THE most damaging week for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland this century, is what the editor of one of the church's own papers, the Scottish Catholic Observer, has called the Bishop Wright scandal.

The church's press officer, Father Tom Connelly, was similarly candid. "It has been shattering. It has placed the credibility of bishops and priests under a huge question mark."

He talked about the jokes and sneers at Catholics' expense in offices and workplaces and admitted the church would lose members because of the Wright affair, people "whose faith is not strong enough to cope with it".

Historically, Scottish Catholicism is largely the product of sustained Irish immigration after the famine and until the second World War it was subject to considerable hostility from mainstream Protestant society. That is now history but its continuing minority position has meant a certain rallying round at this time of crisis.

Thus, on Monday night the pews in Motherwell cathedral were full to bursting for Mass to mark vocations awareness week, hardly the high point in the church's character. Two days earlier, the local bishop, Dr Devine, described former Bishop Wright's decision to sell his story to the News of the World as "damnable and deplorable".

The Scottish Hierarchy, in the persons of Cardinal Thomas Winning of Glasgow and Archbishop Keith O'Brien of St Andrews and Edinburgh, have come in for particular criticism for their handling of the unfolding scandal. In the traditional way of Catholic bishops on the defensive, they let it out in dribs and drabs.

"For all its experience, the institutional church still seems to believe that no news is good news," said the outspoken former rector of the Scots College in Rome, Father John Fitzsimmons. "Lay people I have talked to have been utterly dismayed at the sight of their leaders bumbling from one disaster to another, incapable of a coherent statement about what's going on and what to do about it."

Father Connelly believes much of the controversy and heartache could have been avoided if Bishop Wright had allowed the Hierarchy to announce his resignation "in the normal way" and "it had not been left to the media to make the running".

As it was, the stage was set for a classic confrontation between a news hungry media and a confused and defensive church, with the former coming out on top by a mile.

The media first reported Bishop Wright's disappearance from his West Highlands diocese the rumours linking him with a divorced mother of three, Kathleen MacPhee the appearance of his former lover, Joanna Whibley, and their 15 year old son, Kevin and the first tranche of Bishop Wright's own story, with more to come next Sunday.

"The ball was in the media's court the whole time and it's still there. We still don't know where Roddy Wright is," said Father Connelly. He likened his situation to people besieging him to know what was contained in a locked cupboard in his room "I don't have the key to it, Roddy Wright does.

CARDINAL Winning, a tough talking defender of Rome's line on all things, confessed on Friday that he had been "so duped by events of the last few days that I don't know what to believe any more".

The church's helplessness in the face of uncontrollable media revelations turned into real anger over the weekend with the news that the former bishop had sold his story to the News of the World. Archbishop O'Brien, quoting the prophet Ezekiel, said Wright had "died in his sin" as absolute a piece of condemnation as one is likely to hear from a Catholic prelate.

Father Connelly said at this point the mood of Scottish Catholics changed for the third time. After compassion for Bishop Wright had given way to anger at his duplicity over fathering a son, that anger was redirected towards the media. "People reacted violently and with tremendous disgust to the News of the World interview. There was a feeling of `We'll bloody well show you you're not going to destroy our faith'."

Then there are the media's allegations of hypocrisy and cover up by the church's leaders. These centre on questions about why Archbishops Winning and O'Brien failed to mention Mrs Whibley and Kevin at their press conference on Monday of last week when they announced Bishop Wright's resignation and told of the emotionally charged meeting they had had with him the previous night.

In his News of the World interview, the former bishop said he had given the two archbishops clearance to release the information about Mrs Whibley and his son. Father Connelly said Wright was lying and insisted that it would have been entirely wrong for the church to have made their names public.

However, the suspicion must remain that at least part of their reason for not telling the full story behind Bishop Wright's resignation to limit the damage which would be caused by such a dramatic new revelation. That damage limitation exercise lasted precisely two days, until Mrs Whibley phoned the BBC to tell her story.

Will the Roderick Wright scandal have the same cathartic effect in undermining the authority of the Catholic Church in Scotland as the Eamonn Casey scandal did in Ireland? Both Father Fitzsimmons a Vatican Two radical and Father Connelly, who is much closer to the Hierarchy's thinking, agreed that it will probably not.

"Our bishops have never had the same authority" said Father Connelly. "We'll get over it better than Ireland. The jolt to our national consciousness won't be the same but the jolt to our Catholic consciousness will be similar." Said Father Fitzsimmons. "People's confidence and serenity will be disturbed and it will take them a long time to get over it."

The issue, of course, is not one which can be defined by nationality. Prof James Mackie, the Irish Catholic who heads the divinity faculty at the Presbyterian Church of Scotland's New College in Edinburgh, said "everybody knows that clerical celibacy is a rule which the church made, hence one from which it can and does dispense in cases where it 150 wishes, and indeed a rule which it could simply drop".

"We are not dealing then, with a law of God, or a moral law, or even, in the case of ordinary diocesan clergy, with a vow."

Apart from clerical celibacy, Father Fitzsimmons believes the most important lesson for the Catholic Church from both the Eamonn Casey and Roderick Wright disasters is the need for bishops to be accountable not just to God and each other but also to the rest of the church, Vatican Two's "people of God".

He warns against the Scottish Hierarchy trying to "ride out" the current storm in the way it did 30 years ago when the then Bishop of Aberdeen disappeared with his housekeeper and ended up living with her in a caravan in Tuam.

However, all the signs are that this is just what the Scottish bishops will do again. Once again their priority seems to be to defend the institution rather than to face up to the difficult questions about clerical celibacy and episcopal accountability and appointments which have been so painfully raised again by the Bishop Wright debacle.