Madam, – Whether people in Ferns choose to give some money to the diocese is no business of narcissistic entertainers, the professionally aggrieved or nominal Catholics who have not seen the inside of a church for years. I will contribute. Others may not. It is nobody’s business but our own. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – My advice to the Bishop of Ferns is to appoint lay people to key decision-making positions in the diocese, and then ask them how best to meet the diocese’s debts.
Understandably, sexual abuse victims and the general public want to punish bishops whose catastrophic failures compounded the abuse. However, the Catholic Church is not a profit-making corporation with executives on six-figure salaries. The personal income of clergy is modest, and their personal property portfolios non-existent. When victims sued the diocese of Ferns they sued the Catholic community, and the community is going to have to pay one way or the other.
The bishop is giving the people a choice: they can pay directly through contributions, or indirectly, through the sale of property used by the community. The bishop’s mistake is to think that the faithful will settle for a role in making this decision without being granted meaningful participation in the diocese’s governance. The days of “pay up, pray up and shut up” are over! – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Colm Fitzpatrick’s stoic support (March 4th) for the Bishop of Ferns’s call for more “contributions from the laity to defray the cost of compensation to sexual abuse victims” is commendable, if more than a little naive.
Such support seems to reflect a deep spiritual need to be involved in organised religion, whereas to its hierarchy, the Catholic Church is a successful business organisation whose solvency must be maintained at any cost. – Yours, etc,