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.

O'Brien accepts allegations

And now Archbishop Keith O'Brien admits to the allegations.

Who appoints these people?

Why do so many of them lie?

It's as clear as the nose on one's face.

And then the standard spin line of asking for forgiveness.

The brave men who spoke out.

Something terribly wrong at Irish Rail

Who manages Irish Rail?

A report in today's Sunday Independent tells how the underground heating systems at Connolly and Heuston stations are not working. The systems were installed in the 1990s. And already not fit for purpose.

Irish Rail introduced a new timetable in January. It was decided not to print a hard copy of the timetables. Then a change of mind and hard copy timetables are available.

But according to the hard copy timetable the first train on a Monday ex Tralee is 05.50. The online version gives a train departing Tralee on a Monday at 04.50.

Who manages Irish Rail?

Important to question the status quo

The 'hinking Anew' column in today's Irish Times.

By Michael Commane
Two realities are circling in my head this week. One is the resignation of Pope Benedict and the other is a series of lectures on cosmology I am attending.

It so happens that the man giving the cosmology lectures was my teacher in third class in primary school. I can still recall what a great teacher he was. He later went on to study mathematics. He is also a man of faith in the person of Jesus Christ.

Cosmology is made up of two Greek words, cosmos, meaning the universe and logos, meaning knowledge. The lecture series is in Monkstown in Dublin, and it is fascinating to see how different cultures, different people try to give meaning to the world about them, and the similarities of different cultures in trying to make sense of their environment.

Answers have to be meaningful for people or the story loses its appeal. A literal understanding of the Book of Genesis, for example, is not a cosmology that makes sense to many people today. Cosmology is the study of who we are.

Christian cosmology emerges out of Jewish cosmology - a world of biblical revelation.

I’m back thinking of the resignation of Pope Benedict. Because I have lived in Germany and taught German for many years I have always had a healthy respect for Josef Ratzinger and Pope Benedict. The books written by the former ‘Der Spiegel’ journalist Peter Seewald on Benedict greatly impressed me.

It is tempting to approach the topic of faith with a ready-made rule book. But that never gives us the full picture. Listening to these cosmology lectures I can’t help but wonder have we tied our understanding and faith in God to some sort of cosmology of our making. Might that be why so many people today seem unimpressed and uninterested with aspects of ‘traditional religion’?

There are those who say science will give us all the answers. Today there is a pluralism of cosmologies. Christians need to keep grounded in Christ.

In the first reading tomorrow, which is from the Book of Exodus we see how God and Moses engage with each other. But it seems there is an issue about giving a name to God.

Moses answers God: “If I go to the Israelites and say to them: ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ they will ask me: ‘what is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.” (Exodus 3: 13 - 14)

Moses discovers something beyond the material, beyond the here-and-now.

The dominant dispensation today is scientific, it’s about what we can see, hear, name and measure. But Pope Benedict sees the reality of the spiritual at the very heart of life and the cosmos.

Josef Ratzinger in his book ‘Introduction to Christianity’ considers this passage in Exodus and shows how for Christian faith all our cosmological reflections are fulfilled in Christ. He points out that God is not a God of place or a God, who belongs to any one locality but is God of the universe, yet One who invites each of us into a personal relationship. In some ways it is accurate to say there is no name adequate for God.

When all the threads are gathered together, we have to be on our guard not to be a “one-trick pony”, where our vision is so tunnelled that we cannot see outside our own immediate environment.

Jesus always questions the status quo. That is something few of us are comfortable doing.

These are exciting times. Surely it’s the job of the person who is trying to talk about God to use words that make sense in the here-and-now, in this culture, all the time with Christ as our beacon.

Imperative to cut vulgar pensions

Anyone who looks at the large pensions of the elite can be left in doubt of the inequality that exists in the State.

The vulgar sums paid to retired high ranking public servants and politicians cannot make sense in the current environment.

What a statement it would be if all these pensions were cut to €99,000. And that still would be a fabulously generous payment.

And please don't let anyone say, it can't be done. Of course it can.

Mankind still needs God but not this behaviour

This comment is from a reader in response to the article by Joanna Moorhead.

Because of the sensitivity of the subject the author's name is not being published.

Joanna's article describes the feelings I felt when I left the church. I was abused as a child, not by a priest, but by an adult - and the adults chose to ignore my pleas in favour of their own defence.

The church did the same. I think Jesus would throw up if he saw his church.

