Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Ireland's War on the Church

St. John Nepomucene: preferred to die rather than give up the secrets of the confessional.
Ireland -- the island that gave the world spiritual giants like Brendan the Navigator, Brigid of Kildare, Columba, Fr. Willie Doyle -- will soon be filling its jails with priests.  At any rate, there is no other way to understand the holding of Ireland's Minister for Justice (or should that be Minister for "Justice") Alan Shatter that the seal of the confessional does not exempt priests from reporting the abuse of children or vulnerable adults.  There is no basis for a claim of privilege, says Shatter, now that the special position of the Catholic Church has been written out of the Irish Constitution.

So, then, it seems priests will be going to jail for the iniquitous crime of upholding the sacramental seal -- and they will go to jail, even the most off-the-wall liberal ones.  And how, it may well be asked, will the police know that priests aren't violating the seal?  Will molesters give themselves up?  Will the government resort to sacrilege in the form of undercover sting operations?  Or will it simply start rounding up priests who haven't reported any abusers, on the assumption that they must be withholding information?   

What are the people of Ireland going to do about this outrage?  In an age when only 31% of Irish attend Mass every week, can we expect an uprising?

The country that once held stubbornly to her Catholic faith in defiance of English oppression is not only abandoning the faith, but peopling her government with evil men of the same stamp as the old oppressors.  God help Ireland.

2 comments:

  1. The Constitutional "special position" of the Catholic Church is long gone (1976 to be exact) and has nothing to do with anything. The ministerial exemption is what is at issue and that predates Bunreacht na hÉireann by several centuries. This will come down to whether the President has the integrity to refer the Act to the Supreme Court; this is 50:50 shot at best with a left-wing ideologue in the Áras. Otherwise, it will have to wait for a relevant case for a challenge to be heard - US style facial challenges don't exist in Irish law. Once the Supreme Court gets it, the case will hinge on Denham CJ and on Hardiman J, most probably. Both are hard-headed and neither are friends of the Church but the are fair & not in the Government's pocket. So we have a long road to travel before we have to man the barricades!

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  2. This too shall pass! The light of the Church can never be overcome.
    "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,
    And let those who hate Him flee before Him." Psalm 68:1

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