Religious Abuse - How Religion Deprives Children of Their Human Rights in Northern Ireland

Religious Abuse

How Religion Deprives Children of Their Human Rights
in Northern Ireland

Political divide in Northern Ireland

Reports: Rights of children in NI undermined by religion - National Secular Society

Reports recently submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) by the Northern Ireland based child rights advocacy group, The Children's Law Center (CLC) demonstrate how religion continues to poisoning community relations, maintain divisions and hostility and deprive people of basic human rights, in Northern Ireland.

Despite years of progress following the end of the 'troubles' with the 'Good Friday' Belfast Agreement and the establishment of a power-sharing executive to administer devolved political power, the major source of intercommunal tension continues to be religion. The single most important barrier to the removal of religion as a source of hostility is the de facto segregation of primary and secondary education because of the insistence by the main Christian churches that they are not only influential in, but have control of education.

Despite a poll in 2012 which showed that 71% of the people of Northern Ireland believe an integrated education system should be the "primary model for the education system" and a 2016 UNCRC recommendation that Northern Ireland "actively promote a fully integrated education system" to facilitate "social integration, 93% of children in the province still attend faith schools while the few fully integrated schools can't meet the demand. In effect, parents have no choice but to send their children to be indoctrinated into one or other of two mutually hostile camps.

Source: Children's Law Center

Source: Children's Law Center

Source: Children's Law Center

In 2016, the UNCRC also recommended ending the legally mandated collective worship in Northern Ireland schools where, unlike in England and Wales, even children over the age of 16 have no right to withdraw themselves from collective worship. Last year the High Court in Northern Ireland agreed that this situation is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Although parents can withdraw their children from collective worship, the process is often difficult, and children rarely receive an alternative period of equal educational value. Children are also required to reveal details of their beliefs, in violation of their right to privacy, and often face stigmatisation and prejudice.

As part of their religious education syllabus, faith schools are permitted to include their religion's orthodox teaching on relationships and sex education, leaving LGBTQ+ students feeling that they are the victims of homophobic bullying and demonisation, again in violation of their basic human rights.

There is no requirement for Northern Ireland's schools to teach evolution in science class and, unlike in England, where state-funded schools are forbidden from teaching scientifically discredited superstitions like creationism and intelligent design as science, no such bar exists in Northern Ireland where creationism in its various forms can be presented to children as a valid alternative to the scientific view, and the Christian Bible can be taught as real science and history.

Indeed, the state is complicit in misleading children and depriving them of a sound, evidence-based education, or an objective view of religions, because schools are required to teach RE "based on the holy scriptures", with the syllabus designed by the "four main Christian churches", without non-religious, or non-Christian input. Religions besides Christianity are described as "other religions", illustrating Christianity's privileged position. There is no provision to objectively evaluate the claims of the various religions or make an meaningful comparison between them and the non-religious view of the world.

Despite the diminishing role and influence of religion in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, religion continues to hold sway in Northern Ireland, and in doing so, continues to foment and encourage intercommunal tension and strife while pretending to be peacemakers. Clearly, the interests of the priests and the churches is paramount and the interests of the people comes way down the list of priorities.

Northern Ireland - Loony DUP Leader Already Looking for Martyrdom

Edwin Poots, made a brief statement to the press but refused to answer questions

Ian Paisley accuses BBC of mocking Edwin Poots' faith - The Irish News

Taking offence and playing the martyr seems to come naturally to religious fundamentalist and Creationists like the new leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, Edwin Poots.

Poot's long-time political ally on the extreme right of the party, Ian Paisley Jnr. has already started complaining that the BBC mocked Poots for his fundamentalist beliefs when it told viewers that Poots is a Free Presbyterian Young-Earth Creationist, who believes Earth is only 6000 years old. Apparently, telling the truth about the bible-literalist beliefs of fundamentalist Christians is a form of mockery. But perhaps Paisley is sensitive about the matter, realising as he must, how ludicrous those beliefs sound in the rest of the UK, where they are regarded as more than a little deranged and the opinions of loopy religious nut-jobs and people with whom you wouldn't want your children left alone.

