Father Michael Cleary was a fantastic husband and father
Fr. Michael Cleary (left & right pic.) and Antonia Leslie and Ross Hamilton son.
He can be accused of hypocrisy, yet Father Michael Cleary was right not to turn his back on the woman and child he loved
In the current climate of despair and disbelief, as more and more revelations of crimes by church and state against society’s most vulnerable women and children emerge, attacks on the Catholic Church, its institutions and key individuals are to be expected.
I am no lover of the Catholic Church myself. I could write books, never mind articles, on my disdain for the church, its history and what I see as the hijacking of the Christian faith and subsequent conversion of a belief system into a control system with the main purpose to bring in income from the collapsing Western Roman Empire, starting in 380AD.
This generalisation of the Catholic Church’s reason to be, naturally, does not take into account the many genuine, good, devout, kind and spiritual lay people, nuns, priests, saints and church elders who have lived and worked within the church.
A couple of weeks ago, Father O’Neill of St Brigid’s church in Cabinteely, Dublin, called out 40 journalists, including Fintan O’Toole, claiming they had falsely reported on the now, quite old story of the infamous Father Michael Cleary, his housekeeper/wife Phyllis Hamilton and the paternity ‘claims’ of their sons Douglas Boyd Barrett and Ross Hamilton. Ross responded by stating that Fr O’Neill must not have the full facts.
Indeed, there was a paternity test carried out. A court of law, back during the time when the whole scandal and ensuing legalities were current, ruled that on the basis of a test on Ross’s DNA and DNA tissue that had been found in St Vincent’s hospital, belonging to Fr Cleary after his cancer biopsy, were a match and that Ross was without doubt, Michael Cleary’s son.
I share a house with Ross. He has become like family to me. I know the story of his childhood first-hand. I know what life was like for him, growing up in his own ‘family home’, his relationship with his mother and father, the trauma of losing them both at a very young age.
I know the emotional damage and toll left on him by the media fanfare and struggle with the church for vindication after he and his mother were branded liars and profiteers. I also know the impact of growing up, living a lie, guarding unfathomable secrets, feeling shame, enjoying certain notoriety, confusion, abandonment, you name it:
but it’s not Ross I want to talk about here. It’s Fr Cleary himself. Because after all the valid criticisms of Michael Cleary’s hypocrisy with his extreme criticism of the sexual mores of young women at the time and how he presented himself to the public as an arch-upholder of Catholic morals, and never publicly acknowledging his relationship with Phyllis or his children, I want to come to his defence.
In his duties, he was an excellent priest. He was close to his parishioners, very involved in their everyday lives and was the go-to man for any problem, no matter how big, small or ungodly. His Masses were packed to the rafters.
Fr Cleary was the youngest of a family of five children and being the only boy, he was adored by women from a very young age and he got away with murder. He grew up a natural performer and loved being the centre of attention, but I don’t believe it was in a selfish egotistical way. I think he just learnt from a young age that performance was expected of him. Sure, it feels good to be able to make people ‘Ooh and Aaw’, but I believe Michael was like most young males growing up in a strong matriarchal background, seeking constant approval and validation, by being the entertainer.
He should never have become a priest in the first place, but he did, because it was expected of him by his family. He basked in the ‘customer care’ aspect of his ecclesiastical life and still found ways to pursue a career in the public eye as an entertainer.
He toured as the ‘Singing Priest’, a cabaret act, where he did stand-up comedy and sang in venues as far and wide as Las Vegas and headlined the Sydney Opera House. He sold best-selling records. He had his own late-night radio show on 98FM. So a dour and pious country parish priest Fr Michael Cleary was not.
Whether he was a celibate priest before he met the young and, yes, vulnerable Phyllis McDaid when she was only 17, who knows. Personally I doubt it, but he did fall head over heals in love. Did he take advantage of her youth, troubled past and misplaced trust in him? Yes, of course he did and this is the only part of their story that I have a big issue with. But she says she fell in love with him instantly and when he died, she never recovered. Six years later, she died of ovarian cancer, but on a more subtle level, it was death by broken heart.
There are priests who sleep around. I had a conversation once with a young man who trained to be a priest in Maynooth who said he never got laid as much in his life as during those years.
Many priests father children. The Vatican has its own special department that deals with the welfare and financial pay-outs of all the ‘children’ of the church, who seem to be more numerous in Italy, Latin America and Africa.
