Prayer, Penance and Catholic guilt

 I started writing blogs nearly thirteen years ago. This is one of the very first blogs I planned to write, but try as I may, I couldn't find the words to convey what I meant. I have probably had another 50 attempts, my draft blog folder is littered with discarded efforts, all of which completely failed to convey what I had to say. I could have taken the cop out route and published any of them. I suppose they are all quite interesting in their own way, but I just felt none were honest enough or said what I really wanted to say properly. Let me start by saying that if you are reading this and now expect stark tales of dastardly deeds, then there are none here. But in some ways, I think what I am going to say is far more devastating about the way the Roman Catholic church functions. I am saying this in the probably vain hope that someone, somewhere in a position of authority in the organisation will read it, stop and think about what I have to say, and take some of what I have to say on board. You may ask what is different this time? Well firstly, I have had some inspiration and pause for thought. This is thanks to Pat Mills. Mills is a writer, perhaps IMHO the finest of our generation if you like graphic fantasy novels. Mills also tweets about the issues with the Catholic Church. We share a view that the Church needs to properly address the scandals that are destroying it at the moment. We also share the view that it needs to properly address the victims of abuse, treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve and deliver justice and closure for the horrors that have been heaped upon them. 

But that is not where I want to start, I just wanted to put the context there. I wanted to start by talking about Prayer. I believe Prayer to be the most powerful thing in the Universe. I despise the snake oil salesmen preachers who sell Prayer as some sort of shopping cart that delivers miracles and riches. It does none of those things. They sow false hope, they inspire cynicism and they completely alienate people to something which may save their lives and sanity. Let me explain. I believe I was blessed. I was taught to pray by my father. He was a gruff Australian, raised in the outback. He flew bombers for the RAF in the second world war. He was a hardnut who lead a successful escape. There were tales of him throwing a gangsters enforcer in an incinerator in the 1950's after an attempt to extort money from his business. But there was another side to him. When I was a small child, my biggest treat was to see Daddy in the mornings. My father hated getting up and loved nothing more than lying in bed. Mum would bring him cups of tea and toast, to keep him out of the way. She couldn't stand his cheerful demeanour. I would jump into bed with him and he'd grab his Rosary beads off the bedpost and we'd lie there saying the rosary. One day I remember asking him why he did that. He said "Just to say thank you to God for being alive". At that moment, two London Sparrows appeared on the gutter of the adjouning house. He looked and said "There's St Peter and St Paul, come down from heaven to make sure we are alright". By an amazing coincidence, as he said that a ray of sunshine broke through, illuminating us. He said "All is good with the world". Of course, sadly it wasn't but all was good with our world. My father always said that Prayer was a primarily a thank you for our blessings. He said that you should never pray for worldly riches, your football team to win or luck in love. He said that you should pray for strength to persevere and solace in despair. He said if you had a problem you should pray for the wisdom to see it through and if you were in turmoil, you should empty your mind and say the Rosary and just hope for peace and calm. 

As a teenager, I forget these lessons. When I was 24, I'd left home and my Father had been very ill. I was going through an Atheist phase. I was shocked to see him and was convinced he was going to die. I thought of his words and prayed that he'd make a recovery, asking the Lord for the opportunity to have one last curry with him at The Mill Hill Tandoori. Be careful just what you pray for. To everyones amazement, he recovered. My mother, who had got sick of him moping around (he was a lousy patient), went to see her sister when he was better. I vowed to make good on my words. Dad was 69 and it was November 1986. We had a great night. He told me a story, something had been troubling him in hospital. He said that when he'd been shot down over Rumania in 1944, as he was struggling to get out of his Wellington Bomber before it crashed, he prayed to the Virgin Mary. He said that the bible said a man had three score and ten years. He said that if he somehow survived, he'd lead a good life and do what he could to thank the Lord for his survival. He managed to bale out with about five seconds to spare. He felt his parachute open, he heard the plane hit the ground, then he hit the ground, in the pitch black spraining both ankles. 

