The
fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our
Fenian dead. The words were uttered almost a century
ago. But today they are still relevant when we watch
the behaviour of the hypocrital priests within the
Catholic Church. Is it any wonder that you are experiencing
the smallest attendance at your chapels? You people
hide pervert priests in your midst and then bury
them with the blessing of the church. Yet you refuse
to allow the body of a dead republican inside your
church. You embrace perverts but reject upright
republicans. Shame.
My
uncle Billy died recently. He was a life long republican,
a life long mass goer and a lifelong decent human
being. On his final journey he was shunted from
pillar to post because his coffin was covered in
the flag of his country. Some priest had exercised
the one bit of petty authority left to him and banned
the body from entering the chapel. Eventually a
Christian priest (not many of them about) was found
in Turf Lodge who agreed without hesitation to give
my uncle the funeral befitting a man of his beliefs.
Father Matt Wallace - who visited republicans in
their sewer of Calcutta, as Cardinal Tomas O'Fiaich
once described the H-Blocks, and who shared his
Gallagher's Blues cigarettes with the prisoners
gasping for a smoke. Father Matt was the one priest
who could be found that was prepared to allow my
uncle to enter the chapel.
Uncle
Billy was a believer. He was not some imagined communist
revolutionary intent on imposing atheism on the
people he lived amongst. He believed in Jesus Christ
and Irish republicanism. Not the type of beliefs
likely to outlaw Catholicism.
If
there is a heaven Billy is in it. The priests can
have hell all to themselves. There will hardly be
too many tricolour cover coffins going in that direction
for them to turn away. The priests need a god to
forgive them. Few others will.
