Catholic Church's monstrous crimes in Ireland.

Not a woman among them.

by Sean O'Torrain*

In the interest of full disclosure I was born into a Protestant family and I am now and have been for 40 years an atheist. And even fuller disclosure, I have been a revolutionary socialist for these past four decades, was part of the Bogside uprising in 1969 was a full time organizer for the Socialist party and its International, the CWI, until I was expelled in 1996. I am giving this information in order that it will be difficult for me to be tared with the brush of being anti Catholic for what I am about to say.

I am sure that all who are reading this are familiar with the monstrous activities of the Catholic church hierarchy in Ireland. Their child abuse. their enslaving of young women, their making them work for nothing, their taking their children away from them, their ill treatment of the children of unmarried mothers and leaving them to die, their burying them in septic tanks, their imprisoning them in what they called convents but which were in fact prisons.

The Catholic church has tried to deny that they made money out of the slave labor of these women. But the ledgers are now being found which show how much money they did make by doing the laundry for major hotels and also for government departments. This is increasingly known and this is a very good development.  But what I would like to raise here is another aspect of this crime. First: who are the main people and elements responsible for these monstrous crimes? Second, what is the responsibility of those who have been rank and file members and remain rank and file members of this organization, that is the Catholic church?

The responsibility above all lies with the Catholic hierarchy.  This is an all male caste which is unelected and which runs an organization of over one billion people. It has a very clear ideology. It is pro capitalist. In fact it is the main church of capitalism. In previous centuries it was the church of feudalism but when capitalism became dominant it adapted and became the main church of capitalism. It is very conscious of this role that it plays. When Stalinism was collapsing, the popes of the time visited 18 Stalinist countries to make sure that Stalinism would be replaced by capitalism rather than democratic socialism. It worked closely with the US government on this. The Protestant churches are also churches of capitalism but the Catholic church is the dominant church of capitalism. 

The Catholic church is undemocratic. Its leaders are not elected. It is anti women. Not only in its policies, anti pro choice etc.,  but also in its structures. Women cannot hold the top positions. It is a vicious misogynist organization. It is an incredibly wealthy organization. It rolls out its platitudes against poverty but of course it keeps its gigantic wealth to itself. And when it does talk about poverty it maintains the old crap that poverty we will always have with us. In other words it preaches that poverty will never be ended.  This is a totally corrupt and rotten organization, which is against the interests of working people worldwide.

The caste, which runs it, has to be seen in this way. This is who they are. They must be condemned and opposed. They keep power through terror. They threaten with hell fire. They manipulate peoples’ emotions to control them. The say the powerful sex drive is wrong unless blessed by them. For this blessing and go ahead you have to be a member of their corrupt organization and contribute money.  On top of this they keep their pageantry and music and drama to memorize.

Now to the membership of this organization. What is your responsibility? And what should you do? In my opinion anybody with any sense of fairness or decency, anybody who believes in equality and democratic rights, anybody who believes in women’s’ rights and an end to poverty should not belong to the Catholic church, should leave the Catholic church. It does not hold up to say that you are against all these ills in society and to belong to the Catholic church. To do so is like saying you belong to the KKK but oppose racism. The Catholic church supports with the greatest determination the capitalist system, which is responsible for these ills.  So I advocate that anybody with a shred of decency and fairness should leave this organization and do so openly and publicly and state their reasons.

It is nauseating to see what passes for public and political life in Ireland. Just about every political party from Fianna Fail to Sinn Fein to the Labor Party bootlicks the Catholic hierarchy. That is, they bootlick the monstrous criminals who presided over the Magdalene laundries and all the rest. They get them to sprinkle water on their children’s’ heads when they are born, they get them to chant and wave their arms and give the go ahead to them to have sex when they are getting married, they get them to moan and pretend they are sad and are able to usher them into some other place rather than hell when they die. And the central theme in all these events is to make sure that the Catholic church is at the center of things.

It is particularly nauseating to see Sinn Fein. They claim to fight against the domination and exploitation of Ireland. Yet there they also bootlicking the Catholic church on all such occasions. This when the Catholic church after British imperialism has been and continues to be the main force of exploitation  of the people and resources of Ireland and been this for centuries. It is just as nauseating to see the so-called Labor Party, which is supposed to stand for working people also bootlicking the Catholic hierarchy.

I have given my suggestion as to what members of the Catholic church should do. Leave it. If you cannot do so then form an open and public opposition within it. But do so with your eyes open. When the opposition Liberation Theology movement developed in the Catholic church in the 1970’s the Catholic hierarchy collaborated with US imperialism to wipe them out, that is murder them.

But should more be done?  I would like a discussion on this. The Catholic church is basically a terrorist organization. It bases itself on terrorizing its membership with its own creation “hell.”  I am not in favor of calling on the capitalist state to ban organizations as this opens the door to this state to ban workers and left organizations.  So I am not in favor of banning the Catholic church in Ireland.

But I am in favor of this. The evidence is all around us to prove that something has to be done.  I am in favor of removing the control of the Catholic church from all fields of education, from all areas of health, in other words I am in favor of a total separation of church and state and the Catholic church and the Protestant churches to be excluded from any input into and control of education and health. I am also in favor of the Catholic church and all churches having to pay compensation to the women who were forced to work for nothing and whose children were taken from them. Let the wealth in the big houses of the Bishops and the Cardinals and the other property it owns be taken off them and used to pay the compensation to the victims. Why should the taxpayer have to pay? 

I am also in favor of making sure that all are aware of the role of Irish capitalism in relation to the domination of the Catholic church over Irish society. This to be done by changing the curriculum in the education system. The Irish capitalist class came on the scene of history late. (See Trotsky’s the theory of the Permanent Revolution) It was weak, dominated by British imperialism and afraid of its own working class. After the war of independence in which it played practically no role, or even opposed, (see where William Martin Murphy and the bosses called for the execution of Connolly and others) Irish capitalism was in a very weak and vulnerable state. It needed allies. It reached out and clasped the willing hand of the Catholic hierarchy and made a deal. The Catholic church could have control of education and health care and the disciplining of children and women and in return the Catholic church would support capitalism. Which of course it did anyway. Some deal.   

So when we point the finger for who is responsible for these monstrous crimes we have to point it at the Catholic hierarchy but we also have to point it at the Irish capitalist class. They too are responsible for the monstrous criminal actions of the Catholic hierarchy, which are now being exposed.

Sean O'Torrain (John Throne) is an activist and former member of the Bogside Defence Committee and author of The Donegal Woman, a tribute to his grandmother and all the young women and boys who were "hired out" to the rich landowners.  He can be reached at loughfinn@aol.com