They think they’re superior to ordinary people

I listened, open-mouthed, to the defence of Cardinal Brady’s position by Msgr Maurice Dooley (RTÉ, March 15).

As he spoke, I waited (in vain) for him to make some remark that would show he had some sense of the common good.

I can only conclude this blind adherence to a kind of Spanish Inquisition Catholicism is based on some kind of naive belief that they (people like Dooley and Brady) are superior to the common man or woman, and that the protection of their positions of power at the expense of innocent children can be justified by some warped sense of right and wrong. Msgr Dooley clearly believes that so-called canon law in some way overrules civil law.