The Vatican's Response to the Irish Government: First Thoughts

Whether or not it was the Californian Senator Hiram Johnson who coined the phrase, 'when war comes, the first casualty is truth,' is a matter of some debate. What's clear, though, is that others expressed a similar sentiment before him. Samuel Johnson, for instance, writing in The Idler in 1758, numbered the diminution of the love of truth among the calamities of war. More than two thousand years before Johnson, however, the Athenian Thucydides had made the very same point in his description of social unrest and civil war in the Greek world of the fifth-century BC:

'Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.'

I've been thinking about this passage quite a bit over the past few days, as I've been watching from afar the reactions in Ireland to the Vatican's response to the Cloyne Report and to the views expressed about that report by the Irish government.

I happen to think that the response is a good one. It comprehensively explains the Vatican's own actions in connection with the Cloyne Report in a calm and measured way, attempting to banish misconceptions while at the same time seeking to defuse tensions.

Unfortunately, it seems that where the current Irish government is concerned, to be accurate is to be 'very technical and legalistic', while facts are to be dismissed as 'pettifogging detail'. For others, familiarity with what the Cloyne Report actually says is not straightforward evidence of the document having been read in a careful and responsible way, but rather is the unmistakeable sign that 'the gimlet eye of the canon lawyer' has been at work. 

I'm not sure when accuracy, honesty, and thoroughness stopped being regarded as virtues. I may have been away too long.

Anyway, Let's take a look at the Vatican's response. Not in detail -- it's short enough for everyone who actually cares about this matter to read the whole thing for themselves, and I'll return to this tomorrow in any case -- but just to pull out a few salient points to help in thinking about it. It might be worthwhile, first, to refresh your memories on the key issues related to the Cloyne Report.


1. Who's the response for?
The response is addressed, quite explicitly, to the Irish Government, in the person of the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs. It is a formal diplomatic communication from the government of one state to that of another. Atypically, this communication has been published on the Vatican website, but this is in the interests of transparency and of the need to refute publicly certain public allegations made against the Vatican. Unlike last year's pastoral letter it is not directed to the Irish Church or the Irish people in general, and should not be read as though it is.

This must especially be kept in mind when Irish politicians or pundits complain about the response being largely devoted to stuff that's of little interest to Irish parents or the Irish people in general. Leaving aside how I'd hope that Irish people would, in the main, still be interested in the truth, the response isn't addressed to Irish parents or the Irish people in general. It's addressed to the Government.


2. What does the response address?
As requested by the Irish Government, the letter is a response to two things: the Cloyne Report itself, and the Irish Government's views on the matter. At its heart is a response to the Tánaiste's demand for an explanation of why, in the Government's view, the Vatican intervened to have priests believe they could in conscience evade their responsibilities under Irish law:

'I want to know why this State, with which we have diplomatic relations, issued a communication, the effect of which was that very serious matters of the abuse of children in this country were not reported to the authorities.'

Given the Cloyne Report's allegations about the effect of one letter from the Vatican, the Governmental comments about that claim and allegations of Vatican interference in the development of the Cloyne Report, and the subsequent parliamentary censure of the Vatican, it is entirely natural that the Vatican response focuses, in the main, on those claims. The Irish Government made very serious allegations about the Vatican. It's hardly surprising that the Vatican's response is a rebuttal of those charges.


3. Why doesn't it say more about abuse and cover-up in Cloyne?
Why would it? The letter's a response to a demand from the Irish Government for an explanation about the Vatican's own actions; it's not a response to a demand for a comment on the behaviour of Irish clergy.

The Vatican takes pains in the response to avoid interfering in the business of the Irish State, and as such properly refrains from commenting on the detail of matters which may yet come before the Irish courts. Having said that, it utterly condemns the abuse of children by Irish clergy, is unambiguous in its condemnation of the failures of John Magee and Denis O'Callaghan to follow either the Irish bishops' agreed child-protection policies or the universal rules of the Church as a whole, and expresses deep sorrow for abuse committed by Irish clerics, and for the suffering undergone by their victims.

Pundits and politicians wittering and whinging about how 'the Vatican just doesn't get it' are themselves missing the point. The Vatican was asked for an explanation of why it allegedly interfered in and obstructed Irish matters, and it has given such an explanation. Anything else is completely off-topic. This response is very much to the point.


4. Okay, well, what exactly are the issues the Vatican's addressing?
A few things, really, all of them being concrete and clearly defined.

• The Cloyne Report's claim that in a 1997 letter the Vatican refused the Irish bishops' request that their 1996 Framework Document be granted  formal recognition and given the status of Canon Law (4.21).
• The Cloyne Report's claim that the Vatican letter undermined the Irish bishops' Framework Document by describing it as a 'study document' (1.18, 4.21).
• The Cloyne Report's claim that the Vatican's  letter greatly strengthened the position of those in the Irish Church who were opposed to the implementation of the Framework Document, and encouraged them in their opposition to it (1.76, 4.22, 4.91).
• The Tánaiste's claim that 'the Vatican intervened to effectively have priests believe they could in conscience evade their responsibilities under Irish law'.
• The Taoiseach's claim that, 'for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse [the Cloyne Report] exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.' 
• The Taoiseach's implication that the Pope takes the view that the Church is not bound by the standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy.
• The Taoiseach's claim that the Vatican responded to evidence from Cloyne abuse victims in a way that was legalistic rather than sympathetic.
• The Dáil motion that deplored the Vatican’s intervention as contributing to the undermining of the child protection framework and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish Bishops.

5. Didn't Enda also accuse the Vatican of downplaying and managing the rape and torture of children in order to uphold the power and reputation of the Church?
He did, yes. The Vatican's response doesn't directly address this, as it's a very broad and vague claim, and one which is in no way supported by the Cloyne Report. I don't see how it could have been addressed head-on without escalating matters further; it seems to me from reading the Vatican's response that the Vatican is in fact pulling its punches, stopping short of pointing out the clear fact that the Cloyne Report, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, and the Dáil had all, in effect, made claims against the Vatican that would under other circumstances constitute defamation under Irish law.

That said, the response points out that during the period covered by the Cloyne Report, the Vatican received no evidence of abuse in Cloyne until 2005, when one case was submitted to Rome (21.40), with the effect that the offending priest was barred from exercising his priestly ministry (21.62); he has since, of course, been given an eighteen-month suspended sentence by the Irish State. Since then, a few cases have been referred to Rome in 2009, but as no decision on these cases had been made at the time the Report had been drawn up, the Report didn't comment on the Vatican's handling of them in any sense; Enda could hardly have had them in mind when he made his claims about how the Vatican responded to abuse allegations from Cloyne. Implicitly, then, by showing how the only abuse case handled in full by the Vatican while the Murphy Commission was investigating Cloyne had resulted in the barring of a priest from acting as one, the response demonstrates the absurdity of the Taoiseach's claim.

What's more, the response details at length, in sections entitled 'Church legislation on child protection', 'Circular Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (3 May 2011)', and 'Specific attention to the situation in Ireland: the Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland (2010)', the constructive steps the Vatican has taken to address the problem of child abuse by clergy, steps that can hardly be dismissed as attempts to downplay abuse.

If the 2002 SAVI figures are accurate, over a quarter of Irish adults are survivors of child sexual abuse, with roughly one adult in 240 having been abused by a priest. This is a horrifying reality, and is something we all need to work together to fight. By effectively turning the other cheek in response to the most vicious of the Taoiseach's allegations, the Vatican is declining the opportunity to exacerbate the situation by replying in the polemical manner the Taoiseach's calumnies deserve; instead it's giving everybody a chance to lower their arms and work together to protect and help Irish children.


6. Right. Well, why didn't the Vatican grant the Irish bishops' request that their 1996 Framework Document be granted  formal recognition and given the status of Canon Law?
For two reasons, basically, the first of which was that the Irish bishops didn't ask for it to be granted such recognition, and the second of which was that the Vatican felt that such recognition wasn't necessary, given the unanimous support of the Irish bishops for the new guidelines and the ability of each bishop to implement the guidelines within their own dioceses.

There's more to it than that, but that's the essence of it. You'll note that the Cloyne Report got this wrong, by the way. It expressly states that the Irish bishops sought recognition for the guidelines, when they did no such thing. As I've said before, the report is far from being a perfect document.


7. Well, why did the Vatican describe the Framework Document as a 'study document'? 
Because that's basically what it was. It was presented to Rome as a step towards a formal legislative process, due to be published not by the Irish bishops but by an advisory committee for the bishops. It was as a step towards a formal legislative process that the Vatican commented on it. The Congregation for Clergy had already played a part in the creation of the Framework Document, and it most certainly did not reject the guidelines, let alone bar the Irish bishops from applying them. On the contrary, it merely expressed some concerns about the guidelines, which were obviously in need of being field-tested, and warned against the implementation of the guidelines in such a way that could later lead to the overturning -- on procedural grounds -- of disciplinary decisions.


