Bishops should ease off on victim syndrome

Auxiliary Bishop of Down and Connor Donal McKeown said at Knock, “People of faith see church condemned and mocked no matter what it does. ...And many have lost energy because they feel angry or bereaved at how the Irish church has fallen from its position of integrity and leadership in Irish society.”

Is it as clear as that? The idea that the Irish church was a home of or for integrity and true leadership is questionable.

Just take the Sunday Mass obligation; how many people went to Mass because they perceived to have been told that if they did not go they had committed a mortal sin and were certain to go to hell should they die. Was that leadership, was that a teaching based on integrity?

In schools the beatings that young and not-so-young children received in church-run schools were never a sign surely of integrity or leadership.

When a West Kerry couple attended a funeral in a Church of Ireland church they had to report the matter to the local bishop. What had that to do with leadership or integrity?

So much of the Catholic Church’s teaching in the area of sexual behaviour had little or anything to do with leadership and integrity.

If there are journalists denigrating religion and spirituality in Ireland it would seem it is a result of years of oppression and power that the Catholic Church actually had in Ireland. And surely the Catholic Church does not have exclusive rights on leadership and integrity.

What had it to do with integrity and spirituality that a bishop lived in a ‘palace’.

The lifestyle of bishops has seldom if ever been in keeping with real leadership and certainly never with 'spirituality'. Gospel values?

Is Donal McKeown not aware of the damage and hurt that has been caused?

And if, as reported, the bishop said that, "People of faith see church condemned and mocked.." it is important to point out that not all people of faith think in such a manner.

We reap what we sow.