I don't know why the rest of the media appears to have missed this one. The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin resigned just before Christmas last, but it was only formally accepted by the Pope last Thursday, April 22.
I could be wrong but in the statement he issued that day the former Bishop became the first senior church man to give his totally honest and straightforward view of the whole affair. In fact he went so far as to say that the Church's actions could have been described as unchristian. For some bizarre reason, the import of his comments were missing from the coverage of the resignation. Most of the other media outlets appeared more interested in Cardinal Brady's comments on him.
Anyway, below is a bit that I wrote for our editorial.
Having resigned, at the age of 73, from the position of Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty knows his career holds no further prospects for advancement.
He is left in a position of having nothing to lose and is consequentially entirely free to speak his mind, something his still ambitious former colleagues will never do.
Having set the tone last December 23 when he admitted he “should have challenged the prevailing culture”, in his statement last Thursday he continued with what must be, for many, uncomfortable analysis.
He explained that when he offered his resignation, he had hoped it would honour “the truth that the survivors have so bravely uncovered and opens the way to a better future for all concerned”.
“The truth is that the long struggle of survivors to be heard and respected by church authorities has revealed a culture within the Church that many would simply describe as unchristian.
“People do not recognise the gentle, endless love of the Lord in narrow interpretations of responsibility and a basic lack of compassion and humility.
“I believe, as I said at the recent Vatican gathering 'that the goal should be a new fellowship; a deeper sharing of the mission that transcends the kind of clerical culture that led us here'.”
Put another way, the absolute power enjoyed by the church going back to the days of Archbishop McQuaid has corrupted the church so absolutely that it has moved as far as possible away from the fundamental basic principals it claims it was founded to promote.
Or as journalist Mary Rafferty said about the Murphy Report the day it was published: “What it shows us is that the plain people of Ireland know the difference between right and wrong, and the clergy don't.”
The church is now, and not for the first time, an organisation under siege, and has responded to that, again not for the first time, by closing the shutters. That bodes ill for the church.
In his statement last Thursday, Jim Moriarty quoted the former police ombudsman in Northern Ireland Nuala O'Loan, who called for “an open, transparent, accountable Church... valuing each person as made in the image of God”.
The church doesn't do transparency. For instance almost two years ago the Vatican issued a dictat to all bishops on how to deal with child sex abuse cases. It ended with an instruction (in Latin so that nobody born in the latter half of the 20th century who had not spent time in a seminary would understand it) that such cases were to be reported to the Vatican, but not the civil authorities.
And last Thursday when a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office was asked by the Leinster Leader if there was any reason floating around for why it took 17 weeks and a day for the Pontiff to accept the resignation, she replied without hesitation or equivocation: “We will never know”.
There was no attempt to bluff - no “well, I'll get back to you one that,” or “his Holiness was busy”, or “things move slowly in the Vatican”. Just a straightforward “We will never know”.
How's that for openness and transparency?
For all Jim Moriarty's failings, it may be that the Church has lost the the man it needs most.
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