Measure for measure, the cardinal should go

IT is really hard to comprehend the actions of Cardinal Seán Brady.

Not reporting child abuse to the gardaí because of some canon law is not an excuse that can override the serious nature of his action. He must have known or felt that, surely? I like to think that all actions can be explained if we could but understand the mind of the “actor”.

If I was playing him as an actor in some film, for example, how would I enter into his head and convince myself that my actions were just. Moving a paedophile about and allowing him to carry on working and then not reporting his crimes to the gardaí ... how do you justify those actions in your head? It’s a headache even trying.

In Shakespeare’s, Measure for Measure, a young novice nun, Isabella, becomes the sexual target of an elder statesman Angelo, and so shocked is she by his advances and demands that she speaks the following soliloquy:

“To whom should I complain?

Did I tell this,

Who would believe me?

O perilous mouths,

That bear in them one and the self-same tongue

Either of condemnation or approof,

Bidding the law make curtsey to their will,

Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,

To follow as it draws ...”

Surely Cardinal Brady and his supporters are “bidding the law make curtsey to their will” by saying canon law excuses their actions and by “hooking both right and wrong to the appetite” they merely cherry-pick what to explain away and what to condemn.

The whole of the Catholic Church in Ireland is doing precisely the same, bending and subjugating every law and every word to suit their own will.

But who do we really complain to? Who will help us? When you’re dealing with an organisation that places itself next to God and has laws that it can bend to suit its own actions, you are really dealing with a dictatorship. I believe it’s time to dismantle the Catholic Church in Ireland and the lead must come from the Government.

Jacqueline Cotter

Gortnaclohy

Skibbereen

Co Cork