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	It's Time for the Purple Princes to Finally Fall on Their Croziers in Bid for Credibility By John Cooney Irish Independent [Ireland] November 1, 2005 ONLY two drastic initiatives by the Catholic bishops can help restore their lost credibility and regain their moral authority from decades of cover-ups of paedophile and sexually deviant priests. Action in light of the Ferns Report and the ongoing revelations in the media of similar widespread abuses in Dublin, Derry and the west would have to be bold. The first move would entail a collective offer of resignations by all the present members of the Irish Hierarchy, inclusive even of those more recently appointed such as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin who are advising the adoption of a more enlightened policy approach. This unprecedented step would be based on the principle of collective responsibility for their governance of the institutional Irish Church, even though in canon law each bishop in the 26 dioceses is sovereign in his own ecclesiastical bailiwick, subject only to Rome. Such a measure would allow Pope Benedict XVI to renominate those like Dr Martin, Bishop Eamonn Walsh, the Apostolic Administrator to Ferns, and his name-sake Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, with a mandate to clean-up the soiled temple of the Irish Church in accordance with the secular law of the land. Of course, this, too, would not be accepted by the Pope even if, in the unlikely event, the bishops were to shock us by doing so. This is because Rome's secretive elevation of canon law - church rules - has put the protection of allegedly guilty clerics above the welfare of children and vulnerable women. The Vatican, remote from the Irish scene and dismissive of interference in its affairs, even declined to comment on the Ferns Report. So, my second proposal is that the Irish Bishops should convene an extraordinary meeting in Maynooth, where they should adopt a resolution solemnly pledging themselves to make their adherence to Irish law superior to canonical decrees from Rome. Again, alas, such an act of courage on the part of their Lord Bishops will not happen despite their awesomely regal, scarlet and purple robes that adorn them with a quasi-mystique in the upper echelons of Irish society and the political corridors of power. Their Lordships have proven themselves to be no more than Rome's civil servants at best, and the Holy See's messenger boys at worse. On Sunday pastoral letters of apology for the horrendous abuse of young children by rapist clergy were read out throughout Ireland, North and South. No doubt some of them were sincere. But in some cases, they read like crocodile tears, lacking genuine contrition and a firm purpose of amendment to root out abuses at source. Dissenting voices were heard from only a few priests. Some muffled questions were voiced from angry pews. In Wexford, Fr Bill Cosgrove, the parish priest of Monageer, where the late Fr Jim Grennan abused 10 girls on the altar, admitted that the Ferns Report had shown the Catholic Church as a body that failed to live up to the moral standards that it set itself. The institutional church had sometimes chosen "self preservation" ahead of the principles of truth and justice. Courageous was the refusal in Clonakilty by Fr Gerald Galvin to read out the "mistimed" letter from bishop John Buckley of Cork and Ross because his remarks "didn't go far enough" and showed "no real sense of atonement." Newspaper columnist, Fr Brian Darcy, argues that the Church must look at the way it "accepts, trains and brainwashes clerics, a crucial topic which nobody wants to talk about. Its insistence on weird sexual morality, its refusal to allow priests to live in healthy marriages, its insistence on an all-male clerical club, its willingness to accept anything into the priesthood rather than allow women to be ordained, its encouragement of unhealthy sexual suppression, are all not just part of the problem but are the actual problem." Yet, no serving Irish bishop has questioned the celibacy rule that was emphatically reaffirmed by Pope Benedict at the close of the International Synod in Rome. It is now up to Irish politicians, clergy and laity to save the Irish Church's credibility from Rome and its bishops.
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