THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE IRISH CATHOLIC

The Irish Catholic is doing Irish Catholics a diservice this week with their headline "Divorced/remarried Catholics can now receive communion" and the ensuing article.  The article, by Greg Daly, fails to note that the Pope's letter, leaked by persons unknown (in Rome or Argentina) was commenting on a draft document proposing criteria for the implementation of Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia.  This can only be called downright irresponsible.  The only consolation is that the Irish Catholic has such a small readership that damage will be slight (I hope) but not if national newspapers and the media in general take it up.  Not that divorced and remarried Catholics are actually lining up for Holy Communion.  What this gives is carte blanche to 'liberals' or 'progressives' to do what they have been doing and pretend their actions are approved.  I note that there is no reference in the article to the bishops of the Irish Church and their approach to Amoris Laetitia and its implementation.  They have jurisdiction here and not the Argentine bishops.

I have not found any article within the Irish Catholic refering to the events last Sunday in Athy where two Lesbians, having 'married' in a civil ceremony and then left their roles due to protest from the faithful, were welcomed back into their roles within the parish and given Holy Communion!  Not a word!

The issue makes me wonder further though.  For quiet some time I have bemoaned, along with fellow clergy and faithful Catholics, the 'secularisation' of Irish society and the loss of the sense of the sacred.  Could this article about the Pope's letter (N.B. Papal infallibility is very carefully defined and it doe not apply to opinions given in private letters, I'm sure even the Ordinary Magisterium does not apply here) and the absence of any mention of Athy be indicative of the spread of secularism within the Church?  Secularisation isn't just visible in the loss of a sense of the importance of Baptism or of how one ought to behave in a church.  It manifests itself as well in a loss of the sense of sin for sin is fundamentally a violation of the sacred.  It also appears in a loss of the ability to be revolted, shocked or offended by evil.  We become accostomed to evil and, God forbid, when we become accostomed we are a step closer to approving, then justifying and even engaging in that evil.

Catholic journalists above all have a duty to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Indeed their duty is to He who is the Truth and they will answert to Him for their failures.