Sunday, March 3, 2013

A smidgen of honesty will go a long way

The Keith O'Brien story is endemic across the Catholic Church. They have been lying about it for far too long.

And nothing, nothing at all, is being done to discuss or talk in an open and charitable way about the issue.

What now will all the righ-wing magazines, newspapers and free sheets say to explain away all those words of the former Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh?

Might the church sit down and ask serious questions as to how bishops are appointed in the Catholic Church.

Might there be a discussion on the link there is between crazy right wing nonsense and closet homosexuality among the clergy?

It would seem the kern of the problem is homosexual men joining priesthood and then being forced to keep their sexual orientation secret.

Houston, we have a problem. And we should be singing from the rooftops that the lid might now come flying off the humbug, lies, nonsense and all that 'holy claptrap'.

The Keith O'Brien story was the first item in this evening's main BBC One news.

This writer asked for a discussion on this very subject at a meeting of the Irish Dominicans in Dublin in the mid 1980s.


Nothing happened then and nothing is happening today.

Aspects of the issue were mentioned again last summer. A response of complete silence.

We might even be told that it is all part of an anti Catholic media agenda.

Hardly this time. That one trick pony might have run its course.

3 comments:

Francis Hunt said...

One of the things which has impressed me in the past few days is the comprehensive, deep and nuanced coverage of the affair which has been going on in the British media. Far from simply blindly beating up on the Catholic Church, as the knee-jerk reaction from the Catholic right likes to claim, there is a serious process going on to try to understand what is going on at a much more fundamental level. This article by Catherine Deveney, the journalist who originally broke the story (published in last Saturday's Guardian) is an excellent example.

Michael Commane said...

You didn't by any chance see this month's free sheet 'Alive?

A comment about the March issue was made on this blog on February 25.

You might be interested in listening to the Joe Duffy Show of Tuesday.

Upsetting and sad.

Francis Hunt said...

I didn't see "Alive," didn't look for it either, though I happened to be in Ireland last weekend. I've better things to do with my time. :-)

As it happened, I caught quite a bit of the Joe Duffy show in the car on the way to the radio - the self-righteousness, and, at the same time, the disingenous shading of the truth by the editor was mind-boggling. Nevertheless, there was a man who contributed to the discussion from Dublin - a committed Catholic and one who seemed to know the Tallaght Dominicans well, who pretty much wiped the floor with fr. McKevitt; calling him competently out on his essential dishonesty.

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