A key point of the recent UK election was when Labour leader Gordon Brown was caught on microphone describing an elderly voter he'd just met as a bigot.Within hours, he was back in the woman's garden, humbly describing himself to the assembled media as a "penitent sinner" -- though the fact that he'd reportedly spent the entire time inside Gillian Duffy's house trying to persuade her to join him on the doorstep for a photocall didn't exactly do much to dispel the suspicion that this sinner wasn't quite as penitent as he was letting on.
Last week, Sean Brady stepped forward as Ireland's ecclesiastical answer to Gordon Brown. (Not that anyone asked for one, but still.)
Recently exposed for his part in the hushing up of young boys abused by Fr Brendan Smyth in the Seventies, and facing calls for his resignation, the Archbishop of Armagh promptly did a Gordon and described himself as a "wounded healer", before asking for time so that he could "pray, reflect on the Word of God, and discern the will of the Holy Spirit".
Now, as luck would have it, the Almighty seems to have come up with the answer that his representative in Armagh should stay on.
Which is nice.
In some respects, it was the least surprising announcement since Ricky Martin revealed that he was gay.
Most commentators had no doubt that Brady was simply buying time for the furore to die down and would cling on to his post, which means they either had a fast track to the Holy Spirit or simply know a thing or two about human nature.
Either way, the admission by Brady that he wasn't letting his past as a member of the Church's crack Child Silencing squad hold back his career seemed to confirm much of what his counterpart in Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said a couple of weeks ago about forces in the Catholic Church still not grasping the enormity of what they let happen on their watch.
Unfortunately, the Archbishop of Dublin wasn't in a position to do the whole Told You So thing because he was spending the week trying to master that familiar but tricky dance step, the Frantic Backtrack -- even denying that he had meant to point the finger at any specific individuals. All he'd meant, he insisted, was that there was a "cultural" resistance to change.
Indeed, far from personally criticising the Pope, as had been widely speculated, Martin went out of his way to slap down the "misguided interpretation" that he had meant any slur on His Holiness in that much-publicised speech to the Knights of St Columbanus.
The problem is that if he didn't mean to single out any individuals when he spoke so mysteriously of "strong forces" resisting change, then what did he mean?
He still insists he stands by the remarks, but if they've now been watered down into platitudinous generalisations, standing by them doesn't take much commitment. It's like refusing to back down from a claim that some people don't like cheese.
It's hardly controversial.
Of course there are elements who don't want to admit how much they failed when it came to the handling of child abuse in the Church. The only question that matters a damn is, who are they?
That question was put much more forthrightly by Fr Dick Lyng, parish priest of St Augustine's in Galway: "Where did Archbishop Martin find this unwillingness, this resistance? Is it within his own diocese, among his fellow bishops, or within the Vatican itself? Until that is clarified, the shadow of suspicion falls everywhere."
Still no answer was forthcoming. Which, surely, serves no one but those self-same "strong forces" who, the Archbishop claimed so melodramatically, want the truth hidden. Why do the job for them by refusing to speak plainly? It shouldn't be a guessing game.
This isn't some academically arid theological debate, after all.
Archbishop Martin wasn't talking only about the past; he also hinted that the current rules on child protection are not being followed properly by his (still nameless, remember) colleagues.
That's a pretty serious charge, and it can't be brushed off with vague waffle about cultural resistance to change. If a teacher or a politician made such a claim about their colleagues, they'd be expected to back it up and provide some names and details at the very least. If they didn't, they'd be roundly condemned by everyone with a stake in protecting children.
Look at how victims groups last week not only lambasted the Minister for Justice for failing to act on the recommendations of the Ryan Commission one year on from the publication of the group's report, they also called for civil servants who had failed to prevent child abuse to be named and shamed.
Yet Archbishop Martin, who still fails to name and shame those in his own organisation whom he claims to know have done the same thing, remains lionised in many quarters as a doughty defenders of survivors' rights.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness even used the word "fearless" last week to describe the Archbishop's approach to this crisis.
Admittedly, getting the approval of a man who hasn't had the courage to criticise his party leader's hush hush handling of child abuse in his own family might not amount to very much, but it's symptomatic of the easy ride that Diarmuid Martin gets from the media classes simply for making the right noises.
Should he not be naming and shaming the guilty too?
Especially when the head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children says he's not aware of any widespread flouting of the new rules on child protection.
All the more reason, some might say, for the Archbishop to put some meat on what remain, nearly two weeks on from a much-publicised and lauded speech, the bare bones of his allegations.
"Perhaps he knows something that I don't," as Ian Elliott, director of the National Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Belfast, said last week.
Or perhaps he doesn't. In the absence of anything more concrete than ominous Princess Diana-style intimations of dark forces beavering away behind the scenes, how can anyone possibly know?
Until then -- and no- one should be holding their breath at this stage for further developments -- Fr Lyng is surely on the money with his suspicion that the speech to the Knights of St Columbanus will, in retrospect, come to seem more like a media sideshow that lacked real substance than the principled stand of a fearless protector of the vulnerable.
SIC: SI