the writing on the wall

Jimmy Mulhall is in the Joy for writing on walls while Charlie Haughey roams the streets in broad daylight. The reason is that Jimmy is a decent man who lives in Rutland Cottages in inner-city Dublin while Charlie Haughey is a liar with two luxury homes. This is representative of the way justice works in Ireland.
There s been stern discussion of what the Haughey case means for our perceptions of Irish public life. It would be terribly unfair if all politicians became tainted, say all politicians.
It s hurtful to suggest that those who served in cabinets headed by Haughey share in his guilt, says Ms. Maire Geoghegan-Quinn who served in Haughey-headed cabinets.
There s a scary thought. A Haughey-headed cabinet. Not as scary as a Haughey-headed human being, though.
And then there s the amiable suggestion that Haughey was somehow symbolic of an Ireland emerging from the mists that doth be on the bogs into the harsh modernity of late 20th century capitalism, that his rottenness was merely the old ways mouldering made manifest. So we re all in it, really, including Jimmy Mulhall.
No, we are not.
The Leinster House politicians, though, they are all in it.
I say this for the obvious reason that it s safer to assume that all TDs are crooks. That way, we won t get caught again.
Plus, and even more obviously, a certain percentage of them are crooks who in an efficient society would be locked up and kept in harsh light under constant observation 24 hours a day.
And then there s the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility. They all take collective credit when things go well, so they can share collective guilt now for the crimes we have come to know of.
Case closed.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Mulhall is in the Joy.
Jimmy, 46, a husband and the father of six children, was convicted on July 11th at Dublin District Court of causing criminal damage to a gable wall at the corner of Summerhill and Buckingham Street. The cops got him as he was finishing off the slogan, Garda stop harassing anti-drugs activists .
It s a moot point whether the inscription of these words could be construed as damage to the wall, criminal or otherwise. But Judge Desmond Hogan didn t dally on nice distinctions of that sort. Jimmy was offered a community service order, which he refused on the ground that this would have implied acceptance he d committed a crime. So Hogan sent him down for nine months.
We have beef barons who everybody knows are robbers flittering around the skies in their personal helicopters looking down at Jimmy Mulhall walking in circles round the Mountjoy exercise yard. We can be philosophical and reflective about these matters some times. But there s other times you find yourself yearning for a surface-to-air missile.
For sheer gall, you can t beat Cardinals. At All Hallows College on July 4th Cahal Daly delivered a long address on The Media And The Church , in the course of which he said: We in the Church should ourselves be active in making our institutions and our activities such as to have nothing to fear and nothing to hide from competent media enquiry. I am on record as stating that the media have done a service to the Church in Ireland in regard to scandals which have occurred . . . The media have discharged their rightful function in reporting these scandals . . In regard to the horror of child sexual abuse, for example, the Catholic Church authorities in Ireland now have in place clear and public guidelines for dealing with complaints made against priests or religious .
Cathal Daly s own handling of allegations of child sexual abuse by priests is at variance with these sentiments.
Dr. Daly will be aware of the case of the child rapist, Fr. Gerard McCallion, currently in prison in the North. He will, I think, recall the many efforts I made more than three years ago to speak with him about the allegations, as they then were, against Fr. McCallion. He will recall some at least from a letter, a series of telephone messages and a number of faxes I sent to him.
He may also have been made aware by the Catholic Press and Information Office of my attempts to solicit their help to persuade him to talk to me.
Dr. Daly knew something of the case already. A relative of one child raped by Fr. McCallion had sent him a copy of a letter to the bishop of the diocese in which the crime had taken place. The letter told in harrowing detail of the suffering of the child and of members of her immediate family.
Dr. Daly s office had acknowledged receipt of the letter.
I wanted to talk to him about his response to the letter. Had he, for example, informed the civil authorities of the allegation against Fr. McCallion?
I had also wanted to ask him about the circumstances in which Fr. McCallion had come to be serving in the parish in which these attacks took place.
I had been told by a priest that, on the day before Fr. McCallion had arrived in the parish, he had been asked to keep an eye on him . I knew that another priest had tracked Fr. McCallion as he called to homes in the parish and advised parents not to allow him in if he called again.
This suggested a truly remarkable state of affairs. But Cahal Daly refused to discuss it. Even now, with McCallion convicted and behind bars, Cahal Daly s prim lips stay sealed.
So much for the claim that the Catholic Church has nothing to fear and nothing to hide from competent media enquiry .
In his All Hallows address, Dr. Daly repeated the weary mantra of the Catholic Church being treated unfairly in media coverage of child sex scandals. In a startling reversal of the truth, the Catholic Church is represented as one of the victims of the scandal, the media as behaving villainously.
The same style of moral inversion is to be encountered in the blurb provided by publishers Veritas for the book Goldenbridge A View From Valpariso by former nun Teresita Durkan. The book is a rejoinder to Louis Lentin s February 1966 RTE documentary which, in the course of telling of a daughter s search for the mother who had abandoned her as a baby, described the horrific treatment of children in the Goldenbridge Industrial School in west Dublin.
Durkan s line is that while the place had its flaws , Goldenbridge was also a warm, struggling and compassionate community, and it served the people of West Dublin with dedication and generosity for nearly 150 years .
With an insouciance which in another context might be accounted admirable, Durkan dedicates the book to children who suffer and those who try to love and help them !
The media, she complains, traduced Goldenbridge in the wake of Lentin s programme. She felt compelled to counter the adverse judgement passed on the place.
Far from facing the dark truth of its record recently revealed, the Catholic Church s first instinct was to admit nothing. Then it strove to limit the damage. Now it s fighting back.
How can we forgive them their crimes against children when there is no sign of true repentance, nor of a firm purpose of amendment? n