8. Isn't it true, though, that the 1997 letter encouraged those who were opposed to the guidelines?
It doesn't seem to have done. It's not even clear how widely disseminated this letter was; the Cloyne Report describes it as a strictly confidential letter to the Irish bishops (4.21), and gives no indication that it ever passed beyond the bishops themselves

In any case, whatever the Irish government may say, the Vatican is right to say that there is not a jot of evidence in the Cloyne Report that supports its claim that the Vatican's 1997 reservations about the Irish bishops' 1996 child-protection guidelines had any impact whatsoever on the implementation of those guidelines in Cloyne or any other diocese. I'd challenge anyone who doubts this to trawl through the Cloyne Report in search of any evidence for this hugely damaging and -- I believe -- false allegation. The nearest thing the report offers in support of its claim is a scornful 2008 quotation from Denis O'Callaghan about how the Irish bishops had expected Rome to endorse a wholly separate 2005 document.


9. But what about the Tánaiste's claim that the Vatican convinced priests they could in conscience evade their responsibilities under Irish law?
What responsibilities? What law? You can't evade things that don't exist.

Up until 1997, the failure to report a felony was but a misdemeanour in Irish law, and it was removed from Irish law altogether by April 1997's Criminal Law Act, which created the new offence of 'concealing an offence', applicable only when someone has been bribed to conceal an offence. Of the fifteen members of the current cabinet, nine had been members of the government that introduced that Act, five -- including the Taoiseach -- as full ministers and members of the cabinet, and four -- including the  Tánaiste -- as ministers of state.

It is true that the Congregation for Clergy had reservations about the Framework Document's requirement that any allegations of abuse -- or even concerns expressed about the possibility of such -- should be reported to the State, but given that the Irish Government itself decided over the course of 1996 and 1997 against the introduction of mandatory reporting, I don't see that there's any evidence that the attitude of the Congregation for Clergy in 1997 was any different from that of Enda Kenny, Richard Bruton, Michael Noonan, Brendan Howlin, or Ruairi Quinn.


10. So aside from the fact that that claim is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, it's got no basis whatsoever, as you can't undermine something that's not there?
Exactly.

For what it's worth, time and again throughout the Vatican's response, it stresses the need for the Irish Church to cooperate with the laws of the Irish State, how bishops have never been impeded from reporting cases of abuse to the State, and how bishops were explicitly told in 1998 never to obstruct in any way the course of civil justice. Indeed, it's a basic principle of Church teaching that all Catholics are obliged to obey all just laws of the State in which they live.

(Obviously, some states have blatantly unjust laws, and Catholics are most certainly not bound to obey them. Have a think about things that, say, Idi Amin's government or Pol Pot's came up with and you'll understand why the Church doesn't demand that Catholics obey the law regardless of what it might be.)


11. What about Enda's claim that the Cloyne Report exposed -- for the first time ever -- an attempt within the last three years by the Vatican to frustrate an official Irish inquiry?
Well, as I said at the time, that was clearly nonsense, and the Vatican's pointed that out. The Cloyne Report in no way criticises the Vatican for a failure to cooperate with it, reserving its sole criticisms in that regard for the State. With reference to the Papal Nuncio, it says he told the Commission that he held no documents that would be of use to it, but that the Diocese, which held all documents, would be obliged to cooperate fully; the Report says it did just that, even supplying all privileged communications.

I'll come back to this tomorrow, as Archbishop Martin has asked the Taoiseach to explain his public allegation, and the Taoiseach has responded with a self-refuting ball of bluster. In the meantime, this fellow nails what really happened: the Taoiseach lied to the Dáil. 


12. And the Taoiseach's implication that the Pope didn't regard the Church as needing to operate in line with the standards of civil society?
As the Vatican points out, the passage the Taoiseach quoted was one about theological methodology, basically saying that theological truth isn't a matter of passing fashion, and as such cannot be determined by opinion polls or focus groups or even the collective views of groups of academics. It had nothing to do with Church governance or canon law or anything other than theology, as I explained back in the day.


13. It sounds like the Taoiseach has tried to mislead the Dáil in more than one way, so. And with success. What of his line about the Vatican responding to allegations of abuse not with sympathy, but with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer?
I think this is very unfair on the canon lawyers, who are just trying to ensure the rules are followed. More to the point, though, I covered this above, at point 5, and back in the day, at point 31 of a very long post on the Cloyne Report in general. Given that the report details only one instance of abuse that had been dealt with by Rome, that being submitted to them in 2005 with the complainant being believed and the accused priest being barred from exercising any priestly ministry, there's simply no evidence on which the Taoiseach could base such a claim.


14. That leaves us with the Dáil motion, deploring the Vatican’s intervention as contributing to the undermining of the child protection framework and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish Bishops. How does the Vatican respond to that?
Well,  we've basically covered this too, at point 8 above. The Dáil deplored the effect of the Vatican's 1997 letter, but as we've seen, there's nothing in the Cloyne Report that hints at the letter having had any effect at all. The Report shows Denis O'Callaghan as having openly viewed the Framework Document with contempt, but it doesn't cite him as drawing on the Vatican's letter in support of his views, and indeed, it makes it clear that he was as opposed to implementing canon law as he was the Irish bishops' own guidelines.


15. Okay. I've heard people claiming that in this response, Rome is trying to localise the problem, to say it's nothing to do with the Vatican, and that it's an Irish problem. Is there any truth to that?
The fact is that contrary to popular belief, the Church is incredibly decentralised, with most decisions being taken at the lowest possible level. This shouldn't really surprise us: given that the Vatican's operating budget isn't a lot more than half that of University College Dublin, it can hardly be expected to micromanage things. In practice, as the Ferns Report explained back in the day and the Vatican's response spells out, dioceses have a huge degree of autonomy, to an extent to which one might almost hold that every bishop is Pope in his own diocese. Almost.

The point being: it's impossible to analyse these issues fairly unless we understand just how localised the Church is. Indeed, the Irish Church has more than 180 separate parts, and there's nothing remotely resembling a clear chain of command in Ireland, leading everything back to Rome. It's very clear that Magee and O'Callaghan did their own thing in Cloyne, and nobody in Rome was any the wiser until the Elliott Report brought their mismanagement of affairs to light. That, of course, was promptly followed by a debate over whether Magee should step down, with him being unwilling to do so until he had a meeting with the Nuncio, after which he requested that he be relieved of duty.

Yes, I know these localised problems appear to have happened everywhere, both in terms of the abuse itself and of mismanagement of abuse. This does not mean that the mismanagement was in any way centralised, though. If anything, it seems that it was something that arose naturally from clericalist cultures and the natural tendency of people to trust and look after those with whom they have close ties. What Benedict seems to have been trying to do from Rome is to find a centralised way of short-circuiting the all-too-common local tendency towards clericalist mismanagement.

There are those who don't like Rome having an influence on how the Irish Church runs things, but given the hames the Irish Church has made of dealing with clerical abuse, I don't see that we should be looking for an exclusively Irish solution to an Irish problem.

And child abuse -- let's not beat about the bush -- is most definitely an Irish problem. 


More tomorrow, with particular reference to the Taoiseach's claims. And sorry I've been slow with this. I've been away, and I've been very busy at my own work, it being at a crucial stage, and in terms of this I've been trying to get a handle on the original nature of the Irish request, the text of the response, and the governmental and media reactions at home.

Eolaí and his Painting Tour: Week Nine

Years ago in Mayo, whilst spending my days bounding across bogland to one neolithic site after another, my afternoons poring over German analyses of ancient battles, my evenings having a jar in McGuire's bar, and my nights playing backgammon before a turf fire, I was introduced to a wonderful 1841 travel book, Caesar Otway's Sketches in Erris and Tyrawly, in which the inestimable Tipperary Anglican opined:

'We now came in sight of Lough Carrowmore, the largest lake in Erris; it is one of the three lakes which Partholan, if we are to believe Keating, discovered on his inspection of Ireland after his landing thereon -- others had not yet been formed. But though it be old, it is ugly; the eye looking northward from the road we are travelling on, taking in nearly its greatest length, about four miles; and it is far from beautiful -- the surrounding hills are neither grand nor varied in their forms, the desolate bog comes down on all sides, and surrounds it with its melancholy cincture; the islands are few and flat, and not even a furze, or bramble bush decorates their stony and wave-washed shores, over which the cormorant urges its slow and ungainly flight, and from whose rocks the curlew sends its melancholy pipe. I have not seen since I left the borders of Lough Derg, (where supersition disgraces what nature has made but ugly,) a more desolate, and at the same time unpleasing water, than Lough Carrowmore.'

You don't get that in Bill Bryson. 

We left the Brother last Thursday after he'd arrived in Bangor Erris, having cycled in the rain and the golden hour through the beauties of Ballycroy. The next day saw him setting off north again, along the western shore of Lough Carrowmore, through Barnatra and Inver, looking over towards Rossport before making his way to Pollatomish, there to stay at Kilcommon Lodge, one of my favourite places in Ireland, and I place to which I'd love to go back.

