SCOTLAND
The Catholic Register (Canada)
BY DOROTHY CUMMINGS MCLEAN
March 26, 2015
Edinburgh’s disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien was in the news again last week after he resigned his rights and privileges as a cardinal. The Vatican stated that “with this provision” Pope Francis “would like to manifest his pastoral solicitude to all the faithful of the Church in Scotland and to encourage them to continue with hope the path of renewal and reconciliation.”
Nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. McLean of Edinburgh screamed at each other for half an hour, fighting hammer and tongs over whether or not Cardinal O’Brien had been hung out to dry by a coterie of gay priests because of his prominence in the Scottish battle to preserve traditional marriage.
One of the difficulties Edinburgh Catholics have in discussing the downfall of our former archbishop is that we don’t know what he did exactly. We know only that three active priests and one “former” priest told journalist Catherine Deveney that within a 33-year period, O’Brien made at least four “inappropriate approach[es]” to them. The youngest was 20, a seminarian, when the alleged impropriety occurred. The others were priests, adult men, when Father/Bishop/Cardinal O’Brien offended them.
The story broke on Feb. 23, 2013 and, like many other Edinburgh Catholics, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of our big, hearty Irish cardinal making sexual passes at men.
I run with a Church-centric crowd that is well-seasoned with urban sophisticates, and none of us had an inkling that the cardinal was gay or unchaste. Gossips opined only that he was no intellectual and was overfond of whiskey. They were embarrassed by his habit of singing “Mud, Mud Glorious Mud” at parties, but they had to admit it was a crowd-pleaser. The cardinal sang it even at the Edinburgh Festival.
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