Our straight talking Lancashire lass takes a sideways look at the daily news.
Trouble in the Vatican. Again.
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Does the name ‘Cardinal Keith O’Brien’ mean anything to you? It should. He is the top Catholic Cardinal in the UK, and one of the most vocal people against gay marriage.
Cardinal O’Brien today announced his resignation after allegations of sexual abuse of four young priests during the 1908s surfaced.
I’ll repeat that. The country’s foremost anti-gay-marriage voice, one of the most powerful men in the UK Catholic church, has been accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour towards other men. Hmmmm….
He is also a supporter of abolishing the celibacy rule in priests, and believes they should be able to marry. But this is beside the point.
O’Brien is denying the allegations, of course. They may be true, they may not. But that’s not all…
The Vatican is currently fighting allegations of an underground gay network, the members of which would regularly meet for orgies across Rome and in Vatican City. This has left them ‘prone to blackmail’. Is this true? I don’t know, but would many be surprised if it is?
It also highlights the huge disconnect with everyday Catholics who are just living their lives as best they can, and the powers that be in Rome.
The church clearly needs to buck up. It needs to address real issues like the role of women, the global recession and climate change – events that are affecting everyone.
Religion has its place in the world. People of all faiths do a lot of good in God’s name, including Catholics. But, if these allegations are true, the behaviour of some of these men, these ‘church leaders’, gives ordinary Catholics a bad name.
The Vatican needs to sort its house out. It must be less secretive, and I don’t think losing some of their vast institutional power and oodles of money would go amiss. Then maybe, just maybe they could start to claim the moral high ground again.
But right now it seems that The Vatican is rotten to the core.