Though it be old, it is ugly. Right... it's worth clicking on the links for the colour original, btw

You'll know of Pollatomish, of course, if you've watched the news at all in Ireland over the last few years. It's an absolutely magical place in the most beautiful of surroundings, which sadly has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. There was a major landslide there in September 2003, and though that'd be problem enough, it pales into insignificance next to the story of the Corrib Gas Field, Shell to Sea, and The Pipe.

If you haven't seen The Pipe, or An Píopa in its Irish-language version, then you should track it down. Somehow. It's both heartbreaking and inspiring, and important too. The whole story is one people should know, inviting questions anybody interested in modern Ireland should be asking. I visited Broadhaven Bay a few times just as this whole storm was beginning to brew, so it's kind of personal to me, but I think it's something people need to know about. It's not just a story of the usual suspects blocking progress, and I don't think it's typical NIMBYism either. You might disagree with me, of course, but don't do it out of hand, Track down the film, and do some reading, and watch other documentaries, and even visit the area if you can. And think.

Saturday saw the Brother thinking Mayo was so beautiful he needed to see more of it, so off he set to look at the where all the action is regarding Shell's activity, before returning along the eastern shore of Lough Carrowmore through Bangor and Bellacorick, site of the famous Musical Bridge, to his next host, just outside Newport, where he'd planned on being a couple of nights earlier. 70 kilometres of cycling all told, and much of it in the rain, with him arriving in Newport drenched through.

Sunday was a day for painting, and for watching Dublin beat Donegal in what at least began as a very ugly match. 'Japers,' said the Brother, 'Japers, to think I stopped actually watching paint dry to watch this.' Still, Dublin won, the hard way, in what the Brother says was an amazing spectacle. They'll be facing Kerry in the final. It's been a while.

Leaving his hosts with a painting of Skerdagh School, on Monday he was off again, hoping to push himself to Enniscrone. Not sure of his route, he decided that to hold off deciding until he reached Pontoon, between Loughs Conn and Cullin, and by Lough Conn he stopped to drink some tea and eat some boxty. Onward he peddled to Ballina and beyond, before a sudden attack of common sense struck him with the thought that Enniscrone was too ambitious a destination, and he turned back to Ballina.

-- Can I get milk, a big glass, a carton? he asked the man in the B&B.
-- You want to drink milk?
-- I want to make tea all night.
-- I'll give you a big jug, said the man.

Tuesday began as it was destined to continue, with tea, and then the Brother set off, carrying on towards Enniscrone, stopping for potato cakes within sight of Nephin and Killala Bay in Sligo, his fifteenth county. Along the Sligo coast he cycled, past Dunmoran, and stopping for some purchases and another fine exchange.

-- Do you want a bag for those?
-- No thanks, I have my bike outside.
-- Petrol or diesel?
-- Legs. 

He carried on towards his destination, eventually reaching Sligo town, there to imbibe some tea*, to have a wander along the beach, and to watch the sun set.

Yesterday began with an improbably blue sky, and was a day for plotting, with the brother giving serious thought to the feasibility of a few of his planned counties. Without any hosts thus far, Leitrim, Roscommon, Fermanagh, Donegal, and Tyrone were all looking tricky, so lots of thinking was on the cards.

Not just thinking, though; the application of colour to canvas took place as you'd expect, with tea and potato cakes to keep the Brother going, and Ben Bulben away off in the background, as he sat painting and talking on Dunmoran Strand. It wasn't as warm as it might have been, though, and he regretted having left his jumper behind. Of course, the tide started to rise, impatient of the Brother's wishes, that being its wont, and him remembering difficulties at Cork's Garryvoe Beach, he withdrew to higher ground to watch the birds.

As for today? Well, he's been cycling round about, and taken a trip to Rosses Point, where a statue called 'Waiting on Shore' stands in memory of all those roundabout who've lost loved ones at sea; seemingly people have been known to rest trays full of biscuits in her hands. As the evening wore on, the Brother was nuzzled by a friendly Alsatian**, before being taken on a drive out to Innisfree, there to ponder, one presumes, just how simply he could live with bees and beans. And brushes, of course.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow

With the evening drawing to a close, he unveiled his plan for the next few days, an ambitious loop through five counties in five days. Roscommon's on the cards for tomorrow, and he's nowhere there to lay his head just yet, so if anyone's interested, please let him know.

Indeed, if you think there's any chance at all the Brother might be passing within twenty miles or so of where you live, especially if you're in the likes of Roscommon, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Donegal, or Tyrone, and if you have a bed to offer and fancy a painting, do get in touch with him. He's a man of simpler wants than Yeats's islander: somewhere to lay his head, food to eat, limitless tea, and to know where you are.

You can follow the last three weeks of the Painting Tour on the Brother's blog and especially on Twitter, using the hashtag  #paintingtour. His Facebook account's worth a shout too, but Twitter's where most of the real action is. Don't be afraid to give Ireland's first digital nomad™ a shout -- the tour's about social media in Ireland as much as it is art and the Irish countryside, after all.

* Barry's, of course.
** No, not Arsene Wenger, Alsatian though he is and doubtless well-disposed to Evertonians today. A German Shepherd. A dog. Keep up.

Pearls Before Swine

With, of course, one or two possible exceptions, I’ve long thought the finest cartoon I’ve ever seen on the internet is XKCD’s classic ‘Duty Calls’ gag. It’s just far too true, and I found myself living it yesterday and earlier today.

Notes to self: Don’t do this. Don’t feed the trolls. Don’t argue with people who are incapable of taking new information on board. Don’t try to teach pigs to sing: it wastes your time and leaves you feeling dirty, while the pigs are left grunting in the muck at the end, still incapable of singing, and probably rather put out too.

So yes, what happened?

Well, as you’ll probably know, the rather minor amendment to UK abortion law that Nadine Dorries and Frank Fields are proposing has led to an awful lot of shouting. Pro-life people have made vastly exaggerated claims for what the amendment might achieve, and Pro-choice ones have been screaming about a sinister Pro-life conspiracy. The reality is that the proposal is very minor, and even if it passes, which it probably won’t, it’s unlikely to make a huge amount of difference.

UK abortion law is not, in principal, particularly liberal; in the main it theoretically only allows for abortion when two doctors sincerely believe that the continuation of a pregnancy would pose a risk to the health of a woman or her existing children. In practice, however, its application has become so loose that the UK effectively has abortion on demand up to a foetal age of 24 weeks, at which point the foetus magically becomes a person. Or something. Anyway, so many British people now widely regard abortion as a basic right that when the Lancet saw fit to comment on the many millions of females being aborted in China, it did so on the simple utilitarian grounds that its unwise to have a society in which for every 100 boys who are born, fewer than 85 girls see daylight.

Yes, that’s the Lancet’s line: it’s not sinful to kill millions of human beings because they’re female. It’s not evil to do so. It’s not immoral to do so. It’s not wrong to do so. It’s just imprudent.

When people fight, it's usually because they're trying to protect what they love...
... rather than because they're trying to destroy what they hate.

To say this is a highly polarised debate is putting it mildly, and I don’t think the situation’s helped by so many people on both sides shouting at each other, unwilling to concede the fact that their opponents are acting from good motives.

The Pro-choice crowd sincerely believe that a woman should have control over her own body, and that she shouldn’t be compelled to bring to term any child within her: they see it as a straightforward matter of women’s rights, and of privacy, as who is anyone else to tell a woman what she should do with her own body? This, I think, makes perfect sense, as long as you’re absolutely certain that the child within her isn’t a human being.

The Pro-life crowd, on the other hand -- and I count myself among them, naturally enough -- tend either to believe that the child in the womb is a human being, or that it might be one, and that it’s wrong to kill something which might be human. Sometimes they have religious reasons for this and sometimes they don't, but what they tend to have in common is a shared belief that one wouldn’t set a house on fire if one thought there was even a possibility that there might be someone inside. In the main, contrary to what a lot of Pro-choice people say, Pro-life people are not out to limit or destroy women’s rights; they just don’t believe that women’s rights trump the universal human right to life. Putting it another way, they don’t think it’s possible for anybody to have a right to choose anything, unless that person is first able to exercise their right to life.

As far as I can see, the discussion isn’t primarily about the rights of the mother. It’s really about two more fundamental things.

• The first is whether human foetuses, embryos, blastocysts, and zygotes are indeed human. Not whether they’re persons, because personhood is obviously a subjective quality, and not whether they can feel pain, as otherwise it’d be okay to kill anybody as long as one first took steps to ensure that they’d not suffer; just whether or not they’re human. 
• The second is whether human life is somehow more special than, say, bovine or algal life. 

I happen to think that the second question goes without saying, which is why I was more bothered by the fact that almost 3,000 human beings were killed in America in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks than I was by 10,000,000 cattle and sheep having been culled in Britain during the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak. Granted, I appreciate that I may feel this way just because I am human, but I strongly suspect that we’re the only animals that can have this discussion.