When he was taken POW and placed in a POW camp in Bucharest, he'd had no sleep for three days. He was tired and dispirited. He took out his Rosary beads, started to pray and fell asleep. A camp guard came in, saw his boots on the bed and hit them with the butt of his rifle. My father, woken and in a foul mood, leaped out of bed and started to beat the hell out of the guard. An officer came in, pointed his Mauser pistol at my father and said asked what the hell was going. My Father still had the Rosary in his hand. He said "I was praying when this goon attacked me" (or words to that effect). The officer, seeing the Rosary realised he was telling the truth. He told my father to go back to his prayers and disciplined the guard. My Grandmother was raised in a German orphanage and had raised my Father by speaking German to him, so he understood every word. He strongly believed that if you were right with the Lord, such things happened. 

What troubled him was that he was now in his 70th year. The good Lord had fulfilled his part of the bargain. He said that when he'd been lying in hospital, he'd realised that he'd run out of road. I pointed out that he was fine. I suggested that he go to Florida to see my sister, who lived in Fort Lauderdale to recuperate. Her husband was a doctor, so he'd be in good hands. Dad said he'd been thinking of doing that. My parents decided to see out the winter there. We spoke about many things, drinking scotch until 3am. It was probably the only proper adult conversation I ever had with my father. In January, my mothers sister Died. My parents returned on the 30th January 1987. I didn't know they'd come back, no mobile phones then. The day after my father had a heart attack and died. Be careful what you pay for. He had his three score and ten, I had my curry. Make of it what you will.

In 2011, when I learned I had Prostate cancer, a friend gave me an amazing book, called Anti Cancer - A new way of living. It has many good lifestyle tips, to help deal with a bad situation. It is written by a qualified doctor. There is a chapter on meditation. I learned a very interesting thing. A study was done to assess the calming effect of meditation on the brain. A group of Buddhist monks were wired up and their brains monitored whilst meditating. As expected, the brain waves became very calm. A similar experiment was done by the same team on a group of Italian nuns saying the rosary. To the surprise of the team, they had exactly the same calm brain patterns. The conclusion was that quiet meditation, whatever the form is very good for you. Coming from an Irish Catholic background, with some Aussie thrown in, I thought back to those days saying the rosary with my father. Since then, if I can't sleep, feel distressed, need inspiration, I say the Rosary. It works for me. My reasons for mentioning this is to ensure you understand how important prayer is to me. It helps, it works. I make no claims that it has made me lucky in love or successful in business, I'd like to say I've prayed for neither but it is not entirely true, but the success I prayed for in love did not emerge in the way I had hoped, although I am blessed beyond my prayers as a teenager (lets leave that there).

I hope I've set out just how important prayer is for me personally, now we move on to the trickier part of the matter. When I started attending St Vincents RC Primary school, my relationship with Prayer started to change. It no longer was a joyous experience, where Sparrows would appear and rays of sunshine would shine. My memories of that time was of being told how every sin was a stain on your soul. It seemed the sun never shined. A whole new vocabulary appeared. We learned that babies that died without Baptism went to Limbo (this place always confused me, I believe it has been abolished). When you  died, before you could go to heaven, you went to Purgatory to account for your sins. We were urged to pray for the Holy Souls, although I could never quite figure out why. We learned that our faith was the one true one and all the rest of them were wrong. We never prayed for the Queen, as she was the Head of The Church of England. We were taught that if we were really lucky, we'd be tortured and put to death as Martyr's then we might jump the queue, dodge purgatory and go straight to heaven.

When we were about seven we started to 'learn our sacrements'. Confession was the first. For those who are not familiar. You tell the priest all of your sins and in return he gives you absolution and penance. What is penance? It is those same prayers I'd joyously say with my Dad as a Toddler, but you'd have to sit in a cold church, with everyones eyes on you. They could tell how naughty you'd been by how long you'd say your penance for. We were told that if you didn't confess and you died, then you'd be in deep trouble. As kids, we'd all make up sins, trawl our brains for minor infractions. Dear Father "I've lied, I told tales on my sister, I didn't say my prayers". What sins could a seven year old realistically commit that would confine them to purgatory. 

