St Mary's Mother and Baby Home, Tuam: The Truth is Out There, But You Won't Get It In The Media

“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” And then there are stories about brutality, abuse and the Catholic Church.

What follows, I submitted as a comment to an article I came across on Facebook posted by Waterford Whispers News. The article was totally scurrilous, simply a rehash of all the worst distortions that have been so far published — for example, indeed as an example of the ludicrous rather than the scurrilous, whoever wrote it just assumed that whoever wrote whatever article he had based his on knew French as wot it is rote and so mis-translated "Bon Secours" as “safe harbour” rather than “Good Comfort”, even going so far as to replicating not using initial capital letters —

See: http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/06/03/bodies-of-800-children-were-just-resting-in-mass-grave-claims-catholic-church/

“The Tuam workhouse for unmarried mothers and their babies was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours (French for ‘safe harbour’) between the years 1925 and 1961, during which time the bodies of at least 796 children aged from 2 days to 9 years were placed one by one in an unused septic tank, following deaths from TB, malnourishment, pneumonia, and good old-fashioned neglect.”

Good old fashioned neglect. Yes, indeed. The good old fashioned neglect of the truth when to actually check the facts and to then properly assess them before putting pen to paper would be too much like hard work when there is the chance of a bit of good old fashioned Catholic Church bashing and baiting.

Where to start? Although it is only incidental, the seemingly helpful translation of the French, calculated to provide an ironic dig at the nuns involved, and hence the Catholic Church, falls flat. If the author of this article had done something as simple as bothering to seek expert help about the translation of “Bon Secours”, rather than just lift it from somebody else’s piece, he would have come up with a more pointed barb. It is all to do with the “of” before “Bon Secours”. This renders the possible translation of “Bon Secours” as “safe harbour” untenable. They are in fact the Sisters of Good Comfort. Still to my mind a sadly misplaced jibe but it at least would have had the merit of being, whilst still wrong, at least right; if you see what I mean.

Catherine Corless examined the public records and found that as far as she could determine 796 children had died at the local St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam run by the Bon Secours nuns. This was not in any size, shape or form a “workhouse”. It had been one, established in 1840, but it had ceased to be one before the nuns took over. Perhaps the author of this article had read that in 1938 the Matron and Medical Officer for the Home had petitioned the local authority to have a new disinfecting chamber and laundry installed and jumped to the wrong conclusion. These were to deal with the Home’s own laundry: the children’s clothing, the bedding etc. It was NOT a Magdalene Laundry.

Indeed, originally mothers were not catered for. It was only four years after the Home opened that this became the case. And it is very much to the credit of the Sisters that this happened.

In 1929 a special maternity ward for unmarried mothers-to-be was added to the Home. Married women, especially those paying the full fees, at the local district hospital in Connacht voiced their displeasure at having to share hospital facilities with “fallen women”. A senior local priest, one Canon Ryder, objected to the suggestion that these unfortunate women be segregated from the others and had hoped to secure facilities for them at other hospitals. That having proved a fond hope, the Bon Secours sisters in St Mary’s kindly offered to help. Unfortunately, they were never able, through no fault of themselves, to recruit enough properly trained staff and they were never provided with adequate facilities. There is no doubt that these practical difficulties affected infant and maternal mortality outcomes but the nuns cannot be blamed for that. They did their best.

Over the lifetime of St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home (1925-61) there were on average about 22 deaths per year. Catherine Corless noted that the children had died from a range of ailments including malnutrition, measles, meningitis, tuberculosis, convulsions, influenza, bronchitis, pneumonia, gastroenteritis and so on. (It must be remembered that in any institution were large numbers are living in close contact with one another  cross infection is both a great concern and something which can never be wholly counteracted.) Neglect, good old fashioned or not, was not an issue she noted. And to forestall at least one all too predictable riposte from the ill-informed and ill-disposed, “malnourishment” is not a synonym for “neglect”. Indeed, at that time most children in Ireland would have been clinically speaking malnourished and it is reasonably safe to assume that that would have been a contributory factor in the deaths of most infants and young children, in or out of local authority care.

Albeit that in this instance it is local authority care by proxy. The local authority owned the Home and the good sisters operated it on their behalf. And far from it being “notorious”, in 1935 the Health Board commended it as being “one of the best managed institutions in the country”. In 1944 the Matron ensured that all the children were vaccinated against Diphtheria (it has been estimated that in the previous year, 1943, there were 1 million cases of Diphtheria throughout Europe and that 50,000 died). She also sought to have the children vaccinated against Whooping Cough. The Tuam Herald reported in 1949 on the Health Board inspection of the Home and noted that the Inspectors had “found everything in very good order and congratulated the sisters on the excellent conditions in their Institution”.

