IRELAND
Irish Independent
EILISH O’HANLON – 11 AUGUST 2013
Back in 1992, the country was rocked by the discovery that a Catholic priest had enjoyed a sexual relationship with a consenting adult woman and had fathered a child. Those were the days. The bar on sexual scandal in the church has been raised considerably higher since then.
Nostalgia’s probably misplaced, all the same. There may be a temptation to think that Eamon Casey did nothing wrong in having an affair with American divorcee Annie Murphy when she was staying at his home in the early 70s, at least not in comparison with the paedophile priests who would, in later years, be sharing the same parish with the Bishop of Galway; but it would be hard to sustain that comforting argument after listening to the first interview in 20 years with his son, recorded for the first of a four-part TV3 documentary series on the hidden history of Irish journalism and broadcast last week under the title Print And Be Damned.
Speaking to Donal MacIntyre, Peter Murphy recalled his first meeting with Casey, when he was only 15, in a lawyer’s high-rise office in Boston. How he tried to engage with his father “and him having really no interest in engaging back with me”. How he eventually fled in tears, a “blithering mess”. It wasn’t hard to see the hurt and bewildered young boy behind the articulate and affable 39-year-old that Murphy is today.
The argument that Casey was a hypocrite because, while always known for his progressive tendencies, he nonetheless backed the church’s position on celibacy, doesn’t really stand up. A man can have an affair while still believing that priests should be celibate. There’s no contradiction. But there are sins other than hypocrisy. We’re supposed to disapprove of the damage that can be done by deadbeat dads who wash their hands of responsibility for their offspring, and it’s no better just because the culprit is a bishop rather than a welfare cheat.
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