zondag, juli 31, 2011

Ubuntu! raibh maith agat

The links below relate to the Memorial to Survivors of Institutional abuse. As you may be aware, The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (aka The Ryan Report) recommended such a memorial be put in place.


Please take some time to look at the documents and bring them to the attention of people who might be interested in entering the competition to create/design a memorial. I would also appreciate your bringing these links to the attention of people who may not have access to a computer.








klik

Die onwaarschijnlijke cadeautjes uit Ierland.
Ik mag zien dat het doorgaat, er wordt in Sloveense oren gefluisterd.

Maar ik mag mijn mond open doen!
Ik mag dankzij open monden in Ierland van vroegere slachtoffers, die gehoord werden, niet alleen naar ze luisteren - en al luisterend zoveel van mijzelf terug vinden, ik mag nu ook mijn mond mee open doen!
Ik mag weten dat het kán.

Ik mag aan iemand die dat misschien wel kan, net als ik geen Ier, vragen eens mee te kijken naar hoe je vorm kunt vinden zodat tranen van gisteren bijdragen aan de veiligheid morgen.

Ik mag desnoods zo gek zijn om de rest van mijn leven te besteden aan de wens er heel Europa mee vol te zetten en er een export artikel van te maken. Nooit meer!

Ik mag mee mijn mond open doen om van mijn kinderen te eisen dat ze hun ogen open doen en hun hersens gebruiken om de volgende rotzooi maar effe oplossen.



Omdat het kán.
Het bewijs is er!
Geleverd door een zooitje Ieren.


zaterdag, juli 30, 2011

God heeft Mensen nodig















Moge Zijn grote naam verheven en geheiligd worden
in de wereld die hij geschapen heeft naar Zijn wil.

Zegt nu: Amen

De Rigali truc: "wordt behandeld als zijnde buitenlander"

Lichte daling aantal katholieken in Duitsland
30 juli 2011

BONN (RKnieuws.net) - In Duitsland waren er vorig jaar 24.651.001 katholieken. In 2009 waren er 24.909.332. Vorig jaar waren er meer uittredingen uit de Kerk dan doopsels.

Met dank aan een weinig ethische ethicus, maar misschien was ik toch nog niet zo gek als ik glazig zat te kijken naar babylijkjes en de hoogte van de aardappelprijs in de amsterdamse grachten. Je moet maar weten dat olifanten gek op aardappelen zijn en daar dus in kuddes op af stormen.


Waar tbv de annalen dan natuurlijk bij aangetekend dient te worden dat het onwaarschijnlijk dom was om géén turf statistiekje aan te leggen van al die blije lachen na een vliegerwedstrijd.
(naar: Memoriaal van het Klooster, hoofdstuk ananas, farao)



"Laat ons de kinderen de wereld cadeau doen">
Nazim Hikmet










irishtimes.com
Friday, July 29, 2011


A priest (79) has been sentenced to jail today for sexually abusing a woman in Dublin in the 1980s.

Paul McGennis, of Holy Cross Diocesan Centre, Clonliffe Road, Dublin 3, pleaded guilty to eight sample counts of indecent assault on the female at two locations in the city on dates between June 1980 and May 1984.

He was this morning sentenced to six years in prison, with the final four years of that suspended due to his age and health, the guilty plea entered, and a financial contribution he made to his victim.

Announcing sentencing, Judge Desmond Hogan noted that the defendant had earlier this month apologised to his victim for the "torture" he had put her through thereby meaning that a lengthy trial was avoided.

However, Judge Hogan added that given the seriousness of the case a custodial sentence was unavoidable.

"This was sexual abuse of a young girl in her formative years by somebody in a position of trust...he must have known he was taking advantage and that his word would not be questioned. This caused additional trauma to the victim because she felt she wouldn't be believed because of the defendant's position in society," he said.

The court heard earlier this year that the abuse began when the girl was about 11 years of age and took place in the priest’s house in one Dublin parish and continued after he moved to another in the city.

The priest would always have chocolate in the house and would give the girl sweets and toys but when she began to get older he would give her money after having sex.

She complained to gardaí a number of years ago after receiving counselling following a suicide attempt.

When interviewed by gardaí in 2009, McGennis denied the allegations but he pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court this year and earlier this month apologised to the woman for what he had done.

Judge Hogan said today that in passing sentence he had taken into consideration the victim impact statement of the woman, which he said had made "harrowing reading."

In her victim impact statement, the victim said McGennis had “taken away my innocence, my childhood memories, my chance of an education and my prospects for the future”.

She added that the abuse had continued to threaten her marriage and denied her the chance to have children and that it had left her without self-esteem or the ability to form and maintain relationships.

The court heard McGennis, who was previously chaplain to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin, has four previous convictions for indecent assault and has served a prison sentence.

On June 24th, 1997, he was sentenced to 18 months for two indecent assaults for an offence in 1960 and received an 18-month sentence.

On June 27th, 1997, he was sentenced for two indecent assaults occurring between May 1977 and 1979 and received nine months concurrent to the other sentences. He appealed these sentences and served nine months for the offences.

The Judge ordered that McGennis enter into a bond to be of good behaviour and also abide by conditions laid down by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmaid Martin for the period of the suspended sentence.

He continues to be a priest but has been out of ministry since 1997.








THE JAILING of Paul McGennis yesterday was a further landmark in the campaign over many dark years by Marie Collins.

Her determination helped pull down a cover-up by Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese that had gone on for decades. This man had blighted the lives of children.

The Murphy commission concluded “there is no doubt that Collins, in her often lonely campaign to show the archdiocese how it had erred in its handling of child sexual abuse cases, was instrumental in changing the archdiocese’s understanding and handling of these cases . . .”

Referred to as Fr Edmondus, in the Murphy report, it records that McGennis was chaplain at the children’s hospital in Crumlin from 1958 to 1960. In 1976, when he was based in a Wicklow parish, he abused a nine-year-old child. His conviction yesterday concerned his abuse of a young girl between 1980 and 1984.