With so many questions following from his election, his refusal to answer them from the assembled journalists outside Stormont can only attract more ridicule. What is he running away from? What about his opinions is he ashamed of or embarrassed by?

A Young-Earth Creationist Loon to Lead Northern Ireland Assembly!

Edwin Poots, Democratic Unionist Party leader and Young-Earth Creationist
"Earth was created in about 4 BCE!"

Edwin Poots: Who is the new leader of the DUP? - BBC News

The Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Ian Paisley, has elected Edwin Poots, a fundamentalist Presbyterian Creationist, as its leader. As the leader of the largest party in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly, he could, subject to formal approval by the Legislative Assembly, become First Minister in the power-sharing Executive in which, in line with the Good Friday Agreement, the leader of the second largest party, currently Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill, is Deputy First Minister.

However, in what would be a break with tradition, Poots has indicated that he wishes to separate the roles of First Minister and leader of the DUP, so may nominate a First Minister from amongst his colleagues. If so, as leader of the DUP, he will retain considerable political power and influence in the Province.

As so often in Irish politics, religion is set to poison the political process in Northern Ireland and threaten the Good Friday agreement and the peace and stability of the province, hastened in that process by the idiotic vote in 2016 to leave the European Union.

Poots, despite being an educated adult, is on record as saying he believes Earth is a little over 6,000 years old. He believes this because this date was once calculated by Bishop Ussher of Armagh, from his reading of the Bible. It is not based on any scientific data, all of which shows Earth to be about 3.8 billion years old. Presumably, on the same basis, Poots believes in a literal 6-day creation, Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. He gets this from a book which endores slavery and second-class status for women, the authors of which thought Earth was small and flat, had a dome over it, and was at the centre of a Universe which ran on magic!

He first became prominent in Northern Ireland politics when, as the DUP member of the Stormont Parliament for Lagan Valley, he opposed the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but accepted a ministerial post as Minister for Culture and Arts, in the newly-formed power-sharing Executive under Ian Paisley with Martin McGuiness for Sinn Féin as Deputy First Minister. He also opposed reform of the then highly politicised Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), to form the officially politically non-aligned Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) - regarded as a key reform to allow policing in the province to be with the consent of both communities.

As a proud socially-conservative fundamentalist Christian, he opposes a woman's right to choose, gay couples adopting children and, as Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety he banned gay men from donating blood. He also expressed a desire to ban blood donations from anyone who had had sex with an African.

He is also strongly opposed to coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions and, without presenting any evidence, claimed transmission rates were six times higher in Nationalist (predominantly Catholic) areas of Northern Ireland than in Unionist (predominantly Protestant) areas. There is in fact no evidence to support that claim since data in infections is not collated on the basis of religion or political persuasion.

He is also strongly opposed to the Brexit arrangements under which there is a de facto customs border down the Irish Sea, with different customs rules for Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, keeping NI in a de facto customs union with the Republic and the rest of the EU. This was the issue that prompted Arlene Foster's resignation when she lost the confidence of DUP MLA colleagues who felt she had been too compliant over the Brexit arrangements Boris Johnson had signed up to. In February this year, as Minister for Agriculture and the Environment, Poots withdrew the staff carrying out the Brexit checks at the port of Larne as part of these customs arrangements. The alternative to the border down the Irish Sea is border posts and checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic - a breach of international law under the Anglo-Irish Treaty as part of the Good Friday Agreement, under which goods, capital and people can move freely across the border.

In the 2016 referendum, Northern Ireland voted by a large majority to remain within the European Union while the DUP was in favour of leaving.

