SPILLING THE BEANS

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This was a book launch in a cemetery where a dead man spoke through a living medium.

I had been to one book launch here before. That book was by two living authors, both of whom were present. Today's book was, effectively, by two authors - one of whom, Angela, was present while the other was Resting In Peace a mere block away.

So let me explain.

Fr. Seán Fagan was a renowned theologian and a good man. He was a Marist priest who loved his church but was not impressed by its bureaucratic and fossilised dogmatic overlay.

He was going back to basics, to human values in their proper religious context, such as primacy of conscience. Unfortunately he ran foul of the Inquisition, or to put it another way got complained to the CDF which eventually silenced him and hit him with a super gag order. This meant he could not reveal his silencing to anyone on pain of expulsion from the priesthood.

He obeyed this stricture, for a variety of reasons, but he entrusted the documentation to his friend Angela, and asked her to "spill the beans" after his death.

The book now being launched is the spilling of the beans.

I have previously posted on Fr. Seán and his book What happened to sin, a copy of which I secured through the Dublin City Library Service.

Garry O'Sullivan

Garry introduced the evening. He is the owner of the Irish Catholic newspaper and Columba Press. He took over Columba when it went bankrupt so the title continued and it is the publisher of this book.

As an aside I gather Garry is currently in talks with Seán's nemesis, Vincent Twomey. In a strange twist of fate, Vincent is responsible for me coming across Seán in the first place.

I was having a go at Vincent's wobbly theology on the informed conscience when my attention was drawn by Patsy McGarry to a rapier of a letter from Seán to the Irish Times (29/12/2007) whipping the carpet out from under Vincent's theological gumboots.

Angela Hanley

Angela told us how she, initially reluctantly, got involved in correspondence with Seán, how this blossomed into a friendship, and how Seán entrusted her with spilling the beans, after his death, on how he was "spiritually abused" by the CDF.

It was not an easy book to write. Seán was a positive and optimistic person until the CDF got him in its clutches and reduced him to wishing the Lord would call time on his earthly stay.

Reading the book makes your blood boil at least every few pages.

After Seán's death (15/7/2016) Angela set about preparations for writing the book. She had a lot on her plate but she persisted and finally got the book written.

It clearly illustrates the cowardly and venemous modus operandi of the CDF.

Cowardly because they never have the courage to face their victims. They will not engage directly with them thereby denying them the opportunity to adequately defend themselves. They prefer to operate through the victim's superior and let them carry the can. Angela recounts how the CDF threatened to depose the Marist's Provincial, though they had no authority to do so. They also refuse to reveal the identity of a complainant, which also circumscribes an adequate defence.

Venemous because they set out to destroy their victims. And they often succeeded. They appear to have damaged Seán Fagan beyond repair.

Mary McAleese

For those not up to speed, Mary is a former two-term President of Ireland who has got herself a doctorate in Canon Law. She is currently campaigning to reform the church for its own good.

She was recently banned from speaking within the Vatican's holy precincts. The organisers immediately moved the conference, on women and the church, out of the Vatican rather than forego Mary as a speaker.

So she's a heavy hitter.

Mary made a plea directly to Pope Francis on Seán's behalf in 2013. Following this, and many other pleas through various channels, a minimum concession was made and the threat to his priesthood was removed. All other restrictions remained.

I'm not sure what this concession meant. Perhaps it meant that he would not be removed from the priesthood no matter what sanctions he broke. But what would the punishment then be? Excommunication? An excommunicated priest?

In the context of human rights and consent she pointed out that one is not born a Catholic but conscripted at Baptism.

She also reminded us that the Vatican (as a State) has signed up (internationally) to all sorts of human rights (eg free speech, due process) which (as a religion) it flouts.

My own view is that the Vatican (a religion) has no moral claim to statehood in the first place. It abuses this status, acting as a State one minute and not a state another, according as this suits its agenda.

Having looked at some of the good people let's check out some villains.

Charles Brown

Prime among these is Charlie Brown. As Seán/Angela reveal he was Cardinal Levada's sidekick in the CDF's dealings with the Marists. He was complicit, to say the least, in the bullying of the Marist's Provincial.

Was he then sent to Ireland, as Nuncio, to keep an eye on the situation here? Most likely. Otherwise he was just a waste of space. He refused to meet ACP and took refuge in making holy exhortations at a safe distance in Knock in the West. Following in the Pius XII mariolitrist tradition he was.

