunately, he had to sell the apartment in 1995 because he "found meeting the payments difficult". He received £90,000 for the sale (£62,583 of which, he says, was spent on paying off the remainder of his Building Society loan).

One could get swiftly used to this strange concept; a bishop actually answering questions about his private affair. It’s an innovation which can very quickly awaken the Hello! Reader that slumbers within many of us, especially if that Hello! Reader is also a hard-pressed contributor to church coffers.

What colour towels were folded in the bathroom of the Donnybrook apartment? What kind of paintings were hung on the walls? Had the bishop a king-sized bed? A big four-poster bed with velvet canopy? A water bed? What sort of pyjamas were tucked in under his pillow? Were they festooned with pictures of Zig and Zag? The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? Saint Theresa of Lisieux? Boyzone?

Episcopal accountability does not stop at the hall door!

Brendan Comiskey’s resolve to face down the media and ride out the controversy is easy to understand. He has no intention of becoming another Eamon Casey, condemned to the tropical heat and (slightly) diminished luxury of South American exile. An ornery son of a bitch, Comiskey is also smarting from the slings and arrows he has had to endure for living a lifestyle that is, in reality, the norm among his fellow bishops.

Opulent residence(s), fine food, vintage booze, flamboyant holidays – such is the daily grind of almost all downtrodden Episcopal wretches, compelled to earn their daily pain au chocolat by the seat of their browbeating.

Alcohol is good for preserving practically everything but secrets, and it is widely known that Comiskey was, and is, far from the only Irish bishop with a formidable thirst.

The late Dr. Jeremiah Newman, for instance, was, routinely, so deeply, profoundly, metaphysically drunk that, on at least one occasion, he was found directing traffic outside his palace in Limerick at 2am. And yet he was allowed to die with his reputation and the respect of his flock intact. Why, then, should Brendan Comiskey be forced to start shopping at Sackcloth & Ashes R Us simply because he was hapless enough to get caught with his snout in the trough?

As the press conference is brought to an abrupt end in St. Peter’s College, you can almost hear the Leave Comiskey Alone bandwagon creak into action: "The man has answered all your questions, what more can he do?"

Church cheerleader Fr. Brian D’Arcy mingles with the hacks in the assembly hall, shaking his positivity pom-poms. With a grave od of the head and an aw-shucks shrug, he sidles up to certain amenable clusters and stealthily strives to apply several coats of brave-faceslap to the proceedings. "Under the circumstances, lads, I think he did as well as anyone could expect," D’Arcy murmurs, a one-man brigade of the St. John’s Spin Ambulance. "I think he was as honest and open as he could be."

They are at it on the radio too, the religious commentator John Cooney, for instance, instantly and breathlessly hailing "a credible and courageous performance". Others follow, lavishly heaping praise on Comiskey with faint damnation about "how he may have bungled the media handling of his initial departure".

In many ways, Comiskey got lucky. February 28th was a busy day at the news buffet. There was the Ed O’Brien funeral in Gorey, and an Anglo-Irish Summit meeting to boot. Charles and Diana also did their bit for him by announcing their divorce in the late afternoon.

The pressure was intense on most of the daily newspaper reporters at St. Peter’s College to make the press conference appear more dramatic than it had actually been. Within earshot, I heard Irish stringers for British tabloids gush enthusiastically into their slimline mobile phones as they ardently assured their London editors that they had "plenty of good stuff".

Much of what you may had read therefore about Comiskey’s "gruelling battle with the media" or his "uncompromising clash with the rat-pack" had more to do with the scrabbling of nervous hacks to avoid being scooped by their colleagues. Not that it matters much. As the Bishop of Ferns will gleefully tell you, the first draft of history is written in the next morning’s headlines.

In the days immediately after the press conference, "frank" is the word that is most regularly used to describe Comiskey’s display. He dealt with the issues "in a commendably frank and open fashion", opined The Irish Times. He was "frank in admitting that he could have done things better", declared the Irish Independent.

Indeed, it is unlikely that you would hear his name associated with the term ‘frank’ more often if it had somehow emerged that he were a General Franco-admiring, Francophile counterfeiter of francs who spent his evening reading Frankenstein, eating frankfurters, sniffing frankincense, and franking frank letters to Phranc.

However, it is not a word that you would apply to either Comiskey’s performance or bearing, if you’d actually been in the room with him.

This was a man I read as being determined to say the absolute minimum, and in tones that veered between arrogant and pompous.

He was there to castigate his accusers, rather than answer the accusations, to deploy hurt and bewilderment as his defence team, and to denounce the prosecution counsel as a witch-hunt. It was a show trial alright, but one that had been staged by Comiskey himself.

And now that his single appearance before the court has been stitched into the record, he’s perfectly content to return to the bunker.

The enduring image that I will take from the day is the sight of Brendan Comiskey’s back as he left the room at maximum velocity, glancing over his shoulder only briefly at the mob of journalists, most of whom were still shouting questions at him.

He had a grin on his face the size of the river Slaney.