Staring Into The Sun And Other Irish Lunacies

"The church has always been appalling. I'm an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sinner who only pays lip service to the church, but I was trying to tell the truth about how it used totally illiterate people to seduce everyone through terror. It has always been like that and it's like that now and the masses have always gone along with it. "America is full of narrow-minded bigots who are terrified of any criticism of the church. They forced me to make twenty-three cuts before it could be released in America... Hypocrites!" [Ouch! Thought he was talking about Ireland there!]
- Director Ken Russell on his masterpiece, "The Devils".

"This is not the age of manners. This is the age of kicking people in the crotch and telling them something and getting a reaction. I want to shock people into awareness. I don't believe there's any virtue in understatement."
- Russell to "Time" magazine in 1971.

By Charley Brady

I think that Russell should count himself lucky, even though he's a bit harsh on you guys.

When the film was released in 1971 there was in Ireland no question of cuts. It was banned outright. To this day it is impossible to see until a film club shows it, and even then it is not in the version that he made.

No wonder his frustration.

What would you expect? It was a serious look at that awful blend of politics and religion; and even though it centres on real-life events that took place centuries ago I find it as relevant as ever.

If it were released today it would still face the same problems because even after everything we now know, this is still a country that holds old Father Church in reverence.

Look at a swine like Father O'Donovane: this upholder of the good Christian Faith forgot to tell the Revenue that he owned 13 homes in the region.

Guess what? The suckers that he asked for loot to be put into the collection box day in and day out didn't know this either.

When the revenue asked him to cough up a few shekels this week - well, when I say a few shekels what I mean is €433,000 in personal tax for this year alone - the Holy Father said that they were a "shower of bastards" before adding that they are "all c***s."

Charming, don't you think?

In a hilarious statement yesterday we heard that the foul- mouthed and very wealthy ratbag had been given time off for and I quote: "a period of prayer and reflection."

Back to "The Devils":

Skip forward almost forty years from our Philistine approach to a genuine work of art and this week we have a rather fetching and beautifully lit advert where, in order to promote an animal charity, the model Joanna Krupa is naked with only a very large crucifix protecting her modesty.

I must admit that I glanced at it and thought: "Wow, she's gorgeous" before turning the page and getting onto real news.

It was only later when it was pointed out to me that the Catholic Church is very, very unhappy as only they can be that it dawned on me that religious groups feel the advert to be "inappropriate".

Are they having a laugh or what?

Not one of our disgraced bishops can tell right from wrong. The Vatican, led by His Holiness Herr Pope Bennie, who couldn't give a damn about what Irish people want to hear from him, hasn't even had the decency to issue a statement and yet they find the time to - dare I say it? - drool over an advert featuring a half- covered model?

Have they nothing better to do?

I guess that the good old self-flagellation whips will be coming out again tonight. Not until these saintly Keepers of the One True Faith have had a good old browse though, just to convince them that they really are outraged enough.

I'm outraged too, you know. I too am a normal sinner, although I feel no need to punish myself or my poor old back for the dark thoughts that I'm having.

Like for instance:

Dark thoughts about why the Garda, who covered up for the priesthood because they felt it "wasn't in their remit" to tackle child rapists, aren't being hauled across the coals and banged up in the slimiest jail you could think of?

Thoughts about why Bishop Donal Murray, Bishop Jim Moriarty, Bishop Martin Drennan, Bishop Ray Field and Bishop Eamonn Walsh are not resigning out of pure shame.

I do of course use the term "Bishop" in a purely sarcastic sense since anyone who covers up for perverts should never in any sane country be even allowed the consideration of resigning.

Boot them out and charge them with the criminal acts that they are guilty of. Personal opinion, obviously.

OK, it's time for a deep breath and an apology.

I felt that with last week's article I was trying to hold the utter horror that I felt at the Murphy Report in check and wanted to give the simple facts.