[Update 7/10/2019: I heard, over the weekend, that he had his eye on London after Dublin. That would indeed have been a fairly prestigious assignment - Court of St. James's, no less?. He would have been following in the footsteps of Archbishop O'Hara (Nuncio: Ireland 1951-54, Britain 1954-63) though the representation has been upgraded to Ambassador status since O'Hara's day. Note that the Holy See Ambassador is accredited to Great Britain and not UK.

Well, all this might just have come to pass but for the change of régime in the Vatican. Pope Francis has sent him to Albania for his sins. Catholics are about 10% of Albania's population which is 57% Muslim.]

Vincent Twomey

Vincent is a retired professor of moral theology whose theology of conscience is fatally flawed but no doubt pleasing to his mentors, particularly his teacher, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger. He was also a member of Benedict XVI's Schulerkreise.

He is at the opposite end of the scale from Seán. Nuff said.

I asked Angela to sign my book and mentioned that it was an already read copy. She was clearly listening. And it will be even more well read as I go back and consult bits of it in writing this post.

Then I saw someone getting Mary McAleese to sign their copy. What a good idea, I thought, she is, after all, a part of the story.

Seán Fagan RIP

Seán's motive, and Angela's mandate, in having his story told:

Spill the beans in public on what really went on, to shame our sinful church in the hope that it might prevent further repetitions.

Strong words, and this is what Angela has done. Bless her.

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I'll finish as I started with the book cover. I thought it was brilliant. But that wasn't the whole of it. It was pointed out to me that the design continued across the spine to the back cover. Neat.

Incidentally, when you've read Angela's and Seán's book you might reinforce the experience by reading, the not so silenced, Tony Flannery's book, published in his lifetime.

WHO IS BENNY?

I launched my religious blog just one year into the papacy of Benedict XVI, hence my moniker Benny. The Bridgebuilder bit comes from the Pope's latin title Pontifex Maximus, the Great Bridge Builder.

I wanted to comment on religious matters but wanted to keep this separate from my main blog to avoid offending some readers there.

I had been raised a Catholic in the repressive era of Pius XII (more repressive perhaps in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe). I had seen the flag of progress raised by Vatican II, in the reign of John XXXIII, and was encouraged, though I had more or less abandoned ship by then.

Then the conservatives re-asserted control leading up to the cowardly surrender by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae. After a very brief interlude with the untested Luciani Peter Sellers lookalike, John Paul I, who departed in a sudden and unexpected manner, we had a long innings with the theologically and dogmatically reactionary Polish actor, John Paul II. If that wasn't enough he was followed by the dogmatically rigid and fearful former head of the Inquisition, Benedict XVI.

So I thought it was finally time to put pen to paper, and I set up a blog called Bulls. This title was meant to convey something between a Papal Bull and the sort of speech we have today come to expect from Boris Johnson, or Bojo de Piffle as I prefer to call him.

I was gently put-putting along with Bulls when, on 18 January 2012, I was notified by Blogger that my blog had been deleted. That saga is a long story and if you're interested in technical details you can check it out here. The blog had been deleted but Benny was still in business. So I set up another blog hoping it would be temporary until I could get Bulls back.

What to call the new blog. Well, as a former altar boy I had the phrase Dominus Vobiscum ring in my ears from time to time, and as the International Eucharistic Congress was to be held in Dublin some months later I was conscious of the Holy Biscuit. So I did a mash and here we are.

Shortly afterwards Bulls was restored and I then had two holy blogs. But I had fallen for the latter, more up to date, template and decided to discontinue posting on Bulls and continue on Dominusvobiscuit.

Having lived with the name Benny the Bridgebuilder I decided to keep it.

Over time I became irritated by my crap avatar, a very fuzzy papal arms lifted off the Vatican website way back. I recently decided to do something about it but not being able to find a suitable replacement I changed tack entirely and used one of my mashups from a Dominusvobiscuit post. It was at that point that I thought I should explain the derivation of the various names. Hence this post.

If you have interests outside the religious sphere my other blogs are listed on my website.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SISTER BEN

"The Breadline, 1916" by Muriel Brandt

This is the picture that Margaret Mac Curtain chose for the cover of the book, which would honour her lifetime of writings and which was launched at the celebration of her ninetieth birthday this year.

