Some of us in Derry have done our bit to distance the city from the child-abusing Catholic Church.

The arrival of the Papal Legate to celebrate the centenary of the Long Tower parish was presaged by an inscription on the sacred space of Free Derry Wall: “Welcome to the Papal Legate.” By the time Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Keith?) arrived, this had been subtly altered: “No Welcome to the Papal Legate (until true contrition for child abuse).”
Despite the latest babble of bluster from the bishops, there isn’t the sliver of a sign of real sorrow. And you all know, without me having to remind you again, that without true contrition there can be no forgiveness.
The visit of the Pope’s envoy came a week after Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had travelled to Rome to “brief” Benedict XVI on the Ryan report. The Pope, the pair announced afterwards with straight faces, had been “distressed” to “learn” the facts.
What a load of old cobblers. The Vatican has known the facts about child sex abuse for many years, in Ireland, Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, Latin America and elsewhere. Its response has been to lie through its teeth and cover up the crimes. It admitted nothing, and then admitted next to nothing, until some of the suffering had been revealed by child victims, journalists and whistle-blowers within its own ranks. The common initial reaction has been distortion, calumny and downright lies from bishops following the Vatican line.
The attitude of Benedict was made clear when he chose Cardinal Bernard Law as the first US prelate to be granted an audience following his ordination as Pope. Law had been driven out of Boston by the Catholic laity, after the extent of his collaboration with sex abusers was revealed following the dismissal of a law suit which would have kept the truth hidden.
Nowadays the Irish bishops compete with one another for the fervour of their condemnations of child abuse. Only the gullible will take them on trust.
Bishops who have covered up child rape continue to refuse to release records of complaints of abuse against clergy. In Derry, the diocese buttons its lips when asked about the export of Catholic “orphans” (most of them weren’t orphans at all) to Australia and other outposts of Empire, where there were deprived of their identity, told they had no families and then, in many cases, subjected to grievous abuse.
The persistent reluctance of media and politicians to hold the miscreants to account, or even to come close to levelling the appropriate charges, testifies to the grip which the Catholic Church, despite all, continues to exert on Irish public life.
The bishops brazenly parade in their finery, dispensing moral advice to people who wouldn’t in their wildest nightmares collude in the evil the hierarchy is steeped in.
When, a decade ago, the Irish Amateur Swimming Association was shown to have harboured a number of abusers, the records of the association were ransacked for evidence and the organisation eventually put out of business. Why should a body which has routinely provided sanctuary for criminals against children be treated differently?
The least we are surely duty-bound to do is positively to discourage the young people of Ireland from setting foot on Catholic Church premises.
Incidentally, Cardinal O’Brien brought with him to Long Tower an envelope containing a Papal blessing which he graciously passed on to a congregation which included the top Derry leaders of Sinn Fein and the SDLP.
What a relief that our honour was to some extent saved by the Free Derry Wall-painters.

Saddam Hussein’s solicitor’s rock band debuts at the Dungloe next week. Thought you’d like to know.

There was a hopeful sign for the future in the Euro election in the North which appears to have been widely missed.
You may have noticed DUP candidate Diane Dodds at the count with a face that looked like she’d spent the morning munching wasps. Her party’s vote had plummeted by 60,000. Many of these would likely have peeled away to Jim Allister’s anti-power sharing Traditional Unionist Voice anyway. But there’s a mass of anecdotal and phone-in evidence that a substantial proportion had also been dismayed that the wretches they’d supported last time around appeared to believe that a seat at Westminster entitled them not just to travel warrants but to season-tickets on the gravy train.
The two issues, the party’s backwards somersault with reverse-twist flip-flop on power-sharing with Sinn Fein and the sound of the snouts of the Swish Family Robinson snuffling slurpily in the Westminster trough, were connected. Voters already mistrustful of their leaders for going into government with Republicans may have felt this view confirmed by stories of extravagant living at the taxpayers’ expense.
What’s hopeful is that it used to be said you could put up a donkey in the North confident of election as long as it had a union flag or a tricolour attached to its tail. But a donkey that’s stuffing itself daily on carrot en croute while hee-hawing at the hoi polloi living on raw turnip and chaff?
There are limits, it seems. Isn’t that an optimistic development to be able to report?

And some people are still talking about Bertie Ahern running for the presidency in 2012. I suppose it’s possible if he manages to stay out of jail.