Medb Ruane:
Saturday March 06 2010
Jaw-dropping comments by Denis Brennan, Catholic Bishop of Ferns, added greatly to (some of) the nation’s anxiety this week. He suggested that his local parishioners should open their purses to help his church out with its alleged current financial embarrassment.
The sting in the tail was his definition of what makes and unmakes a good Christian. It was a case of the béal bocht occupying the high moral ground. Most bishops had the sense to cut back on moral pronouncements since the Ryan and Murphy reports, realising their damaged authority means this isn’t the moment to tell people what’s right and wrong.
But money has its own imperatives, especially when it comes to the institutional Catholic Church.
“That ‘I did not cause the problem’ is not the response of the Christian,” Bishop Brennan said. “That I would like to help in the work of justice, healing, reconciliation, a safer environment for children, proper financial stewardship and overall good economic health is the response of the Christian.”
This slogan manipulates a Christian attitude to a kind of Miss World aspiration, where contestants line up, look humble and swear their top priority is world peace. Of course it is, but will saying so make it happen?
The parallel universe called ‘the real world’ may have wondered what planet Bishop Brennan occupies. Live register figures are hovering over the 400,000 mark but the core issue was the reason why the bishop wanted lay people to cough up cash. The money was required to help pay mortgages taken out on the bishop’s palace — that having been done, reportedly, to pay some claims due to survivors of clerical child abuse in the diocese.
The question of why Catholics in Ferns should effectively pay a double levy for abuses to their own community didn’t arise. Direct and indirect government taxes have already bailed out religious orders to the likely final amount of more than €1bn after Bertie Ahern and Michael Woods’ decision. Ferns people contributed to this.
The Ferns diocese also received some €5.8m from a national Catholic diocesan fund because it is the smallest diocese with one of the highest proven rates of child abuse. The rate may reflect the people of Ferns’ own courage in insisting abuse cases be disclosed.
Bishop Brennan called the Ferns abuses a tragedy — but these were crimes; legally and ethically. They persisted because successive bishops didn’t act and because priests were effectively enabled by keeping their sacramental powers, which let them keep abusing with an odds-on chance of not being reported. If the Church had acted sooner, there’d be less to pay.
Bishop Brennan was one of the first bishops to speak out after they met Pope Benedict XVI. You have to wonder whether his call reflects the Pope’s policy for Ireland. Behind the bishop’s statement looms the spectre of the Vatican’s wealth. Nowhere and at no time has it paid a cent of compensation to survivors in the many countries where clerical abuses happened. Would the Vatican let Ferns go bankrupt to safeguard its own assets? Or other Irish dioceses?
The way it’s organised helps the Vatican retain its assets no matter what happens elsewhere — Canada, the US, Germany or any of the other First World countries whose citizens have the confidence to challenge criminal behaviour. This medieval-style governance is often used to evade collective responsibility if a single diocese or national hierarchy is in difficulty. Look at it differently and you might argue that the governance system is one of the biggest obstacles to improving child protection within the Catholic Church.
There are proven difficulties in communicating abuses between Rome and local dioceses; proven difficulties in enabling survivors to speak directly to Rome; proven difficulties in state authorities pursuing clerical abusers across local and international diocesan boundaries, never mind making Rome’s diplomatic channels accountable to national laws.
The bishop’s statement is centuries away from the pay-for-indulgences practices that made the Catholic Church so very rich. But the emotional tone of his remarks plays some of the same tunes. Then, the more indulgences you bought for yourself or your departed loved ones, the closer you got to heaven. That was everyone’s preferred destination.
The same song encouraged new middle classes in 19th century Ireland to donate money and land to build churches. Odds are if you unpicked the financial history of any church or presbytery in Ireland, you would find the purses of thousands of lay people for whom giving money to the Church was a way of being good.
Bishop Brennan sounds like he’s playing the goodness cards without taking responsibility for the cover-ups that let abuse continue for so long. For example, he feels competent enough to define what a Christian is, even though the Ferns example, and indeed the Church’s attitude to paying compensation, is hard to place in any New Testament story about Jesus Christ.
He uses his assumed moral authority to tell lay people what’s best for them, which happily coincides with what’s best for his financial affairs. Then he blames the situation on ‘mismanagement, poor understanding and a lack of resolve’, as though bad book-keeping is a bigger mote in the eye than clerical child abuse.
Thought: maybe the rest of the country is on another planet. After all, this State is practically bankrupt while the Vatican books are showing deliciously healthy profits.
Irish Independent
Why should we bail out the church’s? And if you are looking for a millstone I was told that you would find one in Cavan.
Does anyone know where an acutal millstone could be found? It could be carried up to the gates of Maynooth and left outside with a sign saying “practice what you preach”.
All donations gratefully received!! Bring on the millstone! Paddy
MONEY MONEY MONEY IS THE CATHOLIC WORLD
WHERE’S THE IRISH STATE IN ALL OF THIS ITS NOT PROTECTING ITS PEOPLE, ITS NOT PROTECTING SURRVIVORS, ITS PROTECTING ITSELF AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, THAT’S WERE ITS AT.
Christy
First they punish us for no reason and now we have to be thankful for it.
It’s time to think again Denis Brennan
May I contribute a millstone ….. for the purposes of ‘balancing the books’ ?