St Vincents was run by the Daughters of Charity. Being dyslexic and more or less incapable of reading and writing, I struggled. I didn't receive too much charity. The most feared of all teachers was Miss O'Donovan. I quite liked her. Whilst she would hit me over the knuckles for not tidying my desk, she'd also take great delight in finding fault with the clever kids who weren't naughty. No one got out of there alive, metaphorically. She left me alone most of the time, as she realised I was beyond redemption. I was also lucky in that I had measles, chicken pox and just about every other disease in the year she took us. My sisters had so terrified me of her, that I'd pray to be ill and give the lord thanks as I was struck down. Then there was sister Gabriel. What was a sin? I well recall the worst sin of any. A boy in the year above me had been caught playing kiss chase in the playground. His punishment. Sister Gabriel called a special assembly. He was made to kiss her in front of the whole school. I'm not sure if he was given 'The Bat' as well, but to be honest I'd have rather been given the cane for a year than face that humiliation. No one ever played kiss chase again. The Daughters also ran an orphanage on the site.  IN the first year of juniors, the orphans were allowed to join us in lessons. This seemed like a massive deal. We kept our distance, we were worried that being an orphan might be contagious. When I was about eight, my mother contracted cancer. I was told by a cousin that she would die and I'd be put in the orphanage. I was horrified. My friends would no longer talk to me. 

I was so upset that as my Dad drove me up to visit her, I asked him. He nearly crashed, burst into tears, sobbed uncontrollably for five minutes and then gathered himself. "No son, nothing and no one will ever take you away from me". I asked him if Mum was going to die. I will credit my father with never lying to me. He said "The doctors say that she has almost no chance of survival, but I believe that if we pray for her every day, she may pull through". She survived. Something she attributed to drinking eight pints of Guinness a night, rather than our prayers. What that should have taught me was compassion for the orphans, but in truth, all it really did was terrify me that I may suffer the same fate. The thought of being stuck there for 24 hours a day was beyond awful. 

Catholic guilt. When mum came out of hospital, there was general rejoicing. This had not been expected. Everyone said to me that I must be over the moon that my Mum was getting better. Yes I was happy, but in truth I was happier that the threat of going into the orphanage had gone. I don't recall how or why, but one day I woke up and realised that I was a very selfish person. I wasn't pleased that my mum was getting better for her. I was only pleased because it meant I wasn't going into the orphange. It is interesting. If you see any pictures of me before Mum had cancer, I almost always have a cheeky smile. After, I always have a furtive and guilty look. The whole experience scarred me. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. I could never share this. 

So what am I trying to say?  I will return to this topic again, but there are many things that disturbs me about this period of my life. I owe a great debt to my Father for showing me 'the right way', but my memories of school and the whole edifice that was the Church in the 1960's casts a shadow. That an institution run by a religious community can inspire such terror in an eight year old child is surely something to be concerned about. There are many things emerging about the orphanage that are beyond just 'a little concerning'. The view of us as kids was that it was a bad place, but it goes far beyond that, as Mrs Angry has documented. But it goes way beyond that. The whole dysfunctional mindset that Prayer is punisment, that we have to confess to sins we haven't even committed and that we should feel guilty for merely wanting to survive is something I think all Catholics of my vintage need to address. I have not had the awful experience of abuse that some have had. But how can we move on when a Church that makes kids confess for 'lying to their sister' refuses to confess it's own sins and do the appropriate penance of making reparations. The victims of the abuse that has happened to not need 'penitent' abusive priests saying an Our Father for them. They need the Church to do what it should have done from the day it came into existence. To support the weak and to be honest. Only then can we truly move forward. 

Easter Sunday

This week we've seen the two major religious festivals of Passover and Easter. Not being a religious scholar, I'm not going to offer the readers of the Barnet Eye any great insight into either of these festivals. In Mill Hill I've witnessed many people of the Jewish faith walking to and from Synagogue past my house. These are typically family groups of old and young. As they walk they talk, joke, laugh. It's pretty much the same for the people visiting the various Christian churches in Mill Hill for the Good Friday and Easter Sunday ceremonies.

In Mill Hill there was one rather noticable feature of all of these worshippers. They all approached their respective services in a calm relaxed and happy manner. None of them were looking over their shoulders for the police, death squads, mobs of other faiths armed with stones. People are free to practice whatever they want in peace, free of fear. Whilst the Synagogue does employ security to ensure the safety of worshippers, this is more as a sensible precaution against lone nutcases or groups with their bases far from Mill Hill, who have no association with the area. I think I can say with cast iron certainty that anyone who publicly threatened any of the religious establishments in Mill Hill would receive a united front of opposition from all faiths. For as far back as I can remember there have been excellent relations between all of the faiths in Mill Hill.

My mother used to help at fundraising events at the Synagogue in the 1960's and 1970's. It may surprise you to find out that she was a devout Roman Catholic. Why did she help/ One of her best friends was a Jewish lady who organised the events. She used to ask my mother as she knew she was a hard worker. In return, she would help my mother to organise events at St Josephs College, notably the annual garden fete. I once asked my mother about this curious arrangement. She replied that her friend thought that St Josephs College was the best thing about Mill Hill, with its beautiful grounds and landmark tower. She thought it was worth preserving. As to my mother helping at the Synagogue, she said that in a community we should all support our friends. I guess that this practical level of building communities sank in. One interesting thing which a Jewish friend pointed out. St Joseph who sits atop the tower at the college is possibly the only Saint in the Catholic Church who wasn't a Christian, but a Jew. He was never listed as a follower of his son, just as a guide and an influence. Maybe his towering presence in Mill Hill has helped ensure we all get on. A nice thought.

On Easter Sunday, I would suggest that all of us who live in a free and fair society, where we can live our life and practice our faith as we choose should say a prayer of thanks for this privilege. Whatever faith you belong to or even if you have none, when you see people attending services for faiths and denominations you are not a member, it is a cause of celebration. The best guarantee that we can live our lives according to our beliefs is that we are happy for others to do the same.

Have a great Easter Sunday. I gave up Red Wine, Meat and Bread for lent. It is fair to say I will enjoy my Sunday roast today, two stone lighter than when I started.

Is the Pope a Catholic?

I read this article on the BBC website today, about the Pope worrying that the church might have to start appointing gay people to senior positions. You see I wasn't aware that there was such a ban. I just thought there was a requirement for all clergy (except for married ex Church of England Vicars) to be Celibate, be they gay or straight.

I've no idea if it's true, but years ago, I was told that historically, the Priesthood was seen as a good career for gay Catholics. There was a good reason for this. Priests traditionally are most likely to come into our lives at times of great stress, when we are emotionally vulnerable. Historically with the man of the house going off to fight wars or spending long days working, a Priest who was heterosexual would find himself in a position of huge temptation and with ample opportunity to take advantage of it. Society was far more comfortable with a priesthood who were "not interested". Who knows what they got up to elsewhere? I don't see it as our business one way or the other, so long as they were providing a service to the community.

To this day, many Priests have problems with Alcohol. I happen to believe that this is often due to the unbearable stress of sexual frustration and associated guilt. If I had to lead a celibate life, I'm sure I'd have drunk myself to death years ago. There are many aspects of equality which many people are uncomfortable with. For example, I am far from convinced that the legislation which forced the Catholic Adoption agency to stop placing children, due to the requirement to treat gay couples equally, really was something which benefitted society, especially when there were plenty of agencies which were available and provided the service. Would I have a case for discrimination if I approached a specialist gay dating agency and demanded that they fix me up with a woman? I'm a Roman Catholic, my children have been brought up in the faith, but as I married in a registry office and didn't receive a Church blessing, I don't take communion. I don't feel discriminated against for this. It's the rules of the club.

Society has a bizarre attitude to sex. England may change captains, because the current one chose to put his plonker where it shouldn't have gone. Tiger Woods has lost millions of pounds worth of sponsorship for his "virility". The news is full of stories of other footballers with "super injunctions". To be honest, I don't care what people do in their own homes, behind closed doors, so long as it is consensual and between adults. It's none of my business. I'd much rather the Pope trusted us and allowed us to follow our conscience in these matters. If someone says one thing and then does something else, that is an issue, but if they just get on with their job, who cares. In the good old days, you'd hear old biddies on street corners saying "Oh, that Fr O'Murphy, he's a lovely man" and you know full well what they meant. No one cared.

Is the Pope a Catholic? I do wonder sometimes.

Tomorrow's great question : Does the bear crap in the woods?

Guest Blog : A message from Kenya

By Fr Jim Fanning MHM

Dear Friends,

How was your year? It is customary at the end of the day in the Church to reflect on all the blessings we have received during the day and repent of any failings. Well we thank God that this year has been a year of relative peace in East Africa and that the road building programme has continued with good roads at last from Nairobi to Kampala. The long delayed under water fibre optic cable has arrived and we are now promised high speed internet access in line with the rest of the world.