McGennis’s activities first came to the attention of the Dublin archdiocese in August 1960. Scotland Yard then contacted gardaí when a processing company in the UK reported film taken by McGennis of two young girls aged 10 or 11. Garda commissioner Daniel Costigan brought this to archbishop John Charles McQuaid “because a priest was in question”, as the commission put it. The Garda did not investigate further.

The archbishop “limited his activity to dealing with the priest’s problem”, the commission said.

In 1985 Ms Collins told local curate Fr Eddie Griffin about her abuse and being photographed at the children’s hospital in 1960 when she was 13. He told her not to name her abuser, or he would have to do something. He offered Ms Collins absolution “to do away with her guilt . . .”

It was 10 more years before she could take the matter further. Fr Griffin told gardaí he and other seminarians “had been advised while in college not to seek the name of priests that allegations were being made against”.

In 1993 complaints about McGennis’s contact with young children in Edenmore parish in Dublin were made to church authorities. In October 1995, Ms Collins wrote to archbishop Desmond Connell about her abuse by McGennis. A trawl was done at Archbishop’s House. It uncovered the 1960s complaint. Ms Collins’s letter was passed to then chancellor of the Dublin archdiocese and its child protection delegate, Msgr Alex Stenson. He met Ms Collins.

The commission found it was “very clear that Monsignor Stenson believed Mrs Collins”, but that he did not tell her about the other incidents involving McGennis. He did tell the Garda in November 1995, with the consent of archbishop Connell.

He later said he had no consent to tell Ms Collins until he met her in March 1996, when he told her McGennis admitted abusing her. This he had not told the Garda.

He told her McGennis was no longer in a parish but was receiving treatment. In truth, McGennis was still in Edenmore and was not removed from ministry until January 1997.

In March 1996 there was a complaint against McGennis arising from his time in Wicklow. Gardaí asked to meet Msgr Stenson, and did so in May 1996. They asked to see McGennis’s file. Msgr Stenson refused. Canon law would not allow it, he said. He was asked about his confirmation to Ms Collins about McGennis’s admission that he abused her.

He “expressed dismay” on hearing the letter referred to by gardaí. He would not have written it “had he known that she would be handing over the letter to the gardaí”. He refused to make a statement to gardaí confirming the McGennis admission.

In December 1996 Ms Collins met archbishop Connell. He admitted not confirming to gardaí there was another 1960s case on file about McGennis, as to do so “would undermine people’s confidence in the church . . .”

He told her the church’s 1996 framework document wasn’t binding in either canon or civil law, and that “he could follow what parts of it he wanted to follow”. He told her “he had to protect the good name of the priest who had abused her”.

In June 1997 McGennis pleaded guilty to his abuse of Ms Collins and was sentenced to 18 months.

Days later he received a nine-month concurrent sentence for his abuse in Wicklow. The total sentence was later reduced to nine months on appeal.

In a statement after McGennis’s conviction, archbishop Connell said the diocese had been co-operating with gardaí in the case. The commission noted that Msgr Stenson said “the diocese never claimed it had co-operated fully, with the emphasis on the word ‘fully’, with the gardaí”.

vrijdag, juli 29, 2011

gedwongen adoptie




le general ble' goude' nous demande d'etre pret pour la lutte finale





Dolhuys kunst van het ouder worden, kunst van het wegkijken. Archief schatten en barbaren


bron




vitusdans

Tarantella tarantella
jong en oud ge hebt nu de kans
dans met ons de tarantella
dans met ons de spinnendans!


Mijnheer Wimpie
"Het is veel mooier dan je denkt,
als je denkt is het nog veel mooier"



‘Even as you are children of Christ, be you also children of Rome.’*





Senior Vatican figures hoist the drawbridge when it comes to criticism of the Pope, writes PADDY AGNEW

Irish Times
Friday, July 29, 2011

It is now clear that the one section of the Taoiseach’s attack on the Vatican in the Dáil last week that has thoroughly annoyed the Holy See is that passage in his speech where Mr Kenny quotes Pope Benedict – then Cardinal Ratzinger – in a 1990 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) document.

Towards the end of his speech, the Taoiseach talks about “two pieces of legislation” with regard to protecting “the sacred space of childhood” that his Government intended to promote.
At this point, he quotes Ratzinger, saying: “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the church.”

Kenny then concludes with an apparently defiant challenge to the Catholic Church, saying that the “standards of conduct which the church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic”.

The clear implication is that given its mishandling of the worldwide sex abuse crisis, the Vatican has no right to inhabit any moral high ground from which it seems to denigrate (or disrespect) democratic principles

Many have argued that, given the Holy See’s track record of a less than satisfactory, long- distance handling of the Irish clerical sex abuse crisis, such comments from the Taoiseach were long overdue.

While senior Vatican figures now freely, but off the record, concede that the Holy See deserves its share of outspoken criticism for the many mistakes made in the handling of the sex abuse crisis, they hoist the drawbridge when it comes to criticism of the Pope.

Even if it could be argued that Benedict has been a senior and influential church figure for the last 30 years, and as such must bear his share of responsibility for the “company culture”, senior Holy See figures suggest otherwise.

They point to a number of instances that would indicate a genuine desire on the part of the Pope to deal with the clerical sex abuse scourge – his creation of the sex abuse norms in John Paul II’s 2001 Motu Proprio Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela; his (less than fully successful) attempts to denounce notorious church paedophiles such as the late Cardinal of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groer, and the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado; his attack on “filth” within the church in his 2005 Via Crucis homily; the pastoral letter to the Irish and the apostolic visitation to Ireland.

Thus the apparent allegation that Benedict is less than willing to get to grips with the issue is seen as unfair. In particular, the quote from the 1990 CDF document Donum Veritatis, On The Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian is seen as taken out of the context of a complex 6,000-word document.

However, the offending paragraph 39, which contains the quote, seems designed perfectly to antagonise church critics.

Discussing the “mystery of communion” represented by the church which is “organised around a hierarchy established for the service of the Gospel”, it says that “all the baptised are to strive with sincere hearts for a harmonious unity in doctrine, life and worship”.

