Will there be Resignation of Bishops ?

[Abacus]

Arising from the revelations and conclusions of the Dublin Diocesan Abuse Report of Judge Murphy, what chance now for resignations among the Bishops in the RCC ?

Today and yesterday in the course of media interviews, Archbishop Martin in response to interviewers questions on the resignation issue stated quite categorically that it was up to the bishops involved to reflect and to be guided by their own consciences in their approach to the question of resignation.

If this is the path followed, doesn't that mean that the guys with the flawed judgment (despite their learned positions) become judges in their own cases ? Isn't that accepted as an absolute 'NO NO' just about everywhere in democracies ?
How little the hapless Archbishop seems to know or appreciate.
There cannot be even the faintest hint of impropriety in such a decision if it is to be accepted as just.

[USER1234]

There should be but its very doubtfull!!!

[johnfás]

Indeed, there should be, but I know nothing of the politics of the Catholic Church but worringly suspect there will not be. You would have sufficient access to gauge a good idea from the involved laity in the other churches if such a situation were to arise, but the Catholic hierarchy seem so distant from the reality of their church (as in the people) that the inside track appears impossible to know. Which is worrying of course, because one wonders who these men seek counsel from, and one worries they do not.

[Newsy]

If these men listened to their conscience in the first place, the Irish RCC wouldn't be in the place it is, right now.
I don't imagine their consciences have gotten anymore 'informed', in the meantime.

This is terribly poor leadership.

[Ah Well]

To answer the Thread question will there be resignations?



Unless of course they're forced to and involuntarily it occurs

[Utopian Hermit Monk]

Archbishop Martin in response to interviewers questions on the resignation issue stated quite categorically that it was up to the bishops involved to reflect and to be guided by their own consciences in their approach to the question of resignation.

... and the worst part is that, as far as I could tell, Martin was not being intentionally ironic or sarcastic.


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[The Field Marshal]

There are question marks about the Murphy commission.

This commission has failed to obtain vital information from the Vatican city state because in the commissions own words it deems it not appropriate to pursue diplomatic channels in this matter.
It gives no reasons for this baffling viewpoint.

One would have thought considering the money spent by this government commission that all it had to do was ask either our very well paid ambassodor to the Vatican or the Minister for foreign affairs to pursue the matter on the commissions behalf.

[Indy-pendant]

If these men listened to their conscience in the first place, the Irish RCC wouldn't be in the place it is, right now.
I don't imagine their consciences have gotten anymore 'informed', in the meantime.

This is terribly poor leadership.

I know a number of priests very well, and have a passing acquaintance with a bishop or two. Most of them are ordinary, relatively decent, people. I've been shocked though at how they're reacting to these revelations. The priorities of those I've spoken with recently are all about damage limitation, avoiding scandal, and protecting the structures. They look back longingly at a time when their authority was unquestioned, their status assured. The culture of the heirarchy is utterly removed from reality. There is no getting past the arrogance of those who have had basically unrestricted power over a prolonged period of time.

There was a small corner of my mind that had pity for those who were 'tarred with the one brush' once, but not any more. The choreagraphy of the responses, the absolute lack of any humanity in their dealings with so many vulnerable people has confirmed my opinion.

The time for dismantling, if not dismemberment, has come. It will never, never, never change from within.

(strange how much of this could apply to a government too....)

[alex77]

There are question marks about the Murphy commission.

This commission has failed to obtain vital information from the Vatican city state because in the commissions own words it deems it not appropriate to pursue diplomatic channels in this matter.
It gives no reasons for this baffling viewpoint.

One would have thought considering the money spent by this government commission that all it had to do was ask either our very well paid ambassodor to the Vatican or the Minister for foreign affairs to pursue the matter on the commissions behalf.

nothing to do with thread and no they wont resign

[darkknight]

I know a number of priests very well, and have a passing acquaintance with a bishop or two. ... The priorities of those I've spoken with recently are all about damage limitation, avoiding scandal, and protecting the structures. ...
There was a small corner of my mind that had pity for those who were 'tarred with the one brush' once, but not any more. The choreagraphy of the responses, the absolute lack of any humanity in their dealings with so many vulnerable people has confirmed my opinion.

The time for dismantling, if not dismemberment, has come. It will never, never, never change from within. ...

This is grossly unfair.

Even in the few days since the Report was made public, hundreds of ordinary decent priests have been working away on the ground, visiting the sick and elderly, accompanying the dying, consoling grieving families, helping young couples to celebrate their weddings, and so on.

The couple of 'ordinary' priests with whom I have spoken in recent days feel just as sickened as anyone else by what was going on. Probably even more so, since they are seeing the beliefs and values to which they have devoted their entire lives trampled in the mud and betrayed at the highest levels of their own Church.

The way some people go on here, it's as if they have never experienced the good work done by these ordinary, decent priests. When you attend a funeral, for example, remember that the priest has possibly presided at several funerals that same week, spent time with several grieving families and tried to find words of comfort for all of them. One of the priests I met yesterday had spent a lot of time with the family of a young man who committed suicide last Friday.

Most of these guys just work away in their parishes, week after week. They neither seek nor receive positions of power in the Church. They never had access to secret files on the rotten behaviour of a minority of their confreres. Whenever they were approached by someone with a complaint about another priest, they followed procedures and trusted their bishops to do the right thing. They are now shocked and dismayed to discover that this trust was, in some cases, misplaced.

I am actively involved in my own parish, and I think it's time that lay people - the overwhelming majority of members of 'the Church' - stopped acting like children and started accepting responsibility. Decent, faithful priests, bishops and lay people need support and encouragement. Rotten priests and bishops and lay people need to be confronted and, wherever necessary, denounced.

Good, ordinary lay people should be gagging at the spectacle of corrupt politicians now feeling entitled to strut around lecturing equally corrupt Church leaders about doing 'the decent thing', as if our our political class has suddenly won the right to claim the moral high ground.

Whether as ordinary citizens or as ordinary members of the Catholic (or any other) Church, Irish people need to grow up and start behaving as rational, responsible adults with the courage of their professed religious and/or political convictions. All too often, we Irish behave in a typically post-colonial manner, as if we were brainless idiots, incapable of thinking and acting for ourselves. We allow others to take control over our lives, all the while secretly resenting them and waiting for the chance to vent our pent-up anger when their sins are uncovered. This is infantile!

Why has the Irish laity no voice?

Why are they decades behind their counterparts in other countries in organising themselves as an influential force for change in the Church?

If Catholics in poor parts of the world have been capable of organising 'Basic Christian Communities' for several decades now, how come Irish Catholic lay people are still whinging about the power of the clergy and blaming everything on 'them'?

If the Church in Latin America, Asia and Africa has been able to produce many fine lay theologians (including those of the left wing 'Liberation' variety), how come the most significant recent initiative by Irish lay Catholics was a gathering of self-deluded sky-gazers at Knock?

'Irish Catholicism'? Too much 'Irish' and too little 'Catholicism', in my opinion!