To think that John Charles McQuaid 'forbade' people from attending TCD. To think that these men tried to tell good parents how to live their lives is a crime against humanity.
The lore and the nonsense that spewed from their lips. But on a personal note, when I think of how we were expected to give these men respect. The titles they used. It is nothing but horrendous. And what about the people, who told us to behave in such a fashion?
Of course there are great women and men in the service of the hierarchical church? I have been privileged to know so many.
When dictates come down from Rome and bishops, and the 'theologians' 'attenpted' to make sense to the nonsense, and still do today.
Telling us they did not know the damage that was being caused. Of course they lied and still do, so as to control and attempt to hold on to whatever sort of power they think they may have.
Those people attempting to guide young women and men with respect to their sexual lives causes me physical illness.
Funny, how they know the mind of God in every detail in sexual activity, and then this.
What is particularly bleak is that it is most probable the change that is necessary, seems impossible of taking place in the current clerical environment, which may well try to close rqnks.
The tears, at least for me, seem crocodile in quality.
What about an audit of every diocese in the world?
Should the Irish State request Rome recall the Papal Nuncio?
Every current serving bishop in Ireland has been appointed to that job by means of a proceess that is devious, secret and most questionable.
Every current Irish bishop is part of that appalling nomenclature. No exceptions, although Willie Walsh has spoken his mind in an open and honest fashion.
The church continues to play its own clever mind games. It is not honest about the issue it has with homosexual priests. It refuses to talk in any open or meaningful manner on the topic.
To think that a married Anglican priest can become a Catholic priest and remained married is a fabulous nonsense but theologians have the magic explanation.
This may sound angry. It is. For over 30 years I have been asking for open and honest debate on all issues dealing with sexuality within the clerical church to be refused at every possible opportunity. And one of the powerful weapons of the church is to stay silent or else to dismiss you as a person who is angry or has 'probelems'.
McQuaide, Ryan, McNamara, But they are simply the fall guys.
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7 comments:
The very fact that the five bishops criticised by name (Murray, Moriarty, Drennan, Field and Walsh) in the report remain in office and show no inclination to resign bodes ill for the church. In a letter read today at masses in the Limerick diocese, Donal Murray fundamentally tries to excuse himself for conduct which the report describes in his case as "inexcusable." This is a kind of behaviour I'm not sure even John O'Donoghue could stoop to.
They have understood nothing. Even if these men feel personally that they have done nothing wrong, nevertheless the atrocities and cover-ups happened on their watch and they must accept the consequences; that an independent inquiry has examined their conduct and found it wanting, beyond all catogories of secular and canon law wanting on the level of basic human decency and moral rectitude. I'm reminded of some of the justifications offered by Nazi fellow-travellers at Nuremberg.
There might just conceivably be a way to a new start for the Catholic Church in Ireland - if there was sincere repentance and a feeling for meaningful actions, signals, gestures on the part of all those in any way responsible for abetting the abusers and covering up their consequences even if this meant subjecting more children to abuse. It's a concept well known to the men in question as they have preached about it often enough. It's called penance. Resigning would be a first, personal step into a journey of true repentance. Many more would also be necessary.
The silence of the Vatican and its Nuncio hiding behind diplomatic conventions is so sickening that it defies comment ...
Francis Hunt
Heard all this in l980.......what has changed?
Yvonne bone
I have been out of the country, so I have not been up to speed with events.
I have heard that the Vatican has claimed that matters should be done as per diplomatic convention.
The Vatican may well have the best secret service in the world but that same Vatican is making me a very sick person today.
Has anyone examined how bishops are appointed, the forms that priests complete in those appointments, the secrecy engaged??
But the story goes on. On Friday it was reported in the Suddeutsche Zeitung that the spokesperson for vocations to the Catholic Church in Germany said that priest numbers are down becasue of rampant materialism. Is anyone going to question this man, stand up to him and tell him he is not telling the story as it is?
The Catholic Church thinks it knows the mind of God in a way no one else does.
It has a major problem among its priests relating to all matters of sexuality.