For this reason, it adds, the infamous “standards of conduct” appropriate to a democracy do not apply, while the document also ridicules the idea of “polling public opinion to determine the proper thing to think or do, opposing the Magisterium by exerting the pressure of public opinion”.

All of this would represent “a grave loss of the sense of truth and of the sense of the church”.

Unpalatable to some, such views nonetheless represent classic Ratzingerian thought.

Welcome, Mr Taoiseach, to the Catholic Church, where for a long time people have inhabited a moral high ground that does not so much denigrate or disrespect democracy but which simply takes another road altogether.

In that sense, Holy See figures have difficulty understanding the apparent attack on Benedict, a true custodian of a very orthodox, hardline faith.



* Irish Times
bron PREDA

donderdag, juli 28, 2011

Geen vervolging Cor Schilder

Een Nederlandse oud-bisschop die beschuldigd werd van het misbruiken van een jongen in Kenia wordt niet vervolgd.

Het Openbaar Ministerie in Arnhem zegt onvoldoende aanknopingspunten te hebben voor een strafrechtelijk onderzoek. Ook ontbreekt er een aangifte van misbruik. Als er nieuwe informatie binnenkomt, zal het OM de zaak opnieuw bekijken, zei een woordvoerder.

Het gaat om een 69-jarige bisschop Cor S. die inmiddels weer in Nederland woont. Hij zou de Keniaanse jongen in de jaren negentig veelvuldig hebben misbruikt toen hij in Kenia werkte.

Commissie-Deetman
De zaak kwam in 2005 aan het licht en is door de commissie-Deetman bij het OM gemeld. De commissie onderzoekt misbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk.

Het Vaticaan stuurde de bisschop in 2009 met vervroegd pensioen.
PATSY McGARRY

OPINION : SO, ROME is miffed at “excessive reactions” in Ireland following publication of the Cloyne report. This State has spent millions unearthing what has been available to Rome all along. In October 2005, there was the Ferns report, costs to date: €2.3 million.

In May 2009, the Ryan report, estimated costs to date: at least €126 million. In November 2009, the Dublin report: costs to date €3.6 million. In July 2011, the Cloyne report: costs to date €1.9 million. Total costs so far of the four statutory inquiries? €133.8 million, with more to come.

None of this would have been necessary had the Catholic Church here and in Rome co-operated fully in establishing the truth. Instead, those that could be were dragged, kicking and screaming, into disclosing what they desperately wanted to keep hidden. So, in Ferns, abuse files on five further priests which should have been presented to the inquiry remained unavailable until an accidental discovery in the summer of 2005 – when the Ferns draft report was already completed. A “regrettable error on the part of the diocese . . .” said apostolic administrator to Ferns diocese, canon lawyer, barrister-at-law and Dublin auxiliary bishop Eamon Walsh. Four years later, Rome declined his resignation.

On May 15th, 2009, five days before the Ryan report was published, in a letter to the redress board, the Christian Brothers said the congregation “totally rejects any allegations of systemic abuse . . . or that boys were inadequately fed or clothed . . . and vehemently repudiates all unsubstantiated allegations of sexual abuse . . .” When that letter was published in this newspaper on June 3rd, 2009, a Christian Brothers statement “reflected their shame that as recently as five days prior to publication of the [Ryan] report their responses were still shamefully inadequate and hurtful”.

In January 2008, the former archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell went to the High Court to prevent his successor giving documents to the Murphy commission. Later, he withdrew the action.

In 2008, Bishop John Magee of Cloyne and Msgr Denis O’Callaghan lied to the church’s child protection watchdog about abuse there.

This formidable desire to hide the truth on the part of senior clergy in Ireland by lies, damn lies and mental reservation was not rooted in any peculiar aversion on their part. It rested entirely on what they understood was required of them by Rome.

Yet in his March 2010 pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI told the bishops that “some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously”, when it came to child protection. Not a word about Rome’s role in any of this.

Not a word about Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos who was responsible for the 1997 letter to the Irish bishops dismissing their 1996 Framework Document as “merely a study document”. Which letter, the Cloyne report said, “gave comfort and support” to those who “dissented from the stated official Irish church policy” on child protection.

In 1999, when the Irish bishops were visiting Rome they were reminded by a Vatican official they were “bishops first, not policemen” when it came to reporting clerical child sex abuse.

But apologists for Rome insist all changed in May 2001 when then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent two letters to every Catholic bishop in the world. In Latin. One insisted that both be kept secret. The other directed that all clerical child sex abuse allegations “with a semblance of truth” be sent to the congregation and it would decide whether they be dealt with at diocesan or Vatican level.

Yet, as current chancellor of Dublin’s archdiocese Msgr John Dolan told the Murphy commission, this policy “was subsequently modified as Rome was unable to deal with the vast numbers of referrals”.

The Cloyne report continues: “The position now, he [Msgr Dolan] said, is that all cases brought to the attention of the archdiocese before April 2001 and which were outside prescription . . . were not going to be dealt with by the CDF. It was up to the bishop to apply disciplinary measures to the management of those priests.”

In effect, the Irish bishops were back where they were before 2001. As Murphy reported: “Victims have expressed disappointment that neither the Framework Document nor its successor, Our Children, Our Church (2005), received recognition from Rome, thus leaving both documents without legal status under canon law.”

This, Murphy found, “was in direct contrast to the approach adopted by the Holy See to the request of the American Conference of Bishops”. The truth is Rome tied the hands of those Irish bishops and religious superiors who wanted to address the abuse issue properly.

Yet, Rome did not even acknowledge correspondence from the Murphy commission in September 2006. Instead it complained the commission did not use proper channels. So, in February 2007, the Murphy commission wrote to then papal nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto requesting he forward “all documents in his possession relevant to the commission”. He did not reply.

So, in early 2009, it wrote to current nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, (in situ since April 2008), enclosing a draft of its report for comment. He did not reply.

