Actor Gabriel Byrne has launched a stinging attack on the Catholic Church and described it as a “force for evil”.
The veteran Hollywood star had a strict
Catholic upbringing in Dublin and spent five years in a seminary
training to be a priest.
But he said it was his own unhappy memories of
the seminary, where he says he was sexually abused by a priest, that
made him decide not to raise his two children as Catholics.
And in an interview, the 62-year-old says he
remains unrepetentant on his views of organised religion and even
claimed the Catholic Church once drew inspiration from Hitler’s Nazis.
Recalling the the time he was sent away to an
English seminary at just 11 to study for the priesthood, he said: “It
was part of the culture. It was a very religious, oppressive society,
though we didn’t see it as oppression at the time. I remember walking with my mother along a
narrow pathway and she was holding onto a pram and two priests came
along the footpath and she had to wheel the pram into the road to allow
them to walk by, these mysterious men in black. I think the religion I
had — and I don’t have any now — was rooted in a kind of childish
fantasy.”
He continued: “The Jesuits have that
expression, ‘give us a child until he is seven and he will be ours for
life’. That was why the Catholic Church and the Nazi party fed off each
other. “
After the rally at Nuremberg, the then pope
said: “We need to be doing something similar and we have the theatre for
it with St Peter’s, so that was when he started coming out on the
balcony to address the crowds. And the Nazis meanwhile were learning from the
Jesuits and making sure they got the child by seven in order to have
them for life. The Hitler Youth. “De Valera signed the book of
condolence when Hitler died. There was a sneaking regard among many
Irish people for Germany and Hitler. England’s pain was Ireland’s gain.”
The New York-based actor, who recently
triggered a storm when he described The Gathering as a “scam”, said in
the interview with the Sunday Telegraph’s Seven magazine that he feels
fortunate to have escaped from the clutches of the Catholic Church.
“They have way too much hold on this country.
It’s a very corrupt and nefarious institution. The nuns were vicious
because you have all these women living together in denial of love. They turned inward on themselves, became
twisted creatures. I saw nuns being awfully cruel to me and to my
sister. Horrific. Horrific.”
He went on: “I think if you are lucky you
eventually come to a place where you are able to question these things,
and I did. I read a lot on the subject and had many conversations and I
have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is a force for
evil. How can you enslave women? How can you deny
men who are supposed to be serving you the comfort of marriage and
children? How can they deny sending condoms to Africa? How can they deny
women becoming priests? It’s an anti-woman and anti-love church.”
Referring to his decision not to raise his two
grown-up children [he had with ex-wife, actress Ellen Barkin] as
Catholics, he added: “I never discussed religion with them. As far as
I’m concerned, it didn’t do me any good. And it’s interesting to watch two people grow up without it and find their own kindness and conscience.”