And these men of power stand, at their discretion and judgement, between me and the Eucharist, to which Jesus invited "all of us"? It's a farce of man... And mankind still needs God but not this behaviour.

Silence reigns across the hierarchy

How are Irish bishops and congregational leaders reacting to all that is being written in these days on what is happening in the church?

Has there been one single intelligent honest comment from an Irish bishop or congregational leader?

On this rock we will rebuild our church

The article below is by Joanna Moorhead and appears in today's Guardian

The Catholic church is on its knees, and not in the way it would like. In fact, the last thing anyone would ask a bishop or cardinal about right now is prayer, or Christian witness, or how to live an upright, moral, God-trusting life.

Why would you, when all they seem to know about is covering up sex crimes, inappropriate behaviour among prelates, political infighting at the Vatican, and the existence of a clandestine gay cabal at the highest levels in Rome?

All of which is, for ordinary church-going lay Catholics like me, profoundly disturbing. How could an organisation that professes a direct link to Christ – “You are Peter,” Jesus told the first bishop of Rome, “and on this rock I will build my church …” – have gone so far off the rails that it now seems a power-crazed, untrustworthy and corrupt institution, out to save its own skin at almost any cost?

The people in the pews are reeling from shock: go to any mass at any church in Britain this weekend, and there will only be one topic of conversation in the porch afterwards. How did it come to this? What on earth has been going on in our church?

I am a little less surprised than many of my friends. I have been writing about the church, and observing it up close in Rome and in Britain, for 25 years. I have seen the politicking, the bitchiness, the in-fighting, the constant focus on who’s in, who’s out, who’s up and who’s down. I have been covering stories of ecclesiastical sex scandals for decades: they may be at a zenith now, but they’re nothing new.

And I have witnessed so many outrages that the only thing I tend to think now, when I hear yet another outlandish rumour, is that the more far-fetched it sounds, the more likely it is to be true.

So I am not as shocked as others, but I am angry: very angry indeed. Because my church – the church to which I and generations of my relatives have been giving their money, allegiance, and sometimes even (as nuns, monks and priests) lives has, quite simply, failed. It has failed to give witness, at an institutional level, to the gospel message with which it was entrusted by Christ. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” he said: but the descendants of Peter, the bishops and cardinals of today, seem more intent on smashing the rock to pieces than building on it.

I am angry too because it seems to me – and, I think, to many of my fellow lay Catholics – that our church has come to be seen entirely in terms of the men who run it.

That, of course, is understandable: not only do they hold resolutely on to the reins of power, but they are also the ones who have perpetrated the crimes. One of the more unsettling moments of the pope’s UK visit in 2010, for me, was when he called on “the whole church” to atone for its crimes.

But those were not my crimes, Pope Benedict: I am not one of the ordained men who has abused children or helped cover up their abhorrent behaviour, and I resent being treated as one.

In fact, all around me I increasingly hear these words from my fellow Catholics: not in my name. These crimes that have been committed, this power that has been abused, this trust that has been betrayed: not in our name, Your Holiness, has it happened.

Guilt has dogged my church through the centuries, and it’s a guilt that has often been planted most deeply among the lay people: every week at mass for many years I have heard the priest in the pulpit reminding and cajoling and persuading us to go to confession, to repent, to bathe in our guilt and be freed from it.

Well, not this time: this guilt is not mine; this is the guilt of the hierarchy, the guilt of the priests, the guilt of the ordained men who run my church and who have been determined for centuries that they would not share the running of the church with anyone who was not one of them.

And therein, it seems to me, lies the real root of our problems. Because what has gone wrong with the church is, at heart, about a concentration of power in the hands of one tiny group. A tiny group of ordained, mostly Italian, men, when we are an enormous church of ordained and unordained men and women of all nationalities, from right across the globe.

If the Catholic church is to survive – and those churchmen in Rome and elsewhere who smile in their superior way, and say the church has had many crises in its history have not, I think, quite understood the measure of this one – then that power must be devolved.

Lay people – we, the vast, silent majority that makes up our church – are a gigantic, tragically untapped resource for leadership, for witness and for evangelisation.

In the 1960s the liberalising Second Vatican Council recognised that, and the best revolution in the history of Catholicism seemed to be under way, only to be snuffed out in its infancy, smothered by those ordained men who feared losing control more than they feared being part of a church that was out of touch, sidelined and irrelevant.