The nunciature in Dublin has been the conduit for truthful clerical child abuse reports to Rome, while Archbishop Leanza was personally involved in talks which led to Bishop Magee standing aside at Cloyne in February 2009. So, the Murphy commission asked him to “submit to it any information which you have about the matters under investigation”. He felt “unable to assist” it “in this matter”.

So, Rome is miffed? So . . .?

Und wenn dann der Kopf fällt, sag ich: Hoppla!




...
Das Große bleibt groß nicht und klein nicht das Kleine.
Die Nacht hat zwölf Stunden, dann kommt schon der Tag.
Am Grunde der Moldau wandern die Steine
es liegen drei Kaiser begraben in Prag.


en 2 spinnetjes.


und dann fragen Sie was lächelt die dabei?



als die grote klokke luidt, die klokke luidt
keer maar weer om, reuze reuzen
keer maar weer om, reuse gom




















Be slag van Baklava aan de hoek van een ronde tafel


Philadelphia


Vraag: Heeft u het rapport gelezen?
Antwoord: Nee.

Zoals de goede vader zei
uit: Als U begrijpt wat ik bedoel

On a lighter note, are you prepared to become a Phillies fan?

I'm going to have to become a Phillies fan, and an Eagles fan, and everything else in Philadelphia. I genuinely mean that, because I think it's important for the bishop to embrace the sports teams that his people embrace. But I want you to know that all the time I've been a Broncos fan, I've secretly been a Steelers fan … I hope that doesn't get me into trouble in Philadelphia!

I'm an old Pittsburgh guy. I was there for three Super Bowls that the Steelers won, and that made a permanent impression on me. Secretly, where it has to be hidden, I'm a Steelers fan, but I also want to embrace the local community.
The Irish Times - Saturday, July 23, 2011

As a well-written expression of the anger felt in contemporary Ireland about clerical sexual abuse, Enda Kenny’s speech is a masterpiece. Perhaps it took someone familiar with small-town and rural Ireland to capture the very particular torture of seeing a priest abuser continue to occupy a place of respect in a local community, writes BREDA O'BRIEN

Perhaps it took a practising Catholic to deliver sentences such as these: “Growing up, many of us in here learned we were part of a pilgrim church. Today, that church needs to be a penitent church. A church truly and deeply penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied. In the name of God. But for the good of the institution.”

This, too, was powerful. “This report tells us a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children.”

Nor could it be said that he exonerated the State. He spoke of “children and young adults reduced to human wreckage. Raising questions and issues of serious import for State agencies.”

But why, oh why, did he choose to say things like this? “Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic . . . as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.”

No one could doubt Enda Kenny’s sincerity. However, had he read the Cloyne report in full, it is doubtful that he could have reached the conclusion that the Vatican was in the business of obstructing a sovereign state.

The Cloyne report did not say that the Vatican tried to frustrate an inquiry. It does say that a 1997 letter from the papal nuncio, referring to a directive from the congregation on the clergy, “gave comfort and support to those who, like Monsignor O’Callaghan, dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy”.

The Cloyne report then goes on, in chapter four, to outline in meticulous detail subsequent Vatican documents in 2001 and 2010, which make it clear that the church is to co-operate with civil authorities, including this quote from the Guide to Understanding Basic CDF [Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith] Procedures concerning Sexual Abuse Allegations: “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.”

The Murphy report on the Dublin archdiocese did criticise the Vatican for not responding to a request for information. In my opinion, the Vatican was churlish and graceless by citing diplomatic protocol. But that does not constitute an attempt to frustrate.

If we want to express anger at a church that has been disgracefully slow in responding to the crime of child abuse, let me be first in the queue. If we want to criticise a style of communication more appropriate to the 19th century than the 21st, and a chronic inability to understand that the world no longer thinks in centuries but in seconds, let’s go for it. But if we want to take a quote from a 1990 document, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , and use it to imply that Pope Benedict thinks that the church should not co-operate with this State in the matter of reporting child abuse, leave me out.

An Taoiseach quoted Josef Ratzinger as saying: “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the church.”

At that point, we have left the truth behind. That passage concerns “polling public opinion to determine the proper thing to think or do” when it comes to theology. It has nothing to do with child abuse.

It is completely unfair to the Pope. Accuracy matters. Truth matters. If the church had been accurate and truthful from the beginning, think of the damage to children that would have been averted. If the bishops, even now, were willing to publish the results of audits, think of the good that would do.

The Irish church needs to stop hiding and come out and tell the truth, including the truth of the massive changes most of them have implemented. Refusing to do so leaves Archbishop Martin looking as if he is the only one serious about reform.

To criticise the Vatican harshly in the staunchly Catholic 1950s and 1960s would have taken real courage. In contrast, Enda Kenny’s attack on the Vatican was like someone offering to step into the ring with a Muhammad Ali with Parkinson’s rather than with the boxer at the height of his powers.

It is convenient to blame the Vatican, and God knows, with people like Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos (author of the 1997 document) as friends, the Vatican need never have another enemy.

Cloyne felt free to ignore the Vatican when it suited, just as it ignored Irish church guidelines. John Magee is not a monster. Denis O’Callaghan is an intelligent man.

Presumably, too, the directors of the Irish language school in Gweedore who continued to use a child abuser, Michael Ferry, for odd jobs are not monsters. None of them, however, grasped the absolute necessity to protect children.

Church, State, and some citizens failed to protect children. That is the reality we need to acknowledge with meticulous truthfulness to ensure that to the best of our ability, it does not happen again.



NOEL WHELAN

THE REACTION to every speech is always in the ear of the hearer. Some will inevitably dismiss Enda Kenny’s remarks during Wednesday’s Dáil debate on the Cloyne report as a populist attack upon an increasingly unpopular institution or as being motivated by political rather than policy considerations. The speech has already been dismissed by some as a polemic rather than as a contribution to debate.

To do so is to miss the point. The purpose of Kenny’s speech was not to persuade or to debate, neither was it a comprehensive treatment of Government policy on church- State affairs, or on relations between Ireland and the Vatican.

