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I have some sympathy with this man. His church has a rule which placed him in an impossible situation. No man, or woman, should be forced into a celibate life unless that is their calling from God. Compulsory, universal, celibacy is unbiblical and unnatural. How many other priests have taken wives because they are lonely, are in need of a "helpmeet", are facing sexual temptations, etc? I hope the RC church will overturn this appallingly unhuman rule and allow its priests to marry and raise their own families.

So I blame the RC church for much of this. Father Cleary cannot escape blame too, however. He lived a lie. He deceived his followers. He left a so who is confused about his life and his place in the world. That is a terrible thing to have done.

I heard the Sunday Sequence discussion about this film and a lecturer from UU called Eilish Rooney would not accept that the priest was a hypocrite. Of course he was a hypocrite. I don't think his son would deny that his father lived a deceptive double life.

Will I just left a comment at 6.06 pm and the time on this site says I left it at 5.06 pm. I know there are some flaws in the system to be sorted out so I thought I would let you know.

Which God did was Michael Reid a fan of?
prod or taig?

a

Allybalder that comment is both ignorant and blasphemous.

jovial one

Why not answer the question?
I think you are the one being sectarian and ignorant!

ptl
for your info
We can say what we like about any god!

In January 2008, a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the Government would consider the repeal of the blasphemy laws during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. The Government is to consult with the Church of England and other churches before reaching a decision. The move followed a letter written to The Daily Telegraph by leading figures including Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, which urged that the laws be abandoned.

In March 2008 Peers voted for the laws to be abandoned.

Or indeed Allybalder you could have added Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart etc etc

and maybe - shhh - Leslie Hale?

The preacher, who said that he had left Ireland because he had been called by God to the United States, had repeatedly denied any impropriety.

He claimed that he had been the victim of "black propaganda".

allybalder asks, which God was Michael Reid a fan of? prod or taig?

Given that it was about Michael Reid and not God, I don't actually think it was a blasphemous statement.

The trouble Christianity has is that there are too many of its leaders creating God in their own image, and it doesn't do any of us any good.

pete said
Given that it was about Michael Reid and not God, I don't actually think it was a blasphemous statement.

My point is that there is no such thing as blasphemy !

Just for fun
Can anyone suggest a statement which would have been considered blasphemous in the past?
Everlasting life for the best offering!

allybalder,

You cannot offer everlasting life as a prize! Surely that is that greatest blasphemy!

OK - alternative prize - forty virgins instead.

Really thoughtful contributions to the thread on Michael Cleary ... well done.

Inquiring minds want to know. Did he receive last rites? Did he give confession? Is he now in heaven, hell, or purgatory (assuming it is still open for business.)

jovialPTL #1; the Catholic church does not require anyone to live a celibate life...unless they voluntarily choose to become a priest or nun because they feel it is their calling. (BTW, I am not Catholic myself so I'm not defending them because they are my own type.)

Now I symathize with you and I understand your position. It was explained clearly by America's Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts around 1975 (possibly before you were born) when he said of the Pope at the time; "No play-a da game, no make-a da rules." :-) Of course, this being the last straw it cost him his job...but he did say it.

Having watched the programme, I would say that Michael Cleary鈥檚 hypocrisy is beyond dispute. He fits the definition to perfection: preaching one principle 听鈥� celibacy 听鈥� but practising its opposite, happily living a double life for 26 years. Indeed, his case highlights 3 common Irish weaknesses, North and South, Catholic and Protestant: hypocrisy; excessive obedience to authority; and lack of courage to speak out publicly and express an honest opinion if it differs from 鈥榯he official version鈥�. So Cleary tells a group of young girls in a classroom to make sure that if they have sex before marriage, their boyfriends use condoms, while at the same time he condemns contraception in public. The film was packed with similar examples.

Nor should we underestimate the seriousness of hypocrisy. It is surely one of the greatest of mora crimes:

鈥淗e does not believe who does not live according to his belief鈥�-Thomas Fuller.