I'm sure she could have found a respectable painting of a Dominican nun in prayerful contemplation. She is, after all, a member of that community. But that would have missed the point. I'm sure she says her prayers. But that's not what she is known, or will be remembered, for. She is an activist, a doer, and has campaigned all her life for women's rights. But she has also been an academic, a prioress, and, as was clear at this weekend's celebration a mentor and a sympathetic ear.

Margaret Mac Curtain

I met her on our way into Poetry Ireland for the celebration. I nearly didn't recognise her, she looked so well. I first met her when she gave a provocative talk on the betrayal of Vatican II in St. Mary's, Haddington Road, in 2012. She has always bucked the party line and, like Jesus, has railed against the establishment, always in a constructive way. I'll bet she gave John Charles a few sleepless nights in his day.

Theo Dorgan & Margaret Kelleher

The occasion was organised by poet Theo Dorgan and UCD academic and author Margaret Kelleher.

I first met Theo at the Irish launch of Olivier Litvine's translation of Joyce's Chamber Music in the Alliance Française in 2017. Today was my first time meeting Margaret in person though I sort of felt I knew her from her wonderful book The Maamtrasna Murders and from subsequent online correspondence.

Theo kicked off the proceedings, welcoming the overflowing crowd. The place was packed, itself a tribute to Margaret, never mind the powerful words that were to follow.

He reminded us that Margaret was not only compassionate to those in need, but a tough lady when required to stand up against oppression and to encourage others to do so.

Margaret then gave a brief appreciation of her namesake's career and why it was appropriate to honour her on this occasion.

I couldn't help being struck by the pentecostal image on the wall. I didn't know what the full picture represented but it increasingly irritated me as the afternoon wore on.

Cormac Breatnach

Cormac played what looked to me like a treble recorder. He played a selection of Spanish tunes, linking to Margaret's work in Spanish archives for her thesis and later book on Dominic O'Daly.

I thought to myself, this guy is good, whoever he is.

It was only afterward that I got the full impact and significance of his presence. And it was more than appropriate and very much on topic. He is brother of Osgur and son of Deasún.

Check out this TG4 (Dia leo) documentary (52 mins) on the miscarriage (too polite a word) of justice on Osgur and its lasting effect on the whole family. Osgur is still seeking an apology and an admission that the confession was beaten out of him. This all happened in the 1970s when standing up to the Establishment was no small matter.

Now that I think of it, I had Cormac's father Deasún in my Welsh class in Aungier St. for a brief period.

Angela Bourke

I think it was Angela who told the story that she had been friendly with Margaret and shared confidences with her only to find out at a late stage that Margaret was a nun. "I had told her everything and she was a NUN!" That sort of brought the house down.

Moya Cannon

Moya spoke about being a former student of Margaret's and read her poem 'Kilcolman', a response to Edmund Spenser, the English poet, who wanted Ireland starved into civility.

She wonders how one should look on the poetry when the poet is a gobshite [my words, not hers. She puts it more elegantly]

How hard, even still, to love the well-turned verse,
whose felicities were turned on such a lathe.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

I think Nuala mentioned family connections with Margaret and went on to read an English language translation of a poem followed by the Irish language original.

I translated a poem of Nuala's once. My cousin Carmel, a former teacher, asked me to do it. Someone she knew had done one and she wanted to compare the two versions. I've no idea how that worked out. This is my version.

Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid repeated most of what he says in his introduction to the book. But that gives me the excuse to retell here the much repeated story from 1971. This is as Diarmaid tells it in the book.

At a debate in UCD in 1971, Margaret shared a lecture theatre platform with Mary Anderson and Nell McCafferty. Anderson suggested that each of them make a short opening statement about the personal difficulties under which they laboured as women.
Anderson said, "I am a bastard".
McCafferty said, "I am a lesbian".
Margaret said, "I am a nun".
As recalled by McCafferty, "The audience erupted in yells of pure unadulterated pleasure. The exchanges that evening were a runaway train of untrammelled speech."

Lucy McDiarmid

Lucy spoke about St Gobnait's Well and held the saint up as a model of female independence in the early Christian world.

I wonder was she once let down by PowerPoint as she had brought along millions of copies of a page of text and pictures. Very wise, I thought. One for everyone in the audience.