And, yes, in that year of 1944 a local Health Board report did, indeed, described some of the children as being “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” and with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” But in 1944 even children not in Homes were nowhere near as well-nourished as they are today. There was a war on in Europe and the Irish economy was in tatters, as were children in or out of care; and particularly in rural Ireland. And to state that is not being heartless, it is being honest. In 1949, the Matron and her senior assistants met with Senator Martin Quinn and told him that children were suffering as a result of a lack of funds. The Senator is reported to have replied: “I do not like these statements which receive such publicity”. He then asserted that the local people were complaining about how much the present level of care was costing.

But what about the poor wee souls who died? The author of this article states: “between the years 1925 and 1961… the bodies of at least 796 children aged from 2 days to 9 years were placed one by one in an unused septic tank.” If I may borrow a highly technical term from the legal fraternity: Bollocks. A spokesman for the Garda stated: “(T)here is no confirmation from any source that there are between 750 and 800 bodies present.”

In 1975 two boys, Francis Hopkins (then aged 12 years) and Barry Sweeney (10) were playing at the site. Barry was recently interviewed by The Irish Times. He told Rosita Boland they had levered up a concrete block which she notes he indicated was about the same size as his coffee table, roughly 120cms by 60cms. He said: “There were skeletons thrown in there. They were all this way and that way. They weren’t wrapped in anything, and there were no coffins. But there was no way there were 800 skeletons down that hole. Nothing like that number. I don’t know where the papers got that.”

Boland asked him how many skeletons he believes were there? He replied: “About 20.”

Now you have to bear in mind, firstly, that he is recalling something form almost forty years ago and, secondly, that this is a guess; it can’t even be described as an estimate. He had then and has now no scientific knowledge upon which he could make an educated assessment. And that is in no way meant as an insult or as a condescension. It is merely a statement of fact. Figures are being bandied about, supposedly authoritatively. Where do they come from? Even one of the few people who has actually seen inside this supposed septic tank — the site remains so far unexcavated so we don’t know if it is the septic tank that is known to have once been there — doesn’t know exactly but he reckons it could be only about 20.

And another thing, he does not say anything about the bones being those of children. They could have been the bones of adult s who died and were buried there when it was a famine workhouse. But even if they were children there couldn’t have been 796 of them. Not in the septic tank there couldn’t. And not simply because it would have needed to be one helluvva size of a tank. The septic tank was in use in the period between the nuns taking over the premises in 1925 and the public water system reaching Tuam in 1937. The public records show that 204 children died in the Home during that time. And so they could not have been “placed one by one” in it. 592 anyone?

But there is another problem. Barry Sweeney says there were no coffins. However, in 1932 in the Connacht Tribune newspaper the Bon Secours nuns placed an advertisement seeking tenders for the supply of coffins for the Home. Why do that if you are just going to dump the bodies either naked or in a shroud and in a septic tank or a more common mass grave? At the time the boys made their grim discovery, most local people believed that the remains dated from the workhouse that had been on the site before the mother-and-baby home. It could even have been a famine grave from the 1840s. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there are ANY babies or young children buried on the site never mind in the septic tank. So far it is simply a matter of supposition.

When Catherine Corless had produced her list of the 796 children, she sought to cross-reference them with the names of children buried in local cemeteries but she drew a blank. She concluded, therefore, that they must have been buried in unconsecrated ground at the rear of the premises. The Home has long since been demolished but that area is today a grassy, walled and gated plot where local people have planted roses and erected a small grotto with a statue of Our Lady. Hopefully there will now be added a suitable commemoration of the children who lived and died at the Home. And the Irish government, the local authority and the Church should combine to ensure that the site and the records should be thoroughly examined to determine exactly what happened.

And until that is done all those Lunchtime O’Booze’s out there should put away their fevered, anti-Catholic imaginations.

Appointment of Bishops: A Better Way

This article was published, slightly edited, in the Scottish Catholic Observer a few weeks ago.

For those of us who love the Scottish Catholic Church, the last few years have been rather uncomfortable. It started with Roddy Wright: would that it had ended there! But here we are, and it seems that the two biggest lessons that should have been learnt after that sad and sorry episode haven’t. Although there has been a recent exception as regards one of them (see below).

