Pastor's Corner: Fr. George Rutler on the death of Catholicism in Ireland

http://www.stmichaelnyc.com ^ | May 30, 2015 | Fr. George W. Rutler

[NKP_Vet]

Amen.

[miele man]

Fr. Rutler has one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever had the privilege to read or hear.

[sockmonkey]

Thanks for posting. Loved “when Ambassadors for Christ become nothing more than goodwill ambassadors.”

[Jeff Chandler]

ambassadors for Christ become nothing more than goodwill ambassadors

[Ouchthatonehurt]

This is not just an Irish issue. It’s a global revolution.
The multitudes are yawning through it, but our kids will have to deal with the rancid mess.

[twister881]

Bloody pagans. Obviously, St. Patrick missed more than a few snakes.

[miss marmelstein]

Can that man write, or what? When I was a full time parishioner at St. Agnes in NYC, I was lucky to hear his sermons on Sunday.

Ireland is a mess.

[mosesdapoet]

$17 million spent in promoting yes vote on Irish fake marriage referendum. All articles on this subject posted so far do suggest US groups were supporting and financing this travesty. But have not identified who and which they are.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

John Paul would have gone to Ireland personally and led them away from this position. The present “pope” was A.W.O.L. because he supports Christianity in the same manner as our “president” supports Freedom. We have weak leaders, and the sheep stray. The predators are ready.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Did the much-publicized clerical sex abuse scandals have anything to do with destroying the RCC in Eire? The formidable father Rutledge dissembles. The RCC has this coming. Frankly, given the horrors of the child sex abuse scandal in Ireland and elsewhere, the real miracle is that the hot tempered Irish don’t have priests dangling from every lamppost in the country.

[wideawake]

Read the whole piece:

The vote was less in favor of inversion and more in hostility to a Church whose Jansenism and clericalism had incubated corruption and lassitude.

[ConservativeDude]

What happened in Ireland was not sudden.”

So true. The church has been dead there for 20 or 30 years at least. This is the a manifestation of that.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Like I say, he dissembles. Dancing around the horrors of the Irish sex abuse scandals will hardly ingratiate himself with former Catholics, like me. The whole reason I left the RCC is the clergy's inability to meaningfully confront their homosexual problem. I'm sure I'm like my cousins across the pond in that respect. Their vote against the Catholic Church and for "gay marriage" makes perfect sense to me. I would certainly have homosexuality out in the open where I can keep an eye on it and protect my kids from it than to have it skulking in the sacristy.

I highly recommend the Irish film "Calvary." Watch that flick to understand the mood of the Irish. It's not pretty. Lots of bristling anger toward the clergy. I share that anger. Denying that Irish anger toward the clergy is righteous, as Rutler does, is the very reason that the Church lost Ireland.

[NKP_Vet]

Father Rutler didn’t dance around anything. Your comments are typical for lapsed Catholics. Always find the worse in the faith and ignore the good.

[wideawake]

That's not dissembling in the slightest: he says flat out that the vote was a protest against the corruption of the Church in Ireland.

How much more directly could he put it?

[Sherman Logan]

Perhaps instead of a generic statement against corruption he could have specifically mentioned the sins of child sexual abuse and, far worse, its coverup and enabling.

All to “protect the Church.” That worked well, didn’t it?

This is what happens to any organization when “the good of the organization” becomes more important than the reason the institution supposedly exists.

Protecting the Church became more important than protecting children. Christ said something about millstones and oceans. There are probably more than a few bishops down there now.

Similarly, protecting our public schools has become so important it must be done even at the cost of destroying the lives of the children they supposedly serve.

In the late 19th, the French Army sent an innocent Captain Dreyfuss to Devil’s Island to “protect the Army.” That didn’t work out well, either.

As I said, happens to any institution. But not every institution claims to be serving God.

[Kolokotronis]

My father's family was/is Irish Catholic. I was brought up going to an Irish Catholic school run by the ironically named Sisters of Mercy. I have cousins who still live in Free Ireland. They told me that the vote was a roar of defiance against the Irish Church, not only because of the sex abuse scandals and coverup, but equally against what was in fact and for centuries, a ecclesiastical terror regime run by hierarchs in league with priests and nuns (and until well into the last century, the English crown). That system survived the trip here to America. I very well remember as a first grader being told that if we ate a ham sandwich on Friday, and died before confesssion, we'd go straight to hell. If we missed mass on Sunday and got run over on our way to school on Monday, straight to hell! I remember one Irish nun telling me in front of the whole class that my Orthodox grandparents were "damned to eternal fire" unless they "submitted to the Vicar of Christ on Earth"! I was 7 years old.

Any wonder the Church is loathed in Ireland and the Irish people voted the way they did?

[Alex Murphy]

My father's family was/is Irish Catholic. I was brought up going to an Irish Catholic school run by the ironically named Sisters of Mercy. I have cousins who still live in Free Ireland. They told me that the vote was a roar of defiance against the Irish Church, not only because of the sex abuse scandals and coverup, but equally against what was in fact and for centuries, a ecclesiastical terror regime run by hierarchs in league with priests and nuns (and until well into the last century, the English crown). That system survived the trip here to America....Any wonder the Church is loathed in Ireland and the Irish people voted the way they did?

Given all that, how would you interpret the actions of Archbishop John Hughes and the behavior of the Irish Catholic immigrants in 19th century New York?

[Gluteus Maximus]

He dissembles because the word "corruption" can (and usually does) mean financial shenanigans of one kind or another. That's not the kind of "corruption" we're talking about here, and Rutler knows it.

Just to be clear, what we're talking about it is homosexual pedophiles ensconced in their privileged positions in the Irish clergy molesting, raping, sodomizing and otherwise abusing Irish children.

Reading Rutler, you'd think we're talking about a priest or two with a gambling problem skimming from the collection plate. But of course the reality of the crimes of the Irish clergy is so heinous is infinitely worse. It would be like calling the Holocaust "political oppression."

Thus, Rutler dissembles, and indeed is engaged in the very minimization and even outright denial of the realities of the horrors inflicted on children by the "celibate" Irish clergy that lies at the very root of the problem.

[Gluteus Maximus]

I agree that I’m rather typical for a lapsed Catholic. Rather like the 60% of formerly zealously Catholic Ireland. If I may say, you’re rather typical as well. Never willing to look the real problem in the eye and insisting on long term solutions that might work. In short, the Pollyanna Party.