Tickled
pink by Pope Francis, Kenny revealed last week that he had invited the
Pontiff to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families in 2018.
And, said
the Dear Leader (our fella), ‘should he decide to accept my invitation I
assure him that the Government would respond appropriately and make all
the arrangements to treat him in a proper and respectful manner as
befits his position as head of the Catholic Church.’
Isn’t
that nice?
The Catholic Taoiseach of one of the most ancient and loyal
countries of the Catholic world reasserting the close solidarity that
has ever existed between Ireland and Rome!
In doing so, pious Mr Kenny, with a papal knighthood around the corner, accomplished a masterstroke of skill and perseverance.
He
demonstrated to the secular world that ‘Ireland remains deeply
Christian and mostly Catholic in spirit and practice,’ as Jean Blanchard
said in a different context years ago.
But,
hang on a sec!
Stall that digger!
Are we talking about the same Enda
who played Nintendo on his mobile phone during an audience with Pope
Benedict XVI?
Yep, but that was in 2012 when
he was an admirer and very close partner of Labour Party infidels – the
chaps with no invisible means of support – and for whom the Bishop of
Rome, Vicar of Christ and head of the Roman Catholic Church was nothing
more than a boring old fart in a skirt.
‘Dysfunctional’
At
that time, Labourites exhibited a studenty anti-clericalism which had
an infecting influence on easily distracted FG ministers who went on to
suffer from what the medical profession (including Dr Leo Varadkar, of
course) might describe as halitosis of the intellect.
Government
anti-clericalism reached a state of very strong emotion as the world
and his wife blasted Catholic institutions and clerics for failing to
safeguard children from sexual abuse.
Alleged Catholic power and
influence in all aspects of public and political life was attacked: the
most dramatic manifestation of which was the decision taken in 2011 by
Kenny, Gilmore, Quinn, Coveney, Burton and pals to close Ireland’s
embassy to the Holy See.
Curiously, the decision
was depicted as having nothing to do with the Government’s criticism on
the Catholic Church but for what Kenny disingenuously said were
‘cost-cutting reasons.’
Earlier, Kenny had described the Vatican
hierarchy as ‘elite, dysfunctional and narcissistic.’
In
response the Vatican withdraw the Papal Nuncio, a move that was
followed by the Government’s decision to close the Irish embassy.
Kenny
and his Labour chums took the line that the closure would be widely
appreciated and that it would reinforce the Coalition’s electoral
prospects in the new ‘secularist’ Ireland.
They were wrong!
Step too far
A
savage political storm erupted.
It involved eighty-three senators and
TDs (including some from Labour) who lambasted Kenny for his
miscalculation.
Yes, there was support for his
censure of the Vatican’s failure to punish bishops who turned a blind
eye to child abuse, but closing the embassy and cutting off diplomatic
links with Rome was a different kettle of fish.
It did not go down well
with the Irish people and was seen as a step too far.
Ireland’s
connection with Rome goes back to the time of Saint Patrick and
although Kenny declared that breaking off relations with the Vatican was
part of an economic belt-tightening exercise, nobody believed him.
As
far as the plain people of Ireland were concerned, limp excuses for an
over-the-top, badly thought-out tactic did not excuse a snub to the Holy
See.
At the time, Charlie Flanagan TD, chairman
of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, desperately tried to salvage
something from the debacle by persisting with the myth that the closure
was based on economic arguments and that it would be reviewed once
Ireland experienced an upturn.
Happily, after
three years, and on the supposition that the Catholic Church had learned
its lesson, Kenny performed an excruciating U-turn and re-opened the
diplomatic mission to the Vatican.
Run by just one person, according to
Kenny it focuses on ‘international development’ – of all things.
And,
in an attempt to save face, Fine Gael tried to link the election of
people-friendly Pope Francis to the decision to re-open the Embassy.
Nobody
swallowed the bait with the result that Kenny’s country boy effort at
international politics led to the perception that his Government had
closed the embassy in the belief that it would be a popular act and then
reopened it thinking it would also be a popular act – which was a
boorish way to run a diplomatic service.
Fall from grace
But
a God-fearing electorate, whose existence was ignored as much by the
Labour Party as by Fine Gael, justly punished the two parties for their
sins in the recent general election.
The Blueshirts lost 26 seats and
now, in order to stay in power, a mortified Kenny is dependent on a
ragbag collection of independents and the remnants of a peed-off Fianna
Fáil party that regularly submits itself to sewer crawling in support of
FG policies.
Nor did God and the electorate
overlook Labour!
The party was practically wiped out and, in a
spectacular fall from grace, its leader Joan Burton lost the top job.
Coincidentally, in the Great Flood of 2015, she literally lost her seat
when she toppled from a canoe during a political photo-shoot.
She ended
up in the Shannon.
The Embassy closure, the
attack on the Pontiff and on Catholic culture did not constitute Fine
Gael’s finest hour, and one commentator chose to depict it as a dogfight
between popes and dopes.
Did Kenny gain any knowledge or wisdom from the ludicrous and humiliating fiasco?
To
judge by the weasel words, acrimony and rancour currently being
engendered by his latest wheeze, the pathetic so-called Citizens’
Assembly on abortion, he doesn’t learn from failure.
After
Archbishop Martin declared that the taking of a life, at whatever
stage, is ‘gravely, morally wrong,’ one of Kenny’s bright young things,
Kate O’Connell, TD, denounced the archbishop for ‘getting involved in
women’s health issues.’ His ideas were ‘not in any way relevant,’ she
primly remarked.
‘They (the Catholic Church)
are entitled to their opinions, but I don’t put any weight in them ...
It is the same as asking my four-year-old ...We as legislators should
not be following the preachings of leaders of faith, in this case the
leader of the Catholic Church,’ she said.
Oh
dear!
We’ve been here before.
Despite Ms O’Connell’s appalling syntax
and nastiness, there’s a dull familiarity about it all –a mixture of
Workers Party-Labour-Fine Gael intolerance that’s compounded by Kenny’s
failure to recognise that one does not get different results by doing
the same thing over and over again. Sad!