Poots is no stranger to the charge of corruption, of which his predecessor, Arlene Foster was also no stranger. Foster famously arranged a Renewable Energy Scheme when Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, with minimal cost controls, under which anyone could install a wood-burning heater in, for example, an out-house or barn, and claim huge sums of money to buy fuel for it - far in excess of the actual cost of the wood-pellet fuel - a generous facility under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from which very many Unionist-supporting land-owners made small fortunes at NI taxpayers' expense.

This was the issue, and Foster's refusal to allow an enquiry into the scandal, that cause the previous Executive to collapse when Martin McGuiness resigned as Deputy First minister after an election had put the DUP within one seat of losing their majority in the Legislative Assembly. Under the Good Friday Agreement, Foster was also required to resign and the Power-Sharing executive collapsed. Fearful of an election they they could well have lost, Foster refused to call another election and Westminster re-imposed direct rule on the province.

Poots had been lobbying Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, on which his son, Luke, was a councillor, in support of planning applications by friends and associates. Luke Poots voted on these applications without declaring an interest, when he should have absented himself from any votes related to the applications. In effect, Poots Snr. was acting as a conduit for paid-for favours with Poots Jnr. delivering the favours. Luke Poots did not seek re-election to the council in 2019. Both he and Edwin Poots, like Foster before them, deny any breach of the rules or abuses of power.

Together with the Brexit debacle and the dwindling of support for the old sectarian and casually corrupt politics of the DUP, there is now a distinct possibility that the regressive Protestant majority in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly could fall to a progressive Sinn Féin-led coalition in a future election, followed by a referendum on re-union with the Republic, for which there is growing popular support.

Come that day, the 1920's creation of the British Conservative and Unionist Party and the Protestant Orange Lodges under Carson of "A Protestant State for a Protestant People", for long the slogan of Ulster Unionism, will finally be laid to rest. The selection as DUP leader of someone who apparently find it difficult to assimilate scientific evidence and base his policies on that evidence, can only hasten that day, especially as the Republic simultaneously turns its back on religion and becomes increasingly secular and progressive, and where Sinn Féin now has the same number of seats in the Dáil (37) as Fianna Fáil and is the leading party in the governing coalition.

Hopefully, Poots, or whoever he nominates to be First Minister on his behalf, will be the last Protestant leader of Carson's Protestant State and the island of Ireland will become a Secular State for a Secular People.

Catholic Abuse News - Irish Church Ratting on Compensation Promise

Site of the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam (now demolished).

Dáil hears call for church assets to be seized if religious orders refuse to pay for abuse - Independent.ie

20 years ago, the then minister Michael Woods, a Fiana Fáil TD, struck a €120 million deal with the Catholic Church in Ireland to pay compensation and reparations to the survivors of the Mother and Baby homes run by Catholic nuns.

Under their draconian, abusive and judgmental regimes, hundreds of babies, stigmatised as the illegitimate products of 'sin', died from diseases, neglect and malnutrition, their bodies then being disposed of like rubbish by being thrown in disused septic tanks or given to the gardener/handyman to dispose of in unmarked graves in the grounds. Some of the bodies were sold to Dublin medical schools to be used for dissection, for as little at 50 pence per body.

The €120 million was to be the Church's contribution to a government-run 'restorative justice' scheme. Most of the commitment has been reneged on.

Catholic Abuse News - Government of Ireland Apologises for Abusive Nuns

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland
"People were frequently stigmatised, judged and rejected"

Irish government to apologise over mother-and-baby homes - BBC News

Taoiseach Mícheál Martin, head of government in the Republic of Ireland, has formally apologised for the state's part in the regimes of terror and casual abuse of mothers and babies in the homes run by Catholic nuns in the 1950s through to the 1990s in Ireland. This abuse led to the premature deaths of some 9000 babies and children and the casual disposal of their bodies in unmarked graves and even in disused septic tanks. Some bodies were even sold to Dublin medical schools for as little as 50 pence!

