His “BROOKLYN” is a good example. And he impressed me when he was interviewed on the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs.”
But fiction dressed as journalism does not become him. The SUNDAY TIMES (January 17) gives him almost a full broadsheet page, and, I imagine, a decent sum of money, to vent his spleen on the Catholic Church and the Irish State, as if they were the sole culprits for the inhuman cruelty and death by neglect visited on single mothers and their children since 1922.
The Church of Ireland and other congregations were equally guilty, including one with close connections with THE IRISHTIMES, the sworn enemy of the Catholic Church and the Irish State. Two Church of Ireland Archbishops have issued mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded , semi- apologies for the crimes visited on members of their flock. By organisations supposedly devoted to that flock and to the Glory of God. But those facts are air-brushed out of the Colm Toibin’s story.
The institutions involved mostly predated 1922. One of the worst of the Catholic ones was run by an English Order whose Mother Superior was described as stupid and ignorant by an Inspector but was defended by Dr Cohalan, Bishop of Cork, on the grounds of Canon Law. The Papal Nuncio wanted the woman’s removal but the Bishop delayed it by 4 further years, during which new born babies did not survive more than a few weeks. The Bishop was no friend of the Irish State, and Michael Collins, if given a free hand, would have had him shot when he pronounced excommunication on our soldiers resisting British aggression in December 1920.
Back in the 1980s Colm Toibin, writing in the Sindo or Indo, which were more Catholic than the Pope for most of their existence, made an attack on fellow-citizens who had not had tertiary nor secondary education, digested the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council, nor subscribed to THE IRISH TIMES. Some apparently had written ungrammatically to Mary Robinson, because she supported the legalisation of the sale of contraceptives, and even cut the fingers off gardening gloves and posted them with their (Irish) letters. I can think of many public figures who endured worse without making a song and dance about it. In a review of the Irish Papers in THE IRISH DEMOCRAT I left Colm Toibin’s complaint to last. I quoted a Dublin gurriers’ put-down, which I owed to Brendan Behan, suggesting that Toibin go and have a Mass said for himself.
While I’m on about the Sunday Times I recall an article in that paper, following the tragic death in pregnancy in a Galway hospital, of an Indian dentist which was seized on as part of an international campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland.
The campaign was as vicious and unjustified as Mr Toibin’ s piece in that paper this week. The article was by India Knight who described those of us who don’t support abortion on demand as “swivel-eyed fanatics”. (The Indian dentist was married and was in hospital to give birth, and had no desire for an abortion.)
I don’t know what swivel- eyed fanatics look like. And I have to trust THE SUNDAY TIMES to believe what Ms Indira Knight looks like, for it regularly prints a picture. She is the paper’s BEAUTY CORRESPONDENT.
Have a look.
I dare you not to laugh.
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