This blog has gone into hyperdrive with the huge demand for the report below on the split within Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle. Look out for my article on it in the Belfast Telegraph tomorrow.
And, while you’re here, my Pentecostalist friends, why not have a look around. I have been building this blog for months and there is a lot of material.
Those of you with an interest in reminiscence and whimsy (with a touch of darkness too) might like the podcasts on Barney.
Please also visit my audio arts blog ArtsTalk if you have a deeper interest in arts and culture than, say, your average arts and culture minister might be expected to have.
I have just done a report for Sunday Sequence about the split in the congregation of Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, the largest Pentecostalist type church in Belfast, the spiritual fiefdom of Pastor James McConnell.
If you missed the programme and you can’t pick it up on iplayer, because you live outside Northern Ireland, or if you just prefer to hang out in this site, here it is:
Some years ago I was invited to speak at a conference in Armenia. Afterwards we were driven to meet the Catholicus, or Pope, of the Armenian church. He was annoyed about Northern Irish evangelicals poaching souls from him while bringing aid to victims of the Armenian earthquake.
Anyway, on the way back to Yerevan, the capital, I got separated from my translator. Our minibus took a detour up a hill to a cemetery and suddenly we were being escorted by soldiers to a grave and handed big gladiolis to lay there in tribute to whoever was inside. All of this was filmed.
So somewhere there is a little film of me paying my respects to an Armenian military figure whose name and achievements, benign or otherwise, I know nothing about.
Which means that I am ill placed to criticise Irish poets who performed a reading in Queens University today in honour of AJP Abdul Kalam, the founder of the Indian nuclear weapons programme.
Still, it would have been nice if someone had told him that the incineration of Pakistan should not be an option in any circumstances.
I had taken this picture of the evening light in the trees before noticing the couple on the right. And if they hadn’t been too busy to see me they would, presumably, have taken me for a peeping tom. Honest, I didn’t mean it. But they are in exactly the right place to balance the image, so I can’t resist publishing it. I hope no one in it is kissing somebody they shouldn’t oughta.
Just to come back to the theme of beards for a moment: I got seduced into setting up one of those Facebook quiz things: ‘how much do you know about…?’ – in this case me.
And one of the questions I posted was: How does Malachi trim his beard?
The options included, biting it, plucking it, trimming it with a babyliss strimmer and ‘he doesn’t, it stopped growing years ago.’
All three people who took the quizz went for that last one.
I had never realised that we hairy chinned ones were such a mystery to the rest of you.
No one took responsibility for the rape and brutalisation of children by religious orders when it was happening but there are more ways to respond now than simply by being appalled and swearing it will never happen again.
For a start, the orders which were responsible should be disbanded. This will only have token value, since there are few people left in them here and they have no responsibility for children any more. But if they stood down themselves it would be a singular admission of disgrace, and that is what is required of them.
Further, the state should impound their property and reverse legal sweetheart deals to limit the amount of compensation they would have to pay.
Those who continue to celebrate the contribution of these orders should examine their consciences carefully.
Currently there are Christian Brother trusts running schools on both sides of the border, preserving, as they see it, the ethos of the Christian Brothers.
Well the legacy of the Brothers may include some doctors and solicitors who think they got a fine education, but the suffering inflicted by the Brothers was not a fair price for that.
Those trusts should divest themselves of the name and reputation of the Brothers.
Further, I would like to see the history of the depredations, the cynicism and the corruption of the orders and much of the secular church taught to children in schools. It is as important that the history of this hideous period be taught to children here as it is that the history of the Holocaust be taught in Germany.
The atrocities were different in scale and degree, but the story is the same, of how ordinary people can become bestial.
And if the story is told, it has to be related to the global story. In many other countries, the sexual exploitation of disadvantaged children by Irish missionaries was disastrous.
In Canada, they were involved in running schools for Native American children. Those children were trained for servility before their white masters. Thousands were raped and many of those who fled the schools died.
In Australia they were responsible for the importation of Irish orphans and their severance from all hope of knowing who they were.
And if the evidence of experience now is that these celibate orders fostered sadism and sexual perversion, then we must look closely at how they are now conducting themselves in countries where they still function and claim respect.
There are no Christian Brothers teaching in Ireland but there are many in India and in several African countries.
If Ireland is to accept responsibility for the suffering that past generations allowed to be inflicted on children, then it must speak to those other countries and alert them to the danger that their own children may be abused in this way.This could be an Irish diplomatic responsibility.
Never again should these orders be respected or their word be taken untested about what they are doing.
And then we must try to understand how these things happen. Presumably many of those who joined the orders did so with an honest intention of living a disciplined and celibate life. Many of them left home at 14 to join junior seminaries, before their own sexuality was awakened and then had to learn to live with an impossible pledge to celibacy taken before they were fully formed.
