Christian Brothers play the market while the taxpayer foots the bill for their crimes, writes Emer O’Kelly
Sunday June 14 2009
Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), a New York-based investment company founded by the De La Salle Brothers in 1981, has recently established a company called CBIS Global Funds which is described as an “off-shore fund based in Dublin”. The company wants to attract what it calls “ethical investments” from Catholic institutions in Europe and beyond.
Does everybody feel sick? Or is nausea reserved only for those who did not have their moral outlook warped by the kind of “good Catholic education” offered by these people and their ilk? It’s the kind of warped schooling that still has thousands of people in this country prepared, apparently, to trust their own children to schools owned and controlled by these greedy, blood-sucking, cruel, dishonest, unprincipled, immoral men and women who have creamed off millions of taxpayers’ money on the backs of abused child slaves. And just what do the holy brothers plan to do with these funds and the rest of their ill-gotten gains? On recently revealed experience we can be sure the main aim will be to ensure that the State authorities can’t get their hands on them. What a wonderful example of a moral code with which to imbue the coming generations. And we know how well they passed it on during past generations: they have produced serried ranks of thousands of Irish citizens who have equally warped moral codes when it comes to doing down their fellow citizens through greed and chicanery, and who persist in defending these people as offering a good moral and ethical grounding for life.
Solidarity with their tormented victims is easy when it doesn’t require action. Words and walking are cheap, as we saw on Wednesday. The words that would have required a sea-change in Irish thought weren’t uttered: “Get into the High Court. Now. Freeze their assets. Put in train the mechanism for taking them collectively and individually into the criminal court to answer for their sins — financial, violent, and sexual. Draft legislation to sequester all their funds on behalf of the State.”
The victims wept outside the Dail. Inside, the products of the Christian education offered by the brothers, priests, and nuns, sat smugly and talked of “consultation” with the abusers to PERSUADE them to “increase their offer of compensation”, and expressed more “sorrow”. The Brothers guided their moral outlook very well when they had them in the classrooms as children: blunted and skewed, it was letting the men and women in black off the hooks they deserved to hang from.
Outside the chamber, many of our brave public representatives were muttering the oft-heard mantra “Do you expect us to bankrupt the religious, who have done so much for this country?” Why not? They are morally bankrupt, so why not bankrupt them financially if that can offer some surcease from anguish for their victims, and some recompense to the taxpayers who now have been forced to realise that they have been funding religious greed for generations? Co-incidentally, on the same day, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland issued another statement after their ritual meeting of pomp and circumstance, saying how “ashamed, humble, and repentant” they felt. Their hypocritical arrogance remains breathtaking as they uttered words that should have choked them. The statement was drafted as it was being revealed that even up to a few months ago they were raging with all the force and authority at their command to deny their crimes, and even more importantly, to avoid being held financially to account for them.
The only ray of hope was the embarrassed, beaten floundering of that good man Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, as he tried to find some lame excuse for the vile behaviour of his fellows. He alone is not lost to all sense of shame. But his decency serves only to cast into pitiless relief the outrageous inhumanity of his fellows and their unrepentant refusal to accept the enormity of their crimes.
Ireland must not forget that these men and their female cohorts have lied, lied, and lied. They will not yield an inch or a cent until they are forced to with all the uncompromising power of the State. That must happen without delay.
Charles O’Rourke wrote:
” who paid the other 90%?, the Irish tax payer!. What? But they are criminals! yes we know that. Jesus you guys are really screwed up! Yes!.”
Yep. As long as the majority of the Irish remain “asleep”, our country will continue to be run by a gang of sociopaths. And they don’t even have to use guns to make the masses do their bidding!
Has Rome left Ireland, the collective psyche yet? No, not by a long shot!
Well said Paddy, I don’t know where I would be without you. Must admit that these past weeks since the release of the Ryan report have drained me and I find myself in a state I have never experienced before, Yes the religious have shamed themselves and dragged Ireland into the sewers of Europe. Not easy to explain to Europeans why Ireland is the World Capital of Paedophilia. Are they in jail? I have been asked.No I reply.They are protected. By who?. The Irish Government I reply.What?. Yes they made a deal with the Irish government that they would not take part in any investigation if the perpetrators were named, What?. No courts?; No, no courts , they don’t do courts in Ireland, not if you are a holy man or woman. What?. Have they been sued?. No ,they made a deal with the government to pay a sum which turned out to be a tenth of the cost.What?, who paid the other 90%?, the Irish tax payer!. What? But they are criminals! yes we know that. Jesus you guys are really screwed up! Yes!.