In the early Roman Catholic Church, priests could marry. This was stopped because, being a financial institution, succession rights to money and property became an issue.
So compared to the vile crimes of child rape, neglect and abuse that were rampant within the church and of which the church seemed happy to cover up, Fr Michael Cleary’s secret life of loving husband and doting father seems minuscule and of a different world.
Most priests, who have affairs, abandon their lovers and want nothing to do with their offspring, should there be children as a result of their transgressions. Fr Michael Cleary stood by his woman, secretly married her, preforming the ceremony himself. Phyllis bore a child, Douglas, who was given up for adoption, and soon after, Phyllis became pregnant again with Ross.
Ross was put briefly into foster care and then taken to Phyllis’s sister to be looked after in Limerick. Phyllis went to the US to work as a carer. Yet Fr Cleary, so distressed at giving up his wife and children, went and retrieved Ross and brought Phyllis home from the States a year later.
It was too late for Douglas who had already been legally adopted. Fr Cleary was torn between duty to the church and having a heart. His heart won out.
Fr Cleary then embarked on this crazy but perfect plan. Phyllis told everyone she had been married to a Mr Hamilton – she changed her name by deed poll – and was divorced and had had a child.
The plan to bring Ross and Phyllis home and raise Ross in a family environment, within the family home, worked. The cover story seemed plausible to all who weren’t in the know and Michael, Phyllis and Ross lived as mum, dad and child, not just behind closed doors as Fr Cleary was always by Ross’s side and took him with him wherever he went. Fr Cleary was as besotted with Ross as he was with Phyllis. Everyone else believed he was a great substitute dad to his housekeeper’s fatherless son.
So hypocrisy and lying aside, here we have a man who did the right thing by his woman and child. He supported them financially, mostly with his own money as he was earning good money from his showbiz career.
He was a loving husband and father. Was this not the godlier thing to do? Should he have turned his back on them, ignoring his child and pay Phyllis to be quiet and go away? Michael Cleary has been called a coward for denying publicly that Ross was his child.
Everyone assumed he was too scared of the scandal and a life of public shame and disqualification from the church. I believe that his denial was to save Phyllis and Ross from exactly the furore and emotional damage that ironically happened anyway.
He knew he was dying for a long time. He knew they would be left alone to face the flack if it ever came to light. He knew that Phyllis would be vilified and life for Ross would become insufferable. Maybe, just maybe, this was a bigger motive for his staunch denials than self-preservation?
The modern church, still riddled with scandal and horrific skeletons crashing out of gruesome closets at every juncture, is desperately trying to modernise and become more down to earth, realistic and human.
Maybe it should look again at Michael Cleary and recognise a priest who was as human as his flock and did the wrong thing by loving a woman and having children, yet the right thing by being a husband, father and provider as well as trying to protect his wife and child from the exposure and scandal that eventually befell them? For this he has been remembered by many as a villain.
The Malaysia Airline MH370 passengers and crew died from suffocation
THE PLANE CRASHED INTO THE OCEAN ON AUTOPILOT
- Officials say new analysis suggests the plane crashed further south than previously thought
- Search operation will focus on a 60,000 square kilometre area further south in the Indian Ocean based on some new satellite projections
Passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight most likely died from suffocation as the plane coasted into the ocean on autopilot, Australian officials have now said.
In a new 55-page report, the Australian Transport Safety Board said investigators arrived at the conclusion after comparing conditions on the flight with previous disasters.
The news comes as authorities announced the Australian-led search will now focus on a 60,000 square kilometre area further south in the Indian Ocean.
The report narrowed down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications, the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight.
‘Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370′s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,’ the ATSB report said.
Officials said this suggested the plane was most likely to have crashed further south than previously thought.
They said they are confident the Boeing 777, carrying 239 people, was set to autopilot several hours before its demise into desolate and unmapped waters.
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said: ‘It is highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through the satellite sightings.’
The new analysis comes more than 100 days after the plane disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before eventually plunging into the Indian Ocean.
The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane’s black box recorders were heard along a final arc where analysis of satellite data put its last location.
But a month later, officials conceded the wreckage was not in that concentrated area, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia, and the search area would have to be expanded.
