Brendan Hoban, a founder-member of the Association of Catholic Priests has criticised the Iona Institute for its recent legal actions against RTÉ.
“If you claim a role in public discourse then you can’t complain about the unwritten rules,” Fr Hoban says. “It’s just part of the cut and thrust of debate. There’s no place for wilting violets.”
Writing on the ACP website, he added: “In the recent controversy about homophobia . . . Iona’s gadarene rush to the legal eagles for their pound of flesh from RTÉ was both surprising and unwise.”
He recalled how, some years ago, “a member of the Iona Institute agreed with an RTÉ presenter on a popular morning radio show that ‘dissident priests’ should be pushed out of the Catholic Church”, referring to ACP members.
“It didn’t seem to occur to the Iona spokesperson – though we feared that maybe it did – that this could involve for the more likely suspects a loss of earnings, accommodation, job and identity, in effect the devastation of one’s life.
“All of that didn’t seem to matter much. Iona was indulging in a form of cheer-leading, the equivalent of urging the hounds to kill the fox – not a happy place to be, especially for the fox,” Fr Hoban said.
“Indeed if the defamation had been personalised, there was a great temptation to pursue Iona for compensation. ”
Iona “should have grabbed one of the alternatives offered by RTÉ, either a right of reply or a donation to a charity”.
“They could have claimed the higher ground by standing above what presented as a form of precious grandstanding and worse, what looked like a selfish rush to financially milk RTÉ’s predicament.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Featured Post
A quiet space offers staff a chance to relax and recharge
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column. Michael Commane A cousin of mine, who works here in Ireland for a multi national c...
-
Dominican priest Leo Donovan died in Kiltipper Woods Care Centre, Tallaght on Saturday morning, February 17. Leo had been over two years in ...
-
Seósamh Laurence Collins died in Tallaght University Hospital in the early hours of Monday morning, January 22. Larry, as he was known in t...
-
John O’Rourke was born in Newry on November 14, 1939. He joined the Dominican Order in September 1958 and was ordained a priest in July 1965...
No comments:
Post a Comment