Irish Prime Minister and practising Catholic , Enda Kenny, on Wednesday launched an unprecedented and stinging attack on the Vatican saying that Ireland – Vatican relations could never be the same again.
Kenny accused the Vatican for what he said was the first time in Ireland, the Holy See sought to frustrate an inquiry in a democratically elected republic.
The Vatican would rather ‘manage’ or downplay the rape of children to protect its power, standing and reputation, he said.
Kenny told the parliament the Cloyne Report highlighted the ‘dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’
He accused the Church hierarchy of being either unwilling or unable to address the horrors uncovered in successive reports.
“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict’s “ear of the heart” . . . the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. . . . This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded.”
“It’s a failure he said that this Roman clericalism must be devastating for good priests … as they work so hard, to be the keepers of the church’s light and goodness within their parishes, communities, the human heart.”
“But thankfully for them, and for us, this is not Rome,” Kenny said.
“Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said: “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the church.”
“As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne report, as Taoiseach, (Prime Minister), I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic.”
“Not purely, or simply or otherwise.”
“Children . . . First.”
Sources
- RTE News
- Irish Times
- Irish Times
- BBC
- Image: RTE News