Church in crisis - A legacy in great need of rejuvenation

TODAY, as we celebrate St Patrick the man — or men — who brought Christianity to these islands, his Catholic successors preside over a discredited and imploding church.

By their delusion, arrogance, deceit and collusion they show time and time again that they regard canon law as the primary arbiter of right or wrong. They may bring the centuries-long commitment of so many generations of Irish people to Catholicism to an end. They may achieve what persecution and repression failed to.

This week’s revelations about Cardinal Seán Brady — that he was involved in a process to gather information about the notorious Norbertine paedophile Brendan Smyth in 1975 but did not report Smyth’s rampages to the gardaí — were, as we have said, so very disappointing and disheartening for the thousands of Catholics struggling to sustain a connection with the institution that seems to constantly challenge the three great tenets of their beliefs — faith, hope and charity.