It has a most unhealthy attitude towards women.
Bishops and provincials don't do resigning.
Bishops are men of the system. They would not be in their jobs if they were not part and parcel of the secrecy and obfuscation.
All a cocktail to disaster.
Michael, I hear your anger and I am with you 100%. Like the previous comment, I too listened to the letter by our bishop at mass yesterday, stating how shocked and upset he was by the findings – why ? - nothing new has come out. Where has he been over the last number of years?. Has it really taken this long for these men to 'get' what is going on? I don’t think so. The previous comment says 'they have understood nothing' Not so, they understand perfectly well, but to admit to it would mean they loose too much, as in power, respect, money, all of which they felt they had a god given right to over the years.
Shortly I hope to publish the investigation into who wrote the inapprorpriate comments to this blog.
It should make for more interesting study.
Michael, I'm (ab?)using your blog to make my own views public (in my own small way) on this whole issue.
Men like Murray, Moriarty, et al. - and I would include Des Connell in this group - are, most probably, very sure that they acted correctly, acording to their own lights. For them, their loyalty to the institutional church is genuinely primary. The Catholic Church, including indivisibly its institutional component, is the infallible voice of God on earth. They serve it, and that is their whole justification.
Des Connell taught me philosophy at UCD and I feel I know a bit about what makes him tick. He can use the artifice of the "mental reservation" and believe that this is morally correct, because he can justify it in the edifice of scholastic theology, the truth of which he is convinced. For this reason he can simultaneously be horrified at the abuse of children by churchmen, and at the same time subjugate it to the supremacy of his duty, as he sees it, to serve the church and protect it from harm.
Donal Murray seems to think similarly. If I understand his reaction to the criticism of him in the Murphy report correctly, he wants to wait for feedback from the priests and people of his diocese. If he gets the impression they think he should resign, he may even do so.
But both Connell and Murray, as well as the others, have got it basically wrong. This is not a question of their responsibility to the Church, or their obedience to the pope (I'm expecting that there will be smokescreens raised about the so-called Holy Father not accepting some offered resignations), or their own theological justifications. It is a question of their moral responsibility to the victims of the abusers.
As a result of their positions, they were faced with difficult but ultimately clear moral decisions and they chose wrongly. All the extenuating arguments regarding damage to the church, loyalty to the pope, the prospect of horrifying scandals do not change this (and the truth - at least some of it - has come out anyway).
It happened on their watch and they let the victims down. No theological arguments, no opinions of the priests and laity of the Limerick diocese, no wishes of the pope can change this. And this is why Murray and the others must resign and Connell must go much further than he has in terms of unreserved apology. Apart from any considerations of the victims and their feelings, it is a question of their own moral integrity. In this sense, to use the terminology they (not I) would use, it's a question of saving their own souls.
I fear most of them do not seem capable of discovering the basic backbone within themselves to save themselves morally - spiritually, if you like. And this is, perhaps, the most damning judgement of all on the system which produced them, formed them and which they have served.
I am relieved and glad not to be in any way associated with that system any more. And, at the same time (thinking also of my idealistic young self who entered the Dominican Order 32 years ago and spent nine fruitful and formative years there) saddened that the institutional Catholic Church has so managed to corrupt and pervert what was, potentially, a beautiful ideal.
Francis
I found the comments here very interesting and found myself wondering what might constitute a "real" gesture towards the harm done.
Maybe if the entire episcopal conference (whtout exception) resigned en masse it might send a signal. And then I wondered, what if an entire diocesan clergy (or even a significant number) resigned en masse, that too might make a gesture.
In the absence of these potential gestures, I suspect that many many Catholics will vote with their feet and cease to be church attenders.
While I am deeply saddened by the Murphy Report, I am left wondering about the great emphasis on child sexual abuse by church personnel. Wasn't there a report some time back that gave the real child abuse figures in Ireland as one in four? We have a massive social problem in this country in relation to child abuse, and while venting our ire toward one formerly-powerful segment of society may be cathartic, I wonder how much closer it brings us to the protection of every child.
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