Paula Meehan

Paula took exception to the idea that Amergin, the male Milesian, was the first "Irish" poet, so she invented a female predecessor and entertained us with a long poem from this new source.

Well done.

Ailbhe Smyth

Ailbhe spoke about the institution of women's studies in UCD. "Margaret was 150% in. It simply could not have been done without her. Without her scholarship, without the respect people had for her, her incredible political sense." Margaret, and some others, watched her back and it was only much later that she realised how much that meant.

She shared a moment with us, which she said recalling it still filled her with emotion, and that was very clear to us watching her tell it. Margaret had given her reassurance and good advice at a very traumatic moment in her life. I'm sure Ailbhe's story is one of many that could be told about Margaret.

Michael D

Michael D was with us in spirit but with a degree of incarnation on the wall. He paid a lively and clearly heartfelt tribute to Margaret and this was much appreciated by all present.

Mary Robinson also sent greetings.

Alan Hayes

Then came the launch of the book.

Alan Hayes spoke about his publishing house Arlen House. They seem to have played a blinder over the years, but, as he said, without any grant from the Arts Council. The Council apparently hold the view that "there is no need for Arlen House".

Well, today's tribute to Margaret, a collection of her essays over the years, is 500 pages long and retails for a mere €25.

Maureen Murphy

Maureen was lavish in her praise of the book and laid great stress on the idea of communities both in the study of history and advancing the cause.

She was most forceful in her presentation and you can briefly see her in full flight on one of her favourite subjects here.

Margaret Mac Curtain

For all her physical frailty, she doesn't give up and you could feel the strength of her and the audience's respect and affection for her when she rose to speak.

As I said, I first met her when she gave a talk on the suppression of the legacy of Vatican II in St. Mary's Haddington Road in the excellent Patrick Finn Lecture series.

And shortly afterwards at the launch of an issue of Studies in Newman House where we had a long conversation and where it became clear to me why she enjoyed such widely held respect.

It was not long after this that the CDF embarked on yet another orgy of repression and I took down the post I had done on her Haddington Road talk lest it draw unwanted attention to her in those dangerous times. I'm not foolish enough to count the CDF among my admiring followers but there is always Google, as much at the service of the evil ones as that of the good.

She had a particular thank you to Arlen House with which she had a special relationship over the years.

There is no doubt that there were lots of nuns in the audience. Margaret thanked them for turning out. I figure some of these nuns were quite old and their having made the effort was a great tribute to Margaret.

When I arrived I was sure there were nuns among those coming in and I thought I'd play a little game and see if I could guess who was a nun. I gave that up fairly quickly when I mistook one of my neighbours from home, whom I actually know well, for a nun. The mind is a funny thing. I was expecting nuns and then seeing them everywhere.

She was proud of what had been accomplished over the years, not just by herself, but by all who laboured in the vineyard. She had no illusions though, there was still a lot to be done.

When she finished speaking the audience rose to their feet in a spontaneous, enthusiastic, and noisy standing ovation. Powerful stuff.

This was not just about history. It was a piece of history itself. I am so thrilled to have been there.

---

Some other photos

Margaret & Nell

Nell McCafferty

I happened to see this woman in front of me who looked familiar. I wondered if she might be Nell McCafferty, but then she could have been another one of the thousands of nuns in the room.

Are you Nell McCafferty? sez I.

My name is Nell, says she.

Now that only got us half way there. Why didn't she just say yes or no. Sounds like the Nell we all know.

Nell McCafferty from Derry? sez I.

Yes, says she.

So we're there at last.

I told her I thought her portrait behind the curtain in the Little Museum was great.

Why have they covered it up? sez she. For the children?

I explained to her the intricacies of the curtain, how you could pull the ropes and they opened, and the inscription that went with it. I think we were only half connecting and I gathered that both her sight and her hearing were not the best.

Suddenly she says: You're fly is open.

Jesus, I thought, her sight can't be all that bad. I promptly zipped it up.

You should go and see it, sez I.

I couldn't climb the stairs, sez she.

It's on the ground floor, sez I.

That went down well until I remembered the outside steps, so we'll see. Anyway I was glad to have met this legend of womanhood. A bonus.

[Update 9/8/2019: I checked it out yesterday and it's actually on the first floor, so that's 10 steps outside and 30 more to the first floor. So that's that, I guess.]