As it happens, my nephew, Kevin, witnessed Bishop Wright doing his runner. He and a couple of friends were staying in the presbytery of St Columba’s Cathedral as house guests of Fr Sean MacAulay, God rest him. It was a working holiday. They were trying to rid the bell tower of its unwelcome guests, the pigeons. Princess Di’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, and God rest her, was on kitchen duties. She tried to be helpful in other ways, suggesting: “Why don’t you just shoot them?”

From his bedroom window, Kevin saw the van being loaded that Wednesday morning (September 4, 1996). Telling Fr Seany of this as they went in for breakfast, he declined the latter’s suggestion that he take a wee walk up the street to see what was going on.

But a blind man could see what is not going on in the Church eighteen years later. The good Catholic people of Argyll and the Isles were left for over three years nursing their grief, keeping it warm in the absence of a shepherd. I am sure Archbishop O’Brien, as he then was, did his best. But more was required. And Rome did not do it.

More recently, in Dunkeld, Bishop Vincent Logan announced in December of 2010 that he had submitted his resignation to the Holy See because of ill-health. Astonishingly, at least to your humble but esteemed scrivener here, this was not accepted until June 30, 2012. Even more astonishingly, despite having sat on his resignation letter for 18 months, the acceptance of it was not accompanied by the announcement of a successor. We had to wait a further 18 months before Bishop Stephen Robson’s appointment was announced on December 11 last.

For three years Rome knew that a new bishop was required in Dunkeld; and nothing was done. Just as it hadn’t been done in Argyll and the Isles. “Hod oan. Hod oan. Fings wur bein’ dun,” Archbishop Mennini protests (but in Italian, of course). Then why were the good Catholic people of Dun(dee)keld kept in the dark?

[(Dun(dee)keld? Suggestive of Oor Wullie and hence my attempt at the use of dialect. While we are at it: why not change the name to Diocese of Dundee? Ever tried to find Dunkeld?]

And as for Dunkeld, just to make things even more ludicrous, Bishop Robson, then Auxiliary in Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, on Sunday, October 13 last, as PP announced in the parish bulletin of Ss John Cantius and Nicholas, Broxburn: “Very Important Message. We warmly welcome Monsignor Patrick Burke to our Parish Family. We are lucky to have a much loved priest and pastor. Mgr Patrick has worked in Rome in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for a good number of years – especially with Pope Benedict before his retirement as Pope.”

Three things were immediately obvious: Bishop Robson was for the off, the only questions being where to and when; Bishop Robson was going to be replaced as PP by Mgr Pat, and; Mgr Pat was to be appointed Vicar General, or at the very least “a” Vicar General.

As to that latter, why else would he have accepted Archbishop Leo’s plea that he return to his home archdiocese from Rome to help him in his new mission? Even if Mgr Pat were falling out of love with his work in the CDF (and I have no reason to believe he was), why come back to all the trials and tribulations facing the Church at home?

One is reminded of Archbishop, later Cardinal, Manning’s visitation of Glasgow in October 1867. At his later urging, Propaganda Fide offered the post of Apostolic Administrator of the Western District to Archbishop George Errington (who Pius IX had deposed in 1862 as Coadjutor Archbishop with Rights of Succession of Westminster, thus paving the way for the convert Manning to succeed Cardinal Wiseman). Mgr Errington was by then working quite happily as a PP at the mission on the Isle of Man. Aged 64 years, and using that as an excuse, he declined to accept appointment. It was noted at the time: “A man would have to be a saint or a madman to accept the episcopal seat of Glasgow: he was neither.” Nor is Mgr Pat.

Why not tell the good Catholic people of Dunkeld, and the rest of us, at an early date: “This is what is going to happen. When Mgr Leo has had a brief period to settle in and Bishop Stephen has had a chance to help him do that AND hand over to Mgr Pat both as VG and PP, then…” Instead the Media Office is demanding The Tablet retract their story that Mgr Pat has been appointed VG! I thought “Media” implied communication?

So, the two lessons that should have been learned after the Roddy Wright affair (no pun intended, or it would have been the plural) were: firstly, sede vacante should always be ended soonest (they managed this with Archbishop Leo); secondly, if there is NECESSARY delay, let the people know AND let them know as much as possible, not as little.

Yes, the Church is not a democracy. Yes, indeed, it is much more than that! It is a family. And families break up quickest and more irreconcilably when communication breaks down. Or wasn’t there in the first place.

What can be done?