Wafer-Munchitis, Pew-Arse, bishop Fatigue, whatever way you view what they are flogging its clear its all past their best sell-by date. The bishop Brennan has retreated into the trenches having fired his “”” god given responsibility”” bit, back to hard tack and bully beef for Denis. Having shot himself in the foot, the bishop Brennan suffers the pain and indignity of being shot in his good foot, this time by his “”diocesan financial control officer”” , a father Carroll, has left the bishop Brennan legless, and who by his remarks looks as if he escaped from ENRON just in time. It`ll take more than a bag of cement to paper over these cracks, and more than a self-taught ” financial” control officer to empty further, the pockets of hard pressed parishoners.
Last week the bishop Brennan commented to the fact that he had no knowledge of how the “””vaticans finances worked”””, neither do I Denis, and a good starting point to understand how their coffers are overflowing Denis would be to ask your “diocesan finance controller”” just how much the Ferns diocese has contributed to this unholy display of wealth over the years. Whats the yearly contribution from Ireland to rome.? Does each bishop know what the other has paid. And then you take it from there Denis, GLOBAL CONTRIBUTIONS and mainly from POOR countries.
Its the “”god given responsbility bit” and the “”diocesan family” scenario that I find rather difficult to understand. And here we can generalize Denis, “”who”” was responsible for the abscence of GOD in Ferns, Dublin, and the Institutions in Ireland as thousands of children were being brutally abused. In the Ferns Report, the Ryan Report, the Murphy Report, the Mc Coy Report, god did`nt figure much, in fact Denis, not only was HE ignored, but he was put on hold as the mighty mitre`d ones sought ways to IGNORE god in favour of saving and protecting their own arse`s, while consciously , wilfully and criminally intent upon recklessly endangering children to FURTHER CRIMES OF RAPE, BUGGERY AND SODOMY BY KNOWN CLERICAL PAEDOPHILES. When one considers that such criminal decisions were not only adopted by bishops, archbishops and cardinals, not to mention others present at such UNGODLY meetings over the diocesan power table, that these decisions were AGAINST the welfare of children, which effectively abandoned such helpless children to the “market forces” of a hierarchy built on deceit. Such criminal decisions were taken by , SCHOLARS, LAWYERS, CANON LAWYERS, and we must not forget that these neanderthals were viewed as “leading lights” of Irish society, and other assorted lackeys with vested interest and an eye to the main chance.
The sickening and vomitous rhetoric spewed on a daily basis by these bishops must soon run its course as their puerile mantra of “healing, reconcilation , forgiveness” loses its appeal to even the most hard nosed pew occupant. If they think that a !letter! from rome will solve their problems, then they indeed have a long road to travel. Brennans attempt to draw a line under these atrocities merely indicates the distance he is from reality. The cleverly orchestrated strategy to move the focus onto diocesan finances has NOT worked, its up to survivors to keep the focus on the CRIMES of this church, its adherents, its lower class crass ignorant religious orders, the lack of impetus from the Dail to ensure that those responsble for these crimes stand in a criminal court to answer for them. Its ACCOUNTABILITY we wish to hear about and NOT OF ACCOUNTS of a “poverty” stricken parish or diocese whose resources were SQUANDERED on sharp lawyers and sharp practice to intimidate survivors.
What Denis Brennan has done is wortwhile noting in that as a “man of the world”, his wayward actions in attempting to court favourable public opinion by attempting to second guess and interpret the feelings, motives and purposes to the survivors needs, that in HIS opinion he is UNIQUELY “qualified” to throw light on the recess`s of their brutal experiences while attempting to discriminate to a mountain of historical evidence as having no basis in fact, nor equal to the all embracing “snake oil” of healing, reconcilation and forgiveness. Brennans “road to healing” contains more holes than his parish accounts. In view of Brennans ignorance to place a further burdensome levy on his parishoners, a criticism founded on taste, and a criticism founded upon logical analysis and inductive probability to his “plea” for cash must earmark him as a BUILDER OF PILLARS IN THE SAND.
Its obvious that Ratzo told his Irish bishops that THEY must find the dosh for these crimes, and no doubt he informed them that only by the grace of “god” did they manage to get BERNARD LAW out of America before HE ended up in court there. And thats the rub in all of this, it only needs ONE bishop, archbishop or cardinal in Ireland to stand criminally accused of WILFULLY assisting in the atrocities carried out on children , by omission, or other default, and with others present, a collective of bishops, in usurping State Law by suppressing heinous criminal acts on children, that this fight can then be taken to the doors of rome, in that , according to “canon law” the bishop , archbishop or cardinal is ONLY ANSWERABLE to rome. It then becomes Ratzo`s problem, such a move would involve a very heavy “Diplomatic Incident” in the offing, and the opening up of his coffers to survivors.
DOES THE STATE HAVE THE BOTTLE FOR SUCH A FIGHT.? WILL THE STATE FOLLOW THE LETTER OF THE LAW IN PURSUIT OF JUSTICE FOR ITS THOUSANDS OF BRUTALLY ABUSED CHILDREN.? IF RATZO`S “letter” IS NOT ACCOMPANIED BY A RATHER LARGE CHEQUE, THEN WE SHOULD REFER TO ELVIS, !RETURN TO SENDER! .
No mention of the money the Vatican has in off shore accounts and on trade platforms in private banking.
The Catholic church has absolutely nothing to do with Christ consciousness and the sooner the sheeple wake up the better.
This is another con trick at open wallet surgery on the innocent people, while the boys in frocks live in luxury.