Why Have We Allowed The Pope And The Curia Subvert Our Constitution

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Sunday April 18, 2010 21:05

by donkylemore

The Curia has protected the Pope with a venal beguile The defence of their errant priests and bishops is to launch an attack of a tripartite nature ; the church as victim; the blame lies with the victims; the problem was one of incipient homosexuality . The three factors were advanced separately over the past 10 days by the pope and 2 different theologians . Not just ordinary Curia sycophants , but doctrinaire heavy hitters.

The change of direction which the church has taken in defence of paedophilia should not come as a surprise . Fintan O Tooole - Irish Times Sat - addresses this ''tripartite'' attack against the victims of child abuse .

This is a monstrous and deceptive defense and it should be regarded as heinous and abusive in itself .

The defence as advanced would suggest that the pope and his curia are engaging in a ‘tridental’ pincer movement in defence of its criminal priests .The attack is tendentious . It blames the faithful and the victim , and throws in the mores of modern day living to contextualise and excuse this new evil.
It ignores the fact that church theologians and moralists have been cautioning against paedophilia for 2 millennia.
When we look at this in the context of the church ’s response to the Murphy commission - first arguing that documents were s not ought and as they should t have been sought; ie hey had been sought with regard to diplomatic protocols - then refusing to submit them when they were sought through the Nunciature the picture of an authoritarian fundamentalist church becomes clear.
In other words Rome has flagrantly defied societal legislature
This was posited by Ratzinger’s contemporary theologian Hans Kung in an open letter to all bishops last week. Here Kung implores the bishops to turn away from the absolutist position of obedience to the Pope where there has been an infraction of moral law. He reminds the bishops that there can be no absolute obedience other than to God.
Kung further makes several accusations against Ratzinger ranging from the imminent canonisation of his predecessor Pius X11 , when Pious who collaborated with the Nazis in handing Jews over to the Nazis during WW2 .
He accuses Benedict of alienating the Roman Church from Islam , the Judaism and of shunning ecumenism.
But while Kung and Benedict were once classmates and later both professors of theology they have been arch enemies for over 30 years .

Kung’s appeal to the bishops is heartfelt . He beseeches them to take heed . But reading this impassioned open letter you get the feeling that he already acknowledges defeat.
If the bishops were to be truthful and were to be as honest with their own consciences
as they expect of the priests who prostrate themselves publicly before them ( bishops) on ordination , then we would already have had many more convictions of paedophiles - male and females in the Irish courts.
But as long as the Law Library allows a church ceremony to open the legal term our courts will be as supplicant to the orthodoxy of Rome as the bishops.
There was a time when a surgeon could have his hands blessed by a pope , for a stipend - I wonder if the same pertained to the Judge’s gavel.
As a society .with a moral and legal code , a constitution which purports to cherish all its citizens equally we have an obligation to treat the Vatican as a State and not an institution which supersedes our constitution .
We must recognise the State of the Vatican is run by a closed and undemocratic body of people who act in a manner which subverts our laws and codes .

We must address these inequalities in our society whereby garbed criminals can evade the judicial system before God before we can aspire to redressing the greater and more expansive constitutional reform which FG and Labour are talking about.
But that will incur the wrath of Rome and all the predictable sequelae that will stem therefrom .
And as for the victims. Well they are now the culprits .
And the mores of society at large represent a conspiracy ; one which is intent on demeaning Rome .
More of that old Diktat - Roma Loquitor ; Causa Fineta est

save preference

Comments (6 of 6)

Fr Gruber "was pressurised" to take blame

by petty gossiper

Mon Apr 19, 2010 01:44

Oh Dear! It gets more interesting. Fr Gerhard Gruber now says he was pressurised to take the blame last month for a mistake made 30 years ago by Ratzinger. Full report in this morning's Irish Times by Paddy Agnew, Derek Scally and Patsy McGarry

"Priest says he was pressurised into taking blame for pope"

moral evasion

Mon Apr 19, 2010 02:21

Here is the link to the Fintan O'Toole article briefly mentioned in main article-

'The truth is that child abuse and cover-up are not primarily about religion or sex. They are about power'

Grubby.

by Agnostic.

Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:33

Intersting how religious people try to excuse grubby behaviour.