What it was, above all else, was a clear statement of attitude. The new Government of Ireland has given notice that it is adopting a new and less deferential attitude to the Catholic Church and to the Vatican. That is a very healthy development.

Of course the Taoiseach’s speech was political – he is the country’s top politician after all – but it was not cynically so.

The Taoiseach and his advisers will have been conscious that his remarks would be portrayed as populist grandstanding by those who don’t want to accept the point he was making. By playing it straight in media management terms they did much to undermine that suggestion.

Instinctively, political handlers might have preferred to ensure that the press gallery and the Dáil benches were packed for the speech. They could have ensured this by ringing around in advance. They did not do so. They also resisted the temptation to trail the speech and its significance by leaking snippets to one of that morning’s newspapers. Instead they let the speech takes its place in the chronology of a news day that everybody expected to be dominated by the euro crisis and other stories. The absence of hype or advance billing gave the speech greater impact.

Others have criticised Kenny’s text on the basis that it was unfair to the current papacy or that the tone was wrong. Again, however, they miss the point. The current Vatican regime carries responsibility for the errors of its predecessors. Kenny’s tone if anything was too soft in the circumstances.

If, as is clear, this Government has made a strategic decision to adopt a more confrontational posture towards the Catholic Church leadership in general and the Vatican in particular, then the publication of the Cloyne report was the proper occasion for that change in approach to be marked.

The venue was appropriate. Kenny was right to do it in the chamber of parliament itself rather in a media statement or some kind of formal diplomatic demarche.

The fact that it was done at the level of the Taoiseach rather than by the Minister for Foreign Affairs or Minister for Justice was also appropriate. The revelations in the Cloyne report and previous such reports require that the church and the Vatican be confronted at head of government level.

Coming from Kenny it had the added dimension of coming from a senior politician who is also a practising Catholic. Since he was advancing the official Government position it should not matter whether the speaker has any faith, Catholic or otherwise, but in reality it does and it was Kenny himself who chose to emphasise that dimension. It would have been easier for those who wished to dismiss the speech to do so if it had come from a more secular politician or a non-Catholic.

While Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen condemned child abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops in equally trenchant terms, they were more cautious in their critique of the church senior management here and in Rome. The tone and language used by Kenny is in stark contrast to that used by Brian Cowen in December 2009 when the Murphy commission report into the Dublin diocese was published.

As I noted here at that time, Cowen’s most high-profile intervention as taoiseach in the intense public debate following the publication of that Murphy report had the effect of defending the Vatican’s actions rather than adequately communicating this country’s outrage at the church’s connivance in the covering up of crime.

It did not require much courage to say what Enda Kenny said this week. The institution against which he directed his remarks is no longer a political force. His views chimed with the overwhelming majority of Irish public opinion. However, unlike his predecessors, Kenny had both the inclination and the confidence to set aside the diplomatic niceties and state baldly the contempt that the people of Ireland have for the manner in which the Catholic Church has responded to these revelations.

In years to come, passages from this speech will be cited as marking a watershed in the relationship between Ireland and the Vatican. Historians will also be interested, however, in exploring how this speech came to be made. It will be fascinating to see if the Taoiseach and those involved with him in the preparation of his text chose to consult in advance with Irish diplomats at the Holy See or with other officials. One suspects that if they got such an opportunity the Irish permanent government advised a more cautious approach. If that was the case then Kenny was right to ignore it.

In his collection of 50 Great Irish Speeches the historian Richard Aldous makes the point that such speeches can be divided into two types: those of the head and those of the heart. Many, he says, display remarkable powers of analysis, “setting out rigorous arguments to influence opinion by sheer force of intellect”. Others, he says, gain their authority from the passion and context of their delivery and because they capture a public mood.

Enda Kenny’s speech this week clearly fits into the later category. It seems destined to make the cut for Aldous’s future editions.

Handelingen van Paulus 10: 8-12

slakkenasiel: bed and breakfast
Op de vraag wat hij het meest miste van Griekenland gaf voor het front van de troepen de godenzoon ten antwoord dat dat niet de veerman maar het bidet was, welk antwoord hem op zijn terugreis dwong tot stoppen.
En allen die met de maarschalk reisden rolden mee door het gras.

woensdag, juli 27, 2011

veldwerk knabbel en babel






















Church's condoning of evil goes way back

Irish Times -
Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Vincent Browne

The “dysfunction, disconnection and elitism” which Enda Kenny said “dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day” did not start with the investigation into clerical sex abuse in the Cloyne diocese.

It has been the defining characteristic of the Catholic Church throughout history and abuses of an even greater scale than clerical child sex abuse have been a feature of that history throughout most of its existence.

The Catholic Church has been an advocate for slavery, for the subjugation of people in Africa, North and South America and Asia, for acts bordering on genocide and for the most appalling cruelties.
Its supreme achievement is that this record is almost obliterated from public memory and the organisation is regarded as the repository of truth and morality by hundreds of millions of its adherents.

Let me explain.

A papal bull, Dum Diversas , issued on June 18th, 1452, by Pope Nicholas V, declared: “We grant you (kings of Spain and Portugal) by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture and subjugate the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, countries, principalities and other property . . . And to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”

This was no aberration. Three years later the same pope issued another papal bull, Romanus Pontifex, confirming the conquest of lands and peoples by the king of Portugal and asserted the sole right of this King Alfonso to the territories captured by him. In doing so, the pope specifically invoked the claim that popes derive their authority from Jesus.

It said: “Since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso – to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to . . . convert [these properties] to himself and his successors [and these possessions] do of right belong and pertain to the said King Alfonso and his successors”.
These were followed by further papal bulls along similar lines by his successors.

Thereby popes gave divine sanction to the brutal colonisation of large tracts of the world, through murder, pillage and terror. Yes, the means of colonisation were not spelt out and specifically sanctioned, but wasn’t it obvious what the means would be? These very papal bulls were invoked by an authority of a different kind in a different era and with significant consequence.

That other authority was the supreme court of America in a 1823 case known as Johnson v McIntosh.

