BishopAccountability.org
	The Irish Church Just Doesn't Get It – Pope Benedict Now Needs to Act Decisively to Show Genuine Humility and Penitence By George Pitcher Telegraph April 5, 2010 http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/georgepitcher/100032721/the-irish-church-just-doesnt-get-it-pope-benedict-now-needs-to-act-decisively-to-show-genuine-humility-and-penitence/ Just been on Irish radio with the estimable Clifford Longley to talk about the weekend’s child-abuse developments. Clifford takes a pop at Dr Rowan Williams for apparently acting as another church leader scoring points at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church with his “lost all credibility” comments. I pursue the “they just don’t get it” line, saying that outrage directed at the media and the Archbishop of Canterbury makes the Catholic Church in Ireland look arrogantly dismissive of this terrible crisis. But it’s two Irish phone-in guests from the pews, as it were, who provide a microcosm of the severity of this issue. John and Frank go hammer-and-tongs on the issue, one of them invoking a terrible history by placing the child-abuse crisis in the context of Spanish Roman Catholics siding with General Franco in Spain, the other accusing him of “losing his religion” and suggesting that 99 per cent of Irish priests are innocent (I’d put that percentage higher actually). In truth, I probably stoke the fire by saying that Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, should have resigned. But this spat is representative of a broader loss of confidence in the Church, the pain of betrayal and the massive loss of confidence. It’s that, I think, that some Irish bishops are not facing up to. One of the callers accuses Dr Williams of having the “spine of a goldfish” for apologising so quickly for his comments. I don’t think that’s fair at all. If you listen to the broadcast interview in which he said that, it’s a throwaway, almost in quotation marks; the Archbishop thought he was echoing what a number of Catholic bishops in Ireland were already saying. But he recognised the hurt and offence that his ill-chosen phrase had caused and said he was deeply sorry for that. It showed both humility and sincere repentance for adding to the misery, which he couldn’t have intended. I don’t think we’re always getting the same from the Church in Ireland, or indeed from the Vatican. Statements about “petty gossip” continue to suggest that parts of the Catholic hierarchy still think this is the media’s fault. Pope Benedict’s remark about not yielding to “dominant opinion” demonstrated an unfortunate contempt and was as ill-chosen as Williams’s remark. The lack of reference to the crisis in an Easter message was similarly high-handed. The Pope’s pastoral letter to Ireland was penitent and moving. But the impression now is that a line has been drawn under this and we should move on. That’s not good enough. A lack of humility – and a lack of the kind of repentance that, frankly, Dr Williams demonstrated for a thoughtless comment of far less gravity – can very quickly begin to look like arrogance and remoteness. The Pope needs to move quickly and decisively now to demonstrate that the admirable attitudes expressed in his letter are both sincere and genuinely penitent.
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