Certainly, my housemates’ cat seems to have no interest in the topic.


Credit where it's due: to His Grace, for a change
Anyway, in the huge war of words that broke out over the topic, two bloggers struck me as being particularly reasonable. One was the pseudonymous Cranmer, whose blog I usually think is worth reading, but with whom I almost always disagree, often profoundly, and who I think I probably wouldn’t like at all in person. Writing on the topic, he noted how ironic and peculiar it was that all the most vocal and prominent objections to the Dorries-Field proposal were directed at Nadine Dorries, with Frank Field’s involvement being wholly sidelined:

‘But it is to be observed that these proposed amendments to the Health Bill also have the support of Labour’s Frank Field MP. He is backing the change, and explains: “I’m anxious that taxpayers’ money is used so that people can have a choice – we are paying for independent counselling and that’s what should be provided.”

But Messrs Harris, Green and Bryant ignore him, and all aim for the woman. It is a despicable Lib-Lab strategy to attack the easy target, because Frank Field is male and enormously respected on all sides of the House. His Grace asked Chris Bryant last night why he was focusing on the fairer sex, but reply came there none. Their attack is sexist; a reaction against conservative feminism which seeks nothing but the right to education. Shame on them.

All across Europe, there is legislation requiring informed consent, and these countries have significantly lower abortion rates. In the UK, there is no requirement in law for women to be informed about the abortion procedure or the alternatives. If you want evidence of the present ‘conveyer belt’ approach to abortion, read this report in the Telegraph, and then thank God there are people like Nadine Dorries and Frank Field in Parliament with the conviction to confront this systematic state slaughter of our children. Oh, and they're both Anglican, by the way.’

He’s absolutely right, and should be commended for having pointed this out. It’s not even that opponents of the Dorries-Field amendment are engaging in ad hominem attacks. They’re engaging in an ad feminem one.


And then there's Blondpidge
The other blogger who’s done impressive work on this topic has been Caroline Farrow, who unlike Cranmer and like me is a Catholic, and therefore, apparently, incapable of thinking for herself.

Or so you would think to judge from the deluge of abuse she’s been subjected to on Twitter over recent days, with a pack of brutes haranguing her in the presumed misconception that R.C. stands for ‘remote-controlled’. I won’t repeat what’s been said to her, other than that at one stage she seemed to have been engaged in simultaneous debates on whether Jesus actually existed, on whether Jesus’ ideas were more important Jesus himself, on whether Catholic teaching allows Catholics to support abortion, on Ireland’s maternal death rate, and on God killing babies in Africa. The language that’s been used towards her has been -- aside from anatomically problematic -- viciously offensive, to a degree that's prompted at least one person to consider giving up on Twitter altogether.

Why has this happened? Well, Caroline initially wrote a blog post in which she sensibly opined that the proposed amendment was unlikely to change things to any significant degree. Contrary to the rhetoric from the loudest voices in the abortion debate, the amendment does not propose a major shake-up to UK abortion law. It merely proposes that if any person considering an abortion decides they would like counselling while thinking the matter over, then there should be a legal obligation on the counsellor, whoever it might be, to be financially independent of the abortion provider. That’s all. As things stand, with counselling provided by Britain’s major abortion providers – though ultimately funded by the taxpayer – the counsellors are by definition subject to a conflict of interest, in that the abortion providers are only paid for abortions which take place, rather than ones which women choose not to have.

As she straightforwardly put it:

‘Before pro-lifers and pro-choicers get over-excited, a little word to the wise. Sorry to disappoint you all, but nothing has changed. The abortion laws and/or access to abortion is not being altered and neither is the time-limit. Mandatory counselling is not being introduced. All that is being suggested is that if a woman requests counselling prior to an abortion, then the counselling should not be provided by someone with a vested financial interest in the outcome of the counselling, but an independent provider. That.is.all.’

Somewhere along the way, in the aftermath of that, and while watching a decidedly disingenuous interview with Evan Harris, who was launching ad feminem attacks at Nadine Dorries and illogically trying to maintain that absence of evidence is identical to evidence of absence, she tweeted a description of Harris as ‘the smiling face of evil’. This, frankly, was an error, and one for which she subsequently apologised, with Harris eventually accepting her apology. Her point was that she regarded abortion as an objectively evil act – not that those who have abortions or indeed who provide them are themselves evil – and that by seeming to defend abortion in the way he was doing, Harris was in fact acting as an apologist for evil.

There’s a separate debate about Harris was defending as a good thing abortion or access to abortion, and about whether there’s any meaningful distinction between the two positions. That’s for another day.

Anyway, in the aftermath of that ill-judged – if theologically and philosophically precise – tweet, the swarm roused, and online nastiness became the order of the day.


Sometimes it's hard to let egregious error go unchallenged...
And eventually I got involved, intruding with uncharacteristic gallantry into a debate about whether or not Jesus historically existed, with one fellow ridiculing Caroline, saying that, ‘There is no contemporary evidence to suggest JC even existed as a human being, whilst there is lots of evidence to suggest that he was/is nothing more than a fictional character.’

Caroline, who’d previously taken the somewhat shakier approach of contrasting what we know of Jesus Christ with what we know of Julius Caesar, and thoroughly fed up with this nonsense, pointed out that there’s a far better historical case for Jesus’ existence than for that of, say, Carthage’s most famous son.

‘Actually, there is lots of contemporary evidence that Hannibal existed,’ sneered her ignorant gadfly, ironically adding, ‘Your grasp of history seems to be lacking. There are Roman writings at the time about Hannibal. Difficult for archeological evidence seeing as the Romans completely wiped Carthage off of the face of the earth as a warning to other states that may challenge them. Contemporary evidence from the Greek historian Silenus, & also from Sosylus of Lacedaemon who wrote a seven volume history...’

‘Years after his death & that is fragmentary,’ retorted Caroline, correctly. ‘Earliest full account is a patriotic one 200 years later. Now goodbye.’

‘You've read this from forums about trying to prove Jesus was real. It's the same old argument that "people believe in Hannibal despite there not being a vast weight of contemporary evidence, so then why not Jesus?" - Well there are huge differences. Not least that there are no claims that Hannibal was anything more than a mortal man and a great general. Not the son of a god.’


I'd like to teach the pigs to sing...
Now, annoyed at how this fellow was already starting to shift his ground from the actual discussion -- whether Jesus had existed, not whether he was divine – in the face of Caroline showing that she had a better handle on the question of Jesus’ historicity than he did, and disgusted at his swaggeringly erroneous claims about our sources for Hannibal's exploits, I weighed in.

‘Earliest complete accounts are those of Livy and Cornelius Nepos, c200 years after invasion,’ I said. ‘No archaeological evidence of even one camp, siege, or battle in Italy despite fifteen-year occupation. No numismatic evidence either despite his father and brother-in-law having minted coins in Spain.'

‘Wrong,’ said the Ignoramus, ‘As well as the sources mentioned, there are also the contemporary writings of Polybius. However, it is only correct to examine the evidence, & even be sceptical about aspects of it. As any good historian should. This in turn also applies to the argument of the existence of Jesus (either as a man or a son of a god) and let's face it, the evidence is poor to say the least.’

I was a bit reassured that he seemed to be willing to stay with the topic of Jesus’ basic historical existence, so felt it might not be a complete waste of time to carry on, by pointing out the partial nature of our earliest source*, who was rather less a contemporary of Hannibal than, well, Paul was of Jesus. ‘None of the sources you mentioned exist now,’ I pointed out. ‘They've all been lost since Antiquity. Polybius started writing his history in the mid-160s and was still writing it in the mid-140s, and most of it is lost. Only the first five of his 40 books are intact, the rest existing to a greater or lesser degree in fragmentary form. Putting it bluntly, the ONLY intact part of Polybius about Hannibal deals with events prior to 216BC and was written more than fifty years afterwards. And for what it's worth, he's a really good source.’

‘You Iffy [sic] have missed that you're actually proving my point for me. I'm not saying that Hannibal did exist as described,’ the Cretin countered, while nonetheless not disputing Hannibal’s basic historicity, ‘I'm well aware of the murky history & political advantages of creating such a monster for a man such as Cato (whose records were later to be accepted by some as fact). Only that the history of these historical figures is sketchy at best. Especially that of Jesus (back to the crux, finally). The evidence for his so called existence, as either a man or a son of (a) god, both being very poor.’

‘No, not especially that of Jesus,’ I insisted. ‘Evidence of Jesus is better than for most people in Antiquity.’

Well, The conversation got longer and longer, and more and more convoluted, and at times I got very condescending, infuriated as I was by this fellow’s flaunting of historical factoids and flouting of historical reality and the historical method. It wasn’t among my better moments.

‘Did you really just suggest that no credible historian refutes that Jesus (a man) existed?’, he continued, somewhere along the way. ‘Given the whole Hannibal chat that went on...? There are numerous writings which dispute Jesus having existed as a man. There is no contemporary evidence (we've been over this). And even if a man called Jesus did exist & was crucified by Pilot [sic], then there is nothing to suggest he was in any way the man we have come to *accept* as Jesus. It could have merely been Jesus Smith who lived down the other end of the street.’


