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  Killer Question That Left Cori's Champion Speechless

By Eoghan Harris
Irish Independent
May 31, 2009

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/eoghan-harris/killer-question-that-left-coris-champion-speechless-1756569.html

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From early morning, I get an extraordinary response to my reflections on the historical roots of the abuse revealed in the Ryan report, published in today's Sunday Independent, and which, I argue, arose from a distortion of Daniel Corkery's shamrock of land, religion and nationality, set on a common stalk of class distinction.

Pat Rabbitte refers to it on Today FM's Sunday Supplement. So does Joan Burton on Newstalk's The Wide Angle. Actually she refers to it three times. Each time the presenter, Karen ("I was a BBC foreign correspondent") Coleman fails to follow up with anything but silence.

Why do I believe it would have been fulsomely followed up if written by one of Coleman's peers in one of the small-selling Sunday newspapers? Because every week she begins with the exactly the same mantra. "There's a great piece today by X (insert a PC journalist's name) in the Sunday X (insert any paper with a smaller circulation than the Sunday Independent)."

I'm fed up. Fed up with Tamil Tigers too. So long Sri Lanka.

MONDAY

A Questions and Answers for the ages. Michael O'Brien, former Mayor of Clonmel, lifelong and loyal member of Fianna Fail, looking at Noel Dempsey, delivers a deathless denunciation of what was done to him.

Dempsey does the right thing. He sits and takes it. His stricken face says sorry in ways words could not do. The most moving moment is when O'Brien, no victim now, but a political animal, says: "You know me minister," and Dempsey nods 'yes', he knows Michael -- but never knew all he needed to know.

TUESDAY

In recent weeks I continually claimed that Newstalk's breakfast, lunchtime and afternoon current affairs are better than those on RTE. Claire Byrne, Eamon Keane and George Hook are informal but incisive, courteous but cutting, down home but not deferential. Check out my claim by comparing and contrasting RTE and Newstalk's interviews with Cori coordinator, Sister Marianne O'Connor, last Tuesday. Listen first to Cathal Mac Coille's lengthy yet largely ineffectual pursuit of Sr Marianne on RTE's Morning Ireland. She runs rings around him mostly because he cannot come up with a killer question -- which is always one that carries its its own answer.

Four minutes after she finished with Mac Coille, Sr Marianne confidently takes call from Claire Byrne and Ivan Yates of Newstalk -- and finds herself in the radio equivalent of Dante's Inferno.

Politely but persistently, Ivan picks over the property portfolio of Cori's congregations.

After that he turns to Cori's alleged failure to put on extra counselling lines after the Ryan report.

But when Sr Marianne contradicts him, giving him the choice of calling her a liar or letting her off the hook -- Claire Byrne swiftly comes up in close support and stuns Sr Marianne with this deceptively simple (but so difficult to come up with) killer question:

"I am just wondering how you would see Jesus Christ reacting today, if he was walking the earth today, how would he deal with this, and would he deal with it the way you're dealing with it this morning?"

Sr Marianne seems struck dumb -- I count six seconds of silence -- before sighing and saying: "I don't know how to answer that really."

Which answers it.

WEDNESDAY

Brian Lenihan, in bullish mode, tells Cori that the state will decide what happens to any money they cough up. Why has it taken Fianna Fail so long to find a forgotten voice; how to speak hard to the Roman Catholic Church?

For years it was Fine Gael that bobbed before the bishops' croziers. By contrast, Fianna Fail, whose founders were excommunicated during the civil war, did not hesitate to challenge the clerics. My father, a stalwart Fianna Fail supporter, was contemptuous of what he called crawthumping.

Both as a football fan and a fan of the Protestant tradition, he particularly cherished two clashes between Fianna Fail and the Church. The first involved a football match with Yugoslavia in 1955, the second was the Fethard on Sea boycott of 1957 -- about which my friend Gerry Gregg helped make that fine film, A Love Divided.

The football row began when Archbishop McQuaid called on Catholics not to attend a match in Dublin between Ireland and Yugoslavia as a protest against Tito's jailing of Cardinal Stepinac, a former Ustashe fascist wartime collaborator. All pious Catholics rushed to comply, as publicly as possible.

Among them was a well-known sports journalist who sanctimoniously said he would not cover the match. The Evening Press, which supported Fianna Fail, replied by running the hilarious headline: "Red Makes Green Turn Yellow".

Furthermore, far from bowing to the archbishop, the prominent Fianna Fail shadow minister Oscar Traynor threw in the ball to start the match at Dalymount Park on October 19, 1955.

Alas the Commies won 4-1, which caused my mother to remind my father: "they have the power."

Two years later, in 1957, de Valera dourly dealt a deathblow to the Fethard on Sea boycott of Protestant shops.

The following year Frank Aiken stood up to the bishops -- and the Americans -- on Red China's application to join the United Nations.

Finally of course, Brian Lenihan's father, as Minister for Justice, courageously challenged the Church by repealing the revolting censorship laws. So Brian Junior did not get it from the breeze. High time the rest of the Cabinet sniffed deeply at the same wind.

THURSDAY

For the past two weeks, the Seanad has reflected on the Ryan report much more deeply than the Dail. Today, as the plight of many of abuse victims arose from poverty, I suggest that as a mark of respect for the Ryan report we call for an amnesty for those serving prison sentences for minor offences against property, many of them victims of poverty.

Senators from all sides support this.

Apart from the humane aspects of opening the gates on over-crowded jails at the start of a hot summer, senators know that the release of 1,000 prisoners would save the state some ˆ250m each year.

Naturally there would be no amnesty for crimes against the person, including the murder of Joe Rafferty whose sister, Esther Rafferty Uzell, is running for Dublin Council.

Senator Maurice Cummins -- the scourge of Sinn Fein in the Seanad -- condemns the attacks on Esther's campaign car by Sinn Fein. Another reason to give Sinn Fein the cold shoulder in the local elections and in the European elections to vote De Rossa, Ryan and Mitchell for Dublin.

FRIDAY

Eamon Keane ends an exceptional week on Newstalk -- including a moving polemic from Mannix Flynn -- by asking Gabriel Byrne to give a gritty meditation on modern Ireland in the wake of the Ryan report.

Byrne recalls how he became friends with Mannix Flynn whom he met while working in the Project Theatre.

Back then, Byrne said, Mannix tried to tell people the truth about abuse, to no avail.

"He was the dog that barked in the night -- before any other dog barked."

Another good reason to give your vote to Mannix Flynn.

Later in the show, both Nell McCafferty and Senator Fiona O'Malley pour cold water on my call for an amnesty. Thank God.

If that wacky duo had supported it, I would have been worried there was something wrong with it.

 
 

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