Lay women, the biggest group within the church, are the most silent of all silent majorities. Yet the women of the Catholic church are its backbone: its strength, its prayer powerhouse, its unseen workers. They are also, I believe, its wisdom, its common sense and its conscience.

If the Catholic church had done as most institutions have done over the last 30 or so years, and invited women to become its leaders alongside men, it would have discovered – as institution after institution has discovered, the world over – that it could not run itself properly without them.

I go to mass most Sundays but I couldn’t bring myself to go last weekend. This church isn’t the church I want to belong to.

My only sliver of hope is that, through the centuries, it has sometimes brought itself to the very brink of self-destruction and, at the 11th hour, managed to turn itself round and live to fight another day. Can that happen again? God knows. But of this I am certain: if the Catholic church is going to pick itself up it needs to make some very big changes indeed.

Trust the laity, share the power, open the pathways, make the mechanics transparent; and that’s just for starters. Oh yes: and read the gospels too. Was this the church Christ wanted? If not, let’s get back to that rock, and see whether we can build something much, much better.

Another voice on cardinal errors

In an article in today's Irish Independent Peter Standord writes: "It is impossible to sit in the pews and not be concerned by the present unhealthy state of affairs where a church that in essence preaches that homosexuality is wrong attracts and admits so many gay men into its priesthood".

Who is this really about?

Below is Mark Dowd's article, which appears in today's Guardian.

Clear accurate words. And nothing will be done to address the situation. Nothing is being done.

By Mark Dowd
I approached a director at Channel 4 back in 2000 with a proposal for a documentary on homosexuality and the Roman Catholic church. I had a simple pitch. "I want to show why my church is so anti-gay."


"And why is your church so anti-gay?," came back the obvious question. "Because it is so gay," I replied.

A furrowed brow invited further exposition. I then spelt out the logic. We interviewed clerics and ex-seminarians in the UK, US and Rome and uncovered a huge irony: the very institution that teaches that the homosexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" attracts gay candidates for the priesthood in numbers way in excess of what one would expect, based on numbers in society at large. One seminary rector based on his own experience told me the number was at least 50%.

Gay Catholics like me will appreciate another irony with the news of Cardinal Keith O'Brien's resignation: that the very man whose trenchant rhetoric on the subjects of gay adoption and marriage has been brought down by accusations of improper same-sex behaviour from no less than four men who crossed his path in the 1980s, either as a seminary rector or as archbishop of Edinburgh. His decision not to participate in the papal conclave is not to be taken as an admission of guilt and he contests the accusations made against him. Nevertheless, it does raise some general questions about a possible relationship between the tone of anti-gay rhetoric and the identities of those who engage in such high-octane language on same sex attraction.

For our programme, Queer and Catholic, we interviewed two men from the English College in Rome who had fallen in love while training for the priesthood. In seminary they had tried to have open and frank discussions about homosexuality but were told by staff and many fellow students alike that this was not the done thing.

In the TV interview, one of them reported on the fact that it was frequently the very men who were out and about in Rome engaging in casual sexual acquaintances in the Monte Capitolino, a nearby park, who were often the most vehemently homophobic in the seminars on sexual ethics.

Building on this, the lesbian writer on queer theology, Elizabeth Stuart, in a fascinating deconstruction of "liturgy queens", made the observation that in her experience it was more often than not the very closeted clergy who deployed an almost neurotic obsession with the size and length of the altar cloth and ecclesiastical protocol as "their own way of dealing with their demons". We have to be careful of a simplistic reductio ad absurdum here. Love of aesthetics in liturgy does not automatically prove anything about one's sexual orientation. But I think Stuart had a point.

Of course, "inverted homophobia" as it has come to be known, doesn't only occur inside the Church of Rome. Colorado evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, married and father of five children, spent years assuring that LGBT individuals would be getting their fair share of hellfire and brimstone before his (male) lover spilled the beans. Republican Senator Richard Curtis, an opponent of gay rights legislation, had the misfortune to be caught with a young man on camera inside an erotic video store. Then there was George Rekers, Baptist minister and leading light of the Family Research Council, who had sloped off on a not-so-secret European holiday with a younger man.

The knee-jerk reaction is to scream "hypocrite", but I take a more measured view. The coming to light of these tales is a positive development. "Methinks the lady doth protest" is a well worn cliche, but from here on in, those who seek to cover their own guilty tracks by the uncharitable nature of their words know that a watching public is getting wiser to some of the unfortunate mind games that have been played out over the decades.

