Tag Archives: Bishops

Down by the River: Not your Great-Granny’s Ireland

Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River opens ominously with a road in a verdant and decaying rural Ireland. “The road is silent, somnolent yet with a speech of its own, speaking back to them, father and child, through trappings of sun and fretted verdure, speaking of old mutinies and a fresh crime mounting in the blood.” Hey, wait one hot second, Gladiola! Yes, dear reader. This is all wrong. My great-grandmother was born in Ireland, and I went there last year on a golf trip. Where are the wee folk and the pints of Guinness? The songs about unicorns? My apologies, dear reader, but this is a story by Edna O’Brien. She’s Ireland’s William Faulkner. Or, perhaps better put, William Faulkner is America’s Edna O’Brien. She writes about Ireland in all its melancholy and sordidness, so fear and superstition appear on every page – song too, but no wee folk; no unicorns.

Mary (that’s a loaded name in a predominantly Catholic country) is 14 years old. Her father is James. He loves horses, but he’s a cruel man who believes in “might before right.” He’s been raping Mary for quite some time now, and she is desperate to get away from him. She and her sister, Elizabeth (another loaded name), visit a remote shrine and pray for their father to be cured of his “epilepsy”. They speak in code, because the truth is too awful to say, even to God.

There’s another truth too awful to say: birth can be a brutally violent act. Mary witnesses this when her father helps a mare give birth. “Mare and foal, though of the same flesh, are warring, two warring things, not like a mother and its young, each fighting the other, except that the foal is stronger, her energy and her thrusting prodigal now.” Soon after, Mary becomes pregnant. When James finds out, he attacks her with a broom stick trying to cause a miscarriage. He was kinder to the horse and foal.

This is Ireland in the 1990s. Abortion is illegal. Bishops control the medical profession, and society decries the “abortion holocaust” taking place in England. Mary concludes suicide is her only option. Betty, an older cousin, rescues Mary from the river and figures out her secret. She helps Mary get to England, but a neighbor discovers the plan and alerts the authorities. Betty and Mary are brought back to Ireland before the abortion occurs.

Now the bishops and lawyers get involved. Mary becomes public property, and the public presumes to know what is best for the born and unborn. But the public only knows Mary as the “Magdalene” so how could they know best.

Time is relentless, and a decision must be made. But who gets to make it. Everyone demands to be heard, but whose voice should be heard? It’s telling we don’t hear Mary’s voice until the end. It’s beautiful.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Look at What’s Happening in France – Don’t Look Here

On rare occasions a powerful and secretive institution may become so corrupt, it should not be trusted to police itself. Fortunately that theory doesn’t apply to the Catholic Church.

Look at what’s happening in France. In October 2021, the Bishops Conference recognized that the Catholic Church was guilty of allowing the sexual abuse of children to become “systemic” after an independent investigation found an estimated 216,000 children were victims of abuse by the clergy since 1950. See! They acknowledge there might be a problem – though they haven’t really said what they plan to do about it. But, obviously, they can continue to police themselves.

And let’s not get distracted by (what some would call) a scandal. France is an isolated incident. As is Ireland, Australia, Germany, and all the others. In the United States, the Catholic Church has been far more honest. A few dioceses have filed bankruptcy so some assets can be sold for the benefit of victims (assuming there are any). Now when I say assets, I certainly don’t mean all assets. Just those the public knows about.

So have faith. More importantly, please continue to send us money. We actually want your money more than we want your faith.

And don’t worry about these peccadillos. I like that word because it sounds like peck of dildos – so it’s funny and we can all laugh and maybe change the topic. Perhaps to more words that sound like sex toys.

Father Orifice (pronounced Orifeechee), Chaplain of Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology