Our subservient way of thinking as a people bestows impunity on those in positions of power in the Irish Times December 1, 2009
 
‘IT IS the deaf people that create the lies.’ Irish proverbs are full of phrases about the power of silence.
 
Fr Donal Gallagher from the Dublin parish of St Peter’s in Phibsboro, horrifically exploited [...]

We may be overlooking the nature of Ireland’s modus operandi when we yell for change, writes ELAINE BYRNE . in IRISH TIMES June 23, 2009

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME is a psychological response by kidnap victims who become sympathetic and loyal to their kidnappers. Hostages bond with the hostage taker as a basic survival strategy. Isolation induces the prisoner to adopt the captor’s mindset.

Is this phenomenon also known as Irish political culture? Are our political institutions trapped by a mindset which is angry but accepts the New York hip-hop philosophy of Run DMC: “It’s like that, and that’s the way it is!”

Trinity College Dublin and the Political Studies Association of Ireland hosted a conference yesterday to ask these questions: Are our Institutions Fit for Purpose? Political Reform in the Republic of Ireland.

The objective of the conference was to provide a forum for Ireland’s leading political scientists, political commentators and interested practitioners to discuss their views on political reform. Jane Suiter, Matt Wall, both PhD scholars at Trinity, and I sat down over a cup of coffee a few weeks ago to organise the conference. By presenting accessible, informed and dispassionate analysis to a wider public, we innocently hope to motivate public participation as part of a process to drive institutional change.

This generation must engage in painful scrutiny of its attitude of deference to power and privilege, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the Irish Times May 26, 2009

A PASSAGE from the Book of Proverbs reads: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse reveals an uncomfortable history of Ireland in its five volumes. It is a history of how power was defined since the foundation of the State. The absolute authority of the Catholic Church rested on the assumption that it is was above reproach, without question and beyond criticism.

Protestants are less inclined to commit a sin because they do not have the same faculty of achieving pardon as Catholics do in The Irish Times March 31, 2009

‘WE SHALL studiously avoid offending the religious susceptibilities of any portion of the community,” stated the inaugural editorial of The Irish Times in 1859. My apologies in advance then to Lawrence Edward Knox, the 22-year-old Protestant Englishman, who founded this newspaper.

A positive correlation exists between Catholicism and corruption. Political science literature and academic research suggests that the more Protestant the population, the less corrupt the country. Divergent views on sin and loyalty account for this corpulent assertion.

So, with a deep sacred breath, here we go.