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You're very suspicious, Will aren't you? And why not - the phrase "mental reservation has no place in covering up evil" is full of loopholes. That said, it's still needed for when the Nazis come looking for the Jews.

Bishops Walsh and Drennan seem determine to stay and adamant of their innocence. Walsh in particular gave a fairly detailed rebuttal. I think he did a huge job in Ferns and deserves the opportunity to give his side.

McCamley

The Brits have this tradition where a government minister falls on their sword for the sake of their departments honour. Even if they're not personally at fault, they're expected to resign. Because the buck has to stop somewhere.

(At least they used to have that tradition. New Labour and the Tories. Possibly the best arguments for a United Ireland. After the DUP.)

I think some people want the Bishops to follow that standard. Then they can defend their personal honor. They might get a fairer hearing.

GV

I don't disagree, Graham, but if you're named in a report as behaving appropriately (Bishop of Galway) while someone else is inexcusable (Limerick) you might feel entitled to state that you don't have to resign. I haven't read the report closely enough to know if their view is correct.

If they weren't celibate they could pretend they wanted to spend more time with their families like British politicians.

Or would that be a mental reservation?

"In response to the many concerns raised about the use of 鈥淢ental Reservation鈥�, we wish to categorically state that it has no place in covering up evil." (Bishops' statement of yesterday. Note the split infinitive. Who writes these things?)
Sorry, lads. This won't do at all at all. It's just another example of "mental reservation". It says all too clearly that mental reservation is allowed when you don't think you're using it to cover up evil. You have shown that you can't be trusted to know when you're covering up evil. And a lie is a lie is a lie. If you can't come up with an outright rejection of the practice you should all resign. Nobody will ever take you seriously again. The snivelling of Eamonn Walsh and Martin Drennan is beneath contempt.
Here, from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, is the old Catholic doctrine of mental reservation that a Catholic Doctor of Divinity and Bishop told Sunday Sequence he had never heard of before the Murphy Report:

The bishops of Ireland today apologized for sexual abuse revealed in the Murphy Report. Their Lordships should also apologize for Vatican II abuse, which was inflicted on all Irish Catholics, and goes largely hand in hand with the former. The most criticized bishop in the report is the ultra-progressive Archbishop Dermot Ryan (deposed from Clonliffe for teaching modernism by John Chalres McQuaid) who presided over the wholesale vandalism of Church patrimony, beautiful High Altars were "reordered" (invariably wrecked), fiddlebacks were replaced with bland poleysters, laypeople were allowed liturgical functions utterly unnatural to their state, the Penny Catechism was replaced with liberal guff, the ancient Latin Liturgy with its High English transliteration was deposed in favour of a bland verbiage in the vulgar tongue. It's no surprise that the Report concluded that "Archbishops Ryan and McNamara do not seem to have ever applied the canon law". All this iconoclastic suicide was part of the postconciliar rebellion and backlash against the supposed 'legalism' of the pre-conciliar Church and its 'oppressive' moral prescriptions. "The Catholic Church" is not to blame for any of this, but we do we have to blame the trendy post-Vatican II bishops for this awful child abuse, so contrary to Pope Pius V who demanded that child abusers be burned at the stake.

The impact of "the Vatican" on the Irish Church is over-rated. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Irish bishops pay only nominal felicity to Rome, and in practice ignore well over 90% of Church rescripts. For example, there are only five parishes in Ireland that offer a weekly Traditional Mass but the Vatican demands that it be celebrated in every parish. Not a single diocese in Ireland has implemented Redemptionis Sacramentum or much else indeed besides. Still even as bad as the postconciliar priests are, it would not be impertinent to point that according to the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report of 2002, around 320,000 people were raped in childhood, about 4 per cent of child rapes have been perpetrated by the clergy.