These are three big blessings but the big disaster has been the weather. I have never known such an irregular and poor rainfall. Instead of our usual afternoon downpours we seem to have had just sprinklings of rain. Often the clouds have built up with black skies and then nothing comes of it. There was both water and electricity rationings in Nairobi and many people and livestock have died in Kenya because of drought and crop failure. There has been a dawning realisation that cutting down trees is partly responsible for the poor rainfall. Sections of the Mau forest which have been cut down will now have to be replanted.

My work has taken me much further afield this year with visits to my old mission in Basankusu in the Congo in June and to Anglophone Cameroon in November. Everywhere people seem ready to support their own missionaries from Africa. This year has seen our numbers of African Mill Hill Missionaries rise from 15 to 18, with the newly ordained being appointed to more distant fields in Pakistan and the Philippines. One of the first African missionaries Fr. Ephraim Odhiambo, who was ordained in 1996, has now arrived in England to do mission promotion there. For years we have heard predictions that peoples from Africa will bring the faith back to Europe.

I continue to ply the highways and byways of Kenya and Uganda in my red Suzuki Grand Vitara with  ‘Friends of Mill Hill’ written on the door. It enables me to pass without many questions and difficulties back and forwards through the borders of Kenya and Uganda as well as the police checkpoints.

I have had many nice visitors this year. Fr. Sebastian Park from Korea came to visit me at

Easter. We travelled together from Kampala to Nairobi visiting all the beautiful spots in Kampala, Jinja (source of the Nile), Tororo, Kisumu, Masai Mara and Nairobi . I also enjoyed the company of my niece Alicia who came out to visit her Dad, my brother Paul, around the same time. Her brother John Paul with his girlfriend Danielle also paid us a joint visit just after the departure of Fr. Sebastian. Following that my sister Mary came to visit once again in September. She is becoming a regular visitor and this time we managed to finish with a very nice stay in the southern beach at Mombasa. Visitors are always nice to have as they pull me out of my routine and give me a chance to see places which otherwise I would not visit. Having reflected on the year and thanked God for his blessings I am aware too of my shortcomings and wrong directions. Sometimes we err in the things we do and other times it is in the things we fail to do. I won’t bore you with the details of all this but just simply ask you for your prayers.

In 2010 I look forward to celebrating my 60^th birthday. I am beginning to feel that my time on the road should be coming to an end soon. I have been mobile now for ten years and whilst relatively still in good health I would dearly like to work in a parish for a few years before I get too old. I am eyeing my old diocese of Basankusu in the Congo (DRC) as my next appointment if I can convince my superiors in two years time. I feel more comfortable having a focus for the future. Please keep praying for me and helping me. I love doing this missionary work of witnessing to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is his birthday which is the occasion for writing  this letter and I wish you all a happy and holy Christmas celebration and once again a peaceful New Year,

With much love and prayers,

Father Jim Fanning MHM

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Fr Jim Fanning is a Missionary working in East Africa. He was born and raised in Mill Hill before joining the order and being ordained in 1973. His work is supported by many people in Mill Hill.

If you wish to have a guest blog featured in the Barnet Eye, please email my by CLICKING HERE.

Are you scared by the truth?

"Jesus died for somebodies sins but not mine" This is how Patti Smith starts "Gloria" on her fantastic rendition of Van Morrison's Gloria. The clip above is taken from a gig in Germany in 1979. This is one of my favourite tracks. Now given that I'm a practising Roman Catholic, this may surprise you. How can I like a track which seems to contradict a basic tenent of faith? It's easy. It doesn't. Signing up to follow Jesus is a matter of choice. If Patti Smith decides that Jesus didn't die for her sins and she wants to keep them, thats her free will and her choice. It doesn't stop the song being a great track. What it does do is it challenges my own relationship with my behaviour. As such it can only be a positive thing. You see, I'm not scared of the truth.

