EAMONN CASEY
He had no right to call himself ‘father’
IT is perhaps no surprise that the death of Eamonn Casey was almost treated as a moment of light relief after the few weeks we’d had in this country. Next to children buried in septic tanks, a white slavery operation and a baby trafficking racket, Casey seemed like the harmless face of the Church.
Even regarding his “failings”, his “mistakes” as they were referred to, well, there was almost something healthy and vigorous about a grown man having sex with a grown woman.
And so somehow, remembering Eamonn Casey had a flavour of an episode of Reeling in the Years. It was almost warm nostalgia. It helped, too, that journos all loved the guy. He was clearly charming, and, as we say in Ireland, convivial. So many of those who had dealt with him at the time came over all warm and gooey.
So for anyone who didn’t know about Eamonn Casey, you would have come away from last week with the impression of a colourful character who booted around in a nice car fighting the establishment, standing up for the poor, not just in Ireland, but all over the world, comforting the afflicted under a hail of bullets in Central America, housing the Irish in London, standing up to Reagan and apartheid, and all while being a wit, raconteur and bon vivant.
And then, of course, there was a slight unpleasantness about a child he disowned, but that was really the Church’s fault, for asking a vigorous, energetic man like this to be celibate. Totally unreasonable expectation.
As the obsequies moved into the church, Casey actually became a victim. As Bishop Martin Drennan welcomed his remains into Galway Cathedral, he said that Casey had paid a high price for his mistakes.
And maybe he did. But Casey didn’t pay half as high a price as other people who made the same mistake in Ireland in 1974.
In Ireland in 1974, mother-and-baby homes were still in full swing. The last Magdalene Laundry would not close down for nearly another quarter of a century.
In 1974, children in church-run homes were still being used for drug trials, in contravention of their human rights, the Constitution and, chillingly, the Nuremberg Code.
Fallen women were still being forced into these places, still having their babies taken from them, and their babies were still being exported for money.
In 1974, Justice Minister Paddy Cooney was still insisting that, “adoption is better for the illegitimate baby than to be cared for by its mother”.
Anthony Kelly was born in the same year as Eamonn Casey’s son, Peter — 1974. Anthony’s mother, Marian, was 18 when she was taken to Bessborough Mother And Baby Home. Marian says she was allowed to hold her baby for a few minutes before he was taken away from her. She says the nuns told her that, “What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t feel”, and 48 hours later she was forced to sign a consent form to have him adopted. She says this “forced and illegal adoption” ruined her life. But then, as the justice minister of this country said at the time. “Adoption is better for the illegitimate baby than to be cared for by its mother.”
So, Peter Casey and Annie Murphy were lucky really. Peter and Annie were lucky that they were able to make a life in America together, that he would never have experiments performed on him, that he would not be forcibly taken from her and sold, that she would not be committed to a laundry for a life of slavery and abuse.
Casey may have paid a high price for his mistake, but nothing like the price that Marian Kelly and thousands more paid for the same mistake, courtesy, let us not forget, of Casey and his lot.
Now, of course, we don’t associate Casey and his brand of Catholicism with all the horrors we talked about in the weeks before he died. The picture painted of Casey was a much more amiable one, almost buffoonish. We kind of think it’s gas that Casey was up there, with Cleary, another hypocrite, leading everyone in song for the Pope in 1979. It’s more farcical than sinister. Weren’t we so innocent? And we have this notion of Casey as one of those priests who wasn’t really a priest, Ted. Sure Casey was a renegade, one of those liberation theology types who was more socialist and social worker than a representative of the Church.
But never forget, Casey was no thorn in the side of the Church in Ireland. He was at the very heart of the Catholic establishment here, and as many pointed out during the week, he was an arch-politician. So don’t make the mistake of thinking Casey wasn’t part of that Church, of the Church that would have colluded with the State to sell his own son, Peter, to someone in America and put his lover into a life of slavery. Casey was at the centre of the institution that propagated the shame and that ran the machine that dehumanised these women and their children.
Annie Murphy and Peter were lucky. They weren’t from here. And also, they knew the right people. Casey tried to get Annie to give Peter up for adoption sure, but he didn’t do his clerical duty and insist.
Do you think this is all too harsh? Do you think it’s unfair to see the man through the prism of one mistake? To allow that to define his life? Never mind that Casey and his lot made it the defining thing in the lives of so many women, who lived out their days in pain and regret and what-ifs. But what of this argument that Casey did a lot of good work and that he should be judged on that?
But how do we judge a man’s humanity if not on how he treats the ones he is supposed to love? How do we judge a man if not on how he cares for his own flesh and blood? How do we judge a man if not as a father?
So having taken advantage of what was a distorted power relationship with Annie Murphy, a 23-year-old who had been entrusted to him at a vulnerable point in her life, he then essentially denied and cut off his own son.
Never mind the pain that Eamonn Casey’s Church inflicted on people, while he was swanning around in his fine cars being convivial. And never mind either the pain and disillusionment that was inflicted on so many other Catholics of good faith when his tissue of lies unravelled. Never mind the hypocrisy, the ego, the misappropriation of funds. But where was his humanity?
It should be said that obviously one hopes that Eamonn Casey rests in peace and that he had reconciled himself to his God and his family before he died, and that they in turn got the closure they needed.
A man stood on the RTE News on Wednesday night with his wife and his daughter. His wife and his daughter were able to speak. They were coping as women do. They didn’t want to leave their beloved Dara, who was lying dead inside. She looked as if she might wake up any moment, they said. John Fitzpatrick stood there looking hollowed out. When asked to describe his daughter, he said just one word, “Beautiful”. These people had raised their girl to be a hero, a hero who, unlike Casey, practised what she preached, who put her own life on the line. And John had lost his little hero and you could tell he was lost himself. Every father could only imagine how he felt as he stood there, dignified but broken in his grief.
And it struck you that these people were closer to God than Eamonn Casey, in his pomp, ever was.
And it struck you that next to John Fitzpatrick, a man like Eamonn Casey had no right to call himself Father.
‘Never mind the hypocrisy... where was his humanity?’