The penny drops
Blimey. Even Madeleine Bunting gets it.
The Ryan report’s meticulous gathering of evidence over several volumes paints a picture of a system of church and state in Ireland which was horrifically dysfunctional with its combination of sadism and deference…The apologies flooding out yesterday seem too little, too late. And there is still, extraordinarily, denial – ranging from Mary Kenny’s jaunty variety of “I’ve never met a priest who is a paedophile” to the new Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, who praised the courage of the religious orders concerned and seemed to exonerate their reluctance to face the past as “instinctive and quite natural”. It’s a form of wording which, from such an experienced media operator as Nichols, beggars belief.
Well maybe she doesn’t quite get it. At least, I would skip the bit about experienced media operator because it’s more significant and more disgusting that from a sentient human being such as Nichols his form of wording beggars belief. That’s the really shocking part – as it is from all the wrigglers and evaders and deniers and keep our names out of the reporters and no prosecutions for us thank youers. Nichols should be so horrified and aghast that it simply wouldn’t occur to him to put in a good word for the people who committed the horrors or those who let them go on doing it.
But still, Bunting comes closer to getting it than I’ve ever seen her do before.
Never fear! Madders will go back to utterly failing to get it – whatever “it” may be – in short order. In fact, if I may put on my prognosticator hat (It’s very fancy!), I predict that she will write something utterly clueless in her very next editorial…
(In other future news, gravity will continue to suck.)
Absolutely. She’ll be blaming Richard Dawkins for all the problems soon enough.
If Dawkins wasn’t so strident and mean, this child abuse would never have happened.
Mary Kenny being so bad made Mad Bun look good. I wonder if she’ll eventually find the moral and empathetic compass, which steered her right this time, to somehow have been designed by religion (mission statement – compassion) after all.
Ah that raises an interesting point – Karen Armstrong is always informing the world that religion is particularly good at compassion. I wonder if she’s having any second thoughts…
I’m not holding my breath though.
OB – like you, I doubt she is – after all, she’s another one who knows about “true” religion (the compassionate, ‘moral values’, but *not* “touchy-feely” these days sort – a step away from Feagletosh?), of course, not the ‘false’ interpretations that lead to all the nasty stuff…
Andy yes but all the same I wonder if she is wondering…if religion is so good at compassion, why did they never develop any? Why did they go on and on and on, year after year, being cruel and crueler?