The new analysis comes days after Malaysian police said pilot Zaharie Shah, 53 (pic), is the main suspect in the disappearance
‘The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircraft last communicated with satellite. We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc,’ MrTruss told reporters in Canberra.
Truss said the area was determined after a review of satellite data, early radar information and aircraft performance limits after the plane diverted across the Malaysian peninsula and headed south into one of the remotest areas of the planet.
The next phase of the search is expected to start in August and take a year, covering some 60,000 sq km at a cost of A$60 million ($56 million) or more. The search is already the most expensive in aviation history.
The new priority search area is around 2,000km west of Perth, a stretch of isolated ocean frequently lashed by storm force winds and massive swells.
Two vessels, one Chinese and one from Dutch engineering company Fugro, are currently mapping the sea floor along the arc, where depths exceed 5,000 metres in parts.
A tender to find a commercial operator to conduct the sea floor search closes on Monday
The new search area has been the subject of an aerial search previously, but efforts will now head below the waves, combing the ocean floor which is some 5km deep in parts.
The shift was expected as the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Martin Dolan, said last week it would move south.
‘This site is a most likely place where the aircraft is resting,’ he said. ‘The search is going to be painstaking – of course we could be fortunate and find it in the first hour or the first day, but it could 12 months.’
Mr Truss said Australia remained dedicated to the task of solving ‘this greatest aviation mystery in total history.’
The new analysis comes just days after Malaysian Airlines pilot Zaharie Shah, 53, was revealed to be the prime suspect behind the plane’s disappearance.
Malaysian police made the announcement after discovering files on Shah’s home flight simulator showing he practiced landing on small airfields, including several in the Indian Ocean.
The files had been deleted from the computer before officials seized it, but have since been recovered by detectives.
The criminal inquiry completed intelligence checks on all of the people on board the flight to Beijing via Kuala Lumpur, but the only individual arousing suspicion was Captain Zaharie.
The father-of-three was found to have no social or work-related future plans, unlike the rest of the crew including his co-pilot, Fariq Hamid.
The criminal inquiry, which is yet to rule out other reasons for the plane’s disappearance including a mechanical failure and terrorism, has so far only released its results to foreign governments and their investigators.
Brian Crowley’s decision to switch grouping’s
MOTIVATED BY INVINCIBILITY AND DISENGAGEMENT
The Fianna Fáil MEP is the most successful Irish election candidate ever.
‘Brian Crowley MEP always resented efforts by Mount Street apparatchiks and senior party figures to manage the vote between candidates in the European elections.’
Coverage of election results inevitably focuses on the last seats filled. It follows that until this week Brian Crowley’s predictable win in Ireland South got insignificant attention.
Crowley is actually the most successful Irish election candidate ever. While a few have, in presidential elections for example, got higher votes in individual contests, nobody has matched Crowley for sustained vote share over multiple elections.
In 1993 Albert Reynolds parachuted Crowley into the national political arena by nominating him to the Seanad. Reynolds was a political friend of Brian’s father Flor, who was a TD for 13 years and a senator for five. It was assumed the Seanad appointment was a precursor to a Dáil run by Brian himself.
A year later Crowley, then only 30, ran instead in the European elections, topping the poll in the Munster constituency with 84,463 votes, 23 per cent of all votes cast.
Youthful good looks
His success at that time was put down to a combination of youthful good looks, a massive province-wide canvass where voters flocked out of their houses to meet him as he rolled down their street and an innovative political marketing strategy which owed more to modern American design than traditional Fianna Fáil approaches.
Crowley’s 1994 vote looked impressive until he nearly doubled it five years later, polling 154,195 votes.
Notwithstanding constituency redrawings he has managed to top the poll each time he has run. His vote share never fell below 23 per cent and once peaked at 34 per cent.
Crowley just has the political X factor. He is personable and has an extraordinary back story of overcoming adversity. He has a competent media and parliamentary style and an inordinate capacity for attending political and non-political gatherings across his large constituency.
He has also put in place a formal network of offices across the constituency and an informal network of hundreds of party and non-party campaign operatives.
ELECTORAL FEAT
Notwithstanding the general Fianna Fáil collapse since 2009, the lengthy hospitalisations he had to endure in recent years and the tragic loss of his brother and campaign manager Flor Jnr, Crowley pulled off an even more impressive electoral feat last month.
