Thursday, January 17, 2013

Priests’ association reject anti-Church comments

Best-selling author Marian Keyes has been forced to apologise after suggesting that there should be a “National Throw A Stone At A Priest Day”.

Ms Keyes then posted a message to social networking site Twitter stating: “no matter how ‘nice’ a priest is, no matter how many raffles he runs, he is still a foot soldier for a f*cked-up misogynistic regime”.

Amid a flurry of protest on the site, Ms Keyes later removed the offending message and apologised “unreservedly” for what she described as “an ill-thought-out tweet”.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has rejected the anti-Church tone of much of the recent debate around abortion.

Following Senator Ivana Bacik’s accusation that Catholic bishops opposed legislating for the X case on the basis of “misogyny towards women” and a belief in the “innate deceitfulness of women”, Fr P.J. Madden of the ACP said such suggestions were “inappropriate, obnoxious and seriously objectionable”.

Fr Sean McDonagah added: “I might not agree with every position that the Church has taken on women in recent years but Senator Bacik's comments were appalling. With her [Senator Bacik] and many more there is a deep seated and pervasive bias against Catholicism.”

Fr Madden told The Irish Catholic he believed what lay behind these comments “implies an ignorance at what constitutes the Catholic Church which is generally perceived as being made up of bishops and male clergy, when in fact when we speak on matters like that, in particular on matters of life, we speak on behalf of congregations that are both male and female."

“The negative comments that came out in the presentations to the committee give us an opportunity to state positively once again that however unpopular it might be we are consistent in presenting a moral standard which challenges all of us to respect life and one another,” Fr Madden said.