In the future, when as a gay Catholic I hear a senior cleric describing my orientation in hostile and uncompromising language, I might just want to ask a poignant question: is this really about me, or is it more about you?

Cardinal errors

Editorial in today's Guardian

The future pope Joseph Ratzinger dragged the Catholic church into the poisonous American presidential campaign of 2004, through a memo about denying pro-choice politicians communion. Its target was John Kerry, a sincere Catholic who nonetheless believed that the law should not dictate to women on abortion, and went on to lose to George W Bush (before popping up in London as President Obama's secretary of state). Three years later, in an outburst that also suggested abortions were resulting in "two Dunblane massacres a day", Cardinal Keith O'Brien attempted to unleash American-style culture wars on the UK, by questioning whether MPs supporting abortion rights should continue receiving communion.


It is only one expression of a notably unreflective priest's desire to build a narrow church – there was also, for example, the intemperate likening of embryology research to Frankenstein. Another manifestation – and one that seems poignant in the aftermath of the Observer's disclosure of allegations about "inappropriate acts" with younger priests, which prefigured his departure on Monday – was his trenchant denunciation of reforms to advance gay rights. After having opposed civil partnerships in the past, the cardinal – who was the archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews, and the leader of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland – last year pledged fresh funding for propaganda against gay marriage.

There is no Catholic monopoly on sexual scandal – as current events within the atheistically led Liberal Democrat party underline. It is also important to acknowledge that despite having been "resigned" (or, more precisely, "prematurely retired") by the Vatican, Cardinal O'Brien has contested the allegations, which is what the claims reported by the Observer remain. But, stepping back from the specifics of this case, one cannot brush off the evidence that Rome has a special problem with sex. In the Vatican itself, even if one discounts innuendo about Pope Benedict XVI's own proclivities as he hangs up his cassock, that cleric – who has denounced both homosexuality and masturbation as moral disorders – has indubitably been weakened by the perception that he looked away in some cases where priests abused boys. In the US and more particularly Ireland, the institution has been shaken by the failure of so many priests to live up to the chaste ideal that the church has long (though not always) imposed upon (most but not all) of its priests.

The caveats in that last sentence are important, since they indicate room for argument. Indeed, extending the married priesthood – beyond those reactionaries who fled the C of E in fear of women priests and yet brought their own wives with them – was a rare reform that Cardinal O'Brien backed. Suspend disbelief and imagine gay marriage being blessed and accepted within the priesthood too, and the church could legitimise the sex life of most of its ministry, reducing the scope of scandal to the minority of adulterers and paedophiles. Back in the real church, however, there is denial not only of all passions on the part of the priesthood but also of contraception in the maritally licensed love of the flock.

Theories abound about the possible way in which repression may foster sexual problems. Psychoanalytically, there is the potential connection between what is desired and what is denied. Theologically, some suggest that Catholic doctrines that have to be believed and yet which cannot be in any ordinary sense – think of wine turning to blood – may attract clergymen in denial about parts of themselves. More commonsensically, loneliness may turn to desperation, and eventually indecency. All of these theories are contestable and contested, but what cannot be contested is that the church has failed to manage, still less extinguish, sexuality by moralising decree. Instead, the papacy of Benedict has made inescapably thorny problems harder to solve. And Cardinal O'Brien has been caught by the spire of a narrow church that he helped to build.

An ironic touch to Keith O'Brien's 'sacking'

Mark Dowd is a writer, broadcaster and former Dominican student. He has an article in today's Guardian.

A quote from the article. "I want to show why my church is so anti-gay."
"And why is your church so anti-gay?" came back the obvious question. "Because it is so gay," I replied.

Accurate synthesis?

A sudden sensitivity to scandal

The excellent writing below appears in today's the Guardian.

By Andrew Brown
As O’Brien is accused of misdemeanours the Catholic church must review its damaging strictures on celibacy

They call it a resignation, but it looks to me as if Cardinal Keith O’Brien was pushed before he could even think of jumping. Only yesterday he was defending his position. Then we were told that the Pope was considering it. Now – miraculously – the cardinal has reconsidered.

In any case, this shows how very sensitive the Roman Catholic church has become towards sexual scandal. The long years of trying to tough out problems and of circling the wagons are over, at least in the developed world. Cardinals now get the same treatment as priests.

