IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sunday May 06 2012

CONTEMPT for authority has become so ubiquitous these days that it’s the self-proclaimed individualists who all end up thinking and sounding alike, and those who, by remaining faithful to tradition, are actually the last remaining non-conformists.

All the same, the fact remains. Ours is an age which worships mavericks. Free thinking and iconoclasm are held up as ideals. Duty and obedience are scorned.

It’s Archbishop Sean Brady’s misfortune to be caught in the pincer movement between those two forces and to find himself radically at odds with his society as a result. He is clearly a man who needs the comfort and solidarity that comes from subsuming one’s identity into a greater whole; who is temperamentally suited to belonging. Many priests are.