Cardinal’s call - Church must be careful

“I hope that everyone who believes that the right to life is fundamental will make their voice heard in a reasonable, but forthright, way to their representatives,” Cardinal Seán Brady stated in his Christmas message. “No government has the right to remove that right from an innocent person.”

As the Government is currently preparing legislation to give effect to the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in the X case judgment, the cardinal’s comments sounded ominously like a call to political arms, especially when he went on to criticise the Government’s failure to prioritise the elimination of child poverty.

No fair-minded person could legitimately criticise any message calling for the protection of the innocent, or the need for children to be society’s paramount concern.

“My hope is that the year ahead will see the relationship between faith and public life in our country move beyond the sometimes negative, exaggerated caricatures of the past,” the Cardinal stressed.

He and some of his colleagues should be particularly careful that this does not take on the appearance of a political diversion to take attention from the Church’s own criminal failings that were highlighted in relation to children during the past year.