Breda O’Brien, helmet-haired schoolteacher and Irish Times columnist clashed with her paper’s Religious Affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry on Tonight with Vincent Browne last night. It offered a bad-tempered glimpse into how RTE’s outlandish libelling of Father Kevin Reynolds has given conservative commentators such as Breda, David Quinn and Senator Ronan Mullen an unexpected opportunity to reclaim some moral high-ground lost in the collapse of trust in the Catholic Church in Ireland since the mid-1990s.
Vincent Browne: ”Were you surprised at the announcement by somebody in RTE communications office on Friday evening, when asked if there would be resignations, he said ‘rolled heads don’t learn anything’.”
Patsy McGarry: ”Vincent, I listened to that interview with Mary Wilson on Drivetime. I was absolutely shocked by the demeanour of the man concerned, considering he himself had been a very prominent and effective journalist. I’m talking about Kevin Dawson. Now he has a role, a different role to play but I felt the stance by RTE, which he reflected, was utterly inappropriate to the gravity of what they had conceded had happened. That is had to be properly investigated. We’re long beyond the days when any institution can be trusted to investigate itself, whether it be in media, or any other institution, banks, church, politics, we’ve so many examples now at this stage in our own society. That RTE must have… that two inquiries wouldn’t meet the public demand.
<Browne: ”Breda, It would seem to be..there’s been no statement at all from the RTE authority in regard to this. And the indications are the RTE authority, as is usual for it, has played dead.”
Breda O’Brien: ”Yeah, it’s really quite extraordinary and it must be extremely damaging to RTE that has acted as the guardian of the guardians that when it comes to themselves, that they’re completely unwilling to fess up and put their hands up. If you don’t mind me saying so though, I think Kevin Reynolds is a very, very lucky man, in this regard. That he was accused of fathering a child and not of rape alone. Because if he had been accused of rape alone, my guess is that we wouldn’t be sitting here now. Because he had a scientifically verifiable way of proving his innocence. And if it had been rape alone, it would have been one person’s word against the other. He would have been just as innocent as he is today and he would have no possibility of proving it.”
Browne: “Yes.”
O’Brien: ”And that’s really. You have to ask yourself how that state of affairs came about. That it’s priests and nuns guilty as charged. How did that happen? The Iona Institute did research on what the public think is the rate of abuse among priests. And it’s really scary reading, Vincent. Seventy per cent of people overestimate it. Seventy per cent of people overestimate the rate of abuse by clergy. Forty two per cent think that one in five priests are actually abusers. There’s five per cent who think over 90 per cent of priests are abusers. And, as we know, the rate, the only Irish figures we have are ones you talk about regularly, the Savi Report. And then we have American figures, and they’re between three and four per cent of sexual abuse is carried out by clergy. So you have a vast overestimation. And you have to ask yourself – where does that come from? What’s the climate that creates that? Because they’re not learned..the public aren’t learning that from personal experience. They don’t know of..if you know 20 priests, which is not unusual in Ireland, four of them aren’t child abusers so why do forty two per cent of people think that they are? And I think that there has been a climate, which has built up, because, first of all, it was so shocking that clergy would abuse at all. Then the church handled it so badly. And were so poor at dealing with it themselves. But now…”
Browne: ”That hardly captures it now, but..go on, yeah.”
O’Brien: ”No, ok, whatever terms, I’ll agree with them. Disastrous, awful, appalling…”
Browne: ”Yeah but they were complicit in that they covered it up.”
O’Brien: ”Yeah. No argument Vincent.”
Browne: ”The institution covered it up, what is singularly…The issue with the Catholic Church, with regard to all this, is not the, so much the incidence of abuse for, as you, as you say, the numbers of priests who abused is very low. But no other institution has engaged in that kind of, in a comprehensive cover-up, cover-up of this criminality.”
O’Brien: ”I, I would agree with you there has been a cover-up. I think there has also been no acknowledgment of change. And there is very little acknowledgement that these things happen in other sectors of society. I, the point I was going to make was that as time has gone by even Maeve Lewis, of One in Four, has said that there’s been a disproportionate amount of attention paid to clerical abuse, to the detriment of the vast majority of people who have not been abused by clergy. And that atmosphere, that excessive…”
Browne: ”And have been abused otherwise.”
O’Brien: “Yes, yeah, I beg your pardon. People that have been abused by people who are not clergy, which is the vast majority. That has led to a climate where this kind of thing can happen. And that’s not just a question for RTE. Like bashing RTE is a grand old hobby but it’s a question for the media in general. It’s a question for civil society. And it’s a question for all of us to say ‘how did that atmosphere build up where a completely…’”
McGarry: ”Can I explain…”
O’Brien: ”He, he, he..No just one second Patsy, let me finish this…”
[Talk over each other]
McGarry: ”Breda comes from the provisional wing of the Catholic church, and never resists an opportunity to have a go at the media. And has been doing this for years – often to the detriment of the emergence of this tragedy. The reason this has happened…”
O’Brien: ”That’s a really serious allegation Mr McGarry.”
