A less strident form of Catholicism

PEOPLE of a certain age will remember, though many have deliberately forgotten, how strident some Catholic churchmen were in the pronouncements they made about issues that had little or nothing to do with religious life or faith.

One, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid — who else? — tried to assert clerical authority over our national broadcaster RTÉ because its headquarters were in his diocese. Those days, and that confidence, are in the past.

There are occasional reminders though, of that unfortunate hubris, but it is a relatively new phenomenon that the hierarchy quickly distances Catholicism from the less socially acceptable declarations by its clergy.