Once upon a time, the Great Single Narrative of Ireland was largely provided by the Catholic Church, Myers states in The Irish Independent
Kevin Myers writes: The late Mary Raftery was rightly a muchrespected and muchloved journalist. And what follows is certainly not criticism of her or her achievements, but of our Great Single Narrative.
Once upon a time, the Great Single Narrative of Ireland was largely provided by the Catholic Church.
Now it comes from the new clergy in the secular media. In this current GSN, the hapless Irish people were oppressed by a sadistic caste of sexually depraved priests, who raped, brutalised and violated children at their ease, immune to all legal consequence.
As with all successful GSNs, there is sufficient truth in these allegations to sustain the myth. But within the culture that has emerged around this GSN, virtually all memory of the selflessness and dedication of scores of thousands of priests, brothers and nuns down the centuries has vanished.
And when you consider the cynical alliance the Catholic hierarchy struck with Charles Haughey’s Fianna Fail in the 1980s, you shouldn’t be too surprised that modern secular Ireland is not too charitably disposed towards the Catholic Church.
The hierarchy, better than most, knew about Haughey; about his coauthorship of the Provisional IRA; about his financial malfeasance: and about his compulsive philandering.
How sweetly paradoxical it was that Haughey’s political successor, Bertie Ahern who – scenting the changing in the breeze – aligned Fianna Fail with the emerging post- Catholic GSN, leaving the Catholic hierarchy as the jilted old spinster at the altar. Bertie Ahern’s creation of the Redress Board, along with the sudden and revolutionary new jurisprudential dogma that an allegation of abuse constituted proof thereof, changed just about everything in Irish life.