In the newly extended Ireland South constituency, which now includes six Leinster counties, Crowley polled an incredible 180,329 votes.
The size of this renewed mandate must inevitably have contributed to Crowley’s sense of political invincibility, and because he was returned as the only Fianna Fáil MEP he had no party colleagues in the parliament to consider and clearly felt he could do whatever he wanted in terms of political groupings.
He has never felt himself bound to the diktats of party headquarters back in Dublin, from whom he always felt detached and from whom he has been entirely disengaged in recent years.
Raising Irish corporation tax would damage our growth
SAYS MICHAEL NOONAN MINISTER FOR FINANCE
Hiking corporation tax by 2.5% would reduce inward investment here by a tenth, Finance Minister Michael Noonan has claimed.
In a written Dail response to Deputy Brendan Griffin (FG) on the issue, Minister Noonan said: “Any increase in the 12.5% rate could unfortunately result in a behavioural change on the part of taxpayers and potentially have a negative impact on economic growth. The certainty around the rate of Irish corporation tax is one of its biggest strengths, and it would be difficult to justify an increase in the context of Ireland’s firmly stated position that we will not change our tax rate.
“Even a marginal change in the rate of corporation tax would undermine both our long held stance on this issue and the certainty of business, domestic and international, in our resolve to maintain that position.
Minister Noonan said “it would take only a 2.5% increase in the rate (to 15%) to decrease Ireland’s inward investment by nearly 10%”. The minister said that “the extremely low effective rate figures that are quoted and attributed to Ireland are based on a flawed premise”.
He said: “The figures are running together the profits earned by group companies in Ireland and in other jurisdictions and incorrectly suggesting that Irish tax does or should apply to both. Ireland cannot tax profits that are properly attributable to other jurisdictions. The ability of some multinationals to lower their worldwide rate of tax using international structures reflects the global context in which Ireland and indeed all countries operate.”
He added: “The best way to effectively address this issue is for countries to work together at the international level and the appropriate action is being considered in this regard by the OECD as part of their project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and Ireland is participating fully in this process.
“Unlike some other countries who have a high headline rate of corporation tax which is then supplemented by a high number of tax reliefs which reduce the overall rate of tax paid, the approach in Ireland is transparent. We have a competitive headline rate of corporation tax which is applied to a broad base.”
Women in Ireland have 33% less saved than men for their retirement
WOMEN HAVE 33% LESS SAVED FOR RETIREMENT THAN MEN.
New research from Irish Life found that this is mainly down to the fact that female workers earn less than their male counterparts. Because women often leave the workforce for a time to look after children also impacting on the pension pots that they accumulate.
Both sexes are set to retire on small pensions as they and their employers are not putting enough into retirement funds, but women have even less put aside for retirement. Based on the contributions being made by workers and their employers, the average worker is set to end their working life on a pension of just under €8,000 a year.
But the average woman will end up with just €6,700 a year.
The calculations assume the average worker – both male and female – is earning €46,000 a year and is 37-years-old, with a defined contribution scheme.
IRISH LIFE LOOKED AT 1,400 DEFINED CONTRIBUTION SCHEMES.
The study shows the average fund accumulated to date is just over €53,000 for men and just over €34,000 for women.
Managing director of Irish Life Corporate Business David Harney said employers should examine ways of encouraging greater engagement from their employees in their defined contribution schemes.
Data from seabed 300km off Ireland being examined
Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to analyse new data gathered from the seabed along the Whittard Canyon, almost 300km off the Irish coast.
The information has been collected as part of the latest Marine Institute research cruise.
Using the specially designed Holland 1 Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), scientists from NUI Galway have taken readings, images and samples from depths of up to 3,000 metres.
It is the first time research of this kind has been conducted in the Canyon, at such a distance below the sea surface.
Among the discoveries was rare black coral – a vulnerable and protected species.
Scientists also located deep water sea lilies, hermit crabs, urchins and bamboo coral.
The ROV Holland I allows the researchers to sample the ecosystem, without causing damage.
During the cruise, it operated on a round-the-clock basis, with every measurement and reading recorded and catalogued by those on board.
Another element of the research is to provide samples of deep sea sponge for scientific purposes.
These are analysed for antibacterial compounds that could be used in the development of new pharmaceuticals.
Academics in the United States, Ireland, France and Germany will study various aspects of the wide-ranging survey that was carried out over a two-week period.
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