The New Torchlight List by James Robert Flynn

Author:James Robert Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Awa Press

John Boyne (born 1971)

Until recently, John Boyne did not write about Ireland but when he finally did he chose a theme of great contemporary interest. In A History of Loneliness* (2014) he uses the eyes of a devout priest to chronicle how pedophiles among the clergy tarnished the Irish Catholic church. The devastation was far more dramatic than in any other nation because of the church's unique role. It was in control. The clergy was virtually worshipped by the people. An archbishop could veto any story in the press. Parliament was intimidated. In America in 1945, when I was eleven, Sister Margaret Francis happened to mention in class that Ireland was much to be preferred to Italy because it was a truly Catholic country.

The dialogue in Boyne's book is as fine as anything in literature. Two scenes wonderfully convey the contrast between before the scandal and after. In 1980, as a young man, a priest gets on a train and people compete to serve him. A highly pregnant woman and a doddering old man both offer him their seats. Instead, a little boy is shifted to his mother's lap. The mother offers him little Anthony's potato crisps. "No!" roars the boy in horror, looking at the priest with fury. He is duly slapped. Unbidden, the old man buys the priest a cheese roll and offers a Kit-Kat for dessert.

By 2010, the priest cannot go into Dublin in clerical garb without risking derision and jostling by teenagers. He cannot be alone with the altar boys without a layman present. In many parishes altar boys are abolished. If the layman leaves the hall to go to the toilet, the priest has to leave as well.

How did the abuse of boys happen and who knew? The priest reviews his past life and has to admit he half knew. His best friend among the priesthood had been a molester from his first parish onwards, but at first he could not bring himself to believe it. And then he could not face the truth and expose it. The church was so revered that the hierarchy would not hear of the slightest hint of wrongdoing. Bishops deceived themselves into thinking some of it was lies, and that shifting priests from parish to parish protected the boys from men who were mainly too "demonstrative" for their own good.

The "few" complaints from parents were solved by a phone call from a bishop or a cardinal or (once) even the Pope. (This is assumed, not proven.) Nearing retirement, the priest feels the church destroyed the soul of Ireland and he was complicit, but fortunately for his sanity he has restored good relations with his abused nephew (the scene is movingly described) and another nephew and their families.

Boyne's earlier novels are not of equal quality. Crippen (2004) is based on the famous case of Dr Crippen who, after his wife's suspicious death, fled England with his lover by ship, and thanks to telegraph communications was apprehended before he reached Canada. Erik Larson documented the same events in Thunderstruck without departing from history.

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