Many people in Wexford are calling on Dr Brendan Comiskey to resign, but others have sympathy for him, reports Chris Dooley.
On the Diocese of Ferns's official website, you're invited to click on a box for "A Word from the Bishop".
Those who have been waiting in vain for such a word for the past 10 days are likely to be disappointed to find the most recent entry is an article by the bishop, Dr Brendan Comiskey, calling for a Yes vote in the abortion referendum.
Read on, though, and the article becomes uncannily apt in current circumstances. Encouraging people to cast their vote, the bishop quoted Edmund Burke: "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph."
Bishop Comiskey denies he did nothing in response to complaints that Father Sean Fortune was sexually abusing children, but he has tacitly admitted that he did not do enough.
"I know that in responding in the past to complaints of abuse I have not always got it right," he said last week in his only statement since the BBC2 television programme, Correspondent, on the Fortune scandal.
Since that statement of last Wednesday week, he has gone to ground. Phone messages to his press officer, Father John Carroll, have elicited only a stock reply by e-mail: "The Bishop issued a statement on 20th March. There has been no subsequent addition to this statement. Healing and reconciliation with all who have suffered remain the primary focus of the Bishop."
If his image took a battering in the BBC programme, his uncharacteristic refusal to confront the issues it raised has only exacerbated the situation.
Nicky Rossiter, a writer on Wexford's history who lives near Enniscorthy, wonders if some external constraint, such as the sub judice rules or a direction of the Church authorities, is preventing Dr Comiskey from speaking.
"He has always been forthright and if he had something to say he would say it. He is also big into the media and communications. It seems odd that he should not realise how bad it looks that he is not talking now. Or maybe he does realise it but feels he can't do anything about it."
A source in the Fethard-on-Sea area, where Fortune was based for six years in the 1980s, said the sight of Bishop Comiskey turning his back on the Correspondent reporter, Sarah McDonald, had gone down particularly badly.
"It's very easy to lay all the blame on the bishop. But walking away from that lady, that has annoyed people more than anything.
"If he had said: 'I'm in a hurry now, we'll have a chat later', it would have stood to him, even if they never had the chat. It seemed he was just not willing to enter into the thing at all."
Yet, it would be greatly over-stating things to say Bishop Comiskey has lost the confidence of his people. He retains significant support and there were indications towards the end of the week that many people, while admiring Fortune's victims for speaking out, retained personal sympathy for the bishop.
A prominent businessman, who asked not to be named, said people viewed it as a "complex issue" and believed Bishop Comiskey should not have to carry the can alone. "I've heard a lot of people saying that if the bishop has to resign, then so should Cardinal Connell and so should the Pope. This is about the Church authorities, not one man."
A number of callers to the comment line run by the Regional Express programme on South East Radio, particularly on Thursday and yesterday, expressed anger at what they saw as unfair treatment of the bishop.
"I think it's very apt that the people of Wexford are wanting to crucify Bishop Brendan this week. I think it wouldn't do any of us any harm to reflect a small bit - let he who is without sin cast the first stone," said one caller.
The vast majority of callers for the previous seven days, however, had ranged from negative to hostile towards the bishop. Tom Mooney, editor of the Echo Newspaper Group, doubts if Dr Comiskey can survive the storm.
In an opinion poll conducted by the group in Wexford town last week, 92 per cent of the respondents said the bishop had not done enough to remove Father Fortune, while 62 per cent said he should resign.
Some believe the poll, conducted among 150 people in Wexford town, did not reflect the true level of sympathy for the bishop in a mainly rural county.
Mr Mooney says, however, that he has not received a single objection to the poll.
The very fact that it was published at all showed how much things had changed.
"We could not have done that poll four or five years ago. It would have been viewed as treachery," he said.
Mr Mooney believes the bishop's position could become untenable after RTÉ screens the Correspondent programme next Tuesday and it is brought to a wider audience.
"He is a tough guy and he came through a similar crisis four or five years ago. He is adept at dealing with the media but I don't know how he is going to cope after next Tuesday."
Breda O'Brien, page 14