The foundation is secure; the superstructure needs radical repair (continued)
By Sean O’Conaill, VOTF Ireland

Worse was to follow. On December 9th the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference told us that the culture of “cover up” revealed by the Murphy report was “widespread in the Church.”

It follows from this that if and when those bishops currently under pressure to resign actually do so, an unknown number of other serving bishops are equally compromised, and should resign also.

Why do they do not do so? Is it because they are hoping that their failures will be swallowed up and forgotten in a radical reorganization of the Irish Church that will follow a pastoral letter from Pope Benedict XVI in 2010? 

The papal communiqué of December 11th acknowledged the “central issue” of “church governance” revealed by the Murphy report, but the confinement of the scope of the pastoral letter to Ireland implies that there is no similar problem anywhere else. This will baffle informed Catholics in more than two dozen other countries where the same governance problems have been revealed.

Whatever may lie in store for Ireland, one thing is certain. To restore trust among us, any new leadership must start out by making itself permanently accountable to the Catholic Irish people it proposes to serve. There can be no going back to the “Trust us and don’t ask awkward questions” regime of the past.

The promise of Vatican II—that we would have structures through which to communicate our needs and our questions to our pastors—must now be fulfilled. And not just in Ireland.