My love of Papa Ratzinger stems from an interview with that same Mgr Burke mentioned above. This was back in August 2005 when he celebrated his last Mass as PP of Our Lady and St Ninian, Bannockburn, before taking up his appointment in Rome. There had been a photograph published in various newspapers of Pope Benedict shaking hands with Pele. According to one, an unnamed Vatican official had had to explain to His Holiness who Pele was. Since by then I knew that Fr Pat had known him well from his time as a graduate student priest residing in the German College, Rome — it is a long story — I asked if this could possibly be true. “Hughie,” he replied “he smokes Marlboro, drinks lager and supports Bayern Munich. So what do you think?”

That’s my kind of guy!

Some time ago, preparing an article about His Holiness, I looked at the history of the Archdiocese of Munich and was surprised to notice that whereas Joseph Ratzinger had been “appointed” Archbishop of Munich, as had his two predecessors, previously Archbishops of that great Metropolitan See were elected, with scant exception. The last elected Archbishop was Michael Cardinal Faulhaber. (Readers in my home town of Motherwell will be interested to know that His Eminence hailed from our Twin Town, Schweinfurt.) Then Bishop of Speyer (also elected) he was elected on May 26, 1917, and his selection was confirmed by Pope Benedict XV on July 24 (it took so long because of the war). He died on June 12, 1952, and his successor, Joseph, later Cardinal, Wendel, was appointed by Pope Pius XII on August 9, 1952.

More recently, it was announced that, after celebrating his 80^th birthday on Christmas Day, Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, had finally retired on February 28. The process to elect his successor is already underway. And then on March 21 it was announced that Archbishop Werner Thissen of Hamburg had retired. And the process to elect his successor is also already underway.

I could go on at great length about how all this has come about, and there is a similar history of ecclesiastical election in Austria and some other countries, but the only important thing is that in both cases the process will be more or less the same, albeit the time scales are slightly different. And in both cases the good Catholic people of the Sees involved know what is happening, who is doing it, approximately how long the different things involved will take, and, and most importantly, roughly when they will have a new Archbishop (or Bishop, for this does not only apply at the most senior episcopal level).

Essentially what would happen here in Scotland is this. Firstly, within 8 days a diocesan administrator is elected by the College of Consultors, the group of senior priests, numbering between 6 and 8, freely chosen by the former diocesan ordinary to serve for a five year term. (This is how it is supposed to be done now. Recently, in two it was and in two it wasn’t: another long story.) The administrator’s first responsibility is to prepare a report, in the form used for the ad limina, on the See to be delivered to the Apostolic Nuncio for onward transmission to Rome. He has three months maximum to do this. (Until the administrator is chosen, the Auxiliary Bishop, if there is one, the senior Auxiliary, by appointment, if there is more than one, is in charge. Only usual business may be transacted.)

Secondly, the Cathedral Chapter must within three months present to the Holy See a list of suitable candidates. The Nuncio, the remaining bishops of the Province and the Bishops’ Conference would all be entitled to present candidates. The Pope (with the assistance of the Congregation for Bishops, advised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) will then draft a list of three names from all of these proposals and from amongst these the cathedral chapter must choose by election a new archbishop or bishop.

The expectation is that this entire process must take no longer than a year. And should take considerably less. Cologne expects a new Archbishop in a few months. Are Scotland’s Catholics less deserving of consideration?

Oh, I nearly forgot. And the beauty of all this is that since everything is being done locally — subsidiarity, anyone? — it is both more easy for the people to make their voices heard and more likely that it will be listened to. Even if, in charity, the Cathedral Chapter do not go with the vox populi. But at least they will have the opportunity, if they so wish, to let their parishioners know why they didn’t. On the QT, of course. 

Good Pope John in Turkey

(This was published, slightly edited, in The Scottish Catholic Observer on Friday, April 25, 2014, to coincide with the Canonisation of Good Pope John, and Pope John Paul II.)

Spy Wednesday — the Wednesday of Holy Week; so called because it is taken by tradition to be the day upon which Judas Iscariot sold out his Master for thirty pieces of silver — found me reading a recently published book, an early birthday present, which I had put aside to read specifically on that day. (Since you ask, my birthday was on April 17, Holy Thursday this year. I shared it with Victoria “Posh” Beckham and Brian down The Gates Bar. Isabel, the owner, got Brian and me a pint. Posh didn’t turn up.)

                                                                

“A Spy Among Friends” (see above, I have an odd sense of humour), by Ben Macintyre, is about someone who sold out his masters, his country, his friends and his family (he spied on his own father).  It is the story of that most notorious and treacherous, as well as most lethally successful, spy of the 20th century: Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby (see picture).

