Dec
29
St. Mel’s Cathedral III
December 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Sometimes a picture does indeed say a thousand words and this one certainly does. I really think that the damage to this building is way more severe than it looks and very likely to be condemned and knocked unless something is done very quickly to install protection and supports in a matter of days and even then I would not bank on it. This Church was built on the backs of a starving people who worked labouring for a meal a day. The Church will once again look to the people to re-build this building and not go near its Billions of assets in reserve as it has always done for centuries.
It really will make me wonder if the people who often need this money most, will part with it once again to an institution that has proved itself to highly abusive of the same people in it’s care.
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Dec
26
St. Mels Cathedral, Longford II
December 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
There is heated and often angry speculation about the causes of the fire that gutted St. Mel’s Cathedral yesterday morning on the streets and pubs of Longford today, traditionally the busiest day of the year for drinking establishments in Ireland. The anger is coming from mainly church goers who feel that any link between the many reports published about the endemic church abuse over the past year.
I will post more on here as I talk to even more people, the drink is helping enormously to get people to loosen up and talk about it as the evening wears on, I have heard about one fight in a pub earlier about who started the fire, the proprietor told the bar afterwards that anyone mentioning the fir would be barred instantly!
I am genuinely shocked at the defensiveness of people when asked do they think it was arson, I have done this many times today and the reaction is one of anger and denial, the connection is always made by them between the abuse in the Church and this fire.
This collective paranoia is odd, maybe to do with the allegations against the church coming out not only as true but way worse than anything anyone except the victims could have imagined. This defensiveness can only mean one thing that the people in the church and the church itself expect something like this to be the result of an arson attack by an abuse victim. I would have expected it to be the result of faulty wiring or as it seems a faulty boiler. Is it a case that every tine the church is accused of something they all close ranks and keep “outsiders” out.
Dec
26
St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford I
December 26, 2009 | 4 Comments
St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford burnt to a shell yesterday. Some people were happy, some indifferent, some angry at the people who were happy, some almost in tears.
I have always loved architecture and design and no matter where I am I will seek and visit the best examples around. Churches naturally were always included, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and my own personal favourite Clonfert Cathedral in Co. Galway.
Very recently I visited St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford, just after reading the Ryan Report on institutional sexual/emotional/physical abuse of minors in state care by the clergy. There is no doubt that whoever reads that report will never forget it as long as they live.
My first impression of it as I walked up to it was its forceful self importance with it’s Roman neo-classical façade, looking down on the humble buildings below that seemed to cower in it’s fierce greatness. I noticed on entering a large structural crack running up from the left hand side of the door and wondered how people were allowed to walk under it. The interior was dark and ugly, the ceilings were way too high in proportion to the width of the building and the rest of it felt somehow dirty, grubby, and it just reeked of abusive medieval power. I found it nauseating and for the first time ever did not bother taking out the camera always brought with me. The Harry Clarke windows were of no significance whatsoever, obviously coming from the studios and had very little of Harry Clarkes hand visible in them.
I left with my companion and we walked around the building, as I walked I tried to imagine the work taking place on the building beginning in 1840 and not being completed until more than 50 years later. The plight of the peasants in Ireland at that time, starving to death in their millions and all that money being spent on what? A symbol of God! Christianity. NO, a symbol of the power of the Church, the power of the men who ran it, while the people starved.
They say one in every four has been abused in this country, they will not care about a heap of smouldering rubble, they are more important than bricks and mortar. The symbolism is powerful though, Fire symbolises purification, and on the morning of the celebration of the birth of the person the Church was founded on!
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Dec
3
Sexual Abuse
December 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Somehow it just never goes away, today I read that in the UK they are now having more young males coming to them who have been sexually abused by their Mothers. There are now several reports describing this phenomena, which although I was always pretty sure some existed I had no idea it was so widespread. This has to be the most difficult subject to understand.
I was once commissioned to do a work based on this subject by the then Health Board, I read 25 books on the subject over a period of 18 months and was still none the wiser as to this world. I had to turn down the commission, the first time I have ever failed at a project of such an emotive nature such as this. The person who commissioned me said that I was not unusual in not being able to respond without being either an abuser or the abused. Both are subjective, and the objective view is it is a crime and is therefore punished.
The psychologists that deal with the Male offenders state that it is not an illness, it is their sexuality. Somehow I feel that there is a piece of this puzzle missing so here I am again a decade later trying to understand the incomprehensible. I know I will return to this again.
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Nov
28
Murphy Inquiry
November 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I started this blog after reading the Ryan Report on clerical abuse in institutions in Ireland, somehow felt that a public place to have a rant and add to the google hit list of searches on my favourite pet loves/hates. I knew this Murphy Inquiry was under way and wanted a place to speak about how I feel about this abuse that is endemic among Clerics in Ireland. This report only covered one diocese and there are 25 more.
tbh I do not know what to say any-more. This stain on the fabric of Irish society must be cleansed but as long as the Catholic Church retains it’s power over both the Government and it’s parishioner’s it will blow over and be forgotten. This is not good enough at all, something else has to happen. Why do people still attend masses after the thousands of abuse cases that have come to light and there are thousands more. What level of ignorance does it take to turn a blind eye to the levels of corruption in the Church?
I have a copy of the Murphy Inquiry and I do not know if I will read it. I read the Ryan report and I was depressed for days afterwards, really angry at times and most of all, shocked by the people who still support this Church. What sort of brainwashing do they do to them? The Catholic Church in Ireland is a sado/sexual cult that is dangerous.
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