Back in the sty...
And that was all yesterday. Today, in my folly, I returned to the fray, vainly hoping to make this fellow see sense. I wasn’t trying to maintain that Jesus was God, or that his miracles were real, or that every single detail in the Gospels can be taken as historically accurate. I was just trying to make the case that the basic structural facts of Jesus’ public life are as historically sound as pretty much anything we know about the ancient world.

‘Ok then, so what is this indisputable evidence that JC did exist in ancient history?’ he asked. ‘Seeing as the earliest written works referring to him were written years after his death, & the gospels which do speak of him all have differing accounts of his lineage, birth, life, etc... All written of course with a pretty obvious agenda.’

I thought it best to direct him to this very old blog post of mine, adopted from my old blog. It deliberately keeps miracles, prophecies, and the whole issue of divinity off the table, simply showing why I believe that the historical evidence is very solid that during the reign of Tiberius an itinerant Jewish preacher by the name of Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem under the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

Before my antagonist read it, he wanted to know whether I was a creationist. I had to press him several times before he would explain why he wanted to know this, with him eventually saying that he felt it was important to know how literally I take my religion. This despite the fact that creationism isn’t in any sense doctrinal in Catholicism, and how you can, if you so wish, look back at Augustine more than 1,600 years ago explaining that there’s no need to read the Genesis creation accounts as being historically literal. And there's the fact that even were I a creationist, I’m still not sure what bearing it would have had on the argument.

And, of course, he wanted to know whether I’m religious, or a Christian in any sense. I am, I said. I wasn’t always, and indeed I was once an ardent atheist, but historical training and a phenomenal amount of reading and thinking compelled me to change my mind.


A Casebook Bigot
Having dismissed what I’d written, both on the historicity of Jesus and on the impact of Constantine on Christianity, as biased by my religious views, he sneered at the idea that I was ever other than a crypto-theist. ‘For such a *learned* man,’ he opined, ‘I doubt that you were ever a staunch atheist. One cannot look beyond the sheer ridiculousness of religion, all religions, and the evidence, both historical & scientific against such religions.’

And there you see what is, pretty much, the definition of bigotry: not the belief that you are right, but the belief that there is no conceivable way that you could be wrong, or that views contrary to your own could honestly be held by any sane person equipped with intelligence, integrity, and information. At this point I really should have patted this bigoted oaf on the head and walked away, but instead I basically went nuts and started pulling rank in the pettiest of ways. It really wasn’t a good moment, and I am rather embarrassed about it.

‘The fact remains,’ said the vociferous buffoon, ‘despite you looking to attack me & change the subject, that you believe in the super-natural.’

My belief in God had never been the subject of the debate, and so I pointed out that I had never sought to change the subject, linking to the original posts where I’d intervened, saying that I had only ever been arguing that the basic historical evidence for the existence of Jesus was something that’s as demonstrable as anything in ancient history. If anyone had tried to change the subject, it had been himself.

‘The point being,’ he said, shamelessly ignoring how I’d shown him as being guilty of that very thing of which he’d accused me, ‘the only evidence you have given are the gospels, which I'm sorry but cannot be taken as accurately reliable historical sources. The fact that you state that you are a Catholic, albeit one who picks & chooses the specific parts of his religion in which to believe, shows that despite your self-confessed credentials, your bias shall always lean towards trying to prove in the affirmative.’

‘If you make fantastical claims,’ he added, ‘you'd better have some bloody good proof.’

‘My claim is that a man existed,' I said, thinking that wasn't a particularly fantastical claim. ‘That's all I've been arguing for. Miracles etc are a separate debate.’

And then we were off again, with him saying, ‘And it is in your interests to try & prove the man existed. Again, with the only real evidence you have put forward being the gospels. Those bastardised, plagiarised, contradictionry [sic] gospels...’

It wasn’t long after that that I gave up, and I think the other fellow’s done so too. What’s annoying me most about the discussion at this stage is the complete failure to engage with the main aspects of my blog post on the historicity of Jesus. It was most certainly was not the case, despite my antagonist having said so twice, that the only real evidence I had put forward had been the Gospels.


It's worth applying Occam's Razor to this...
The Gospels do have historical value, and they really weren’t written that long after the Crucifixion; even if they were written around 70 AD, and I think they predate that by five to fifteen years, that’d still mean they were no further removed from the Crucifixion than we are from Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.

More importantly, though, the key structural facts of Jesus’ public life are all referred to in Paul’s letters, the earliest of which was written, in all probability, within sixteen to eighteen years of the Crucifixion. To put that into context, remember the mid-nineties? John Major was Prime Minister, John Bruton was Taoiseach, Bill Clinton was President, Boris Yeltsin was drunk, Toy Story was in the cinema, Brian Cox was playing keyboard in a not particularly good band, and a rash of young Manchester United players were starting to replace the stalwarts of an English team that had failed to qualify for the World Cup. The Pauline letters – not the Gospels -- are the earliest documentary testimony we have to Jesus’ existence. Any attempt to discuss the matter of Jesus’ historicity without engaging with this fact must be recognised as ignorant, foolish, or dishonest.

What’s more, Paul’s letters are addressed to people who are already aware of the basic facts of Jesus’ life, and evidently more besides. Indeed, it’s clear from the letters that lots of people had been aware of these basic facts since at least the mid-thirties, when Paul was persecuting Christians. This introduces the second important set of data that points to Jesus having existed, this being the wide-ranging testimony to the existence of the Church, this Church clearly dating back to the immediate aftermath of the Crucifixion. It’s disingenuous to claim to be engaging with the question of Jesus’ existence if you’re not willing and able to argue a plausible alternative case, allowing for all the evidence, for where the Church came from.

Finally you have the fact of people other than Christians testifying to the existence of the Church during its early history, these including such opponents of Christianity as: Josephus, a Jewish aristocrat and rebel leader who became a historian in Rome; Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian; Suetonius, a Roman imperial official who served as director of the imperial archives and as secretary to the emperor; Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor; Trajan, a Roman emperor; and Celsus, a Greek philosopher who wrote the earliest known polemic against Christianity.

Not one of these seems to have disputed for one moment that Jesus was a Jew who had been crucified in Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, and whose followers took to worshipping him as a god. Given how at least some of these would have had access to records of executions enacted in the name of Rome, I think it’s safe to say that had Jesus not existed, it would have been very easy for his existence to have been contested. And yet as far as we can see, that never happened.

Any attempt to argue that Jesus didn't exist has to explain away documents about him written within twenty years of the Crucifixion for an audience that was clearly familiar with his story, the existence of a Christian Church from the mid-thirties onwards under the leadership of people who were willing to die for things they claimed to have witnessed, and the fact that none of the opponents of this Church ever seems to have argued that Jesus had indeed been a real person.

I'm not saying that Jesus was God. I believe that too, of course, but that's a separate debate. I'm just saying, here, that he was Man. Nobody in Antiquity ever seems to have challenged this. It's only modern fools who do that.

__________________________________________________________________
* For the record, we have enough of Polybius' Histories to fill six volumes of the Loeb series of Classical texts. He talks about a lot of stuff -- wars in Greece and a whole series of Roman wars around the Mediterranean. What he says about Hannibal is scattered through the first four volumes of the series. The intact book III, in volume two of the set, takes Hannibal as far as his greatest victory, that being at Cannae. Beyond that, however, the text starts to fall apart, such that whereas volumes one and two of the set contain two full books on the Histories each, volume three contains a full book and three fragmentary books, and volume four -- the Hannibalic content of which takes us as far as Hannibal's defeat at Zama -- contains seven fragmentary books.

Polybius seems to have started writing in the mid-160s BC, about seventeen years after Hannibal's death in obscurity in Bithynia on the shores of the Black Sea. This, curiously enough,  is pretty much exactly the same length of time that transpired between the Crucifixion of Jesus and Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians.

Some Thoughts on Raphoe

While I'm generally averse to conspiracy theories, and am usually reluctant to ascribe to malice that which is more easily explained by incompetence, there are times when I think the mainstream media's coverage of child abuse -- with particular reference to the Church in Ireland -- is so wrong-headed that it might as well be conducted through malice as through ignorance and incompetence. The effects could hardly be worse.

The constant focus on clerical abuse perpetuates a double injustice.

The obvious injustice is against the Church and ordinary Catholics, with lies, half-truths, and prejudice being the norm, and with facts being ignored; while this is blatantly unfair, there is, however, a level at which Catholics should expect this, with the Church being expected to continue the sufferings Christ experienced on the Cross.