The other remarkable change shown by this is within the culture of the church. Priests now dare to complain about their superiors through the back channel to Rome provided by the Vatican’s diplomatic service. That is how these allegations were made. There was a time when complaining about your bishop or cardinal to Rome was a one-way ticket to a posting on Craggy Island. There are probably still a great many crimes or misdemeanours that a priest with a sense of self-preservation would hesitate to denounce his superiors for – but it seems that sexual abuse is no longer one of them. This is progress, though slow and belated.

Otherwise, the story illustrates the grotesque and humiliating difficulties that the Roman Catholic church has knotted itself into where sex and gay people are concerned.

If the allegations are correct, you would need a heart of flint not to feel some sympathy for the cardinal as well as for his victims. Celibacy is difficult and sometimes lonely for anyone. The traditional remedy for loneliness, in Scots and Irish Catholicism, involved medication with whiskey and manly bonding. If your inclination is in any case towards men this is not going to be very helpful. Getting drunk in an atmosphere of sentimental affection with the object of desire is a tough test in self-control. We should not be surprised if some men sometimes fail it.

Journalists and Guardian readers who never get drunk and have regrettable sexual episodes are entitled to completely unalloyed joy at the spectacle of a moralist revealed as a hypocrite. The rest of us should temper our delight.

Of course, the real problem is that the Roman Catholic church expects an entirely unrealistic standard of continence from its priesthood. Some priests can manage celibacy. The evidence from all around the world is that most can’t. They certainly can’t always. In the developing world the problem is largely one of priests having unofficial heterosexual families, as Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines – an outside candidate for the papacy – pointed out last week. In countries where that isn’t an available alternative, the priesthood becomes a refuge for gay men – especially in societies where homophobia is the public norm.

This fact adds irony to O’Brien’s denunciations of gay marriage. You can’t really expect better from a church that still hasn’t come to terms properly with heterosexual marriage, as its position on artificial contraception shows. There are many great Catholic feminists, some of them nuns. But you would never guess this from the official doctrine, which still proceeds as if marriage were something in which a man took the initiative, rather than a partnership of equals. And a church that can’t treat women as equals is certainly not going to be realistic about marriage between two men.

All Christians are called to be perfect, and in that sense all Christian moral doctrine is unrealistic. But there are some forms of perfection that are damaging to try for. The demand that all Catholic clergy should live as if sex were something that only ever happened to other people is one of those. It has outlived its usefulness and is now an engine of cruelty and hypocrisy. It’s a very great shame that O’Brien’s fall will be used by the Vatican’s enemies of progress to discredit his brave and sensible suggestion last week that the celibacy of the priesthood be reconsidered.

A quick review of March issue of 'Alive'

The March issue of the free sheet 'Alive' includes the following stories 'Society being destroyed by Equality agenda', 'Irish Times cods its readers yet again', 'Can society take suicide seriously, 'Nazi influence on today's movie world', 'Sweden: conditioning boys to play with dolls', 'Israel didn't want black immigrants having babies', 'Let's raise drink-driving limit'.

Then there is a story titled 'Why Herod comes to mind'. The story includes a picture of Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Cardinal news makes it centre stage

If Keith O'Brien were an 'ordinary' priest working in a church and an allegation were made against him, his bishop would arrive, complete with ring and cross and probably in an upmarket car, speak at all Masses and move the priest out of his home.

It is appreciated that the current allegations are not against minors, nevertheless, it is interesting to see how the institutional church treats people in different categories in different ways.

How long more can the centre hold? Has it ever held?

Keith O'Brien has been a strong voice in criticising/condemning gay marriage. Allegations relating to inappropriate behaviour between him and young men have been made.

Does the hierarchical church not realise it has a problem?

The resignation of Keith O'Brien was the first item on the BBC main Nine O'Clock news this evening.

Then later this evening it transpires that Keith O'Brien has been 'sacked' by Pope Benedict.

A priest, writer for the 'Catholic Herald' said on this evening's Newsnight: "the Vatican curia is not fit for purpose".

Former Dominican comments on latest allegations

Mark Dowd, a former Dominican, said on BBC Radio Four news today: "It is an extraordinary time to be a Catholic, a bit of a mullarkey, if I might say."

First Minister Alex Salmond on the same programme spoke glowingly of the cardinal and how he respected his views and found him a great leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

Keith O'Brien resigns

Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

Yesterday young clerical students were arguing that the newspaper story was yet again another sign of an anti-church agenda.

