Sinead O'Connor Speaks Out

video of her with A Cooper here:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/27/video-sinead-oconnor-on-the-catholic-church-abuse-scandal/

Thank you for the link to the interview with Sinead who speaks articulately but with great pain.

She wrote of the Magdalene Laundries in her editorial. Here is a link to Christie Moore singing of these infamous institutions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inteWfmzui0&feature=PlayList&p=F3C7392F8468237A&index=19

I saw that and saw that she came out pro the church fixing itself. I am too, with grave doubts, but re general order.. but I am sans faith at all. She seems still to have some.

I couldn't help but notice that although she stressed that she believed in the Holy Spirit. While she said she was proud to be a Catholic woman, she made no mention of the church's hierarchy. I also noticed that her voice shook. Whether it was the connection or her emotions, I can't be certain but she was articulate.

I left the church in my own mind and heart at 15 . . . and that was when the church was at its best, just after Vatican II. I enjoyed the intellectualism of the leftists and the sophisticates within the church while in high school and in college. In fact, I feel that owe a debt to a priest who ran a retreat during my freshman year . . . at a Catholic college. He helped me cope with my father's inability to accept that I was not satisfied with a high school education and had gone on to college. At 21, I could officially leave the church and I became a Quaker. While my former husband could not abide my Quaker friends (who didn't drink), we attended the Unitarian church to give the kids a background in religious knowledge. They are thorough going atheists. In fact, they hate Tim O'Brien, the blue grass musician, because he does spirituals. I told the kids that spirituals are part of America's heritage.

I find this upsetting. Why this man was elevated to the papacy is beyond me. I think that there are parts of my own Catholic upbringing that I value.

As I wrote in my posting, a high school friend sent me this. . . along with lists of defrocked priests, including one who taught religion at our high school. The man was obviously twisted. During our freshman year (1961-62), he banned the twist because he said it looked like an "intercourse dance" which he defined as the sort of dance Africans do in order to become aroused enough to have intercourse.

When he said that, I had to think it through. I knew the F word but not intercourse. Then I thought, as a rather sheltered 14 year old, how is it people have to go through so much to have intercourse?

Another classmate of ours used to imitate that priest. She would say, "Fr. H came into the room looked around and said, 'Sex! Sex! Sex!'"

He would not talk to a woman who wore shorts, including life long friends of his mother. He was defrocked for sexually abusing boys.

I think what makes her unusual is that she still believes in the importance of the interaction between religion and the human spirit. I've always liked her, now I have a better idea of why.

I took her, whatever quote I read, and it was probably about the holy spirit, to have actual faith. I do not, but I also always liked her.

I think she is completely sincere and I think she went through a rough time.