The less obvious injustice, however, and one which should worry even even those ill-disposed towards the Church and not remotely bothered by a sense of fairness, is that against the many hundreds of thousands of Irish people who were abused in the past by people who weren't clergy, and the doubtless many many thousands of Irish children who are being abused today. Our constant focus on clerical abuse distracts people from the fact that the 2002 SAVI Study showed that for every victim of clerical abuse in Ireland, there were sixty other victims of child sexual abuse. We hardly ever talk about them. We make people think the problem is out there. It's not. The real danger is far closer.

Take a look at this piece in today's Guardian. In principle it's about clerical and non-clerical abuse, but it's written in such a way as to make non-clerical abuse seem an aspect of clerical abuse.

The springboard for the article is the impending publication of the Irish Church's own child-protection agency's audit of Raphoe Diocese. The purpose of the audit is to examine to what extent the Diocese is complying with the Church's own child-protection policies and procedures. It is, essentially, the same sort of internal investigation as that which led to the removal of John Magee as bishop of Cloyne in 2009.

You'd not think that, though, would you, to read the opening paragraphs of the Guardian article.

'County Donegal in Ireland is about to have its bucolic image shattered by a report into how paedophiles, both clergy and laity, abused children for decades.

An investigation into clerical sex abuse in the Catholic diocese of Raphoe in County Donegal is about to report its findings, which are expected to be damning. '

Leaving aside how Martin Ridge's 2008 book Breaking the Silence rendered impossible the maintenance of idlyllic delusions about Raphoe, the audit isn't an investigation into clerical sex abuse; it's an investigation into how the Diocese has over recent years dealt with allegations of abuse, whether proven or otherwise. These are not the same thing.

The bulk of the story, then, concerns a gentleman who says was abused by an man in the neighbourhood when he was a child between 1965 and 1972. The article introduces this as follows:

'Speaking for the first time about his abuse as a child and the subsequent cover-up, John O'Donnell revealed that he had been abused since he was nine by a lay member of a local church choir.'

The article says the abuse took place in the man's home and the shop he ran; it gives no reason to believe that this alleged abuse was in any way connected with the fact that the abuser sang in the church choir. That fact may well have been revelant to the alleged abuse, but at least based on the evidence presented, his role in the Church seems to have been wholly incidental to what's alleged to have happened.

What of the cover-up? Well, it seems Mr O'Donnell first approached the Guards about this in 1973, when he was sixteen, and that the Guard he spoke to didn't believe him:

'A local guard was outraged that I was naming such a fine upstanding member of the community as a child rapist. The officer slapped me on the face and told me to get out. He said to me that I was adopted and not worth anything. From that day on I never fully trusted a member of the Garda Síochána.'

Now, I'm not saying for a moment that if this happened it wasn't reprehensible, but if anything it sounds more like scandalised disbelief rather than a determined cover-up.

On the story goes, to say how after the various clerical abuse stories that had broken through the 1990s, Mr O'Donnell tried to raise the issue again, with the Guards tackling it this time and questioning the man. He says that in 2005 he approached the Parish Priest as well, because the man was still singing in the choir and thereby working with young people, but that the priest refused to discuss the matter with him. This may well have been not ideal, pastorally speaking, and there's a very high chance that this was contrary to the Irish Church's published child-protection policies, but it's hardly a cover-up: the matter was already in the hands of the Guards, after all.

The article doesn't say what the upshot of the Garda investigation O'Donnell's allegations was; it does say the alleged abuser has since died, but it's unclear whether his death had precluded a prosecution. Certainly there's no suggestion that the alleged abuser was ever found guilty of the alleged abuse; the fact that he's not named is telling.

He may well have been guilty, but that's a separate issue. On the issue of Garda collusion, the article reports:

'Two years ago the Murphy report into widespread clerical abuse of children in Dublin, Ireland's largest Catholic diocese, found that senior Garda officers colluded with four archbishops and top clerics in covering up the sex crimes of priests on a massive scale in the city.'

Quite bluntly, this simply isn't true. The Murphy Report said no such thing. 

One of the most astonishing features of the Murphy Report is how clearly it demonstrates the ingrained clericalism of Irish society in the 1970s and 1980s. Where the Murphy Report criticises the Guards, and it does so on  a few occasions occasions, it generally does so either for a haphazard approach to investigations of for what seems to have been a sincere -- if deeply and disastrously misguided -- conviction that complaints against priests were somehow outside their remit.

With the possible exception of Bishop Kavanagh and Chief Superintendent O'Connor's dealings in connection with how Bill Carney was tried in 1983, the Report in no way suggests that there was any collusion between high level police or clerics with the intention of covering up abuse: on those occasions when Gardaí passed on complaints to clergy, rather than doing their job and dealing with it themselves, it seems to have been in the genuine belief that the Church would deal with the matter.

As we know, it regularly failed to do so, but that's another story.

I'm not looking forward to the audit of Raphoe coming out, but I don't think we need to worry about the Diocese failing to publish stuff that'll make it look bad. Ian Elliot's done a fine job as head of the Church's National Board for Child Protection, and it was his clashes with Magee and O'Callaghan in Cloyne that led to Magee being removed from position there. I think we can be pretty confident that if there should be any attempt in Raphoe to block Elliot's findings we'll hear about it very quickly.  In the meantime, I don't see that there's anything to gain by publicising rumours or what we imagine the audit might cover.

We'll find out soon enough.

Refuting a Mancunian Myth

I'm afraid I got a little annoyed by a comment on yesterday's post. One Steve from Manchester responded to my sceptical dismissal of Alex Ferguson's claim that Manchester United had produced more players for the English national side than any other club had ever done by taking me to task:

'"I really don't have the time to trawl through the history books on this one..."

LOL- you mean don't let the facts get in the way of a good headline?
If you think it's a 'Mancunian myth' then prove it, instead of just picking an arbitrary time period that suits your argument.'

I'd not in fact picked a random period to suit my argument, and had merely pointed out that if Ferguson was talking about the present day, rather than historical achievements, then he didn't have a leg to stand on, given that United hasn't produced one player for England's national team since Wes Brown made his debut in 1999. Far from producing England players, it seems that the modern Manchester United waits until other clubs produce them, and then it buys them with the money it's used to imbalance the League, thereby maintaining its record of bought success -- while dissing Chelsea and City for trying to do exactly the same thing.

However, in irritation at this comment, and motivated by genuine curiosity, I've worked my way through Wikipedia's perhaps slightly patchy list of English international footballers to try to fugure out which English teams have 'produced' the most players for the national side. Granted, how you define 'produced' is pretty much impossible to define, given how players usually move from club to club, even in their youth, but I think the one solid bit of data we can use is this: 'who were they playing for when their performances were such as to earn them a place in the English team?'

On this criterion, then, it seems the ten clubs which have produced most players for the English national team are, in descending order:

• 59: Aston Villa
• 46: Everton
• 45: Arsenal
• 44: Liverpool
• 44: Spurs
• 41: Blackburn
• 40: Manchester United
• 37: West Brom
• 36: Sheffield Wednesday
• 34: Sheffield United

Yep. Manchester United has indeed made an serious contribution to the national side, but even then, six other teams have provided more players, with Aston Villa having provided almost one-and-a-half times as many as Manchester United! By claiming to have produced more players for the English national side than any other club, Ferguson insulted Villa. I wonder if there are any Villa fans who realise what he said...

And as for United producing more players for England than any other club in the world? Well, that's just hyperbole. Of the 112 clubs that I counted as having produced players for the English team, only five weren't actually English: Hibernian, Falkirk, Celtic, Rangers, and Bayern Munich.

I don't how United people keep getting away with pumping out this rubbish. It's as though people are just happy to swallow any kind of diabolic nonsense as long as it's red.

Mancunian Myths Again

Honestly, Alex Ferguson is a buffoon. Look at him today, expressing his delight at how as many as eight United players could wind up being named in Fabio Capello's squad for England's Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Wales:

'It is fantastic. The FA may realise who has produced more players for their country than any club in the world. Maybe they will get some joy from it and realise how important we are to England instead of treating us like shit. I am pleased for the players. They are outstanding.'

Let's not even get into his persecution complex and instead concentrate on looking at his claim about the contribution Manchester United makes to the national team.

I really don't have the time to trawl through the history books on this one, and one might make a serious case that English players are often formed in their teenage years, when they may well have represented their country at youth level, but let's for now just take Ferguson at face value, by focusing on current English senior internationals, and ask ourselves -- honestly -- how many of them were 'produced' by Manchester United. 

If you look at the squad Capello picked for the match against the Netherlands that had been due to be played on 10 August 2011 -- the match that was cancelled because of the riots -- you'll see that of the twenty-five players, twenty-two had already played for their country. Fancy guessing how many of those twenty-two had been United players at the time they made their debuts?

None.