鈥淲e have two kinds of morality side by side:听one which we preach but do not practice and another which we practice but seldom preach听鈥� Bertrand Russell.

鈥淲hat makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core 鈥� Hannah Arendt

鈥淗ypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty鈥� 鈥� Raisa Gorbachev.

However, Jovial PTL, it is clear that you are speaking from an evangelical perspective and regard the Catholic Church as Jesus did the Pharisees, whom he called hypocrites. But, let鈥檚 face it, there are plenty of hypocrites among the Protestant sects as well. Religious belief in general does rather lend itself to this charge. Sex scandals are not the sole prerogative of the Catholic Church. And what about money scandals, with evangelicals piling up riches while preaching the anti-wealth message of a Palestinian nomad? Can you get more hypocriotical than that?

Looking at my last post, don't where the question marks for quotations and black diamonds came from or the spelling error: 'practice' instead of 'practise'. The latter was probably in my source which I didn't check properly.The mistakes in some of my postings stare back at me in neon lights (e.g. 'whiff' somewhere became 'wiff' and 'flak' became 'flack'). I hate seeing spelling mistakes but typing thousands of words a day on a computer tends to make you careless with words. There's a debate in itself. Is the computer ruining language?

Hi Brian

First of all this new blog is working reasonably well, but I too have had problems with strange symbols. (and I don't mean religious ones!) It seemed to happen to me when I first wrote in a word processing software package and then copied it into the web-site. I've had no problems when typing straight into the comment box.

Secondly I now find that we are agreeing on a number of points. The W. B. Yeats thread for example and his supposed hocus-pocus poetry and now on the issue of Christianity and hypocrisy. There is indeed a degree of guile associated with the church, Protestant and Catholic, and you are right to point this out. Unfortunately with all our talk of truth, it is this very sin from which we promise deliverance.

So never mind you being careless with words, it's a bigger problem for the church.

The documentary showed that Fr Michael Cleary was highly regarded by the ordinary people of his parish. He was humorous and high-spirited. He was a good communicator and you could see that his parishioners respected his judgment and his guidance.

When he earned that respect, Cleary proved that the celibacy rule is utterly wrong-headed. He did not observe it and he seemed to be better off without it. He was normal and able to appreciate the way of life of the ordinary people that he served.

Sadly, of course, he was trapped by that pointless rule and it made a hypocrite and a liar of him. His failure to acknowledge his own son, even as death was approaching, was an act of selfishness and cowardice. The medieval dogma of the Catholic church corrupted a good man. And his son and his widow have paid the price for that tragedy.

Brian, I completely agree with you about those evangelical tv evangelists who are multimillionaires. It's a disgrace that they make money out of the Gospel. I am not anti-Catholic, by the way. I am a Christian and I know Catholic and Protestant Christians. Merely being a member of ANY church, catholic or protestant, is not what makes a person a Christian. I am concerned to defend biblical truth wherever it is found.I don't know why you are making an anti-Catholic judgment on my comments.

jovialPTL:
fair enough, we shall see. I think it was your reference to the 'rc church' which set me on this path.

Peter:

Thanks for that advice. Hypocrisy, of course, is a universal trait and not confined to churches or even political parties.

The question is: of what kind of hypocrisy was Michael Cleary guilty? Is it simply the type in which you fail to practise what you preach because you give in to temptation and thus disobey the teachings that you believe?

Or is it the type which involves not believing what you say at all? In ancient Greece the original hypocrites were play actors and people who pretended to be pious. In other words, they were liars because they didn't believe what they claimed of themselves.

Did Cleary believe many of the church's teachings at all? If he didn't, then he was a play-actor who didn't apply the same standards to himself as he did to others because he did not fully believe in the church鈥檚 doctrines in the first place. Thus in The Late Show he seemed to reject the use of condons but advocated them to a class of schoolgirls (a semi-private situation).

if the second type is applicable, then he lived a lie, and this was his fault as well as the church's.

