IRELAND
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)
By Mark Dooley
Yesterday, the Vatican published a report based on an Apostolic Visitation to the Irish Church last year. In response to the deep and disturbing crisis which has engulfed the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI dispatched a number of senior prelates to Ireland with a view to ascertaining the true extent of the disaster. Nothing could have prepared them for what they encountered.
When the Pope announced his intention to send a delegation to Ireland, I was lecturing at Maynooth University – the home of Ireland’s National Seminary. I got to know many of the seminarians as they were obliged to attend my philosophy lectures. They also knew that, as someone with a public profile, I was in a position to highlight their grievances.
Those grievances were shocking – so shocking that I did not hesitate to use my column in the Irish Daily Mail to expose them. Here is a sample of what I wrote in May 2010, and which I subsequently reproduced in my book Why Be a Catholic?
‘Irish seminaries are hotbeds of serious moral decay which is devastating the Church in this country. Their culture is one that rejects piety and holiness in favour of religious laxity and moral confusion. This is resulting in priests who barely believe in the doctrine they are ordained to promote.
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