There is an unwritten law in Irish journalism.
Attach the word ‘Catholic’ to any accusation against a person and a certain section of the public will be inclined to believe it no matter what. The ensuing hallucinations often take on very creative turns, with perceived events carrying as much weight as actual events.
The hysteria gripping Ireland this week began with a matter of fact Tweet, one that did not mention the word Catholic but concerned a Catholic school, claiming that ‘Female students at a Carlow secondary school have been told by teachers not to wear tight-fitting clothing to PE, as it is distracting for male staff’.
The matter of fact nature of the tweet initiated an avalanche of deranged responses. However, a more cautious reading of subsequent tweets would have identified the word ‘basically’ as indicative of the paraphrasing that was being misinterpreted as fact.
The journalist continued to quote from a parent who was in turn paraphrasing what their child had told them.
Finally, it finished with the standard, ‘They have neither confirmed nor denied’, type comment. As if the school owed generic journalists explanations for what had been mutated into a child protection issue that was being carried out flippantly in public view.
Responses to this story quickly turned to slander against these teachers.
Without due regard for the professional or private lives of teachers with regards to baseless allegations, Irish people were quickly insinuating the worst.
Lest we presume that the story had merely gotten out of hand from the original intention, that last Tweet was actually ‘Liked’ by one of the journalists covering the story.
Any rational person would look at this story, draw a breath and ask what had been lost in the process of Chinese Whispers here. As it transpired, the parent quoted had in actuality written a Facebook Post alleging that this had to have happened and the journalist had allowed the story to snowball from there.
But this is post Catholic Ireland. Where every single news story (verified or not) must be an opportunity to vent against real or perceived slights from Ireland’s terrifying Catholic past, as a means of validating the awful world that these people have created for their children.
The majority of commenters made clear that this story would be used to drag Catholicism into it.
Many others used this as a stick to beat Catholic education with in a wider sense. Long term critics of the church quickly rounded on the school, most chillingly, politicians were ready and willing to irresponsibly drum up the hysteria.
One prominent driver of this hysteria was Aodhan O’Riordain of the Labour Party, who imposed brutal austerity on Ireland during their time in government, causing widespread emigration and homelessness.
This story comes at a very convenient time for O’Riordain, a long time campaigner against Catholic schools. In 2018, while campaigning for a Referendum on Catholic involvement in education, O’Riordain stated that, ‘We have 4,000 schools in the State and there are ongoing issues such as access, employment rights for non-religious teachers, school ethos, sex education and so on’.
Also joining in on the dogpile was self-proclaimed ‘Practising Catholic’ Hazel Chu, chairwoman of the ruling Green Party and current ‘Lord Mayor' of Dublin, an archaic and aristocratic remnant of the British Empire which has not yet been removed from Irish society despite its outdated elitism and anti democratic nature.
These comments were remarkable from a member of the Green Party, who themselves cried foul when their Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, was criticised for associating with Peter Tatchell. Evidently, that experience did not create sufficient empathy to hear both sides of a story before commenting.
Such responses might seem mere instinctive reactions to what had happened, but in reality they are troubling indications of how unhinged Irish people have become from reality. With Tuam for example, there is no evidence to point towards the various wild interpretations of Catherine Corless’s original claims, with these wild interpretations sometimes mentioning nuns ‘throwing babies into septic tanks’. We received a number of replies on Twitter recently which asked us to comment upon a vague story about ‘leaked images', which quickly garnered enough social media clout to be discussed by the Irish government (because that is how Ireland decides its laws now). As it transpired, most of the fears over these images were completely unfounded when they had been investigated.
What is really happening here is that Irish people are running out of things to blame the church for.
This sort of scrutiny is never applied to Islamic schools in Ireland. In one Dublin based Muslim school, their policy on PE reads that, ‘All children should wear suitable footwear and clothing during a PE lesson. Children will not be allowed wear any jewellery, broaches or pins used on hijabs during a PE lesson’. The website of another Islamic school based in Dublin displays all female staff and students wearing traditional Islamic attire. Another Islamic school states ‘The Uniform Required For The Students Is In Align With Islamic Requirements (I.E.CODE OF DRESS)’.
In the past few weeks, Catholic schools have gone above and beyond to accommodate ‘Pride’, more so than non Catholic schools in fact. Many have displayed Rainbow flags, invited LGBT activists to speak to their children and organised talks and other events to placate this ideology and prove that they are kind to them. This school in particular had actually invited the Chairperson of the local Pride festival to speak about their sexuality and even organised a ‘Pride Wall’ displaying the ‘flags’ of the various sexual lifestyle and dysphoria movements that fall under the category of ‘LGBT’. This was posted, interestingly enough, on the day that the alleged comments were made. The school were busy placating the same liberal mob who now come for them and slander them to no end.
As it transpires, the school’s principal rightfully condemned what had happened, saying that it was damaging to staff and unsubstantiated, even as 5,000 people had comically signed a petition against the hallucinated situation.
We are sure that Bishops are offering support from behind the scenes and so they should. The state, the media and the desolate wasteland of godless Ireland wants someone to scapegoat for its failures. It wants the church’s schools because it cannot build its own, it wants the church’s lands because they cannot provide their people with their own and it wants the church’s acquiescence because they regard it as a sign of their entitlement to succession. The church should start planning now for increasing the Catholicity of its schools. It should issue directives instructing its schools to desist from pandering to the LGBT mobs who hate them. It should also consider forming Catholic school teacher unions, for those unfairly targeted by rage mobs, those who will face criminal trials under Fianna Fail’s proposed ‘hate crime’ legislation for holding Catholic beliefs and those who are falsely presumed guilty of being predators by virtue of being employed by a Catholic school.
Many of the staff in this school likely don’t consider themselves Catholic, or even as being staff hired to uphold a Catholic ethos. But that is how the world views them and will continue to view them. Catholic schools are an obstacle to graphic sex education (even though many already teach it), they are an obstacle to radical LGBT agendas (even though groups associated with Peter Tatchell are being hired to train teachers on introducing sexuality to Primary Schools in Ireland and Rainbow flags are flying high from countless Catholic schools) and they are an ideological impediment towards having a school system that is completely dictated by the state, without challenge from families or faith groups.
Journalists see themselves as the priests of this Revolution. They can say whatever they want without impunity, always backed by their equivalent of bishops (left wing politicians).
Being outraged for the sake of outrage is not morality. A generation devoted to phrases such as ‘well being’ and ‘be kind’ could easily have caused one of these teachers to have been seriously harmed by these accusations, by themselves or by others.