Their philosophy is completely bankrupt.

obediance .. the paper trail.. the Nuremberg trials

Mon Apr 19, 2010 15:26

Patsy Mc Garry et al write
''Cardinal Hoyos wrote to French bishop Pierre Pican to congratulate him for not reporting an abuser priest. Earlier that year, Bishop Pican received a suspended three-month sentence for not reporting serial abuser Fr René Bissy, who was eventually given an 18-year prison sentence for child sex abuse crimes between 1989 and 1996.''

,..and further on they state

''Speaking in Murcia on Saturday, Cardinal Hoyos confirmed the text of the letter, adding also that Pope John Paul had seen it and “authorised me to send it to all the bishops”

Again one wonders . What paralyzed the State from following the paper trail and prosecuting Cardinal Hoyos in the first instance for complicity if the Cardinal was guilty of a second offense, if in fact there e was a second offence .
This would be the one for which he was being congratulated for being discrete about . As I read it as he seems to have received the congratulatory letter from Cardinal Hoyos later than the time Bishop Pican received his suspended sentence .The reportage makes for turgid reading at this point and I may well be misconstruing it .

In the second case it would appear that Pope JP 2 demanded that all sex offence cases be referred to Ratzinger when Raatzinger was head of CDF.
in which circumstances Ratzinger - Benedict - has known and harbored evidence about sex crimes since 2002. Again there must be a paper trail .
Again the defence of '' I was just acting on orders'' will be probably be proferred .
This defence did stand up in the Nuremberg Trials .
Thank you for addressing my attention to the article . I didnt but the Irish times today. There's so little news in in on Mondays.

Strangely , the exhausted pope became ill at a mass in Malta yesterday- later promised to do all in his power to bring the guilty to .
justice , after speaking with victims.. and later '' he cried ''

This man who has all the information to send several battalions of priest to jail '''cried and promised to do all in his power to bring the guilty to justice '',
Who is he kidding . ?? He who it is further was associated with another cover up in Bavaria..
He should be treated like all the others.
This profligate mendacity has to stop.

By a strange coincidence Cardinal Brady too became ill with a '' blood pressure condition '' a few days ago.

Is this to be a new strategy ?? ''- feel my pain ; ''put your fingers in my wounds- like Doubting Thomas ''

Now we are officially asked to listen with sympathy to the abusers

Mon Apr 19, 2010 21:48

Listen with compassion to abusers, urges top churchman ; Irish Independent 19 April 2010

''AN English priest has called on Ireland's religious orders "to confront the unthinkable" by listening compassionately to the stories of paedophile clerics, writes John Cooney.

Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the former Master General of the worldwide Dominican Order, told the religious orders yesterday that they had opened their ears to conversation with victims of clerical abuse.

"And we must dare to hear the abusers, too," Fr Radcliffe said, to the audible gasp of priests, brothers and nuns at the CORI conference.''

The bishop of Galway , Martin Drennan recently tried to organise a '' pray -in '' at Galway Cathedral for paedophiles . It started as an event involving priests and laity from the Galway Bishop's see. Then as the subliminal anger began to become strained to breaking the event was scaled down to a parochial one .
This was more than a little too rich from one of the bishops expected to resign ,
When this was suggested to bishop Drennan of Galway that he should resign he shunned any consideration utterly . He held out with an obscene obduracy .
He had toiled in the mediocriity of PP living and now that the palatial rewards were his , he was not going to forsake his reward of a new luxury on account of some obscure allegations involving some insignificant children who are now plainly causing nuisance to princes of the church - such as he Drennan . Some Prince .

.When a local radio station conducted a vox-pop as th whether he should vacate the palace , 80 % said he should - step down.
In the face of this the bishop kept referring to all the support he was getting and that if the people wanted him to step down he would know , and he would do so.
I suppose he was a little like Louis 1VX who said when he wanted to determine what the French people thought - he would look into his heart - and know!
Didnt Dev have a similar gift ?

The Catholic Church Wrote It.

by Atheist.

Wed Apr 21, 2010 14:38

The Pope and The Curia WROTE the Irish constitution.

The preamble to the constitution begins :
"In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity...blah blah.

Archbishop McQuaid practically wrote. it.

A catholic country for a catholic people, after all.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_McQuaid#.22Co..._1937

Ayatollah Khamenei would have recognised a kindred spirit in the late Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, the man who virtually ghost-wrote de Valera’s 1937 Constitution.

Number of comments per page

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

The Saker

Public Inquiry

Human Rights in Ireland

Why Have We Allowed The Pope And The Curia Subvert Our Constitution

Comments (6 of 6)