IRELAND
The Irish Catholic
by Michael Kelly
March 16, 2017
It’s hard to get across to younger generations today the enormity of the scandal that was the revelation in 1992 that Bishop Eamonn Casey had secretly fathered a child years earlier.
One got a sense of the impact this week by the fact that the country’s largest-selling daily newspaper The Irish Independent carried a special eight-page supplement to mark Bishop Casey’s death after a long illness on March 13.
There’s something strangely fitting that Bishop Casey – a man who spent so much of his time and energy advocating for the rights of young Irish people forced to emigrate out of economic necessity – died in the week of St Patrick’s Day. Today, a new generation of Irish chaplains is working with Irish communities in far-flung parts of the world, particularly in the US where the so-called ‘undocumented’ are facing such uncertainty.
Exposed
When his sin was publicly exposed, many Irish Catholics were scandalised. They winced as many journalists who had long since harboured grudges against the Church delighted in tearing down a once-mighty edifice. Journalists delighted in exposing hypocrisy, and God knows the Church has provided enough examples of hypocrisy over the years.
It was ever thus, of course – the only way not to be a hypocrite is to hold no standards to be judged by. The very fact of trying to live a set of beliefs means that we will be judged for the times we are shown not to live up to these beliefs. It’s like the story often told about a non-Massgoer who complains to the parish priest that they don’t go to church on Sunday because “the place is full of hypocrites”. Knowing the human condition all too well, the parish priest replies: “But, there’s always room for one more.” Many a theological truth is contained in a one-liner.
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