PRACTICE NOT WHAT YOU PREACH !

We live in an Ireland that is experiencing incredible change. Cultural, social, economic and religious values now have different barometers. Migration to this country has created a multi-coloured mural of interaction in all areas of society from the home to the school and workplace.
Alas, in one segment of Irish life the more things change, the more they remain the same.
We speak about an institution with a venerable veneer that now ranks lower in the league of the Machiavellian arts of deceit, dishonour and denial than the Pentagon.
The Roman Catholic Church, of course, always worked in an under-handed and facile fashion, particularly in this God fearing island that we inhabit.
As we write today, on the Feast of St Brigid, we learn that former archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, is attempting to secure a high court injunction to prevent the Commission of Enquiry into clerical child abuse from accessing 5000 documents in his possession relating to various cases.
Connell is now retired, aged 81, and yet he continues to behave just as he did when he was in power. This so-called academic of the cloth, aloof and arrogant in all his mannerisms and pronouncements, presided over a diocese where priests routinely abused children in the most awful manner.
The victims of this abuse – many of whom took their own lives because of it- were overwhelmed by the relentless power of the Drumcondra crosiers when they tried to get justice, led by this two-faced coward, whose only action when informed of abuses was to move the offending cleric to another parish where fresh opportunities lay.
It is no wonder then that he will use every available resource to keep his hands on those 5000 documents. The legal obstacle course that he has now constructed will probably buy him a few years. He may be dead by the time the contents of the documents are revealed, if they are indeed ever revealed. It may be his most fervent wish that he will have passed from this Valley of Tears before the truth is out.
However, let us all hope this will not be the case. It would be nice to see the hypocrite humbled, brought down from his gold-leafed pulpit to face the ordinary people his intellect openly disdains.
The perpetrators of the abuse, sick and twisted people that they were, used the power of the cloth to intimidate and silence their victims. In the suppressed society created by the likes of Connell, and McQuaid way before him, there was no avenue of rebuttal for the victims, not even in their own home.
Credence was the weapon of the Church, moral authority the enforcer and ignorance the weakness of the flock. It was no contest.
The greater sin was for those on high to know, and then to ignore. Combine this unholy alliance and you give birth to consent. This is the only implication that logic allows.
Now Connell and his ilk, bereft of their once powerful cloth, seek a new weapon and another alliance, even more unholy. The Common law and Canon Law will create a potent elixir of distraction in the search for the truth. It will probably buy all the time Connell needs to depart this life festooned with suitable theological epitaphs from his peers.
During his time in office as Cardinal of Dublin and Primate of All-Ireland, matters of clerical abuse were passed on to a senior Cardinal in the Vatican, appointed specifically to deal with such unpleasant business.
His name was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Now where have I heard that name before?