Now the focus moves to Scotland

The breaking story of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Cardinal Keith O'Brien is naturally a big story.

What is a bigger story is that the cardinal did not 'turn up' for Mass this morning and his alledged immediate dependence on lawyers.

The constant and permanent legal language that the institutional church is now using when it comes to sexual abuse is nothing less than pathetic.

It seems as if the church has found some sort of all-purpose screen that they think protects them and exonerates them from further damage. It's their damage limitation modus operandi.

When is someone going to stop and ask about the sort of person who receives preferential treatment within the church, right across the church, diocesan and religious.

If there is substance to the allegations against Cardinal Keith O'Brien then surely this is the time for a root and branch examination of what's happening in the Catholic Church, with special emphasis on the system used in the appointment/election of people in ledearship positions.

One priest complainant said, "The church tends to cover up and protect the system at all costs."

It's the same old pathetic story all the time.

Merkel's party shifts its view and BM win six one

The German CDU is in the process of easing its objections to homosexual marriage.

This comes after the ruling handed down from Karlsruhe earlier in the week concerning the rights of homosexual partners to adopt children.

And Bayern Munich won six - one today against Bremen, this their 1,000th game.

An elderly man begins to 'realise'

Cardinal Keith O'Brien says he would be 'happy' to to see priests being allowed to marry.

It is difficult not to be flippant. But it gets funnier with the passing of every day.

Irish readers will be aware of Charles Haughey talking about the 'core values' of Fianna Fáil.

It really is the same old cant.

How sad, how hurtful. The spoof.

Then again it might all be some kind of spin to take the attention away from the latest Vatican revelations.

If and when the lid blows off on that and we hear the truth, what then?

Might it happen now that Cardinal O'Brien will be investigated by Vatican officials? Will anonymous letters arrive on their desks on what Cardinal O'Brien is saying?

This writer lived in Berlin before the Wall came down. On its collapse it meant that anything was possible, anywhere and in any society.

....the dangers of the 'evils of relativism'.

German Catholic bishops allow 'morning after' pill

An interesting piece of news.

Katholische Krankenhäuser in Deutschland dürfen vergewaltigten Frauen die "Pille danach" verordnen, wenn sie die Befruchtung verhindert und nicht abtreibt.

La Repubblica reports on Vatican gay lobby

"Gay lobby exercises an inappropriate
influence in internal Holy see affairs."

What's below appears on today's Irish Times digital edition.

PADDY AGNEW, in Rome

Italian daily La Repubblica this morning sensationally claims that Pope Benedict's resignation was at least partly prompted by an internal report prepared by three senior cardinals, alleging that various lobbies, including a gay lobby, exercise an "inappropriate influence" in internal Holy See affairs.

The newspaper suggests that such was Benedict’s dismay when presented with the details of the report on December 17th that it hardened his long-meditated decision to resign. The internal report prepared by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi had been commissioned by Benedict himself.

He had ordered it in response to the so-called Vatileaks scandal which culminated with the arrest and subsequent conviction last autumn of the Pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, found guilty of having stolen confidential documents from the papal apartment.

In this morning's article, it is claimed that the cardinals reported that various lobbies within the Holy See were consistently breaking the sixth and seventh commandments, namely "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not commit adultery".

The "stealing" was in particular related to the Vatican Bank, IOR, whilst the sexual offences were related to the influence of an active gay lobby within the Vatican.

Last week, when presiding over the Ash Wednesday celebrations in St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Benedict spoke of "divisions" which "besmirch" the face of the church. In a famous homily at the 2005 Via Crucis Easter celebrations in Rome, just days before the death of John Paul II, the then Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken of the "filth" in the church, a comment interpreted by many as a reference to the worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal.

However, La Repubblica claims the cardinals' 300 page report speaks of "Impropriam Influentiam" on the part of various lobbies, some of them of a "worldly nature", reflecting an "outside influence". The Rome daily recalls the figure of papal gentleman, Angelo Balducci, accused three years ago of being a member of a gay ring active within the Vatican and involving choristers and seminarians.

The paper does not explain the source of its information on the cardinals report nor does it provide a direct quotation from any part of the report. Rather it claims that its findings are based on information received from an unnamed Vatican source.

A Vatican spokesman this morning had no comment to make on the allegations.