Ailbhe was having trouble with the mic on the stand. Eventually Theo went over to help and finally suggested she hold the mic in her hand. Ailbhe, good humouredly, referred to the incongruity of being helped by a man. Thank you man, sez she.

The interesting thing is that she did hold it in her hand, steady, and not too close to her mouth, and came across with the best sound of the day.

This is Lucy's distributed PowerPoint substitute.

Margaret & Anngret Simms

Theo: All Hands on Deck

Margaret's Grand Entry

Selling The Book

All the World's a Stage

Cody Sanders

Cody is from Houston, Texas. His family emigrated to the USA in famine times. He is doing a masters with Margaret Kelleher. On this occasion he was Mr Sound&Vision man. He did a very good job on the sound which was required not only in the main room but in the overflow room.

When it came to the visuals, playing Michael D on the wall, the crowd was so packed that the projector was blocked. So Cody held the projector, shoulder high, for the duration. Full marks.

I had a conversation with Paula in the course of which I complimented her on her enunciation - she finished all her words. She put that down to being careful with her Dublin accent. She's Seán McDermott Street and my people are James's Street. So I gave her the test. What did she think the thing was that was pronounced "throw"? Got it in one. A first for me. It's the kitchen sink, usually the big delphy one, and it's spelled "trough".

And as for the irritating image on the wall, I thought it might have referred to WB Yeats parachuting down to his Lake Isle for a weekend break. But then I remembered that, unlike me, he never actually lived on the Island. I heard him admit this myself.

On researching the item I find, thanks to Dublin Airport's Twitter stream, that:

Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney is honoured in Terminal 2 @DublinAirport with the tapestry 'Out of the Marvellous', created by the artist Peter Sis & featuring lines from Lightenings viii

A HORSE CALLED VIATICUM

Once upon a time in a country accused by a former Pope of the credulity of its mothers there lived a Parish Priest.

No, not THAT Parish Priest - I am prohibited from telling that ultra-germane story by the Vatican thought police and the current tsunami of secular political correctness. I'll have to keep that one for the next life, assuming there is one and that we both end up in the same place.

Well, THIS Parish Priest had a horse, and a family in the parish had a field. The family, for whatever reason, allowed the PP to graze his horse in their field. And as Voltaire said of Candide, all was for the best in the best of possible worlds.

But then came the day when, for whatever reason, the family had to sell or cultivate the field and the news had to be broken to the Parish Priest that his horse would have to find other pastures. The PP was not pleased.

Fast forward >>>

As the granny lay dying, the family sent for the priest, as one does. The Parish Priest refused to attend, stripping viaticum at its roots. The family, fully aware of the possible implications for the granny's immortal soul, were devastated. But the PP would not budge. There was in play the unmentioned story of the horse.

Fortunately for the family, and possibly the granny as well, there was a religious order located nearby and an order priest did the needful and the good granny had company on her journey to eternity.

This is a true story. It happened in my family.

Now why would I drag up this horseshit, so to speak, at a time when the current Pope appeals for love and toleration all round and takes the scythe of tolerance to the chaff of clericalism. Surely all this holy hubris and triumphalist theology is becoming a thing of the past and it is irresponsible of me to fan the flames of anticlericalism.

Would that it were.

The Eucharist is once more being weaponised in the faction fighting within the Holy Roman Catholic and Universal church.

Refusing Communion to those straying outside the dictats of a fossilised and outmoded Magisterium is increasingly the norm. The Church, by which I mean the clerics in this case, is wielding its power because it can. No matter that this is an incredibly cruel and short sighted thing to do.

The horse is back, screaming for its grass

NOWT SO QUEER AS FOLK

Ángela Ponce
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I have just read the Vatican's latest tract on transgender and intersex.

Well, I read most of it. I began to run out of steam around the middle and just skimmed the rest of it.

I haven't read anything so stunningly ignorant and incendiary from the Vatican since Benedict XVI's letter on clerical sex abuse to the Irish people.

It is based on the idea that transgender/intersex is a life style choice consciously and freely opted for by the individual. This is a stunning misrepresentation of what is involved for most affected people.

Not only that but it pursues this paper tiger reductio all the way to its absurdum. Consider this extract:

challenges emerging from varying forms of an ideology that is given the general name ‘gender theory’, which “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences

Let's face it. Either we're all God's creation, and theory and doctrine needs to be developed to encompass this, or these people are effecttively criticising God for being asleep on the job.

