{"id":210,"date":"2009-05-29T11:03:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T17:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=210"},"modified":"2009-05-29T11:03:55","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T17:03:55","slug":"god-hardened-their-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/god-hardened-their-hearts-210.htm","title":{"rendered":"God Hardened Their Hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Father Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s warned American bishops and Pope John XXIII and Paul Vi about abusers. A sample<\/a> of his opinions:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization [sic].” The letter, addressed to “Most dear Cofounder,” was apparently to Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe, N.M., who was considered a cofounder of the Paraclete facility at Jemez Springs and a good friend of Fitzgerald.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Later in the same letter, in language that revealed deep passion, he wrote: “It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat — but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born — this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The response: Fitzgerald was removed as head of the order he had funded, which was then run by abusers and suspected murderers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Father Edward Flanagan<\/a>, founder of Boys Town, in 1946 returned to teh land of his birth and \u00a0warned the Irish about their reform schools. The Irish also would not listen.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But Fr. Flanagan was unhappy with what he found in Ireland. He was dismayed at the state of Ireland’s reform schools and blasted them as \u201ca scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong.\u201d And he said the Christian Brothers, founded <\/span>by Edmund Rice<\/span><\/a>, had lost its way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in <\/span>Cork<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u2019s Savoy Cinema he said, “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.” He called Ireland\u2019s penal institutions “a disgrace to the nation,” and later said “I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child\u2019s character.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Flanagan \u00a0<\/span>added<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What you need over there [in Ireland] is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places . . . I wonder what God’s judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, his words fell on stony ground. He wasn’t simply ignored. He was taken to pieces by the Irish establishment. The then-Minister for <\/span>Justice Gerald Boland<\/span><\/span><\/a> <\/span>said in the D\u00e1il<\/span><\/span><\/a> that he was \u201cnot disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A hardened heart is deaf to the words of God; it is a stone which the Holy Spirit cannot touch \u2013 and many Catholics have this heart, and think that carrying outteh pope’s commands and obeying canon law assures their salvation as they let children be abused and tortured.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Father Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s warned American bishops and Pope John XXIII and Paul Vi about abusers. A sample of his opinions:\u00a0 In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,261,1],"tags":[115,262,263,1159],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clergy-sex-abuse","category-clericalism","category-ireland","category-uncategorized","tag-abuse","tag-edward-flanagan","tag-gerald-fitzgerald","tag-ireland","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}