Exploring abuse: Michael Harding’s The Kiss

“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday (May 2). The article, by the Sunday Tribune’s Ali Bracken, told the story of the serial abuse of children by the California-based Irish priest, Oliver O’Grady – in his own words.

It was “the affection of the hugging,” that O’Grady particularly enjoyed; it “awakened within me urges to be affectionate in return.” When an altar boy he liked, aged ten or eleven, arrived at the sacristy, he said, “I might go over and give him a hug, and if he responded by allowing me to hug him and offered to hug me in return, that sort of gave me permission to continue at that point.”

Irish theatre, child abuse, and The Kiss

“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday. The article, by the Sunday Tribune’s Ali Bracken, told the story of the serial abuse of children by the California-based Irish priest, Oliver O’Grady – in his own words.

It was “the affection of the hugging,” that O’Grady particularly enjoyed; it “awakened within me urges to be affectionate in return.” When an altar boy he liked, aged ten or eleven, arrived at the sacristy, he said, “I might go over and give him a hug, and if he responded by allowing me to hug him and offered to hug me in return, that sort of gave me permission to continue at that point.”

Time for a new Tribunal

Eamon de Valera once said that if he wished to know what the people of Ireland were thinking, he had to simply look into his heart. Today, the politicians prefer to rely on polls to know what the people are thinking, while de Valera’s role as a moral grandstander has been largely usurped by my colleagues in the media.

Both polls and pundits are mired in the same miasma, however, and it is one in which our politicians languish also. What people “think” typically means what they think in passing about an issue of the moment. Public “opinion”, and how to predict, reflect and marshall it, is the core concern of both pundits and politicians. Less considered are public values.

Interview with playwright Michael Harding

Michael Harding was going to be a priest. It was the era of Vatican II, of liberation theology, or worker priests pursuing social justice.

The church, he thought, was the place to be.

He was already, by passion, a writer. Aged 14, he was given a manual typewriter by his uncle, and knew that was all he wanted in life.

But there would be plenty of room in the new church for a writer.

So, in his mid twenties, after a few years working as a teacher in a open prison, he returned to college, to Maynooth, as a seminarian. He was no innocent.