Sure, Danny Welbeck was contracted to Manchester United when he made his senior debut, but he'd been on loan to Sunderland for several months before that. For what it's worth, here's a breakdown of the teams players had been playing for when they earned their English shirts :

• 4: Everton -- Rooney, Lescott, Jagielka, and Baines
• 3: Aston Villa -- Barry, Milner, and Young
• 3: Manchester City -- Hart, Richards, Johnson
• 2: Bolton --  Cahill, Wilshere (had been on loan from Arsenal)
• 2: West Ham -- Ferdinand, Carrick
• 1: Arsenal --  Cole
• 1: Charlton Athletic --  Parker
• 1: Chelsea -- Terry
• 1: Middlesbrough -- Downing
• 1: Newcastle -- Carroll
• 1: Norwich -- Green
• 1: Southampton -- Crouch
• 1: Sunderland -- Welbeck (on loan from Manchester United)

Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, and Tom Cleverley haven't yet made their senior debuts for England, but all three have been named in Capello's provisional squad. Of these it'd be preposterous to say that Jones has been 'produced' for England by United, given that he was with Blackburn until United paid £17 million for him about ten minutes ago, and even captained England's under-21 side as a Blackburn player. That leaves Cleverley and Smalling, both of whom could fairly be said to have been 'produced' by Manchester United, and neither of whom may yet take the field.

There's not much of a case here to say that United produces any players for the English national side nowadays. But then, given that they hardly produce any for themselves, this probably shouldn't surprise us. The Premier League is a rigged game, where a handful of teams, rolling in money, are able to use their ridiculously fat wallets to buy players that other teams have developed -- often to a point where they can represent their countries at senior level -- and then use them to maintain their dominance. But then, I've said all this before.


Update: Having scrolled over breakfast through Wikipedia's list of England internationals and looked elsewhere, it seems that the last time somebody earned an England shirt while playing for Manchester United was April 1999, when Wes Brown managed it. Since then three players contracted to United have played for England, all earning their first cap while on loan to other teams: Kieran Richardson was playing for West Bromwich Albion when he earned the first of his eight caps in May 2005, Ben Foster was on loan to Watford when he earned the first of his four caps in February 2007, and Danny Welbeck was on loan to Sunderland on the only occasion thus far that he has played for his country, that being in March of this year. Hmph.

Eolaí and his Painting Tour: Week Eight

Years ago in UCD, when I was invigilating exams, I worked with a Polish girl who'd grown up in Berlin. In exasperation at the unpredictable nature of the Irish climate, she remarked that she often thought there should be an EU directive that'd insist on a common meteorological system throughout the Union.

-- And whose weather would we use?

-- A bit from everyone, she said.

-- But that'd be rubbish, I replied, sure there's nothing we have but rain.

-- No, she smiled. You have the most rainbows.

I thought of this today on seeing the Brother's photo of the glorious rainbow that greated him as he arrived this evening in Bangor Erris, in County Mayo. Gorgeous, isn't it? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We left the Brother last week in County Galway, way out in Eyrephort at the end of the Sky Road west of Clifden, having completed a day that rivalled any he'd ever had in the saddle in his life -- and given that he's cycled to Istanbul and across America, that's saying a lot. The rain hammered down on Friday, and the setting was too gorgeous to flee from, so he stayed put and painted Toulouse, which in this case wasn't the French city but was in fact his hostess's dog, looking more than a little like the Brother's own DogDog, and a jovial companion for a walk along the beach.

He squeezed in a bit more sketching on Saturday before setting off, cycling along the coast and then cutting inland past Kylemore to Killary Harbour. On the way there, and in the most beautiful of surroundings, his gear cable broke, and to his twofold astonishment, he found that he had a replacement from when his American cycle kit of fifteen years earlier, and that he was able to fix it! The fjord being apparently devoid of Twitterati, he took the advice of one of his Twittering friends and stayed overnight at the Killary Adventure Centre, just west of Leenane, it being conveniently free of children who'd all headed off to Westport.

Sunday morning saw him bidding farewell to Leenane and cycling into Mayo, his fourteenth county; he had the roads rather to himself, with the county's attentions being on Croke Park, where Mayo was facing Kerry in an All-Ireland football semi-final. As Kerry's DatBeardyMan said after the Brother crossed over, 'ooh Mayo no less. Today you will be painting mostly misery'.  And indeed, despite a promising first half, the day was Kerry's, the Kingdom winning 1-20 to 1-11.

North the Brother cycled, through Delphi -- not, not that one -- and up to Louisburgh by Clew Bay, where he turned and cycled along the bay's southern shore, marvelling at the myriad islands and the Reek overlooking them all, as he made his way to the home of his Lecanvey hosts, there to shower and rest and refuel with tea, and to paint at Lecanvey Pier, listening to the sea while looking across the bay to Croagh Patrick.

As I've mentioned before, follow the links. This looks better in colour. Especially the sky.

Properly online again, as part of his apparent plan to acquire half the country's WPA keys, and following an online discussion about the value of cycling helmets -- after his American experience, the Brother's an ardent advocate for the things -- he posted a picture of the thrilling Connemara scenery in which he'd tended to his fourth puncture of the trip a couple of days earlier. This inspired a Twitter discussion in the dead of night about the merits of various kind of tyres, with one person singing the praises of 'bomb-proof' Schwalbe Marathons, saying he'd cycled 25,000km on one pair and suffered just ten punctures in total! 

Monday was a day for more painting, and one of the most beautiful sunsets one could imagine, and chicken pilaf, and Guinness. And, no doubt, tea. In the dead of night, with the bleakness of The Road on the telly, the tyre conversation of the previous evening was resumed, and in the course of all the chatter, a very kind person said she'd send over some new tyres from Dublin! It's nice to see such kindness in the real world with our screens filled with cannibalism and desolation and abandoned shopping trolleys. That's how it starts, you know.

On Tuesday the Brother was away again, making his way to Westport through just a few miles of scenery that he drily described as being 'a bit too nice', saying he was getting tired from looking and trying to take it all in. He took this as an opportunity to try some mounted commentary, as enabled by Bernie Goldbach's lapel microphone a couple of weeks back, describing his views as he pedalled towards the town. In Westport he stopped in the shadow of Saint Patrick -- no, not the one wielding swords on horseback -- to drink some tea and ponder a painting before heading out to stay with two of his Twitterati friends, and to smile fondly at seeing one of his paintings on display.

Wednesday saw him stationed a couple of miles south of Westport, sitting on a hill looking down at the town and painting a panorama for his hosts. It sounds as though there was a phenomenal amount to take in, but he made a valiantly vibrant attempt at a Moyhastin Panorama, painting almost till dark and then taking a trip to Boheh Stone to see the Rolling Sun, though getting there too late, arriving as it reached the bottom. Still, there was a second lovely Westport night, there to chat and have a pint in Moran's, to paint, and plot in the darkness.

That reminds me. Somebody online opined during the last week that the Brother sleeps while he cycles, so that he can paint through the night. It's a fine Chuck Norris style 'fact', and one worth repeating, even if it'd leaving you wondering how he manages to see the things he later paints. I wish I could remember who it was who said that, though as things stand all I can say with confidence is that it wasn't me, it wasn't the Brother, and it wasn't John Lee, who wrote a nice little piece about the Brother for Irish Central, beginning by contrasting the old-fashioned and radically modern aspects of my brother's exploits:

'So quaint -- itinerant artist pedaling through the Irish countryside, paying for a night’s lodging with a deftly done painting -- all so very analog. But it’s digital that drives this clockwise, one-man, two-to-three month, slo-mo, 32-county, social media cycling and painting tour of Ireland.'

It's worth a read, and not just for the lovely embedded video.

Anyway, that takes us today, and the Brother leaving beside a handprint or three as he said farewell to Westport, with his hosts wishing him and his knees well, and having to skip Newport for now -- he'll be back soon -- in order to get to Bangor Erris. Barring places he visited in week one, this'd be the part of the country he's visited that I know best. He set off via Mulranny, looking towards Corraun as he went, and then turned north.  On the way to Bangor he sheltered from the rain and admired the Paul Henry sky, and then carried on through the most magnificent scenery imaginable, stopping for tea at Ballycroy, and revelling in some of the most beautiful rain he'd ever seen with the setting sun of the golden hour backlighting the landscape. And then, as I said, there was that rainbow.

Tomorrow he should be staying in one of my favourite places in, well, the world, and then after that he'll be carrying on, one way or another*, to Sligo and beyond. I hope he's keeping track of how many kilometres of road and acres of canvas he's covered, not to mention how many mugs of tea he's downed. Those'd be figures to admire. Still, in the absence of hard numbers, it's worth keeping in mind just how far he's come, in the fourteen counties he'd graced to date with his pedalling presence.

As usual, this is the point where I say that if you think there's any chance at all he might be passing within twenty miles or so of where you live, and if you have a bed to offer and fancy a painting, and especially if you're in one of the spots he currently doesn't have a host, you should let him know. He doesn't require much: somewhere to lay his head, food to eat, limitless tea, and to know where you are. Just send a message to Ireland's first digital nomad™ -- the tour's about people and pixels as much as it's about painting and pedalling, after all.