In that case, the court ruled that the lands “discovered” by Europeans were owned by the colonisers, not by Native Americans, and that the authority for that law with the Law of Nations, the basis for which were the papal bulls.

This remains the law of the United States. Native Americans have requested the Vatican in the last few years to reverse these papal bulls, to no effect.

There are numerous instances of special depravity in the history of this institution.
One of these was the slaughter of hundreds of Inca warriors under the guise of their failing to convert to Christianity on being challenged to do so by a priest wearing clerical garb, with which the Incas would hardly have been familiar. Others would have been the atrocities of the Inquisition, crusades instigated and sponsored by the church, specifically authorised by another papal bull, and massacred Muslims, in one instance hundreds of defenceless men, women and children in the mosque at Jerusalem.

Yes, there have been “acts of contrition” by the Vatican for some of these atrocities but these have been couched in the most tentative of terms and then the golden alibi: the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ and, being the impersonation of Jesus Christ, it is immune from institutional defect.
No acknowledgment that its foundation document, the Bible, is suffused by incitements to genocide, intolerance.

It has also been one of the primary cultural instruments of the subjugation of women. The very claim that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is ordained by the divine, in the person of Jesus, gives added venom to that injustice.

Catholicism is a fundamentalist religion, believing unswervingly in its own divine origin and, as a consequence, its essential holiness. Injustice, slavery and atrocity are viewed within “the bigger picture” and, as such, diminished in the shadow of it being the vehicle of humankind’s “salvation”.

What significance in that context has the wholesale clerical rape of thousands of children and the institutional cover-up of that wholesale rape, the massacre of a few thousand innocents, the enslavement of entire peoples?

And anyway look at the good the Catholic Church has done.
It will all be okay in the next world.








Harpers Weekly

toegevoegd 18.00:
bak!, mak una patata Bedankt Roel

dinsdag, juli 26, 2011

BERLIJN (RKnieuws.net) - Van de 579 aanvragen voor schadeloosstelling die de Duitse bisschoppenconferentie tot 20 juli jongstleden kreeg van slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik door priesters worden er 560 gehonoreerd. In een aantal gevallen wordt er een bedrag van meer dan 5.000 euro uitgekeerd. Dat meldt Ctb.

Volgens slachtofferorganisaties werden de jongste decennia in Duitsland meer dan 2.000 personen seksueel misbruikt door geestelijken.

Vive le republique. Leanza en de heilige stoelen dans

“The archbishop of Dublin told me … that ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950s; admittedly, it was not perfect – there is much to criticize about it – but nevertheless it was applied After the mid-'60s, however, it was simply not applied any more. The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people."
Benedictus

“Paradoxically, appealing somehow to their own interpretation of Canon Law, they had put themselves even above and beyond the norms which the current Pope himself has promulgated for the entire Church,” Diarmuid Martin, 18 juli




25 juli




Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the 10th representative of the Pope and career diplomat of the Holy See, must pine for days of power and glory when his predecessors enjoyed awesome political clout and enormous social influence.
With the Vatican being damned by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, scolded by Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore, and mauled verbally by all sides in Dail Eireann, the 67-year-old Italian was told he was living in the Republic of Ireland of 2011, not in the Vatican, the refugee-centre of paedophile clerics.
Leanza's treatment contrasts with January 1930 when Archbishop Paschal Robinson (pictured below) became the first Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland since Archbishop Rinnuccini in the 17th century.
Welcomed by fawning government ministers and bishops on arrival at Dun Laoghaire, the Dublin-born, but American-reared, Robinson was driven in triumph along streets lined by fervent Dubliners waving papal flags.

Robinson, a bearded Franciscan friar vowed to poverty, was installed regally in the former Imperial Chief Secretary's Lodge in the Phoenix Park, now the residence of the American ambassador.
The splendid but dilapidated building had been refurbished by the Office of Public Works and was made available to 'Robbo' by the Government, courtesy of hard-pressed but uncomplaining taxpayers.
As a special mark of deference, the Government conferred social distinction on the Pope's man by making him automatically the Dean, or head, of the Dublin diplomatic corps.

Politicians, civil servants, pious priests and zealous laity vied for the Nuncio's ear, and duly received papal knighthoods and Bene Merenti (good conduct) medals.
After Robinson's death, his successor, the elderly Archbishop Ettore Felici, was welcomed in 1952 with a Te Deum in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral -- but within weeks his corpse was laid out in the same sacred building, amid a suspension of the Dail, full pomp of Church and State, and universal public grief.
When Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza arrived in Ireland in April 2009, he must have felt he had landed a cushy pre-retirement posting.
Armed with a canon law doctorate, he joined the Vatican's diplomatic service in 1972, serving in Paraguay, Uganda, the US, Haiti, Zambia, Malawi, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.
Last year, faceless Leanza faced down knee-bending Brian Cowen and Micheal Martin in the seismic public shift to anti-Vaticanism after the Murphy Report into the Dublin Archdiocese.
This time, Leanza may be sent back to his residence on the Navan Road with his tail between his legs.



In een alleszins godsdienstige omgeving konden blijkbaar lange tijd ernstige misstanden plaatshebben. Hoe verklaart u dat?

„Dat is een sociaalpsychologisch verhaal. Het ging om een gesloten systeem waarin kwetsbare kinderen werden opgevoed door mensen tegen wie ze opkeken. In die luchtdichte gemeenschap konden allerlei zaken stiekem gebeuren.”
...

De conclusie wordt voorgelegd aan de kerk, die vervolgens een uitspraak doet. Die kan bijvoorbeeld inhouden dat een geestelijke wordt overgeplaatst of berispt, dat hij niet meer met kinderen in aanraking mag komen, in therapie moet gaan of zelfs uit het ambt wordt gezet.”

Welke plaats neemt het begrip verzoening in het geheel in?

„We spreken niet snel over verzoening tussen personen, maar hopen dat het slachtoffer zichzelf enigermate weet te verzoenen met wat er is gebeurd, al zal dat altijd blijven knagen. Daarvoor is in ieder geval nodig dat de kerk goed naar hem heeft geluisterd.”