These boys and girls also swore obedience to their orders and were, therefore, easily manipulated.
And then they were clustered together in single sex institutions, treated like gormless functionaries by their own superiors and put in charge of vulnerable children, who served the role of the cat that the office boy kicks.
But we have seen it in prisons and concentration camps and in English public schools, that a combination of sexual repression and power produces sadism.
Our own beloved CS Lewis, in a book regarded as a spiritual classic, Surprised By Joy, describes, indulgently, the routine sexual exploitation of little boys in an English public school.
These things were worse in Ireland than elsewhere, and where they were at their worst elsewhere it was often Irish clergy and religious who were doing it. That is the unforgettable legacy of a proud Irish missionary endeavour.
Well, let’s at least be sure, as far as we can, that future generations remember and understand, and that anywhere on this earth that an Irish missionary is in charge of children there is someone keeping a close watch on him.
Who do you respect?
Set aside for a minute the individuals you look up to, because they have impressed you.
What category of people do you think deserves a respectful nod, being – by virtue of their work or standing – more important than you?
None?
Well, that’s good.
But until very recent times, it was obvious who the leaders in society were.
If you were preparing to meet your bank manager, for instance, you would put on a tie or your best shoes. You would want him to see you at your best, as a responsible and dependable person. You might even have felt a little frisson of humility when ushered into the presence.
That was six months ago.
Now what do you think of bankers?
They have plummetted in the public regard from being seen as the people who oiled the cogs of business, from the small company to the major enterprise; they were the ones who assessed the credit you could afford to handle and who endorsed your efforts with a little patronage.
Now they are widely seen as scheisters and rogues, who turned out not to be deft managers of credit but financial alchemists.
I mean, thanks for the sub prime mortgage, chaps, but did you have to give every one else one?
But the speed of the collapse of the reputation of bankers, dizzying as it was, seems sluggish compared to the collapse in the standing of members of parliament.
These are people who live by ritual, are addressed as honourable and right honourable, just in case we shouldn’t notice what fine and elevated people they are. And, sure enough, they are our law makers and also our servants.
And their position was underwritten by the great ideological principle of our times, democracy. So even when they were making a hash of things, we could allow them to imagine that they had the people behind them.
Then we got the slow erosion of respect for them through spin and media management, followed by the total crash of their stock, as it emerged that they had been fiddling their expenses and using them, in many cases, for property speculation, while, at the same time, lecturing us on the need to tighten our belts, limit our payrise claims and live off miserly benefits.
I mean, how low and hypocrtical do you have to be to string out pensioners with vague promises of future increases while shuffling them parcels of coal through the winter, while at the same time all around you MPs are shuffling their receipts to maximise returns from the tax payer?
The problem for the MPs now is that they can not credibly demand that people pay their taxes fairly, any more than bankers can insist on our probity.
And, if two pillars of rectitude alone had been deflated within months of each other, that would be remarkable but there is a third, the church.
OK, it is a long time since people saluted the priest on the street and got out the best china for him when he called.
Today you might be advised, if he did call, to usher your children upstairs out of harm’s way.
The implosion in the prestige of the church has been progressive over several decades. The religious orders had collapsed before the scandals.
But there was a time when a man or woman in black robes, walking towards you on the street, would prompt you to straighten up and show a little respect.
Who inspires that reaction in you now? Anybody?
“Snoring was nature’s guard dog. At the ancient campfire, the low rumble was probably a warning to all dangerous animals to stay away, for the man is never more bestial and appalling than when he is shuddering from deep in his throat up to his sinuses. “
This blog has gone into hyperdrive with the huge demand for the report below on the split within Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle. Look out for my article on it in the Belfast Telegraph tomorrow. And, while you’re here, my Pentecostalist friends, why not have a look around. I have been building this blog for months and [...]
I have just done a report for Sunday Sequence about the split in the congregation of Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, the largest Pentecostalist type church in Belfast, the spiritual fiefdom of Pastor James McConnell. If you missed the programme and you can’t pick it up on iplayer, because you live outside Northern Ireland, or if you just [...]
Some years ago I was invited to speak at a conference in Armenia. Afterwards we were driven to meet the Catholicus, or Pope, of the Armenian church. He was annoyed about Northern Irish evangelicals poaching souls from him while bringing aid to victims of the Armenian earthquake. Anyway, on the way back to Yerevan, the capital, [...]
I had taken this picture of the evening light in the trees before noticing the couple on the right. And if they hadn’t been too busy to see me they would, presumably, have taken me for a peeping tom. Honest, I didn’t mean it. But they are in exactly the right place to balance the [...]
Posted by odoherty 
Posted by odoherty 
Posted by odoherty 