One of the things which I can't get my head around as someone who believes in something after this life is "how interventionist is God". Does prayer actually work? Do only believers get miracles? When I was a kid, one of our teachers told me that the reason certain football teams were more successful than others, was because they had more Catholic supporters praying for them to win. He also explained that was why Brzil won the World cup and USSR hadn't. If you look at the list of World Cup winners, there is definately a tendency for teams from strongly Roman Catholic countries to do well. Sadly I can't buy into the theory that it's devine intervention (hand of God or not). Another teacher told me you should never pray for a football team to win, as you'd use up your allocation of miracles. That would seem extraordinarily cruel. Can you imagine having just prayed for Arsenal to score the winning penalty in the FA Cup final, and getting home to find your wife has cancer and you've used up your supply of miracles.

One of the blogs I follow is Blurred Clarity, by Daniel Hoffman-Gill. Daniel is an Athiest who regularly writes believer bashing blogs. I suspect that Daniels distate for religion is driven by the neocon fundamentalist Christian Right. I suspect that if most Christians were left wing proponents of Liberation Theology, who sought to right the worlds wrongs and used their faith as the driving force, he'd probably have less "bash the Christian" blogs and more gardening tips or whatever. I suspect he'd still be an athiest, but his well written pieces, which generally highlight the stupidity of the religious right, wouldn't find the fuel they need. I doubt that he'd have much inspiration if he had to write blogs about why William Wilberforce christian morality was a bad thing. I enjoy Daniels blogs because they are challenging, funny and well written.  He says many things I actually 100% agree with as well as a few things I disagree with. If I had the choice of having to change Daniel's view of the world or a "God hates Fags" American bible basher, I'd change the bible basher every time. You see I think they are revolting and obnoxious and do more damage than just about anything. I'm quite happy to indulge in rational debate. You can have that with Daniel, but sadly you can't with the neocon right.

Ultimately it all comes down to this question. Are you scared by the truth? The Catholic Church has had many problems and alienated many people because it has sought to hide the truth. A few examples - paedophile priests, The earth going around the sun, to name a few. I strongly believe in the power of the truth. I believe that my faith makes me a better person. I go to church to be reminded how lucky I am and to do my bit to fight injustice. Yes I do need reminding. It has made me a better person, thats why I persist with the institution for all it's faults. All I really want is a "better church". One that spends more time fighting injustice in the world and a bit less time indulging stupid neocons.

We started this blog with Patti Smith singing "Gloria". We'll end it with a clip of "Liars Beware" by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Whenever I wonder about whether I should tell a few porkies to get on I listen to this track. Here's the lyrics to help you understand.


LIARS BEWARE
by Richard Hell and the Voidoids

Look out liars and you highlife scum
who gotta keep your victims poor and dumb--
Your motives and your methods are not disguised
by your silk, soap, sex, or your smiling lies.

Look out here
you pompous jerk
Look out here
I go berserk

Well I guess you put me in my place
but I won't forget your stupid face

They gave you power cuz they knew your needs--
soprano boys get talent when you shoot your seeds.
Well you laugh to hear what your best friends say--
Old man they laugh when you walk away.

Look out chief
ridiculous creep
Look out thief
you'll lose your teeth

Well you got power, now there's competition
and your blind side's turned to the boys with a mission.

You were sixty-five when you wiggled out--
your mind all twisted and your mom all shout.
I'm a man with his share of excess nice
but it can't be spared for drooling lice.

Look out jerk
you ancient slut
I can't endure
Your smirking smut

Well life is short so don't even try
to bother waving as we pass you by.

Peadophile Priests, MP's expenses, Barnet Council

A few people who read the blog have commented to me that despite often mentioning the fact that I'm a Roman Catholic, I've not written a single line about Peadophile priests or the abuse in Ireland. They've asked if I have a policy of ignoring the failings of the church, some have suggested darker motives. First, I'll explain why I mention I'm a Catholic, albiet a rather unholy one. I think that it's important to state interests if we have one. If I write about football, I say I support Manchester City. That way any United fans understand any bias. If I write about politics, I state I'm a Labour member, albiet a very lazy & inactive one. If I write about morality, I think it's only fair to say that I belong to a faith. Sometimes my views clash with those of the church (eg Birth control). It may on occasion open me to charges of hypocricy, where people say "How can you support the church if....". If I didn't state my interest, then you the reader would be unaware and that would be dishonest. In my eyes, that is worse.