I am reminded of my mother's Novena to St. Joseph, where some element of the mystical body had clearly been dozing during working hours.

A society without sexual differences. What in Jaysus name is that, and who's advocating it. Now, if they were discussing the Holy Trinity I could sort of understand what they thought they were at.

In fact I considered an alternative title for this post:THE GENDER OF THE SOUL but it sounded too much like the language of this rubbish Vatican document and I dumped it in favour of a more colloquial title.

Let's look at a few more bits of this execrable text.

Over the course of time, gender theory has expanded its field of application. At the beginning of the 1990’s, its focus was upon the possibility of the individual determining his or her own sexual tendencies without having to take account of the reciprocity and complementarity of male-female relationships, nor of the procreative end of sexuality. Furthermore, it was suggested that one could uphold the theory of a radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the latter. Such a goal was seen as an important stage in the evolution of humanity, in which “a society without sexual differences” could be envisaged.

I am, unfortunately, not an expert in these matters but this sounds to me like a self-serving exaggeration. Again it relies on the free choice thesis. What if I were to describe it as "discernement"? Would that make any difference?

Consider the story of Kailyn Damm. This is not a case of a lightly taken decision, but rather of heroic but misguided resistance at great personal cost. Fortunately after almost a lifetime, the penny dropped and some degree of serenity followed. And this is from a CATHOLIC website.

Are the cretins in the Curia plugged into any of this or do they just babble on, serving up the same old mixture time and again.

the separation of sex from gender. This separation is at the root of the distinctions proposed between various “sexual orienta-tions” which are no longer defined by the sexual difference between male and female, and can then assume other forms, determined solely by the individual, who is seen as radically autonomous. Further, the concept of gender is seen as dependent upon the subjective mindset of each person, who can choose a gender not corresponding to his or her biological sex, and therefore with the way others see that person (transgenderism).

And don't miss the implicit condemnation of LGBTQ+ contained in the above paragraph.

The separation of sex from gender indeed. "radically autonomous", "subjective mindset", "choose a gender etc." - what world are these people living in? You have a God-given mickey, use it. Make more babies - souls to be harvested by the Lord in due course. I grew up with this stuff. I thought they'd have grown out of it since.

What counts is the absolutely free self-determination of each individual and the choices he or she makes according to the circumstances of each relationship of affectivity.

This is the swinging gender, changes with the wind. Nothing stable here.

It strikes me as I read through it that this is an attempted defence of the Creator which just flies in the face of his creation. It is vital for this gang to show that God has nothing to do with this sex/gender dissonance. It is purely the subjective (and erroneous) creation of the individual.

Who actually wrote this stuff? I was inclined to wonder about Benedict, but it is sufficiently illiterate to rule him out. Then there is the Cardinal and the Archbishop who signed it. Useful idiots?

It reads like the shit we would have regurgitated in the diocesan exam had we the vocabulary in those conforming and repressive days of yore. It might have got you a pass in that exam but certainly in no other.

Mind you, it has also taken refuge in throwing in areas of pastoral agreement (non-discrimination, dignity of human person, etc) to give it some pretence of reasonableness.

And then it goes overboard in its listing and praise of female attributes. That might be all very well for the purpose of this particular document. But just read the two paragraphs below in the light of the church's assertion that it is not appropriate to ordain women.

A further positive development in anthropological understanding also present in writing on gender has centred on the values of femininity. For ex-ample, women’s ‘capacity for the other’ favours a more realistic and mature reading of evolving situations, so that “a sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society”. This is a contribution that enriches human relationships and spiritual values “beginning with daily relationships between people”. Because of this, society owes a significant debt to the many women “who are involved in the various areas of education extending well beyond the family: nurseries, schools, universities, social service agencies, parishes, associations and movements”.

Women have a unique understanding of reality. They possess a capacity to endure adversity and “to keep life going even in extreme situations” and hold on “tenaciously to the future”. This helps explain why “wherever the work of education is called for, we can note that women are ever ready and willing to give themselves generously to others, especially in serving the weakest and most defenceless. In this work they exhibit a kind of affective, cultural and spiritual motherhood which has inestimable value for the development of individuals and the future of society. At this point, how can I fail to mention the witness of so many Catholic women and Religious Congregations of women from every continent who have made education, particularly the education of boys and girls, their principal apostolate?”

