WHY WE ALL OWE FRANK OUR THANKS
Great man saw evil at the heart of our Church
FOR 40 years Frank Crummey was a thorn in the side of respectable Irish society.
Now his time has come.
He was right all along and he has a book to prove it. Towards the end of his enthralling memoir Crummey V Ireland he sums up a life spent bringing hope to the hope-less by admitting that the recent Ryan and Murphy Reports left him with just a twinge of guilt.
"For me, the conclusions of both reports have demonstrated what I'd always known was as much a tragedy as the abuse itself: a whole nation's ability to stand silently by and let it happen," he writes.
Many of us are tortured by the same kind of guilt and so we should be.
Voiceless
However I don't know of a single citizen in Ireland who did more to help the abused, the downtrodden, the voiceless, the people who got a bad deal, than Frank Crummey.
He was one of the first people to name who the guilty were - Catholic clergy scandalously abusing power and status, and the spineless politicians who forfeited power to them.
In his book Frank re-tells a selection of the many thousands of cases he has been involved in.This is no self-trumpeting work.
He was born and raised in Kilfenora Road, in Kimmage.
For 12 years it was part of my area when I was a priest starting out in the newly formed parish of Mount Argus in Dublin.
Frank mentions that he knew every one of the 102 families on Kilfenora Road.
So did I. For part of my tenure, the Crummey family lived in one of those houses.
The neighbours, whom he speaks so highly of here, were known to me. I learned so much from all of them as I visited them on a daily basis. Frank always had difficulty with the Church's abuse of power.
Compassion
But he set aside all his problems in the interest of compassion. He could always be relied upon to do the right thing as could Evelyn and all their children.
When we organised openair Masses on the corner of Kilfenora and Clonfert Roads, right to the end of the '80's, one of the main helpers was Frank Crummey.
You don't have to agree with everything a man does or says or believes in order to recognise his courage and his authenticity. Frank is the real deal and always was.
As Frank freely admits, there were many good priests and many good politicians in the Dail. But there was a culture of arrogance which always dumped on the most vulnerable.
Victories
Frank's stories are all about people. He delights in portraying himself as the small man literally and metaphorically. He relishes David's victories over Goliath.
This man, now in his seventies, takes us through a life which includes being an altar boy in Crumlin Church, a member of the Confraternity in Mount Argus, a loyal member of the Legion of Mary in the same church and a contented atheist now.
It details a myriad of occupations which included an army gunner, a taxi driver, a London bus driver, a lonely emigrant in Australia, an ice-cream man, a salesman for women's underwear, a postman, a social worker, a cleaner of sewers, a helper in a women's refuge and a founder member of the Institute of Legal Executives.
Many remember Frank in his early days on the Late Late Show in the mid '60s.
He challenged the views of the Catholic Church and the State in a healthy way and I know his arguments helped me to rethink the accepted morality of sexuality.
Frank Crummey saw the beauty of sex as a wonderful gift from God where many others saw only sin.
Frank says he is an atheist now and he is at peace because of his conviction.
Today believers and nonbelievers have learned how to work together, live together and most of all respect honestly held differences.
It's a rare privilege to meet a man who has done so much good and for whom compassion was not just a word but a way of life.
(Crummey V Ireland, Londubh Books) www.londubh.ie
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HERE'S another letter with a different point of view.