The Vatican and a culture of homosexuality

For over 30 years and longer, this writer has spoken openly and clearly about a closet gay clerical culture right across the Catholic Church.

Today we get clear glimpses from the Vatican what might be the reality.

Again, there is nothing at all wrong with being homosexual. But what has happened in the church is perverse. There is a real explicit link between closet gay priests, bishops and cardinals, who express an over attention to an orthodoxy that has so little meaning for people.

These same men give an attention to liturgical practice, which is most unhealthy.

Has it taken Pope Benedict to prize the lid on something that needs urgent talk and discussion.

It seems not a whisper from church leaders

It's now over 24 hours since the Taoiseach spoke in Dáil Éireann apologising to the Magdalene women for the role the State played in their incarceration and brutal treatment.

So far it seems there has not been a word from any religious superior, bishop or archbishop, offering an apology for what the Catholic Church did.

In these chambers of horror women and girls were humiliated, deprived and told to pray.

Linking prayer with a chamber of horror must be unspeakable

It would be interesting to know if any anonymous or indeed non-anonymous letters were sent to the Vatican on what was happening in these places.

Were any sisters, clerics, bishops reprimanded by the Vatican for their behaviour?

Will there be any acknowledgement from the Irish Church, from the Vatican on what happened?

First hints of waste at Irish Water

Bord Gáis is currently posting to every household in the State a 16-page booklet on plans to establish Irish Water.

Eight pages are in English and eight pages in Irish.

It is a PR initiative. In at least three occasions the booklet tells the reader that no household on the public water system will be asked to pay water charges before 2014.

On every page there is repetition.

For further information the reader is given a 1850 number, no inclusion of an email address for further informaiton.

How much did this booklet cost to produce? How many people will read it? What proportion of those who read it will read the Irish version.

Every day we are being told the country is broke. How much did this booklet cost?

Surely an Irish version could have been deliverd to Gaeltacht areas and available in libraries throughout the State.

Hospital poster that seems to tell a lie

'Today we are passionate about providing care of the highest medical standards, equally to all patients, regardless of their means.'

The above is a quote from a wall poster in St Vincent's Private Hospital.

As this writer attempted to take a photograph of the poster he was told it was forbidden to take photos in the hospital.

'... Regardless of means.' What happrns when words lose all meaning? Is that what a lie is?

Michael Harding publishes his cries

An extract from Michael Harding's 'Staring at Lakes' appeared in Saturday's Irish Times.

Had Michael remained a priest and written that book, what would his fellow priests and bishop say or comment?

And yet in so many ways the book is probably a handbook of the story of so many priests. Seldom a word about it.

Another facade or is it?

Living life in an artificial atmosphere

Institutional seminary life, at least when this writer was preparing for priesthood, was an 'artifical' type of existence.

A young man was taken away from his female and male peers. It was not the natural way to spend early manhood.

Aspects of the life were interesting, even exhilarating at times. We were introduced to things that may never have been possible in a different environment.

How many young Irish men in the 1970s lived in Italy or Germany and managed to learn to ski?

But to be 'removed' from the ordinary daily, nightly too, life of women has inevitably left its mark. And can it really be a good mark?

And then all the secrecy, those nods and winks when it came to anything to do with sexuality.

The UCD study on the issue needs careful study and open discussion. Hopefully, it will happen.

UCD study on seminaries and paedophiliac tendencies

Piece in today's Sunday Times on a UCD study that suggests seminaries 'ecacerbate' paedophile tendencies.

Cheylabinsk student speaks excellent English

Ivan Fursov can't be more than 16 years old, yet he speaks good English.

He is a student in Cheylabinsk, which is approximately 1,500kms east of Moscow.

Ivan filmed on his mobile phone the asteroid, which was about the size of a double decker bus, that broke up above the city of Cheylabinsk.

Experts say it was travelling between 40,000 and 50,000km/h.

Cheylabinsk or Cel'abinsk is south east of the famous city of Jekaterrinburg and north west of Astana.

There are 11 time zones in Russia and Moscow is four hours ahead of Dublin.

Dublin priest supports Tony Flannery

According to today's Irish Times, Fr John Hasset has resigned as dean of the Maynooth deanery in protest against the treatment meted out to Redemptorist priest, Fr Tony Flannery.

"One the good guys, really a good man". A quote from somone who worked at UCD when Fr John Hasset was chaplain at the university.