IRELAND
The Irish Catholic
by Brendan O’Regan
August 11, 2016
Oh well, that didn’t last long. Last week Catholic euphoria over World Youth Day gave way to Catholic agony over the Maynooth controversy.
Predictably, the few Irish clerics and seminarians involved in that kerfuffle garnered a lot more media attention than the thousands of enthusiastic young Irish Catholics that attended World Youth Day. I suppose a story of sex, religion and conflict was bound to get the airwaves buzzing.
In what I heard two aspects didn’t get enough attention – the question of theological orthodoxy got only a cursory treatment, while the alleged confidentiality agreements for seminarians were largely ignored. Further, the various media debates showed a dismal level of religious illiteracy, with confusion between celibacy and chastity, between homosexual orientation and activity, between Church teaching and discipline and between conservatism and orthodoxy.
The first I heard of the controversy was when Sean O’Rourke, on Monday of last week, referred to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin removing priests from the cemetery in Maynooth! As I did a double-take on that one, pro that he is, he immediately corrected that to ‘seminary’.
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