The crux of the problem, it seems to me, is that the VAST MAJORITY of the Irish people are still in the psychological thrall of Rome, aka the Catholic Church. And when adults are still in the grip of the fear – that was the norm of their childhood experience – they will not challenge the prevailing Status Quo. Why is it, for example, that more than 50% of the current Irish public have opted to take out Private Health Insurance – for a shit Health Service – instead of challenging the government as to why they will not provide us with a decent public Health System? Its because the Irish people, per se, have swallowed whole the medieval Roman Catholic of the Rich -v- the Poor. In other words, the Rich (regardless of how they make their money) are deemed to be Good, whilst the Poor are deemed to be Bad, regardless of how they came to be poor.
I think its about time we Irish ran those Roman Catholic sociopaths out of our country. They’ve done enough damage to our collective psyche. We could start by razing their palaces to the ground! One only has to walk approx 500 yards in Dublin city alone to see how much land they own. Its fucking crazy!
The journey to The Hague begins with enough people wanting to make that journey and a good lawyer.
Paddy, bear with me one more time. Suddenly it hit me that you are absolutely right. The Hague is the only road to take if there is to be an irreversible change in the way we wish to define ourselves. I fear that lifting the whole issue out of Ireland to the Hague is the cleansing that Ireland so desperately needs if it is to take a new course in to the future. How does one begin the journey to Hague?.
Bringing it to the Hague is possible if groups make a common appeal and Amnesty put weight behind such an appeal. Human rights groups could come on board. The Hague exists just for those situations were a state fails in it,s duty or is unable or unwilling to apply natural justice to it,s people. Me thinks that Archbishop Martin and other well meaning clerics would in some strange way not shed tears if this was to happen.This would spare the Pope the trouble of disbanding those orders. As it looks just now it’s “who will do what first” game that is going on.
I’ve been a long time advocate of going to The Hague. My view is that we’ll never make any progress here in Ireland – too many vested interested.
Paddy, there is no legal hinder to requesting that this be brought before The Hague. That is the whole idea behind The Hague who take on such cases because these crimes are so often committed by “government’s Crimes of failed states now have a place to go and so do the victims.
Many of us are ashamed to be Irish right now and will be for a long time. The religious orders have brought disgrace on the nation as a whole.
If these people who committed such vile crimes were dealing drugs the CAB (Criminal Assets Bureau) would be in and would confiscate their assets. Time we either brought the Hague in here or we went to the Hague – that’s a must do.
These men and women of God only have one God and that is an evil one who worships money and power above all else.
Now we see the brothers and nuns still brainwashing the children of today with the same lies and creating fear in their minds to keep them under control.
I refused to teach in their schools when I got jobs with them, because they wanted me to sign a contract pushing the Catholic religion, which in concience in 1977 I could not do.
I gave up teaching when I learned the lies we were supposed to feed the children in our care.
I home schooled my own, to keep them free of this cult indoctrination.
Many thought I was mad, but now they are waking up to see the reality of it all.
Our children had and have a bounty on their heads and the tax payer foots the bills and the boys in frocks put it into offshore accounts- THAT IS OUR MONEY.
The Government CAN GET IT BACK.
After all that is the Power we gave it.
What do men who took vows of poverty need with all that money while the poor starve.
Jesus would have given his last crumb to the poor, so these men have noting to do with Jesus and all to do with AntiChrist.
I am ashamed to be Irish and have been for many moons now.
Good God, using our innocent children to make profit from-
Disgusting.!!!!!
Any other organisation found to be acting so criminally the police would have them hauled away in chains ! There is no way survivors can compromise with these kind of people. I think maybe it’s time to consider calling in the Hague … and start hounding these criminals wherever they’re hiding on the planet.
These Christian Brothers have challenged the State and the Archbishop of Dublin and the people of Ireland and do not hesitate to challenge the Pope if necessary.They have been revealed as a criminal organisation nationally and internationally and yet the Dublin government trembles at the prospect of holding them to account for their dealings. When thinking in terms of “failed state” Ireland comes to mind.