durance vile

As the anti Catholic media groups of the Republic of Ireland struggled to feign outrage over the false child rape and paternity accusations levelled by the broadcaster RTE against an innocent priest, only the Daily Mail had the sleazoid temerity to break ranks, show its true colours, and blatently attempt to diminish RTE's crime by suggesting the Catholic Church had done worse.
The Daily Mail responded to the exposure of RTE's criminal vilification of an innocent man by running the following headline:
"RTE MADE A MISTAKE BUT AT LEAST RTE NEVER RAPED CHILDREN OR CONCEALED CHILD ABUSE."
Ahem.
Where to begin.
This one really is a doozy.
The sheer scale of the lie which the Daily Mail is telling, almost beggars the possibility of the Daily Mail being justly held to account.
For the Daily Mail has compressed multiple mendacities into just one crass, manipulative, vilificatory headline.
Let me try.
Three points.
(1) The Daily Mail's headline begins by attempting to reduce RTE's deliberate assault upon an aged priest to the level of a mistake. A mistake. There was no mistake. RTE deliberately gave the priest no chance to refute the lies RTE were about to broadcast to the nation. His denials were disregarded. Urgent communications from his lawyer were deflected. He was informed of the broadcast only shortly before air time so that he had nearly no opportunity to prevent RTE's assault upon his character, his career, his life and his person. Oh, this was no mistake. RTE's camera crew ambushing him at a church ceremony involving children was no mistake. RTE refusing to allow him to take a paternity test prior to their broadcast was no mistake. RTE's failure to take account of the refutation of RTE's deliberate lies by the innocent priest's Bishop and colleagues was no mistake. RTE's failure to notify the priest or his lawyers that the girl RTE was alleging he'd abused was now refusing to take a paternity test, was no mistake. RTE's leak of the results of the paternity test which RTE claims the girl eventually took twice, and which RTE says exonerated the priest, RTE's leak of this supposed paternity test to the Sunday Independent, yes they leaked it rather than informing the priest or his lawyers, this policy by RTE of leaking information to anti Catholic media allies, can never be construed as a mistake. RTE's subsequent and continuing leaks to the Daily Mail wherein, without attribution, RTE attempted to sow in the public mind via the Daily Mail, the still unsubstantiated claim that the innocent priest's accuser was another priest, these leaks, egregious as the others and still going on, can in no way or by any stretch of the imagination be characterised a mistake. All these leaks, all these attempts to ruin an innocent man, all these trahesions of due process, all of them were deliberate. And all of them amounted to criminal behaviour of the most disgraceful sort.
(2) The reference to a "mistake" is only the first part of the Daily Mail's malicious falsehood laden headline. The Daily Mail compounds its hate speech lie by claiming that RTE never raped any children. The intended implication by the Daily Mail is that the Catholic Church itself may be deemed a child rapist. This lie is too invidious for words. The Daily Mail published it anonymously of course. Of course they did. We'll know who wrote it on Judgement Day. So let me tell you all one thing gentle readers. One thing I do know. RTE has indeed raped children. RTE has raped children in the sense that RTE employees have committed child abuse and RTE has failed to report that child abuse to the general public. Here is the news. No organisation, institution, no newspaper, no government department, no sports club, no hospital, no school, no family, in the land has been untouched by child abuse. This is an age of massive sexual dysfunction. The Daily Mail and its ilk wish to pretend that only the Catholic Church has been affected. Worse. The Daily Mail wishes to pretend that RTE employees are completely untouched by the scourge of paedophilia. Worse still, the Daily Mail apes to believe that the causality for sex abuse stems from Christian culture rather than from the atheistic pornographic sleaze culture which through the Daily Mail and its ilk and its putative ally RTE, has disrupted and debauched a generation. I'm telling you folks. RTE has raped children in exactly the same sense that any other organisation may be said by the Dail Mail to have raped children. The only difference is that RTE employees committing child abuse have of course received negligible reportage. As has the Irish Times journalist recently discovered raping children whom he'd groomed through his work as a volunteer coach at Dublin sports clubs. The Irish Times journalist's child abuse activities remain largely unreported. They also remain largely uninvestigated. The excuse being that every time the police so much as look at him, he attempts suicide. Clever, eh? One police officer dismissed public concerns about the matter by asserting: "It looks like the sex was consensual." This in spite of the fact that in Irish law, any sexual activity with minors is considered rape. Still one law for Irish Times child rapists and another for members of the Catholic Church accused of the same crime. Those of us who know about the existence of child rapists in RTE, know about them only through what you might call back channels. Most of us wouldn't claim that RTE itself is responsbile when one of its presenters or producers or programme contributors, rapes a child. But the Daily Mail has invented a new standard solely to be used for slandering the Catholic Church. According to the Daily Mail's reasoning, if one of your employees rapes a child, then your entire organisation raped the child. That is if you're the Catholic Church. Otherwise don't worry about it. I say it again. By the Daily Mail's own lights, RTE has indeed raped children. But believe you me, the Daily Mail has no intention of applying this standard to the child abusers within RTE. It is a standard and a sneer solely devised with the intention of fostering public hatred against the Catholic Church. Listen. No institution rapes children. Children are raped by individuals who commit child rape. The Daily Mail is attempting in its headline to suggest that the Catholic Church as an institution is responsible for any rapes that are carried out by any person calling themselves Catholic. Yet the Daily Mail's incitement to hatred hinges on perpetrating a different standard for RTE, the Health Boards, the Irish Times, the hospitals, etc, than for the Catholic Church. The Daily Mail asserts that abuse committed by a churchman makes the whole church guilty. In the same breath the Daily Mail insists that abuse committed by RTE employees, health board employees, teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, judges, et al, is to be deemed individual abuse without any guilt accruing to the friends of the Daily Mail who run those organisations which the Daily Mail wishes to protect. The wheel is rigged and it's the only game in town.
(3) The final part of the Daily Mail's classically invidious agit prop headline asserts that RTE has never concealed sex abuse. Again the deliberate and false implication is that RTE's behaviour has been impeccable while the Catholic Church by trying to handle such cases discreetly or through lawyers, was somehow concealing them. By the Daily Mail standard everybody in the land who has been confided in by a sex abuse victim with the express instruction that no further action was to be taken, every one of us I say, would be guilty of concealing sex abuse. But of course the Daily Mail and its allies aren't seeking to destroy every one of us. They only wish to destroy the Catholic Church. I'll have to ask for a reality check on this one. RTE has given negligible reportage to the broad mass of sex abuse cases arising among general public. RTE has certainly never focussed on the cases arising within the journalistic and media fraternities. RTE has never pointed out that 99.99 percent of sex abuse cases, including the most serious ones, the ones involving ritual torture and murder, arise outside the Catholic Church. RTE has never so much as dropped a hint that the vast preponderance of sex abuse cases occur primarily in the family home at the hands of near relatives. RTE's failure to communicate the true nature and extent of sex abuse is surely tantamount to the most grotesque concealment of it. The Daily Mail's pretence that RTE has never concealed sex abuse is utterly false.