Bishop Casey's Buried Secrets

My Response to Anne Sheridan's RTE Documentary

Hi there,

I watched RTE’s documentary ‘Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets’ on Monday night, presented by Anne Sheridan. It has caused much media debate and calls for the remains of the late Bishop Eamonn Casey to be removed from Galway Cathedral.

Anne Sheridan’s RTE documentary ‘Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets’ makes compelling viewing and is a masterclass in unearthing secrets behind the clerical mask.

My Journey into the Priesthood

I have a unique perspective on Catholicism and religion given the nine years I spent studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood and trying and failing to live the three vows of celibacy, obedience and poverty.

The Decision to Leave

I studied philosophy and theology and was on the brink of ordination. Having taken leave of absence, it took me a further year to break free and choose not to return to my priestly path.

The Persistence of Religious Rituals

Having swallowed the Big Lie of religion, I’m astounded by its persistence in the Western World.

People continue to baptize babies. Children still make their ‘holy communion’ and ‘confirmation’. Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

People still baptize babies, go through the ‘holy communion’ thing and millions of people worldwide continue with the rite of passage of ‘confirmation’—when the supposedly adult child confirms the faith and identity imposed on them without their knowledge or consent at birth.

Hypocrisy Within the Church

Yes, there has been a massive awakening of people, especially in Ireland, to the duplicity and hypocrisy of many clerics, living secret, sexually active lives with men and women, fathering children, sexually abusing children, and covering it up, while perpetuating and imposing on others injustices, such as forcing a raped girl to have the baby of her rapist, denouncing gay peoples’ natural instincts and attractions as ‘disordered’, and claiming it doesn’t have the ‘authority’ to ordain women.

All priests are sexual and many have secret sexual experiences or relationships with men, women or children, while promoting discrimination against women and gay people. Photo by mahdi rezaei on Unsplash

The Farce of Ordination

I regard ordination as a farce, when deluded or deceitful people presume to be elevated to mediating between an imagined God and the rest of us ‘sinners’. By denying women equal access to that caste of the deceiving and the deluded, they perpetuate inequality in society.

The Pervasive Big Lie

I’m astounded at why so much anger is directed against clerics rather than the entire paradigm they represent. They live and preach a myth. Their identity and purpose as priests and bishops is built on a Big Lie. It’s a pervasive Lie of Extraordinary Proportions. Yet listen to the reverential tones of some news reporters, especially in Britain, quoting the words of the Pope.

Journalists should get behind religious masks, probe words like ‘miracle’, and require facts and evidence from religious people, just as they would while reporting anything else. Photo by Elimende Inagella on Unsplash

The Role of Journalists

Observe how even some of the best journalists lapse from their normally professional fact-based reporting when it comes to religion. I’ve seen one journalist, whom I otherwise greatly respect, report as a fact a so-called ‘miracle’ for which there was, of course, no evidence.

Societal Collusion

Why is this? Is it because journalists and broadcasters don’t want to incur the wrath of religious readers, viewers or listeners? Is it a lack of confidence on their part that they couldn’t argue the toss with theologians? Might it be a societal collusion not to disturb the make-believe deceits of many in society?

The Comfort of Belief

Do they feel it’s just not worth it? Life is too short? And if people want to believe in fairies they can? And they’re unlikely to be receptive to adult thought and critical thinking?

Even here, I’m reluctant to print that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. Why? Because children believe in him. And what harm is that?

The Harm of Religious Belief

It seems to me to be a similar societal rule about God. Of course he, she or it doesn’t exist but many adults and children believe in him and what harm is that?

What harm is it for a child with terminal cancer to believe in a life hereafter? Mightn’t it comfort and console the kid? Their belief isn’t harming anyone else.

Believing in an afterlife might offer comfort to a terminally ill child. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The Case of Bishop Eamonn Casey

But when it comes to grown men like the late Bishop Eamonn Casey believing or pretending to believe the Big Lie, he has his calling card to rape his five-year-old niece, Patricia Donovan, an innocent child, whose life would be wrecked by his crime.

Thankfully, she has spoken out in the extraordinary documentary Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, first broadcast 22 July 2024, and available on the RTE Player. It’s a documentary worthy of the highest award and every commendation is due to its presenter Anne Sheridan (@annesheridan1).

Anne Sheridan, News Editor, Irish Daily Mail and Presenter of the RTE documentary ‘Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets’

A Lifetime of Trauma

It took 2,000 years for the predominant Big Lie in the Western World to be told. It took five years for the documentary to be made. It took one minute for the life of a little girl to be convulsed in lifelong trauma by the brazen, duplicitous, purveyor of the Big Lie, Bishop Eamonn Casey.

His remains lie in Galway Cathedral, his continued interment there a further daily rape by the Church of the victims of the late Bishop of Galway.

Saved by a Woman is available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardback editions.

In My Gut, I Don’t Believe is available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, Hardback and Audible editions.

If you go to Amazon and it says a particular edition isn’t available, simply change the domain name or territory in the URL or address bar. For instance, change "Amazon.co.uk" to "Amazon.com" or "Amazon.de" etc.

You can listen to fascinating questions about godlessness at the launch of the first memoir, In My Gut, I Don’t Believe, on the Losing My Religion Podcast or watch it on YouTube.

You can listen to more fascinating questions at the launch of Saved by a Woman on the Losing My Religion Podcast or the Joe the Human post and Podcast.

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Happy days,

Joe