RADIO REVIEW: IT IS SOMETIMES a person's staunchest defender who can do them the most damage. On Monday's The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays) Msgr Maurice Dooley was responding to the revelations about how Catholic primate Sean Brady did not report the sexual abuse of two children by the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth to the Garda in 1975, children who were then asked to sign an oath of secrecy.
Dooley said Brady had no legal obligation to report the case to the Garda. Matt Cooper asked,“What about the difference between right and wrong?” Dooley replied, “Are you accusing Cardinal Brady or the then Fr Brady of not knowing the difference between right and wrong?” as if such a statement was an outrage.
Cooper asked if he thought Brady had a responsibility to report the “predatory nature and the sexual assaults against children by this monster Brendan Smyth?” Dooley replied: “Absolutely not. He was engaged in a private in camera investigation on behalf of the Church . . .” He even compared the role of a priest to that of a doctor or lawyer who wouldn’t go “blabbing” confidential information.
Dooley made sure to politely greet campaigner Colm O’Gorman when he came on the line, which in itself felt contrived and stage-managed. But then he slipped. “We have jousted before,” Dooley said. It was a bizarre, yet telling, choice of words.
“I don’t see this as a joust,” O’Gorman replied. “This isn’t a game or a sport to me, this is about lives.” He added, “To be perfectly honest, half the time I’d like to have you speak for an awful lot longer, because every time you open your mouth and come out with this mealy-mouthed, pathetic, legalistic nonsense, you expose the corruption at the heart of your own institution, an institution that has lost any sight of concept of truth, of justice, of love, or of human compassion.”
Most radio stations broadcast the Cardinal’s remarks at Mass on St Patrick’s Day: “I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart . . . Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in.” But, 35 years later, it was too little too late.
Colette Kinsella's documentary Children of the Nation: St Pat's for All-Inclusive Parade(Newstalk 106-108, Wednesday) told the story of Brendan Fay from Drogheda, his journey to New York, his exclusion from the official St Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue (the Ancient Order of the Hibernians in 2010 don't allow gay groups to march) and his role as a co-founder in 1999 of an alternative St Patrick's Day parade in Queens.
He left home to join the Christian Brothers: “It was there I acquired a major dose of guilt about my sexuality, Irish terror. I truly believed that God hated me.” One of last year’s marchers at the Queens Parade said, “There’s so much glitter it’s not funny!” That’s something one can never have too much of in a parade or in life – glitter, and lots of it – especially at a time like this. The programme was neither a complete profile of Fay, nor a satisfying taste of the alternative parade, but it made for seasonal listening nevertheless.
In fairness to producer Ronan Kelly, he never claimed his fly-on-the-wall Documentary On One: The Curious Ear – Shopping In Mullingar(RTÉ Radio One, Saturday) was exploring any profound depths of the Irish condition. "Don't ask what this programme is about," Kelly said, "it just trails after a man walking around the town." He got that right. The man was writer Michael Harding.
Harding came across photographs of Princess Diana, JFK and Joe Dolan in a mechanic’s shop window. He told the mechanic that he used to live in Grove Court, Mullingar. “It was like living in Poland; a lot of the neighbours were from Eastern Europe,” he said, adding, “A lot of people say the Polish women raised the bar for the Irish women . . .” Kelly tactfully pointed out that neither man was a ringer for George Clooney. “It was here before that,” the mechanic said. “The young Itinerant women raised the bar first.” But, but . . . Travellers are Irish too.
Afterwards, Harding said, "I associate that kind of conversation with Swift's Ireland or some kind of English-speaking medieval world that's confident in itself . . . It's what conversation was about 200 years ago. Nowadays, conversation is always supposed to be serious and earnest conversation about morality and ethics." There is room in life for both, for sure. But sometimes The Curious Earshould take a tip from George Bernard Shaw and stick to the weather and people's health.
