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Me neither,nor even a half-witticism and I have read his columns for decades.
Fintan has a chip on his shoulder.
He was born in Ireland, a country he despises.
Among Catholics. And he hates the Catholic Church because it does not bow down in adoration
before him.
A Benthamite Utilitarian would appreciate the First Commandment relayed to us by Moses for it
forbids us making gods of ourselves. And the commandments not to tell lies, although ignoring
them might earn one an honoured position in the Irish Times and a Podium in an Ivy League
University.
My opinion of O’Toole may be mistaken but has been acquired over many decades.
I think Fintan is woefully ignorant, unprincipled and cowardly and enjoys the protection of an untrustworthy newspaper.
He has written untruths about John Charles McQuaid, Eamon de Valera and Roger Casement,
and Kevin Barry, none of whom are in a position to sue him for libel.
Mary Kenny, in the current edition of History Ireland, demolishes the accusations of sexual perversion levelled by O’Toole at McQuaid. Mary records the work which McQuaid arranged for the care of destitute emigrants arriving in London decades before the Irish Government gave them a penny, and a lot of very other good work. Kenny does not ignore the Archbishop’s obsessive anti-Communism, his opposition to women’s sports, mixed bathing and his puritanism
.Archbishop McQuaid was indeed a control freak, but a less sinister one than the crooked Lord Goodman, Harold Wilson’s fixer, and British Ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist, the organiser of Genocide in Indonesia (1965) who between them established THE IRISH TIMES TRUST.
De Valera’s oration at the funeral of the repatriated remains of Roger Casement made no mention
of Catholicism, contrary to Fintan O’Toole’s assertions. De Valera stated that if Casement had confined his work to the exposure of the atrocities suffered by Africans in the Congo under King Leopold of the Belgians, and to natives of the Amazon region by the rubber companies, he would be honoured the world over.
O’Toole would have his readers believe the smears spread by Casement’s murderers had been proven true. The imputations of homosexuality were first spread by the British Minister in Oslo in 1915 who attempted to have Casement assassinated at the time.
Character assassination is O’Toole’s forte.
The character assassination of McQuaid, de Valera, Kevin Barry and Roger Casement was
comprehensively exposed for what it was by the late Manus O’Riordan in a letter to the IRISH TIMES
which the paper’s Editor hadn’t the balls to print.
Manus and Fintan had a lot in common in background but nothing at all in character.
Both were born in Dublin South of the Liffey.
Both went to Christian Brothers’ Schools.
Both took degrees in UCD
Both their fathers were CIE Bus Conductors
Manus did a further degree in the United States .
Fintan gives lectures in Princeton.
Manus worked as a researcher for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union from 1971
and became its (and its successor’s) chief researcher. He retired in 2010). He was a key architect
of the agreement between employers, unions and the State, which transformed the Irish economy.
Fintan was brought up a Catholic.
Manus was brought up a Communist. His father Michael O’Riordan had been in the IRA in the 1930s
and as a teenager fought in the Connolly Column in the International Brigade in Spain. He was later
interned in the Curragh by de Valera. When in the 1950s he was a Dail Candidate, John Charles McQuaid threatened excommunication to anyone voting for the Communist. A later Archbishop of
Dublin told Manus that his father, another bus driver,had voted for him.
Manus had no hang-ups about Catholicism nor did he harbour grudges against McQuaid or de Valera.
Manus O’Riordan was relaxed in his Irish skin. He was at the same time a committed Internationalist, an historian, a Bohemians soccer fan, a singer, musician expert on the Dublin Jewish Community, his neighbours in Rathmines, and a devoted family man. Indeed A Man for All Seasons and Nations.
He died 26 September 2021 at the age of 72. We had emailed each other a few hours earlier.
Donal Kennedy
P.S.SEE “THE IRISH TIMES AND THE BURIAL OF KEVIN BARRY” By Manus O’Riordan –
a Blog sent by me to Jude on November 16 2021
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Spot on and about time someone said this. I had a trial subscription to the Irish Times online and when I cancelled, I told them I wasn’t going to support their anti Catholic propaganda. This was shortly after reading one of Fintan’s columns.