                       

And Good Pope John gets an honourable mention.

As Europe was for a second time in the 20th century set at war, Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli had been Apostolic Delegate to both Greece and Turkey — something which would be unthinkable now — since the end of November of 1934. Prior to that, for over nine years he had been, firstly, Apostolic Visitor (1925-31) and then, secondly, Apostolic Delegate (1931-34) in neighbouring (to both) Bulgaria.

"A man of peace does more good than a very learned man." Thomas a Kemps, The Imitation of Christ, Chapter 28, but often in a slightly different form mis-attributed as an original quote to God Pope John

In the war, Turkey, like the Holy See, was neutral and so Mgr Roncalli made his base there and not in Greece. However, just like most of the diplomatic corps, he based himself not in Ankara, the capital, but at Istanbul, a mere 40 miles from the border with Bulgaria. By 1942, Bulgaria was occupied by the Nazis and this great teeming metropolis, the gateway from Europe to the Orient, and potentially the quickest way for the Third Reich to the oilfields of North Africa, had become “an espionage hothouse… the scene of a fierce, secret war”.

                                                                                                                           

Which war was being fought out by no less than 17 different intelligence organisations, not including the host nation but most definitely including the Italians. And part of their effort was being waged from within the Apostolic Delegate’s residence. But not by the future Pope and Saint.

It was to Istanbul in 1942, to lead MI6’s counter-espionage operations, that one of the, appropriately enough styled in this connection, “Young Turks” of the Secret Intelligence Service, Nicholas Elliott, was sent. Elliott was Kim Philby’s best friend and greatest supporter within MI6. Twenty one years later he would beg to be, and was, allowed to confront him in Beirut in January 1963 with final proof of his treachery.

But in Istanbul Elliott became involved with another interesting piece of treachery. And it involved the Apostolic Delegate’s secretary, a Mgr Rici, “a most unattractive little man.” He had, Elliott discovered, been “operating a clandestine wireless set on behalf of the Italian military intelligence.” Elliott tipped off the authorities and Mgr Rici was arrested. It was left to Elliott, “with some embarrassment”, to inform his friend, Archbishop Roncalli, that his secretary would be “spending a considerable period breaking rocks in an Anatolian penal colony.”

Since Elliott later stated that His Excellency “merely shrugged” and gave him the impression that “he was not altogether displeased”, it would seem unlikely that the future John XXIII would have quickly or strenuously prayed diplomatic immunity in his underling’s behalf.

The spy and the prelate had become friends because Elliott — who was not a Catholic, his father being Sir Claude Aurelius Elliott, then headmaster of Eton — had fallen in love with his secretary, Elizabeth Holberton, a “quite posh” and devout Catholic. Mgr Roncalli officiated at the wedding in his own private chapel on April 10, 1943.

Elliott (through Macintyre) summed up Archbishop Roncalli thus: “Roncalli… proved to be a fund of good intelligence, and a vigorous anti-Fascist. Like so many in wartime Istanbul, Roncalli was playing a double game, dining with von Papen and taking his wife’s confession, while using his office to smuggle Jewish refugees out of occupied Europe.” (Von Papen and the German Military Attaché were seated at the next table during Elliott’s stag party in the Park Hotel, Istanbul not Glasgow.)

Two things registered about this. Firstly, Papa Roncalli was entirely human. Here is a man we can admire not as an alabaster likeness on the mantelpieces of the devout but as a heroic character in an entirely profane drama.

Secondly, in this singular man — whom Mgr Domenico Tardini, the Secretary for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Holy See, the Vatican’s Foreign Secretary as it were (who as his first and most important administrative act Good Pope John would appoint as his Cardinal Secretary of State), dismissed as an intellectual nonentity who should never have been recruited to the diplomatic service of the Holy See — this secret agent of His Majesty’s Government, who despite his love for his bride had no love for her religion, clearly discerned a prelate putting the exceedingly profane, the dark arts of the intelligence operative’s world, his world, to a saintly use: the saving of the lives of countless thousands of Jews from their hellish destiny: the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Over nearly twenty years, Mgr Roncalli had built up contacts at all levels, in the Church and out, throughout the region: in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, the Levant and, of course, back in Italy. And he used them all to save the Jews in their hour of need. And I am confident that time will prove that he did so with the approval of Pope Pius XII and the help of his friend, Mgr Giovanni Battista Montini, who would later succeed him as Pope.

Bishop Campbell, you HAVE closed down Protect the Pope!

