Kieran Conry’s Failure

By Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Standing on My Head
October 3, 2014

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2014/10/kieran-conrys-failure.html

Former Bishop Kieran Conryi

I wrote earlier in the week here about the resignation of Kieran Conry and was one of the few voices to say, “Hang on. Let’s not just brush this under the carpet with a sweet Christian, ‘Well we are all sinners, let’s forgive and forget and move on. Water under the bridge. Nothing more to see.’”

In fact there is more to see and some sources from the UK who are very much on the inside with this story have emailed me with information that justifies a bit more attention to this sad tale.

You can be sure the left leaning media will give it more attention. They’ll use it to push for an end to celibacy for priests, re-marriage of divorcees and then same sex marriage and the whole shootin’ match.

Here’s an example of what’s to come:

Andrew Brown writes here in the UK’s left leaning Guardian paper about Kieran Contry’s resignation after an affair with a woman.

He says Conry’s resignation highlights the failures of the Catholic Church.

Errrm, I thought it highlighted Kieran Conry’s failures.

Get ready for the next chapter on this one.

Kieran Conry is a master of media manipulation. He’s been the darling of the UK’s left leaning media his whole career, and he’ll have plenty of pals who will jump to his defense. All the ones who are also quick to blame the Catholic Church for whitewashing problems, covering up scandals and spinning stories to their own agenda.

That’s exactly what they’ll do with the Kieran Conry scandal.

Next week we will see that he will be portrayed as the poor victim, the priest in love who was not able to follow his heart and marry the woman of his dreams because of the cruel, old, out dated Catholic Church (bring up sinister organ music and dark shadows)

Then we will hear more about how the Catholic Church should have allowed Kieran to marry the woman he loved. Never mind the fact that had Kieran had the guts he could well have resigned his plummy bishopric, resigned his orders, applied for laicization and got an ordinary job to marry the woman he loved.

Lots of priests have done that, and they are to be admired because at least they were honest and followed through with their actions, were supportive of the woman with whom they had an affair and did the right thing by her, by their conscience and by the church.

If this is the way the media story goes I’ll be putting the other side on this blog, because the more I hear about this story the more it smells bad. Real bad.