Madam, – Patrick J Pyne (July 2nd) believes that the Civil Partnership Bill is a symptom of a decaying society and that “discrimination”, “equality”, and “human rights” are merely “shallow nonsense” To support this he quotes one Archbishop Fulton J Sheen writing about 50 years ago. The archbishop writes: “It is a characteristic of any decaying civilisation that the great masses of the people are unaware of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times.”
How ironic that a senior shareholder in the Catholic Church should, unwittingly, so accurately describe the meek acquiescence and subjugation that the Irish people slept through in the 20th century. It was our childish deference to government and church in Ireland that allowed the state and church to rape and murder our children with impunity.
It was only the growth of the “liberal values” that Mr Pyne so deplores, which allowed us to uncover the scale of the crimes our children have suffered as a people no longer in thrall to church and state began to question the way our lives were being run. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – James Marston obliquely refers to some recent church-State controversy (July 2nd) but of what does he speak? I suspect that he is referring to the child sex abuse scandal or maybe the details of the Ryan report but let me contradict him by pointing out that neither of these were controversies.
Deplorable, despicable, indefensible yes, but not controversial. The response from the church members and leaders has been overwhelmingly one of acceptance that many evil actions were perpetrated on some of the most vulnerable people in their care. The fact that the reported actions were truly terrible does not make them controversial.
The “continuing level of denial” about the safety and protection of children is not within the church itself but, rather, is with commentators such as Mr Marston who refuse to acknowledge that the child protection measures in the church are now of the highest national and international standard and indeed have made the church a very safe place for children. It is to the shame of all church members that it took actions of such unspeakable evil to bring this about, but the resultant changes should not be denied and are a credit to all those responsible for implementing them within each and every parish. – Yours, etc,