A parish priest has blamed paedophile clerics and how they were handled by the church authorities for doing more damage than secularism to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
A report in yesterday’s Irish Times stated:
Fr John Walsh said that while secularism “undermines” religious ministry, the worst attacks to the church came from inside the church itself.
“The church can come under attack from outside. In our own times, secularism undermines the church’s mission,” said Fr Walsh.
“But the most insidious attacks against the church come from inside itself. For the last several decades we have seen the damage that has been done to the church in Ireland by paedophile members, particularly priests and religious, and by the way church authorities in Ireland have dealt with them.”
Fr Walsh, the parish priest of Buncrana, Co Donegal, was speaking during an open-air Mass to mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Catholic martyr Fr James Hegarty, beheaded in 1711 by the British army.
The friar, parish priest of the locality, was betrayed by his sister’s husband and their two sons, who got £50 for being informants.
More at:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0531/1224298147585.html