McGarry: ”Well you and others, you and others.”
O’Brien: ”You have just said ‘detriment of the emergence of this tragedy’.”
McGarry: ”May I explain?”
O’Brien: ”No, Patsy. Just stop.”
McGarry: ”May I continue? Please.”
Browne: ”No, no…”
[They Talk over each other]
Browne: “There might be a serious issue there.”
O’Brien: ”There might be a serious issue there. Do you mean to say that I have been aparte in a way that has been to the detriment of the revelation of abuse? Did you say that? And did you mean that?”
McGarry: ”I’m saying Breda is that you and other people have found yourselves in a position where you’ve defended the church in contexts where and have, where things happened that were not defensible, that delayed the emergence of this story. You cast doubt on the way, for instance you cast doubt on.”
O’Brien: “So you are saying that I defended the church in a way delayed the emergence of the story?”
McGarry: ”You cast doubt on people like Christine Buckley, when she first came out about the abuse in Goldenbridge, there was doubt cast on…now I can’t remember all the incidences off the top of my head.”
O’Brien: ”I’d like you to produce chapter and verse Patsy because you have done extremely, you’ve made an extremely serious allegation and you’ve provided the most perfect example of why this climate has built up.”
McGarry: ”No, let me explain.”
O’Brien: ”Because anybody that I’ve, who challenges the consensus on this, and says there is more that one side to this gets this treatment, gets called people who have delayed the truth emerging. Now what has happened.”
McGarry: ”May I…”
O’Brien: ”The climate has built up where innocent people have…”
McGarry: ”Let me explain why that climate has built up…”
O’Brien: ”You’ve already explained it…”
[They talk over each other]
Browne: ”Let her explain, let her finish and then you can come back in.”
O’Brien: ”You’ve already explained.”
>McGarry: ”No, I haven’t. That was only on my route to explaining.”
O’Brien: “On your route, you decided to do a little bit of character assassination, Patsy.”
McGarry: No I’m talking….about a group, grouping.
O’Brien: You’re talking about an individual sitting by your side, Patsy. And I resent it deeply. And I think it is one of the problems that we have here in this country. That anybody who says that it is utterly and totally disgraceful that seventy per cent of the population overestimate clerical child abuse.”
McGarry: ”I didn’t say that.”
O’Brien: ”I am saying it. I’m saying that. You’re saying that anybody who is making those kind of points is somebody who is in some sense an apologist for what goes on.”
McGarry: ”No, I’m not saying…”
O’Brien: ”There is no balance, there is no balance.”
McGarry: ”I’m saying. I’m attacking you in the sense you’re attacking the media. May I make a point here? There reason that all this has happened. And I am not for one minute defending what has happened in this or other similar contexts. But the reason that you have findings like that, that are outrageous by the Iona Institute or the Amarach research team, on behalf of the Iona Institute…”
O’Brien: ”Clarify what you mean by outrageous.”
McGarry: ”The findings are. I think it’s outrageous that so many people think priests are guilty of abuse..Because this is 2005 , we have had four shocking, statutory reports, prepared by judges of this country, not by the media, which looked at what happened in Ferns in 2005, which over nine years brought us the Ryan Report in May of 2009, which brought us the Murphy Report in November 2009 and in July of this year brought us the Cloyne Report. Don’t tell me the media is responsible for the climate in which these awful things can happen. It’s not the media, it’s the abuse that has created this problem.”
O’Brien: ”I don’t argue with you in the slightest.”
McGarry: “You do. That’s the problem. You blame the media all the time. That’s the problem and that’s the issue between you and me.”
O’Brien: ”Pasty, we’re here talking about an innocent man, who would have gone to his grave, accused of rape, if he hadn’t been also accused of.”
McGarry: ”That’s pure supposition.”
O’Brien: ”OK.”
McGarry: ”I’m totally with Fr Reynolds.”
.
Watch full show here
“Helmet haired” is a great expression, and suits her perfectly.
I think I’ll steal it for my own use in future
Great transcript, thank you Broadsheet.
Patsy McGarry is an ignoramus.
Patsy McGarry is a very good journalist and one of the very few religious correspondents in this country who don’t bend over in deference to the Church.
Patsy McGarry has done excellent work in the Times writing about the appalling cover-ups perpetuated by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Do we really need to repeat that thousands of children were abused in the most systematic and horrendous way, and it took journalists like Patsy to make this country face up to it.
