On March 27, I posted an article written by an orphan who grew up in a Mother and Baby Home in Ireland. It is a well-written and researched account of conditions in Ireland in the twentieth century, and the care provided by nuns. It also debunks the myths about those “evil” nuns, the kind of propaganda promoted by Irish Central and others.
Predictably, Irish Central is upset. Good news about the Catholic Church’s contribution to society is generally not welcomed by Niall O’Dowd and his staff. So he unleashed Cahir O’Doherty to offer a response to the orphan’s piece. That was a mistake.
On March 7, I wrote a news release, “The Dunces at Irish Central.” I cited O’Doherty as Exhibit A. Why? Because in his attempt to validate the Tuam “mass grave” hoax sponsored by Catherine Corless, he said she “never spoke of” a mass grave. In fact, she has, as I demonstrated.
Well, the dunce is back. We know O’Doherty is a dunce because of his illiteracy. This is his story’s headline: “Bill Donohue’s Says Unnamed ‘Galway Orphan’ Exonerates Tuam Nuns.” Even a middle-school dropout knows it should read, “Bill Donohue Says,” not “Bill Donohue’s.”
Perhaps I am too hard on O’Doherty. After all, reporters do not ordinarily assign the headline to their stories. But this would make matters worse: it suggests that O’Dowd has a stable of dunces.
No matter, O’Doherty goes on to prove his erudition. For example, he quotes the following from the orphan’s article.
“Perhaps was there more to the behavior of their daughters who may have been uncontrollable, wild, even loose women, we don’t know. We can only assume by today’s standards that if a young girl got pregnant and she came from a good family that her family might support her. But even by today’s standards if the young women were wild and uncontrollable and came home expecting a baby she too would be expelled from the family….” (My italics.)
“So there you have it, loose, wild and uncontrollable young women had no one to blame but themselves,” O’Doherty writes. (My emphasis.)
As anyone who is not a dunce can see, the orphan put the blame on the family, not the women. This explains why O’Doherty screwed it up.
Then, after floating the idea that maybe I wrote the article, O’Doherty pivots, saying, “there’s no difficulty finding elderly reactionaries to write poison pen missives in defense of the indefensible in Ireland.”
This is a new low, even for Irish Central. Without a scintilla of evidence to the contrary, it viciously attacks the orphan. To say this is morally reprehensible is an understatement.
Contact O’Dowd: niall@irishcentral.com