The Dublin Report did not conclude that Canon Law impeded the prosecution of clerics, indeed it was never even applied. As Chapter 4 of the Report noted, after Vatican II there was a 鈥渃ollapse of respect for canon law [CIC] in archdiocesan circles 鈥� offenders were neither prosecuted nor made accountable within the church鈥�. The 1917 CIC 鈥渄ecreed deprivation of office and/or benefice, or expulsion from the clerical state for such offences鈥�. A bishop who heard of an abuse allegation was canonically required to investigate it, and expel the priest from the priesthood if found guilty in a canonical trial (which was to happen parallel and independently of a civil prosection). The anti-'legalistic' mindset after the Second Vatican Council lead the post-conciliar Archbishops to ignore the CIC and only two canonical trials ever took place in the period under reivew (both were in the 1990s) and in spite of severe opposition from Monsignor Sheehy, the archdiocesan 鈥渆xpert鈥� in canon law and ultra-liberal, who 鈥渃onsidered that the penal aspects of that law should rarely be invoked鈥�.

Veteran commentator/journalist/economist Joe Foyle made an interesting observation on the Studies blog about Diarmuid Martin鈥檚 remarks on Prime Time about the collapse of diocesan severity in the 1960s:

"It seems that around the 1960s a major policy change emerged. In line with the secular anti-punishment mood of the times, it was decided that the defrocking sanction was inhumane and that, instead, rehabilitation should be attempted to enable offenders to continue to work as priests. The policy change backfired when offenders re-offended. That hurt children and blighted lives gravely, cost Dioceses and Congregations hundreds of millions, evoked 鈥榗over-up鈥� allegations that undermined Bishops and the priesthood in general, and ushered in our current era of Catholic laity who are effectively priestless."

The priests who abused us were all pre-conciliar priests. In fact, they used pre-Vatican II traditions to perpetrate the abuse.

In 1974 when I started Junior Seminary, the Order of priests who ran it were told to have one daily Mass for the whole community, clergy and students, in the main chapel upstairs.

However, the concession was made that priests who still wanted to say their daily Mass in one of the crypt chapels below with one altar server, could still do so.

Three of the priests chose to continue to say their daily Masses alone in the crypt with one boy serving for them. It was here that they abused these boys, before, during and after Mass.

A list went up each week in the refectory of which boys were serving the crypt Masses for that week. When your name was on that list, you knew what you were in for. It was terrifying and sickening.

We were fed to these monsters! (Fed by a pre-Vatican II church.)

We've had to listen to traditionalists pin the blame of all the church's woes on Vatican II and those who took it seriously and who tried to implement it. Now, they are trying to pin the blame of clergy sexual abuse on post-Conciliar clergy too. Its vomit worthy.

Practically every priest who was dragged through the courts stated in their defence that THEY were abused at junior seminary, long before Vatican II was ever even thought of.

My first junior seminary opened in the late 1800's. Only God will ever know how many children were sexually abused in those crypts over all those years.

William, you are to be congratulated for producing thread after thread on this issue, even at the risk of being labelled anti-Catholic. And to the rest of the bloggers on here, I hope you continue to post your true feelings and comments on this issue. I know only too well that you too will be accused of being sectarian, anti-Catholic etc.. I've been there. Please do not be intimidated by the Catholic bigots on here who are still chosing to live in the ghettos which exist within their own warped heads.

We have the unvarnished reality of what happened, the simple objective truth. But RJB we also have people who want to take that and use it for their own purposes. We have traddies who want to blame Vatican II. We have liberals who want to blame anyone who wears a cassock. And we do have anti-Catholics who are motivated to inflict as much damage on the Church as they can.

Oh yes, another thing, such ghetto mentality Catholics will also come across as all sweetness and light, genuinely truth seeking and ever so fair minded.

When the truth is that, up until the Dublin Report, they viciously attacked the abused and those who tried to help them (Willie Walsh and Diarmud Martin), they were against the Ferns Report bringing this "unvarnished reality" to light, tried to claim that this is all terrible because some people might falsely claim compensation, and did everything possible to avoid facing the reality that their church contained great evil.

'This won't do at all at all. It's just another example of "mental reservation".'

Now there's a good point. How do we know that they weren't committing an act of mental reservation when they said that they couldn't use mental reservation?

If it wasn't so serious it would be funny.

GV