JACKIE ROBINSON, PP,
Sir, - Over my years as a priest I have always admired Bishop Brendan Comiskey, particularly for his courage in speaking his mind on various controversial church topics, such as celibacy and women priests. He was one of the few bishops we priests looked up to.
However, having seen the BBC television programme on the Father Sean Fortune scandal, I cannot for the life of me understand how Bishop Comiskey continues to remain silent.
Surely in this day and age, a bishop must be accountable to his flock as well as to Rome. - Yours, etc.,
JACKIE ROBINSON, PP,
Borris-in-Ossory,
Co Laois.
... ... * ... * ... * ... ...
Sir, - As president of the recently-formed Give Evil Credit Society, I cannot let you and Father Tom Doyle away with a key assertion in his article of March 26th. It is: "Sexual abuse is abominable but it's the result of a compulsive sexual disorder, not the devil".
The idea that God, the devil's main opponent, makes things easy for him by creating people with compulsive disorders belittles what the devil achieves. All evil-doing, minor and major, is, by definition, primarily Evil's doing and secondarily that of human puppets who, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden story, say yes to his brilliantly seductive diabolical ideas. We should give him credit for that enormous worldwide achievement.
By using sex temptations Evil is bankrupting Catholicism, morally, financially and even physically. Sex abuse victims are but one, albeit horrific, example of what he has achieved and continues to achieve thereby.
This achievement owes much to Christ's followers failing to take their cue from his words (John:17.15): "I am not asking you \ to remove them from the world but to protect them from the Evil One". All they need do is urge us to say "Father, protect everyone from the Evil One", as a mantra, as it were, on and off, every day. If enough of us said that prayer often enough, evil acts such as sex abuse would be a thing of the past.
But we don't need Catholic priests for that purpose - which is just as well since, thanks to their saying yes, however unwittingly, to Evil they are fast disappearing. There is nothing to stop us from saying the prayer without their urging. Again, it is to the enormous credit of Evil that he manages to keep that from being generally known, including by way of instructing newspaper editors not to publish letters such as this. - Yours, etc.
JOE FOYLE,
President,
Give Evil Credit Society,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.