LETTER TO AMERICA MAGAZINE

Editor in Chief, Fr.Drew Christiansen, claims to,“ bear psychic scars inflicted by the organized defenders of injustice”. (“Of many things”. November 22).

It’s a pity he didn’t get some of those scars from exposing and opposing British injustice against Catholics in Northern Ireland.

As the former Director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the
US Catholic Conference (1998-2004), he continued the abysmal record of that
Office in colluding (by silence) with British torture, systematic violations of
human rights and endemic anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland.

Indeed, the Office of International Justice and Peace since the early 70’s has
been in effect the “ ecclesiastical wing of the British Embassy in Washington”. It never seriously, or proportionately to its power, took on the British government.
... “Not respectable to do so, old boy, lest you be seen as sympathetic to the
IRA.”

Indeed, the Office of International Justice and Peace in 1993 tried to sabotage the most effective campaign ever against anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland – the Mac Bride Principles, launched by the Irish National Caucus in November 1984 to be a code of conduct for American companies doing business in Northern Ireland. That Office conspired with “fronts” for the British Government to host a conference in the U.S., whose purpose was to change the Name of the Principles, neutralizing them and making them acceptable to the British Government. When we got wind of their machinations, we stopped them cold. Imagine the downright cheek and arrogance of that: they never lifted a finger to support The Mac Bride Principles, yet they had the effrontery to assume the right to change their name! Surely another example of the rampant clericalism and ecclesiastical hubris that have brought the Church into so much disrepute.

After almost forty years of struggling to get America to stand up for justice and peace in Northern Ireland, I can say from considerable experience and with
documented evidence that the U.S. Bishops (with a few exceptions) and The Office of Justice and Peace have exhibited a shocking and shameful indifference to the oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland. And to make it worse, they have never shown any sense of shame over that betrayal. Something psychic may explain that betrayal, but it ain’t psychic scars.


Fr. Sean Mc Manus
President
Irish National Caucus
P.O. BOX 15128
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC 20003-0849
Tel. 202-544-0568
Fax. 202-488-7537
sean@irishnationalcaucus.org