Let us not forget that the current Primate of All Ireland, Sean Brady, participated in the crimes of Brendan Smyth by making two of his teenage victims swear to keep silent about their abuse on pain of excommunication.
RTE have a lot to answer for in the coverage of the Kevin Reynolds case, not least by giving the likes of Breda O’Brien, David Quinn and the rest of the conservative Catholic defenders the opportunity to leap on to their moral high horse and scream “victim”.
Stalin said “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”. To paraphrase – the defamation of one man IS a tragedy, but in the eyes of O’Brien et al. the rape of thousands is still a mere statistic to be glossed over at will.
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Yup Well said
It’s all the fault of the Church that so many people have a low opinion of anyone involved with the Church.
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The use of the description ‘helmet haired’ really gets to the core of the issues here, don’t you think?
As indeed does the word ‘conservative’ in relation to Breda O Brien. What does that word actually mean in Irish Society? As far as I can see it is generally applied pejoratively to people who loosely agree on a small number of hot-button issues, irrespective of their positions on a wider range of topics or their individual reasoning for their stated positions. It’s a lazy pigeon-holing which dispenses with the need for civil open-minded engagement.
In the US O Brien’s stances on wealth redistribution, prisoner and immigrant rights, restorative justice, defence spending and climate change would see her branded as a socialist Democrat, if fact in Tea Party Circles she’d probably be branded a Communist.
Her views on abortion and family policy would probably see her linked with people like the Liberal Evangelical Jim Wallis and actor and social justice campaigner Martin Sheen. She would be persona non grata in the Republican Party and would be as welcome at a Tea Party function as…Barack Obama!
ps I also reckon that when someone is accused in a public forum of delaying the emergence of the story of the crimes of child abuse without any evidence they have a right to be angry.
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unexpectedly lazy commentary from broadsheet here. usually very good. but I think ‘helmut head’ has an important point to reemphasise here in relation to an overemphasise on clerics in cases of child abuse.
Yes she has a point that there is an over emphasis on blaming the church more for the abuse… but the bullshit she is spouting is that it is the fault of the media… the consistent shite that is put out by the church on this issue and the reports issued by the courts are the reason people think this. If the church immediately went out and put up their hands and dealt with it, I dont believe it would be tilted in this way. I think it would be more balanced. You also have the paradoxical position of an institution that goes on about morals and trust and love and god, that has members that commit this type of crime. Why would the media not investigate this!!?
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David Quinn, Breda O’Brien (one the founder the other the patron of the Iona Institute of Christian hope, love and tolerance) and Father Ronan Mullen are actually social democrats…who knew?! I think this has more to do with all three’s uncanny ability to transform somewhat unpalatable and deeply conservative standpoints into an easy-to-digest freedom-of-conscience argument and probably market it as some sort of neo-social democracy.
David Mitchell scrubs up well.
Brilliant!
In fact O’Brien, Mullen, and Quinn’s voices have hardly been heard at all on this. Vincent Browne is right on the money – where are the RTE Authority on this?
Who are they? Karlin Lillington (Irish Times), Tom Savage (Communications Clinic, married to Terry Prone, parents of Anton Savage), and the rest: http://www.rte.ie/about/authority.html
The point McGarry (and Broadsheet) misses is that this incident is a lightning rod not for a minority like O’Brien et al but for the majority of people who are sick to death of RTE and want the RTE arrogance, swagger, and contempt for the tax payer and viewers shown by their ‘stars’ and the management stopped. It should be clear to RTE by now that there are large numbers of people in Ireland who want to hurt them very very badly in any way they can.
Terry Prone was probably responsible for every idiot politician using the word “optics” to describe what is essentially pantomime to please the plebs.
@ Prada, you’re spot on about the RTE. Shut the thing down.
To wit, this kinda thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoife_Kavanagh
The gloating of some Catholic cheerleaders is appalling.
You should read the history of the Vatican’s interference in Ireland since the middle ages. It’s always been about them and their attempts at undermining the protestant state in England since the reformation.
It’s never been about the spiritual welfare of Irish people.
Watching it she reminded me of Bishop in Father Ted who kept banging on about the lefty media being out to get the church…. He ended up with the Holy Stone of Clonrickard shoved up his hole.
“The media” “leftists” “liberals”
These are the familiar folk devils employed by any powerful institution and its conservative cheerleaders when the heinous shit they get up to is actually reported every now and then. The likes of Mullen and Quinn make me sick. They are shameless.
Really good to see the liberal/left apparatchiks being caught out & called to account. The truth is that they could’nt give a damn about Fr. Reynolds. The Roman Catholic community can now justifiably claim that they have been the victims of a vile liberal fundamentalist witch hunt.