...

Daarna volgt de zitting. In beginsel worden beide partijen opgeroepen. Dat hoeft niet per se tegelijk, ze kunnen na elkaar gehoord worden. Vervolgens komt de uitspraak: de klacht is gegrond als het misbruik bewezen of aannemelijk gemaakt is. De uitspraak gaat naar de bisschop of overste. Die mag er alleen van afwijken na contact te hebben gehad met de voorzitter van de klachtencommissie, met mij dus. Wordt er een paar keer van afgeweken, dan ben ik weg. De commissie wordt dan onvoldoende serieus genomen.’

Maar bij het zoeken van leden voor de kamers vind ik deskundigheid belangrijker dan een eventueel kerklidmaatschap. Al kan dat laatste heel handig zijn: dat je weet hoe een mis in zijn werk gaat en hoe de kerk is georganiseerd.’
18-6
“Sexual abuse by a priest is a crime and an abuse of spiritual power”, affirmed

Msgr. Charles Sicluna, Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, Saturday morning to press at the launch of a Symposium titled
“Towards healing and renewal”.

The gathering, which will take place February 6th to 9th 2012, is being organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University, with the goal of formulating a global response to the scandal of sex abuse within the Church.

Research and study into sex abuse will also take place through the creation of a new “multi-lingual e-learning centre” also launched Saturday. The centre has been set up to improve information and prevention. Moreover from now to February, the centre’s work will be made public with regular press releases.
Questioned as to whether we could now speak of a decisive strategy on the part of the Vatican in the fight against paedophilia within the Church, Msgr Scicluna responded that the Circular Letter sends “a very strong signal of determination, born of the Pope’s own determination to look the sin and crime of paedophilia in the face, while at the same time affirming that we must be able to give a clear, credible, firm and effective response to this problem within the Church. To be witnesses not only to respect for the innocence of children and young people, but also to the demands of truth in justice”.

“There are so many different aspects to what the Church needs to do and I think that the Symposium, is going to help by sharing experiences across the world, by sharing resources which will be usable across the world”, Baroness Shelia Hollins told Lydia O’Kane.The professor of psychiatry at St George's University in London is one of the many experts who will make an intervention at the February Symposium, alongside a victim of abuse. On Saturday the Professor also shared her recent experience of listening to victims in Ireland. “One of the main problems in the process of healing and renewal is that the victims feel they are not really being heard”, she revealed. “It’s not enough to register shock at their stories, we need to go beyond and listen to them with out whole bodies. I think people do need to hear 'sorry'.

We have a focus on the importance of confession, there has to be an admission of guilt first. And you know it's quite difficult if the admission of guilt isn’t there for even ‘sorry’ to have meaning”.

“I think one of the things that I was most impressed by and surprised by in Ireland, was the fact that so many people have retained a deep faith and have real hope that things are going to get better, despite the pain and suffering that they have experienced for themselves. Although there are others who have lost both their faith and their hope, so it’s a double loss”.

kristallalala; boek houden



Alzo sprak mijnheer struik
dader van mijn toekomst
en bottelde zijn rozen.
k Heb menig uur bij u
versleten en genoten,
en nooit en heeft een uur met u
me een enklen stond verdroten.
‘k Heb menig menig blom voor u
gelezen en geschonken,
en, lijk een bie, met u, met u,
er honing uit gedronken;
maar nooit een uur zoo droef om u,
wanneer ik scheiden moste,
als de uur wanneer ik dicht bij u,
dien avond, neêrgezeten,
u spreken hoorde en sprak tot u
wat onze zielen weten.
krist o ze wie
ze wie ze wies
vies wies wies

Philly judge halts release of cardinal's grand jury testimony, filed to support criminal case

The Republic

MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
First Posted: July 25, 2011

PHILADELPHIA — A judge on Monday halted the release of 1,200 pages of grand jury testimony on a Roman Catholic cardinal relating to his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors filed Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua's secret testimony from 2003 to support conspiracy charges filed this year against a high-ranking church official, they said in court papers filed Friday.

Monsignor William Lynn, 60, is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for allegedly transferring priest-predators without warning. Lynn served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, mostly under Bevilacqua.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that Bevilacqua, the former archbishop, had testified that accused priests "would not be able to function" at new parishes if people were warned of their backgrounds.

Grand jurors found the leader of the Philadelphia archdiocese "excused and enabled" the abuse, and was "not forthright" and "untruthful" during 10 grand jury appearances over eight months, the newspaper reported. He was not charged because the statute of limitations had run out.

Common Pleas Judge Lillian Ransom put a hold on the further release of the grand jury testimony and other documents filed Friday. She did not immediately return a call for comment on her action Monday. Neither side asked to have the documents sealed.

Lynn is the only U.S. church official ever charged in the sex-abuse scandal for his administrative actions.

Four others — two priests, an ex-priest and a former teacher — are charged in the same criminal case with raping boys. Three of them raped the same boy, starting when he was a 10-year-old altar boy, a second grand jury charged this year.

The prosecution's latest filings came in response to Lynn's motion to have the charges dismissed or have his case tried separately.

"It is understandable that he would not want a jury to see the exact nature of the danger to which he subjected parish children, or the consequences of his action. But ... the crimes Lynn enabled would clearly be admissible even if he were tried separately," Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen wrote in the 65-page response, obtained by The Associated Press.

Lynn's lawyers declined to comment Monday on the filings, citing an ongoing gag order in the case.

The motions will be argued at a key hearing Friday. Defense lawyers assert that he had no children in his care and cannot therefore be charged with endangering them.

Prosecutors argue the charge can apply to anyone with a duty to protect the general "welfare" of children, and not just those with direct supervision of them. The archdiocese was charged with protecting children at its schools and parishes, prosecutors wrote.
[...]

maandag, juli 25, 2011

Australië en Hans Fallada



Aangezien er alweer problemen zijn met de Koepel Klokk
die gelukkig, zoals mijn pc zegt en vooral dankzij een hele slimme computervogel naast mij niet aan mijn computer(verbinding) ligt, wat dus een hoop zorgen scheelt, na 5 maal proberen even wat informatie door te geven,
die dan dus maar even hier neergezet.


