A bishop resigns - The first of many more resignations

ONE of the ragged comfort blankets wrapped around politicians dumped by the electorate, forced to resign or just fade into harmless obscurity is Enoch Powell’s crushing phrase “all political lives ... end in failure”.

It seems as if a whole generation of Irish Catholic churchmen may have to settle for whatever comfort Powell’s blanket offers. They may have to leave their bishops’ palaces held in ignominy by those of us who cannot accept that they have any future role to play in our public or spiritual lives because of the evil collusion and appalling abuses related by the Ryan and Murphy reports and the roles they played in this Irish holocaust.

The acceptance yesterday, by Pope Benedict, of the resignation of the Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray was inevitable and before very long more he may have the company of other members of the hierarchy.