The Catholic Church's and the Irish states complicity in these systematic and institutionalised abuses of single mothers and their children was acknowledged in the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

These centres of systematic abuse, humiliation and casual neglect for vulnerable women and their children were set up when Ireland, under the malign and all-pervading influence of the Catholic Church, was a deeply conservative, judgemental, misogynistic country in which sex and pregnancy outside wedlock were regarded as amongst the worst of sins, with prgnancy regarded as an ofence and the girls bearing the brunt of the blame. Their babies were regarded as the product of sin and unworthy of love and care, carrying a stigma that would haunt them for life.

A couple of paragraphs from the Report's Executive Summary are particularly telling of the social attitudes and Irish society and of the nuns in particular:

Ireland to Reduce Catholic Interference in its Education System

A selection of religious symbols on display at Citywest and Saggart Community National School, an Education and Training Board (ETB) school.

Photograph: Eric Luke

Catholic symbols in State schools to be phased out | Irish Times

The Irish Times is reporting that Catholic influences are to be phased out in State-run schools. This is part of an increasing recent trend towards rejection of religion, especially Catholicism, in Ireland in recent years, and is an important milestone on the road to a fully secular society in the Republic.

Amongst the catholic influences to be removed will be graduation masses, Catholic-only symbols and inspection visits by Catholic diocesan inspectors.

Ireland - Where Religion Poisoned Everything

The Great Famine

“[The famine is an] effective mechanism for reducing surplus population [as well as] the judgement of God… The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

Charles Trevelyan, letter to Lord Monteagle of Brandon

Trevelyan's repugnant words, typical of English upper-class thinking of the time, illustrates just how much religion played in the response to the Irish Potato Famine, just as it had played a major part in setting the conditions for it to happen in the first place. Although the anti-Catholic Penal Laws begun by Cromwell and later extended, had been repealed, the repeal was too recent to have altered the distribution of land which was still heavily tilted in favour of Protestants, who were the main landlords, especially in the south and west of the island, and Catholics owned little or none of it.

I explain this in detail in my popular book A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything:

Ancient DNA Shows Early Irish Incestuous God-Kings

Newgrange burial mound, County Meath, Ireland

Photo credit: Ken Williams"

DNA study reveals Ireland's age of 'god-kings' - BBC News

It makes a pleasant change to be able to write about something that isn't related to covidiot religious fundamentalists doing their bit to spread the Covid-19 virus, debunking creationist frauds with facts as revealed by science or to Catholic priests abusing children for recreation.

This is about Ireland and Irish history, something in which I have long taken an interest and written about in my popular book, A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything".

Religion seems to have played as big a part then as it did until recently in the island of Ireland.

Increasingly Secular Ireland as Catholic Church Declines

Baby boom in the past as new figures show birthrates drop again - Irish Mirror Online

The degree to which the Irish Republic has rejected Catholicism in recent years can be seen in a few birth and marriage figures for 2018, released yesterday.

Traditionally, a typical Irish family of previous generations, following the diktats of the Catholic Church, would have been very large. My partner's mother, born into an Irish Catholic emigre family, was one of twelve children, for example. Her Irish-born grandfather from County Mayo, born just a few years after the famine, was one of fourteen children. By the time of the 2011 census, this was down to an average of just 1.38 children, itself a fall from 1.41 in 2006.

Another Massive Rejection of Catholicism in Ireland

1995 campaign poster.
Jesus says no; Ireland said yes. Now Ireland says more, by a massive majority.

Divorce referendum: Ireland votes to liberalise laws - BBC News

In another massive rejection of the teaching and advise of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland, the Irish people have voted to liberalise their divorce laws in a referendum held on Friday.

The scale of this shift away from Catholic teaching can be gauged by the scale of the vote in favour of liberalisation compared to the vote to allow divorce in 1995. In 1995, the majority in favour of divorce itself was a mere - 50.3%. Friday's referendum gave an 82.1% vote in favour of the liberalisation of it.

Catholic Ireland Where Nuns Sold Dead Babies

Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, Cork.
Highest infant mortality rate of any religious-run institution.