These sound to me like an excellent recommendation for the ordination of any woman who wishes to put them forward.

I'm sort of running out of steam here and the document tends to be very repetitive when it's not introducing new outrageous material or papering over the cracks with pastoral truisms.

So I'll just leave you with a few more paragraphs, with minimum comment, to keep your blood pressure at its present level for a few moments longer.

In this understanding of things, the view of both sexuality identity and the family become subject to the same ‘liquidity’ and ‘fluidity’ that characterize other aspects of post-modern culture, often founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants, or momentary desires provoked by emotional impulses and the will of the individual, as opposed to anything based on the truths of existence.

These ideas are the expression of a widespread way of thinking and acting in today’s culture that confuses “genuine freedom with the idea that each individual can act arbitrarily as if there were no truths, values and principles to provide guidance, and everything were possible and permissible”

in cases where a person’s sex is not clearly defined, it is medical professionals who can make a therapeutic intervention. In such situations, parents cannot make an arbitrary choice on the issue, let alone society. Instead, medical science should act with purely therapeutic ends, and intervene in the least invasive fashion, on the basis of objective parameters and with a view to establishing the person’s constitutive identity.

Clearly the term "therapeutic" here is intended to be a divinely loaded one.

The process of identifying sexual identity is made more difficult by the fictitious constract (sic) known as “gender neuter” or “third gender”, which has the effect of obscuring the fact that a person’s sex is a structural determinant of male or female identity. Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of “intersex” or “transgender”, lead to a masculinity or feminity (sic) that is ambiguous, even though (in a self-contradictory way), these concepts themselves actually presuppose the very sexual difference that they propose to negate or supersede. This oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative’ display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks’, and one which, in fact, ignores the suffering of those who have to live situations of sexual indeterminacy. Similar theories aim to annihilate the concept of ‘nature’, (that is, everything we have been given as a pre-existing foundation of our being and action in the world), while at the same time implicitly reaffirming its existence.

Wow, "constract" and "feminity", they haven't even proof read the damn thing.

The dialogue between Faith and Reason, “if it does not want to be reduced to a sterile intellectual exercise, it must begin from the present concrete situation of humanity and upon this develop a reflection that draws from the ontological-metaphysical truth”.

They should have listened to themselves on this one.

Further reading:

Tina Beattie's instant response.

A potentially damaging document.

Ángela Ponce

THE GRAND JURY REPORT

I have just read the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on child sex abuse in the Catholic church in the State of Pennsylvania. I have read the main report which runs to just over 300 pages, and skimmed the rest.

It is a disgusting document, the more so because it is a report by ordinary people who don't mince their words. Their outrage is palpable. The language is simple and direct and, as well as making the report very readable - if you have the stomach for it - increases its impact.

If that seems hard to understand, think about Julianne. She was taught without question that priests are superior to other adults, even superior to her own parents - because "they are God in the flesh." So when one of these flesh gods put his fingers in her vagina, who was she going to tell? Julianne was 14 when she was assaulted; now she's almost 70.

If that is not fairly direct language, I don't know what is. The point being discussed there is why it takes many of those abused so long to come forward and why the law should facilitate them when they do.

The style throughout is more like a conversation than a report. It is very direct and economical but no punches are pulled along the way.

Many readers are reported to have been upset at the sexual abuse passages. I found myself maybe less so. We here have been through so much of this. I was more upset by the reaction of the authorities than the abuse itself.

The report picks out a few examples of abusers from each diocese and retails their history in detail, reproducing original documents, most of which had been stored in secret archives until they were subpoenaed by the grand jury.

A summary version of every abuser is given in an appendix which runs to another 569 pages.

Morgan Costello

I couldn't help feeling I'd like to see a full report, on the lines of their examples, on Morgan Costello - his abusing but also the reactions of his superiors, his use of God and the little black book, his shielding by civil and canonical lawyers, his eventual defrocking, his subsequent accommodation by the diocese, his attempted trial, his death and why his funeral was private and the location of his grave not known.

Like many of the priests in the grand jury report he had direct access to altar boys, except in his initial assignment to the Cenacle convent in Killiney where we were under the wing of Mother Ross, God Bless her.

A narrow escape perhaps.