Nobody - and I mean NOBODY, unless you are a degenerate who should have just joined the Catholic Church when you were old enough to realise that your obsessions would give a shoe-in to the biggest and best organised paedophile ring in the history of the planet - should be surprised that I was a little soft on you.

My reasoning was that nobody who even approaches anything resembling sanity would want to read the full details of what the men in their expensive frocks and assorted regalia did to children.

How wrong could I be?

I was stunned by the amount of people who emailed me to say that I had gotten the point across without going into the whole awful details of that terrible report.

Thanks, I hadn't expected that.

But I should have been tougher, no matter how horrendous it is to read. These kids - as they were, children - deserved more than me holding back.

Yet even now there is a backlash, claiming that the "hysterical media" have fuelled this awful, awful period that lasted the best part of eight decades. And let's be honest, it's been going on for centuries, not eight decades: it is only now that we're getting around to actually showing them for what they are.

I was sick today reading a letter in an Irish paper that basically says that the media is to blame for the "hysteria" surrounding Holy Father Church.

Hysteria. Good that, isn't it?

We're only talking about what might have been for the abused that never had the adulthood that they might have had. We're only talking about the people who ended up as shadows because of a lifetime of blaming themselves for having sinned since the priests covered themselves by inflicting guilt onto every single one of them.

We're only talking about children who grew into drug addicts and alcoholics because the clergy, the cops and the government wanted all of this hideousness to just go away.

We're only talking about lost generations who might have gone on to write the most beautiful of poetry, sublime music or great books but didn't because they had their heads screwed with in order to satisfy a moment's lust at the filthy hands of devils in a dog collar.

Forget the unwritten books and poetry.

Many who ended up as winos might just have had loving lives with a family that some twisted and sick individuals decreed was never to be, simply because they had decided to spend their shrivelled, sick seed on those who were utterly helpless.

I very occasionally hope that there actually IS such an unlikely entity as a God so that He can decide that you spend an eternity thinking about what you have done and what you have created.

What we're not talking about is a smug, smiley face like golfer Tiger Woods who has found that for all the money in the world it catches up with you in the end.

This is human frailty. We can be all guilty of that. (Although in fairness this previous family-loving paragon of virtue does seem to have done it to a pretty spectacular degree.)

When it comes to the church and their apologists at this time we are simply talking about Evil. Old-fashioned concept, that: Evil with a capital E.

The monsters who did this and the monsters - and I don't bloody differentiate between them - who covered up are purely Evil in a way that I don't understand and sincerely hope that no one who reads these columns can ever understand.

This is not about the terrible creatures that you meet, if you are unlucky enough, who have a complete lack of empathy with their fellow humans.

Psychiatrists will call them sociopaths and I don't care about these things either. I'm just not interested in what makes them tick, neither them or the psychopaths or the Evil that we have now seen very clearly is a force that can actually draw like-minded scum together.

If they put themselves in a position where they are able to harm those that I love then I would have no regrets whatsoever in seeing them wiped from the face of the planet.

I never did understand that idea that "every man's death diminishes me". Just never understood it.

And yes, I'm aware that this puts me in a strange position, these thoughts on the nature of pure unmitigated badness, these thoughts of Love and Evil.

Like every one else I simply don't understand how such wickedness can be

In Russell's film he plays the title credit over the faces of King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu (complete with left-handed sign of the cross).

There's no doubting in those two shots who he considers the real devils to be. Church and State, how are ye?

If he were to remake it for an Irish audience he would be spoiled for choice. And it would never get made because it is far too close to the bone.

A confession about my own wickedness: I said in relation to the "apparitions" at Knock Shrine a few weeks back in this column that any idiot who stares into the sun for too long is bound to see things that aren't there.

So when I saw that one doctor is now treating people who have damaged their retinas by staring straight at it I just had to laugh.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, so yes, I guess I am a bad person.

Once again, if I am not hit with a bolt of lightning from the sun then I hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net