En wie nog een tip voor een interessant boek wil
kan ik Hans Fallada - De Führer heeft mijn zoon vermoord van harte aanbevelen.



"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up"


Lombardi


Met dank aan mijn kinderen voor mijn genoten opvoeding waarin ik, hoewel mijn voorkeur uitgaat naar het systeem van een chinese non, menig avondje plat van het lachen moest liggen bij een serie karatefilms met hetzelfde thema.









































zondag, juli 24, 2011

RKK predestinatie in de soete suykerbol
















foto: USAFRICOM , David Konop

En als jij niet uitkijkt kom je nog 's in de Goede Herder terecht
Maar of die Cie. Lindbergh die nonnenmop nou snapt?







Kettingbewijs en


dank



















*
THERE are battles yet to be fought in the war between the Catholic Church and the Irish State.

But the outcome is no longer in doubt. The Church will lose, if it has not already lost.

Which is not necessarily to say that Irish society has won, or will win.

This war was unwise and unnecessary: unwise in the extreme on the part of the church, which started it and promoted it. It behaved as if its relationship with Ireland had not changed since the days when our politicians abased themselves before the Holy See, declaring themselves -- in the notorious words of Brendan Corish -- Catholics first and Irishmen after.

When society here changed, for both good and ill and certainly for ever, Rome and Maynooth continued on the same course, the course of arrogance and narcissism, to borrow a splendid word from Enda Kenny.

Seven years ago, it looked as if they would depart from that course. The appointment of Diarmuid Martin as Archbishop of Dublin appeared to signal a new era in church-state relations, appropriate to the thinking of the 21st century, an era of conciliation and accommodation.

But the new archbishop found himself in a position similar to that of some provincial governor of older times, isolated from his masters at the centre of the empire in Rome and isolated, as well, from most of his own senior officers in their episcopal palaces.

The sex abuse scandals which he inherited were not about sex. They were about power. They were about protecting an institution whose rights took precedence over the protection of the young, over every precept of common decency, ultimately over the law of the land.

And the guilty parties were not confined to the abusers. They included those who covered up the crimes, for whatever reason, and somehow reconciled their actions with their consciences. They included officials of the State who ignored or concealed the evidence. They included those who persuaded themselves that every incident was sporadic, not part of a wider corruption. A lesser degree of guilt, but guilt all the same.
[...]

When the crimes could no longer be ignored, when the State set up searching inquiries, the church promised amendment. It collaborated with the State, often with enthusiasm and undoubted good intentions.
But now we have discovered that cover-ups continued into our own times. More shockingly, we have found that the guidance from the Holy See itself was at best doubtful, at worst deliberately deceitful. The stage was set, not for collaboration but confrontation.
That confrontation, long postponed, took place this week, openly and sensationally.

Irish politicians, once noted for their servility, directly defied and attacked the Vatican. There were calls for the breaking off of diplomatic relations and the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio.

These were absurd, and the related debate about the seal of the confessional was nothing more than a red herring. What mattered was the unanimous view of an Irish parliament. No more subservience. What mattered more was Enda Kenny's unique criticism of the Holy See in his brilliantly crafted Dail speech and his declaration that the laws and norms of this democratic republic would prevail.

There was no doubting his earnestness or determination -- or that of his ministers, such as Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald. But another aspect of the debate carried almost equal significance.

Fianna Fail has long flirted with the conservative Catholic lay organisations. Together, they inflicted on us the defeat of the first divorce referendum and the several failed attempts to reverse the Supreme Court judgment in the "X" case.

This time, Micheal Martin and his party could have echoed Brian Cowen's stumbling attempt to defend the Vatican's refusal to help the Murphy inquiry into sex abuse. They did not. They supported the Taoiseach. They nailed their colours to the mast of the Republic.

In the face of this solidarity, the church has to make a choice. It can play the age-old game of obfuscation, or it can climb down with as much dignity as it can muster.

It has room for manoeuvre.
In a recent speech, Archbishop Martin said that he was not criticising the Pope but worried about his "collaborators", clearly meaning senior Vatican officials. Was he suggesting that Benedict XVI should take personal charge of the dispute and repudiate the claim, expressed or otherwise, that canon law takes precedence over civil law?

To ask that is to ask a great deal. And there is another difficulty.

Benedict XVI lacks the overwhelming personality of John Paul II. His pronouncements are sometimes obscure and seem to have lost something in translation -- strangely, coming from a man skilled in several languages. This is no way to inspire an audience that longs for certainty and authority but will not accept unthinkingly whatever he chooses to say.

But even if another John Paul II reigned in the Vatican, he could not reverse the revolutionary changes in modes of thought which we have experienced in our lifetime.
When John Paul II visited Ireland, he was greeted with joy and fervour. The Irish church appeared to be at the height of its power and popularity. That was illusory, and in any case the climax for any institution is always followed by its decline.

In the Irish case, the decline has been spectacular -- and harmful, because for centuries we allowed the Catholic Church to dictate our ethics.

We did not develop -- we thought we did not need -- a secular civic ethic. The collapse of trust in the institution has left us high and dry.

Now we have to take our ethics, and our destiny, into our own hands. Is it a bad time, perhaps, for such an enterprise, when we are struggling for survival?

Not at all. Let me quote once again the saying that one should never waste a good crisis. We have an economic crisis, whose outcome we cannot tell. But we also have an ethical and societal crisis, and certainly we can fight our way out of it, with or without the help of the Catholic Church or any church.
Enda Kenny has laid down the principle from which we must begin.

This State is a sovereign independent republic. Everything flows from that. And we have to ask ourselves what are the implications for how we live our lives as social beings and how we relate to the State.

Thus far, the debate on these questions has consisted mostly of thoughtless, confused, self-serving waffle. We must do better. And we can. Just for once, our parliament did not shrink from confrontation when the chips were down. Just for once, our leaders offered some leadership. We can follow the way they have shown.