WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON?

Shane over at Lux Occulta has made this document available. It is a little piece of history, a report on the condition of the National Seminary and some of its professors in Maynooth in the early 70s. It raises valid questions, especially poignant given the scandals of recent years, about the leadership of the Irish Church and where its priorities and allegiances lay.

The great Michael Voris has comments that could just as well apply to the Irish Church as to the American.



While I don't know of any young Irish priest who has suffered for offering the Mass in the traditional form I do know that some such young priests are looked at askance by some of their fellow clergy.

Even in the early 90s when I was in college studying theology in All Hallows College Dublin there were lecturers who questioned Church teaching, in many different areas, but nothing happened to them. The attitude among many there was that the Church would change it was just a matter of time. This is still the situation. A student there has told me how there were practice liturgies for the blessing of gay unions, of lecturers who seem to question key parts of the Church's teaching. At least All Hallows no longer aims to train young men for the priesthood (though that may also be a way to loosen Church oversight or at least avoid attracting interest). Even its website homepage gives little clue that it is a Catholic college albeit linked to DCU (Dublin City University).

There is here a history yet to be written if it ever does get written about how the Irish Church almost got highjacked. I say 'almost' because I think it may be a close-run thing. Some bishops were orthodox, true shepherds but others left a lot to be desired. Priests and faithful, we too have to answer questions about how we have stood up for the faith. I have seen and heard many stories of what had gone on in Ireland. Whatever abuses appear in the US or in Britain they are here too. I remember hearing rumours about Ledwith before I joined the Capuchins in 1988.

Always there are rumours but no apparent action. If there is, as Michael Voris alleges, a gay or lavender mafia in the Church it operates by stealth like freemasonry, by handshake and quiet conversations and not in the open.

The answer I believe is a return to Christ and His Church without condition. It is in a total submission to the Tradition of the Church and a rejection of anything, liberal or conservative, that would narrow of distort that Tradition. It means a root and branch pruning of the Church and it means making some tough decisions and following through on them. The bishops today, not a collectively inspiring lot, have taken a battering largely for the sins of their predecessors but now is the time for them to 'man up' and decide if they will be shepherds or just sheep on a pedestal.