In a statement issued on May 2, the Rt Rev Michael Gregory Campbell OSA, Bishop of Lancaster, said, and I quote a length: “Back in 2010 Deacon Nick Donnelly set up the Protect the Pope website/blog, as a direct response to the campaign of hostility and ridicule from sections of the media and lobby groups against Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI’s historic visit to the UK in September of that year.

“Protect the Pope was particularly successful at this time in articulating a strong defence of the Petrine Office, the Catholic Church, and its teachings against certain secularist and anti-Catholic activists. In the last couple of years, however, Protect the Pope appears to have shifted its objective from a defence of Church teaching from those outside the Church to alleged internal dissent within the Church. With this shift, Protect the Pope has come to see itself as a ‘doctrinal watchdog’ over the writings and sayings of individuals, that is, of bishops, clergy and theologians in England and Wales and throughout the Catholic world.

“Protect the Pope makes it clear that the site is a private initiative and is in no way officially affiliated with the Diocese of Lancaster. The fact, however, that its creator and author is a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Lancaster and holding some responsibility here fosters in the minds of some people that Deacon Nick Donnelly is somehow reporting the views of the diocese.

“It is my view that bishops, priests and deacons of the Church – ordained and ‘public’ persons – are free to express themselves and their personal views, but never in a way that divides the community of the Church, ie through ad hominem and personal challenges.

“Increasingly I have felt that Protect the Pope, authored as it is by a public person holding ecclesiastical office (an ordained deacon), has, at times, taken this approach its own posts – but has also allowed for this by facilitating those who comment online.

“I note that Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, speaking at a media conference in Rome on April 29, said: ‘We adhere to the best and highest standards’, indicating that this doesn’t only pertain to the latest in technological advancements, which are ‘critically important’, but also to ‘the way we use that technology’, because ‘how we say
something is just as important as what we say’.

“Cardinal Dolan also noted the importance of never caricaturing or stereotyping those who oppose the Magisterium. He exhorted that even when confronted with those who attempt to distort what the Church says, or who issue ‘mean, vicious, and outward attacks’, we must ‘always respond in charity and love’.

“On several occasions, I asked Deacon Nick, through my staff, for Protect the Pope to continue its good work in promoting and teaching the Catholic Faith, but to be careful not to take on individuals in the Church of opposing views through ad hominem and personal challenges. Unfortunately, this was not taken on board.

“Consequently, as a last resort, on March 3 and in a personal meeting with Deacon Nick Donnelly, I requested, as his Diocesan Ordinary, that Deacon Nick ‘pause’ all posting on the Protect the Pope website so as to allow for a period of prayer and reflection upon his position as an ordained cleric with regards to Protect the Pope and his own duties towards unity, truth and charity.

“The fact that this decision and our personal dialogue was made public on the Protect the Pope site and then misinterpreted by third parties is a matter of great regret. In fact, new posts continued on the site after this date – the site being handed over and administered/moderated in this period by Deacon Nick’s wife, Martina.

“On April 13 Deacon Nick requested in writing that he be allowed to resume posting again from the date: Monday April 21. I did not accept this request as the period of discernment had not yet concluded.

“Again, the fact that this decision was forced, misinterpreted and then released publicly on the site – and miscommunicated by certain media outlets and blogs – claiming that I had effectively ‘closed’, ‘supressed’ or ‘gagged’ Protect the Pope was regrettable and does not represent the truth of this situation. To be clear: I have not closed down Protect the Pope.

“I am certainly aware of the need of the Church and the Diocese of Lancaster to engage positively with the new media, social media, blogs, and the internet for the sake of spreading the Gospel to the people of our age. Indeed, our Diocese has a good track record of such engagement in reaching out to a much wider audience through our active use of the new communication technologies. I have a weekly blog myself.

“I am, of course, also conscious, that no bishop can ever ‘close down’ or supress blogs and websites – such a claim would be absurd. Bishops can and must, however, be faithful to their apostolic duty to preserve the unity of the Church in the service of the Truth. They must ensure that ordained clergy under their care serve that unity in close communion with them and through the gift of their public office: preaching the Truth always – but always in love.”

Ah, the Truth! Pity this seems to be the Jonathan Aitken version of the "trusty sword of truth".

To be clear: Bishop Campbell, you HAVE closed down Protect the Pope! 

Concordat Watch: an epistle to

I came across a particularly virulent anti-Catholic Blog this morning called Concordat Watch. They begin their invective against the Church by averring, or havering: “A concordat is a legal agreement between a country and the Vatican. It can set up a theological fiefdom where certain human rights do not apply — and where they can never again be reintroduced without the consent of the Catholic Church. This is why concordats represent a fundamental threat to both democracy and human rights.”