You can follow the Painting Tour on the Brother's blog and especially on Twitter, using the hashtag  #paintingtour. His Facebook account's worth a shout too, but Twitter's where most of the real action is, even if it's sometimes reduced to musing on singing Cavanmen or undead action in the Middle East**. As I've said a few times now, I wouldn't bother following him on Google Latitude, though, given its habit of placing him at seemingly random locations in the past.

* As Debbie Harry would say.

** And I quote, 'While I'm at it, here's a crap undead joke: Where do zombies go on their holidays? Bahrainnnnnnn, of course. Urrrrrrrrr...'

Update: It seems the line '@eolai sleeps on the bike as he cycles. He stays in people’s houses to stay up all night painting,' was the brainchild of Galway's Allan Cavanagh. Thanks to Grannymar for having preserved it, and having alerted me to the fact.

Devalued A-Levels -- A (barely) International Perspective

Grade inflation is a boringly predictable topic in the papers and online every August. The big question among those who note the incessant improvement in exam results is whether the exams that mark the end of secondary education have gotten easier over the years, or whether -- as some will maintain -- it's simply that teaching has improved, such that students learn better. I know people in both camps.

It's hardly surprising that people should have concerns. A-Level results, which were generally consistent from one to the next until the 1980s, have improved now for 29 straight years. Back in 1982, 68.2 per cent of students passed their exams and one student in eight got one A in their A-Levels. Nowadays, 97.8 per cent of students pass their A-Levels and one student in eight gets three A's.

This is usually the point at which someone pops up to blame Labour for this, possibly doing so implicitly by treating 1997 as kind of Year One for grade inflation, focusing on how the highest grades rose every year between 1997 and 2010, with this rise suddenly being arrested this year.

This claim isn't so much inaccurate as misleading, as it requires one to ignore the general upward thrust in the top grades for more than a decade prior to 1997, and the fact that the number of students passing the A-Levels has risen every single year since 1982. I'm not saying that matters didn't get worse under Labour, but again, as with so many of Britain's problems, the phenomenon predates the era of Blair and Brown by some way. Radical grade inflation had been a clearly discernible problem for years before Labour came to power. Just look at the chart!

The stability in results that marked the A-Levels prior to the mid-eighties was a direct result of them being marked on a selection basis, rather than a criterion basis; they were marked on a curve such that, say, only the top 10 per cent of students could be awarded an A in any given subject, irrespective of their actual score on the paper. During the eighties the system shifted towards a criterion basis, such that nowadays the awarded grades are based more on individual performance rather than on comparison with peers.

(There's a comparative element in the marking even now, but it's relatively minor.)

In principle this is more objective that norm-based selection marking and should allow for results varying significantly from year to year, based on the ability of any given year's students. In practice, however, one could be forgiven for wondering why the results keep on improving... especially when research at the University of Durham has found that a 1980s 'C' grade is the equivalent of a modern 'A'.

I'm often baffled at the tendency to conduct these debates in bubbles, without reference to other countries. There's a lot to be learned by comparing countries with each other, not least because it involves recognising that there are standards other than our own.

I can really only speak with any authority about the Irish system, so let's just run with that as an example. The fundamental thing to grasp here is that Irish students have always done more subjects than English ones: whereas a typical English student did three A-Level subjects, a typical Irish one did seven or even eight. For example, I studied Maths, English, Irish, German, History, Geography, Accounting, and Applied Maths. We went for breadth over depth, leaving specialisation to third level education. Our marks in no more than six subjects are considered when allocating university places.

When I did my Leaving Cert, back in the day, I gave serious thought to applying to go to university in the UK. There were no fees in British universities, after all, unlike Irish ones.** Anyway, one of the things I learned back then was that the standard way of translating Leaving Cert results into A-Level ones was a straightforward two-for-one equation, such that, for example, British universities would consider six Leaving Cert subjects with a results profile of AAAABB to be the equivalent of three A-Levels with a profile of AAB. The opposite arrangement applied for British students applying to study in Ireland: Irish universities regarded each A-Level  as being the equivalent of two Leaving Cert subjects.

It's not like that now. In fact, it hasn't been like that in some time. I remember my then girlfriend getting annoyed six or seven years back when I explained to her how Trinity College in Dublin had downgraded the value of the A-Levels relative to the Leaving Cert. I dread to think what she'd think if I were to tell her that UCD, my alma mater, now explicitly regards the modern 'A*' result as the equivalent of an 'A' result of even a couple of years back, with the current 'A' being only marginally better than the older 'B'.
 

Broadly speaking, Irish universities now take the view that from the viewpoint of University entry requirements, a British 'A' is no longer twice as valuable as an Irish 'A'; on the contrary, it's roughly one-and-a-half times as valuable. A British 'B', which used to be worth two mid-range Irish 'B' grades, is now worth a mid-level 'B' grade and a bare pass, or two low-level 'C' grades. Take a look at this chart, comparing the points awarded for Leaving Cert, A-Level, and AS-Level grades, and leaving out such complexities as bonus points being offered for higher level Maths.

Confused? Okay, well try putting meat on those bones. What does this mean? Well, let's assume you got three A* results in your A-Levels. That'd give you 450 points. Would you like to know what UCD courses you'd not get onto with 450 points? As things stand this year, just based on the first round of offers, 450 points wouldn't be enough for any of: Architecture; Science; Actuarial and Financial Studies; Human Nutrition; Veterinary Medicine; Radiography; Physiotherapy; Health & Performance Science; Biomedical, Health and Life Scences; Children’s & General Nursing; Midwifery; English; History; Psychology; Law; Business & Law; Law with French, History, Politics, Philosophy, or Economics; International Commerce; or Economics and Finance.

And I'm not even getting into what you'd need to get into Medicine.

To have a decent chance at any of those subjects, you'd need three A* results and an AS result in something other than your main three. And General Studies doesn't count for points. For what it's worth, almost all of those require you to have done English, Maths, and at least one other language to GCSE level as the most basic requirement to be allowed do the course, and there are strict requirements barring certain A-Level subjects from being presented together: for example, you cannot present both English Language and English Literature, or both History and Classical Civilization, or both Environmental Studies and Geography.

Trinity College Dublin uses basically the same system, likewise evaluating candidates on the basis of either four A-Levels done in one year or three A-Levels done one year in combination with an AS level done the previous year in a different subject, albeit with a smaller range of barred subject combinations.

Lest you think this is just a matter of Irish universities being arsey, take a look at how the British Universities compare the two systems.

It's basically the same, isn't it? The agreed line seems to be that an Irish Leaving Cert subject, which used to be regarded as worth half an A-Level, is now regarded as worth about two-thirds of one. And this isn't because the Irish standards have risen...

We have to be fair, and admit that the old way of weighing the two sets of examinations against each other was far from systematic, but I think most people would agree that it was broadly fair. If it was any way accurate, then we're looking at a serious problem. The value of the A-Levels seems to have collapsed by a quarter relative to the Irish Leaving Cert, at a time when it is widely recognised in Ireland that the value of the Leaving Cert has itself been slipping. What this means for the real decline of the value of the A-Levels and British education in general doesn't really bear thinking about, but given how OECD and ONS figures show that literacy, numeracy, and cognitive skills in general have either declined or at best improved in a marginal way, I really think some facts need to be faced.

One thing we need to do is not merely to consider whether the A-Levels are fit for purpose, but to consider what their purpose is. Is it to stand in their own right as a certification of having completed secondary schooling to a high level, or is it to act as an entrance exam for third level education, or is it both? If it's either of the latter options, then it mightn't be a bad idea to introduce a percentile score alongside grades, so that university admissions can be conducted on the basis of data far more precise and meaningful than what is currently available.

If it's the former, or the other hand, then maybe it'd make more sense to concentrate less on examination than on education, so that the real emphasis would be placed on what children are learning. And no, Mister Toad, that doesn't just mean indoctrinating children with stuff we're obsessed with.

** Sic transit gloria mundi and all that.

The Things You Miss...

Feeling that being shackled to the desk isn't doing me any good, about a week or so back I started cycling again. While never even a tenth the cyclist my brother had been in his prime, I used to be fairly keen on being in the saddle, at least as a means of getting to and fro, and a couple of years back I went through a phase of cycling in the mountains (or hills, if you must) south of Dublin, covering up to a hundred miles in a day when the mood took me.

I'm not quite there yet, not least because even if I'd built up the stamina for that I'd still lack the time, but still, I'm enjoying starting back towards that. I've plans for some serious ground-covering once the current project's put to bed.

Today wasn't a huge ride by any definition -- just 32 miles -- but given that I was dying after just 19 a week or so back, this is progress. I went south, beyond Congleton, getting as far as the village of Moreton Cum Alcumlow, cataloguing  roadkill as I went*, and turning back as I reached this.

No, I had no idea what I was missing. This is because my bike can't fly. Life would be easier, and perhaps more interesting, if it could.

* In total: one fox, one cat, one rat, one mouse, one hedgehog, one squirrel, two rabbits, four birds including a pheasant, and two unidentifiable lots of dried and bloodied fur. Only the fox and the cat were offensively fragrant. There's a distinct whiff to roadkill.