Which takes us on to the issue of Peadophile priests. I've met good priests & I've met bad priests. The best ones have been inspirational, the worst - anything but. The one thing I've not had personal experience of are sexual advances from one. As such it is not an issue that has touched me personally. On top of that, some of the priests I've met have been extremely positive influences. As such, I've felt that putting the boot into the priesthood would not be fair or constructive, given that I believe that the bad ones are a tiny minority.

Having read some of the recent coverage of the situation in Ireland, I've come to realise that there is something seriously wrong with the institution of the Catholic Church. Whilst around the globe, individual priests are doing great work, the powers that be have systematically covered up endemic child abuse. Priests who should be in prison, have been moved from parish to parish. The church has used it's moral authority to silence parents. Abused children have been made to feel "responsible" for the dreadful abuse and have been permenantly damaged. As details emerge in Ireland, it has reached a point where it could destroy the church. The comments of bishops has displayed a terrible, head in the sand approach. There can be only one approach which will regain the confidence of the congregation. The files must be opened, the abusers must go to prison. Those who conspired in the cover up must be prosecuted. The church is unique in having the means to accomodate these paedophiles when they are realeased from prison. They should be sent to remote, sealed monastries, with big warning signs saying Paedpohile priest home. There they can while away their lives praying for gods forgiveness, on humdrum diets. Just to be completely clear about this, they'd be sent there after their release. Preferrably these monastries should be on remote islands, with no internet access. I'd not be unhappy for non priest paedophiles to join them. If they are truly sorry for their sins, they'd accept this without complaint. If the church did this, then maybe they would eventually recover the trust of the congregation. I was struck reading this by the words of a friend of mine who used to be the governor of the Maze prison during the troubles. I asked him about his view of Paedophiles and whether they could be reformed. His words were "In my experience, they only stop abusing when they are physically incapable of it or when they die".

Reading this coverage, I realised how much there was in common with the scandal regarding MP's expenses. Again, there are some MP's who do a great job and do not abuse the expenses. There are probably many MP's named in the Telegraph, who never dreamed before they entered Parliament that they'd behave like this. The reason they got embroiled was because they thought that there would never be any public scrutiny of their claims. A culture sprung up where the worst that could happen was that they'd get their claim knocked back. As such, many people were corrupted and encouraged in bad behaviour. They felt as if they were untouchable. Like the priesthood, they were wrong. Like the priesthood, they have lost public trust. Like the priesthood, radical measures are required to regain the trust of the public.

This leads us back to Barnet. As discussed above, the problems with priests and MP's have come about because matters were hushed up, discussed in private. Deals were done, problems coveredup. Where did it end up? In ruins. At Barnet Council, there have been repeated financial problems. These did not start under Mike Freer's regime. When Mike was in opposition, he was a keen advocate of scrutiny. Mike was a deadly inquisitor. Alison Moore, the leader of the Labour group once told me that being on the end of a Mike Freer inquisition was the most unpleasant moment of her political career. She admitted Mike Freer was a great opposition councillor. Her comments reminded me of John Prescott MP. In opposition, he was a fearsome opponent. If a train crashed, he'd turn up in his hard hat, berating the government. When it came to running the show, a different set of skills were required.

If you want good clean administration, you need open access to documents and good scrutiny. The best people to do this in the political arena are the opposition. Deals made behind closed doors, unminuted, undocumented and unscrutinised are bound to be flawed. In Barnet Council chambre, whilst discussing the Iceland debacle, the Lib Dems asked for the minutes of the meetings between council officials and Mike Freer, then head of the resource committee. Were these forthcoming? In fact the Lib Dems were criticsed by the Conservatives for putting pressure on council officers. As a result, the scrutiny committee and the people who pay taxes, ie us, are still unaware of how and why decisions are made.

As with the paedophile priests in Ireland and the MP's expenses, why are any of these decisions not being exposed to public scrutiny. This is the only way to ensure public confidence in the process. There is no earthly reason why the taxpayer shouldn't know why the Council decided to invest money in a certain way. I suspect that if councillors and officials knew that their decisions would be open to public examination, they'd be a bit more careful.

One thought for our Conservative councillors - where was "Freedom of Information" pioneered? In the worlds most successful economy - the USA.