Which does raise a general question: how much of what they preach does the average cleric of any religion really believe?

Brian,

It's called the Roman Catholic Church ... I didn't make up the name!

Hi Brian

I like you thoughts on 2 kinds of hypocrisy.

The first kind related to temptation, seems more benign. One can imagine all sorts of people succumbing to this. If it were true of the church, and in my view it can be, then is stands as an indictment of our inability to forgive one another. That would be worrying.

The second kind, that of deliberately misleading people, is a pretty serious charge. I would have hoped that this was not the case.

You then ask, "how much of what they preach does the average cleric of any religion really believe?"

Oh dear! It is a good question.

There is I think a difference between believing what we preach and not measuring up, and deliberately living a lie. There is the possibility that one might lead to humility, and the other to arrogance.

This is one of the reasons christians believe in a day of judgement, with the idea of judgement being much broader than simply, right or wrong. A day of untangling might be a good way to think about it.

quote
There is I think a difference between believing what WE preach and not measuring up,

you're surely not a preacher David??

.

allybalder

David?

petermorrow said this. i.e. me.

No I am not a preacher.

If you prefer, there is, I think, a difference between people believing what they preach and not measuring up, and deliberately living a lie.

Of course the alternative way of understanding this is that we all communicate (preach) something by what we say and how we live.

The point about humility and arrogance remains.

sorry Pete
looked like you were a preacher!
language should be precise

.

and there's more
Preaching and communicating have totally different meanings
Those who believe in 'revealation' preach - the rest of us try to communicate!

.

allybalder

"language should be precise"

I agree, but we're all lax at times.

You drew the conclusion that I was a preacher on the basis of one comment?

There are also those who believe in revelation who try not to preach. Rather we seek to wrestle with the meaning. It ought to drive us to humility.

Allybalder

By this act of testimony, I hereby declare that I am not, not David.

Hi Peter:

I agree that the second type of hypocrisy is worse, and I think Cleary is guilty on this score about at least two of the church鈥檚 doctrines. Clearly, from his talk with the school-girls, he didn鈥檛 believe in its policy on contraception, even though he defended it on TV. Secondly, of course, there is the question of celibacy. When asked on TV how he dealt with his sexuality, he replied 鈥淚 work鈥�. So in public he defended the church鈥檚 celibacy policy while in practice for 26 years he was effectively married and living with his wife and son.

Cleary's hypocrisy and David's act of testimony remind me of the story of Jean Meslier. He was a Catholic priest for 40 years in the late 17th, early 18th centuries in 脡tr茅pigny in France. When he died, there were found in his house three copies of a 600-page manuscript known as his 鈥楾estament鈥� in which he denounces religions as 鈥榠nventions and purely human institutions鈥� and religious belief as 鈥榖ut a castle in the air鈥�. The Christian faith is 鈥榝ounded on uncertainties, contradictions and absurdities鈥�. Christian morality is also attacked for the idea that pleasure is wrong. Half the book argues against belief in a god. The natural order, says Meslier, does not require a sovereign creator since it could be seen as purely matter and motion. The terrifying punishments of hell are 鈥榥o more at bottom than illusions, errors, dreams, fictions and impostures, invented firstly for political ends and ruses, continued by deceivers and imposters鈥�.

Often attributed to Meslier is the statement: "I would like, and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes, I would like the last of the kings to be strangled by the guts of the last priest". Diderot, though, is a more likely source of this remark, which is not found in Meslier鈥檚 鈥楾estament鈥�.

While Cleary is not in the same category of non-believer as Meslier, there was clearly more a hint that he took at least some of his church鈥檚 teachings with a large pinch of salt. The other difference is that Meslier put on record his real opinions, whereas Cleary admitted nothing right to the end.