A Galway parish priest has strongly criticised Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin for ‘venting his frustrations in public’ and ‘pointing the finger of suspicion at innocent people’. Fr Dick Lyng PP of St Augustine’s in the city centre said Archbishop Martin’s address to the Knight’s of St. Columbanus last Monday week, in which he referred to the church’s child sex abuse scandals, was “dominated by a number of unfocused rants”.
In his speech, Dr Martin claimed that strong forces within the church wanted the truth about clerical abuse scandals to remain hidden.
Fr Lyng, in his parish newsletter to massgoers on Sunday, said Dr Martin’s speech received “predictable media acclaim” but closer scrutiny of the text “tends to dissipate one’s enthusiasm”.
In response to Dr Martin’s assertion that there was an “unwillingness to begin ... renewal”, Fr Lyng asked, “Where did Archbishop Martin find this unwillingness, this resistance? Is it within his own diocese, among his fellow bishops, or within the Vatican itself?”
He added: “Bill Murphy of Kerry has more or less stood up and asked: ‘Is it I, Lord?’ Until this is clarified, the shadow of suspicion falls everywhere. This is, I fear, now characteristic of the archbishop’s style: throw the grenade into the crowded room and then ask the intended targets to pull the pin themselves! But he won’t identify the targets. (‘The targets know themselves who they are!’ He seems to say.) He used the same ploy when lecturing his auxiliary bishops to ‘take responsibility’.
“He refused to name names, but was careful to leave the deadly grenade lying on the floor at the same time. It is understandable that he would vent his frustrations in public; but surely he could do so without pointing the finger of suspicion at innocent people.”
SIC: TCS