I have sought to communicate with them in electronic epistolatory manner as follows:

"I refer to the section “Germany”, see: http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showsite.php?org_id=858

You begin by stating: “Just one of the “Fascist concordats” is still substantially in place. Italy has got rid of the Mussolini concordat, Spain has replaced the Franco concordat, Austria has eroded through amendments the Dollfuss concordat and Portugal has scrapped the concordat made with Salazar. Only Germany still retains its concordat with Hitler.”

I presume that the final sentence quoted above has been garbled in translation: “Only Germany still retains its concordat with Hitler.” This is meaningless. Germany made no treaties with Hitler. In points (1) and (2) above (should be “below”;  I had changed the running order of what I had written, went and made a cup of tea, came back and sent it forgetting to make consequent edits and then was unable to edit it after sending) I have presumed hat what was intended to be stated was: “Germany alone retains in force the concordat negotiated between the Holy See (and NOT the Vatican) and Germany under the Nazis.”

On that basis two points require to be made, firstly (point (1)), Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal have freely decided how to deal with their various treaty obligations and entered into negotiation with the appropriate representatives of the Holy See to adjust things to their satisfaction. That was their right. Many of the German Lander have done exactly the same but have chosen, in some though not all cases, to keep things as they were, more or less. That was also their right. It is called the democratic process.

Secondly (point (2)), although some of the matters retained under the concordats between the various Lander and the Holy See are mirrored in the Reichskonkordat signed in Rome on July 20, 1933, it is not that which they have chosen to continue but the concordats made between the Holy See and some of the various German States during the Weimar Republic 1919-33): Bavaria (March 29, 1924); Prussia (June 14, 1929), and; Baden (October 12, 1932). I need only refer you to “Religion and Law in Germany” by Professor Gerhard Robbers of the University of Trier (and a judge of the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate).

You conclude this section by stating: “… no one got excommunicated, as is generally the case when churchmen violate Church doctrine.” That is a blatant falsehood. There is absolutely no “generally” about it. Members of the Church find it very difficult to get themselves excommunicated. And not just in Germany where currently a few Bishops and, indeed, one Cardinal in the opinion of orthodox Catholics like myself well merit such interdiction. It is also the case almost else- and everywhere. And most particularly in the USA. Think John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Mario and Andrew Cuomo.

I realise from the entirely biased, indeed bigoted, tenor of the content of your Blog that objective truth will hold little attraction for you and so I hold out no prospect of the preceding being of any interest or consequence to you. But where there’s life… I suppose."

Funnily enough, leaving aside the tenor and intent of their commentary, this site was extremely helpful to me in enabling me to get access to translations of concordats I was interested in for a piece of research I am doing for an article (hopefully) on the election of bishops. 

Harriet Harman: The Herald fails again

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

On Tuesday, February 25, in response to an article in the Herald (same date) I sent in the Letter to the Editor copied below.

Dear Sir

In 1997, Peter Tatchell wrote, in part, to the editor of another newspaper: “While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.” (Guardian, June 26, 1997)

This echoed what Dr Edward Brongersma, a Dutch politician and academic wrote in the The Magpie, the Mag(azine) of the P(aedophile) I(nformation) E(xchange) in the late 1970s: “A sexual relationship between a child and an adult does not harm the child and may be even beneficial providing that the adult partner is considerate, loving and affectionate.”

The Paedophile Information Exchange had been affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberty from 1975. That affiliation was not terminated until eight years later when it had become an embarrassment.

In 1976, the NCCL filed a submission to a parliamentary committee considering a proposed Protection of Children Bill — proposed over  concerns related to child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children  — claiming that the Bill would lead to ‘damaging and absurd prosecutions’. Then echoing their good Dr Brongersma and presaging their good friend — then as now — Tatchell, it stated: “Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage. The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.’

Harriet Harman, who had been employed as a solicitor by Brent Law Centre since 1974, and therefore must have been fully aware of all that the NCCL was up to, was appointed the NCCL Legal Officer in 1978. Her husband, Jack Dromey, Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, sat on its executive 1970-79.

Can either point to anything they did, said or wrote at that time that distanced themselves from these disgusting positions? A letter of resignation for example?