Pat Flanagan column: Selling 1,000 dead babies shows how much Catholic Church hated children - Pat Flanagan - Irish Mirror Online

The fifth interim report of the Irish Government's Commission Of Investigation On Mother And Baby Homes, published a few days ago, has added yet more horror to the catalogue of horrors that the homes became under the Catholic Church's supervision.

The homes were run by Catholic nuns and became almost autonomous, being accountable to no-one but themselves. They served as homes for pregnant unmarried women and mothers and became virtual places of punishment with both the women and their babies treated as sub-human and worthless by the nuns, who saw them as sinners and the products of sin. When they died, and they died very often, they were not even accorded respect as human beings.

New Book: A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything

My new book, A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything, is a bit of a departure for me, delving into other areas of interest - history and Ireland - and combining them into a coherent critique of religion and the harm it does.

Originally conceived many years ago as an objective background to the then prevalent 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, it quickly became inescapable that the underlying cause of them was religion. There are few if any other factors involved. There is no significant racial, linguistic or ethnic difference between what amounted to warring and mutually detesting communities.

The Catholics spoke English as did the Protestants, the 'Old English' had long been assimilated into the Catholic Irish community and the Protestants were mostly Scots whose divergence from the Celts of Ulster had been within the last 1500 years. Both communities now spoke predominantly English which had largely replaced a Goidelic Celtic language so similar and with such recent common origins that they amount to dialects of one another and are mutually intelligible.

The one major difference was religious, and yet the differences ran so deep that the two communities maintained a virtual apartheid; one faction seeing the other as a lesser people destined to be for ever ruled over by the other and that faction seeing the other as usurpers, occupying their ancestral homelands. A hatred that ran so deep that it became more important to avenge some half-legendary wrong done to grandparents than to ensure a peaceful future for grandchildren. A hatred that cost 3000 lives and gained not an inch of territory and not a single significant political concession.

The Pope Gets a Lesson in Morality

Taoiseach Leo Varadakar welcomes Pope Francis ahead of his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin

Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire

In an astonishingly frank yet polite speech to Pope Francis in Dublin Castle, the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, marked a turning point in the history of the Irish Republic and its relationship with the Catholic Church - and he told the Pope why.

He started the speech by acknowledging the good that the Catholic Church did in Ireland - schools, hospitals, welfare - filling the holes in what the State provided to the people after independence, although he politely sidestepped the fact that the Church clung tenaciously to their control of these institutions and resisted any state involvement, which is why those 'holes' existed in the first place.

According to the transcript of his speech in the Indepenent.ie, reproduced in full below, he then reminded the Pope that the State had now taken on those functions because Ireland is a different place and a different society to that at its founding in 1922.

Holy Father, on behalf of the Irish people, I want to greet you using one of the oldest blessings we use to welcome a special guest to Ireland - cead mile failte - one hundred thousand welcomes.

Another Massive Rejection of the Catholic Church in Ireland

Greeting the result

Credit: AP

With the result now confirmed, the 'Yes' campaign has scored a stunning victory in their campaign to legalise abortion in the Republic of Ireland.

The result is 66.4 : 33.6 in favour of replacement of the 8th amendment - article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution - which forbids abortion in almost all circumstances, with one which reads “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.”

According to this report, the Irish government has already said it will bring legislation before the Dail which

Irish Vote Is A Massive Rejection Of Catholicism

The stunning victory for the pro equality, pro same-sex marriage side in the Irish referendum is an event of huge historic significance because it represents a massive rejection of the Catholic Church in Ireland and signifies another huge penetration of Humanism into this formerly devoutly Catholic part of Europe.

Just as with Germany a few days ago, the message from Ireland for the Vatican is that Catholic Church has a choice: either it has to abandon centuries of dogma, bigotry and exclusion - in effect abandon Catholicism, or the people will abandon the Church. The Church's teaching, behaviour and attitude is no longer acceptable in a modern, civilised and above all Humanist society.