Yours etc

Today (Wednesday, February 26) they found it fitting to find room for letters on: food banks (one); litter (two); Coronation Street (one); phoning BT (one); Giraltar football (one), and; Mauchline and curling (one). I cannot and do not complain about the five published all much longer than mine relating to Scottish politics and flying visits by UK and Scottish cabinets to Aberdeen. But a topic which this morning has seen several other newspapers take up or continue the story, and The Times of London devote an editorial to it, is not deemed worthy of (less expensive) comment by The Herald? Surpassing strange. Bearing in mind that on the last occasion I submitted a Letter to the Editor which they saw fit to publish, they also saw fit to delete a very telling point against the homosexualist lobby — homosexuals fell outwith the ambit of the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, and thus had no part in the Final Solution and their attendance at Holocaust Memorials was an affront to common decency; they were not marked out for extermination and were sentenced to hard labour and NOT the gas chambers; and, yes, many did die of starvation, untreated illness, other neglect and by murder at the hands of their gaolers, and quite possibly other prisoners but the numbers involved were more likely to be in the hundreds and not the thousands, let alone many thousands (I did not go into it to this length) — I am left to wonder whether The Herald is in hock to that lobby?

First Franciscan Consistory

Some interesting assignments of churches

Two assignments have a Scottish connection.

Cardinal Nichols is not expected to visit the Barras any time soon despite having been assigned as his titular church Santissimo Redentore e Sant’ Alfonso in via Merulana, the Redemptorist church in Rome dedicated to their founder. Neo-Gothic in design, that design was authored in the early 1850s by a Scot, George Wigley, the building being erected between 1855 and 1860. Wigley is often mistakenly identified as English because he was one of the thirteen founders of the Society of Saint Vincent DePaul in London in or about 1844 after he had written, at his friend Frederick Ozanam’s suggestion, some letters to The Tablet, then still a Catholic publication, about the organisation newly formed at Paris. (For non-Scottish readers, the Barras,a major mixed street/indoor market in the East End of Glasgow, is located in the parish of St Alphonsus. Many Catholic visitors to one of a Sunday take the opportunity to visit the other.)

The Korean Cardinal, Andrew Yeom Soo-jung (70, South Korea), was assigned the church of San Crisogono (the martyr Chrysogonus). This was the titular church of Gioacchino Pecci, Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903). This Pope Leo’s first formal act on the first working day following his coronation (Monday, March 4, 1878) was to sign Ex supremo Apostolatus apice, the Apostolic Letter by which the Episcopal Hierarchy in Scotland was restored. A further Scottish interest derives from the fact that Archbishop Leo Cushley’s first boss when he was missioned to Burundi was Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig (67, Swiss). He was later Apostolic Nuncio to South Korea, and Mongolia, 2004-08.

San Crisogono had earlier been the titular church of Camillo Borghese, Pope Paul V (1605-21). This particular Borghese Pope is admired in some quarters for purportedly having put out a contract on the life of a canon lawyer who had seriously discomfited him, Fr Paolo Sarpi, and, in others, for having founded “il Banco di Santo Spiritu” (The Bank of the Holy Sprit). This was the first national bank in Europe (being the bank of the Papal States) and the first bank in Rome in which the general public could lodge funds (and receive loans from). (The Vatican only lost control of the bank when it was nationalised by Mussolini’s Fascist government in 1935).

The photograph below of the Korean Bishops and His Excellency Archbishop Tscherrig was taken in St Peter’s Basilica on the morning of Monday, November 26, 2007. The second consistory of Pope Benedict’s pontificate had been held on the Saturday before. The Korean bishops were on their ad limina pilgrimage. I believe Cardinal Yeom Soo-yung is third from the right (the second prelate on the right).

Before the consistory, there were 157 titular churches in Rome and 13 of them had no cardinal protector. However, 16 of the new cardinals were being assigned to the order of Cardinals Priest (the presbyteral order of cardinals). In consequence, three of the new cardinals were assigned new titular churches established on the day (February 22, 2014) especially for this consistory: Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin (59), Santi Simone e Giuda Taddeo a Torre Angela (Saints Simon and Jude Thaddeus); Chibly Langlois, Bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti, San Giacomo in Augusta, and; Fernando Sebastián Aguilar (84, Spain), Sant’ Angela Merici.

One of Pope Francis’s first acts as Pope was to appoint his former Auxiliary Bishop (2002-08) Mario Aurelio Poli (66) to succeed himself as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He has now also assigned him his own former titular church, San Roberto Bellarmino.

Philippe Nakellentuba Ouédraogo (69, Burkino Faso) was assigned Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino, which had been Pope Benedict XVI’s titular church.