For all his sins, Casey achieved greatness
IT was heartening to attend the funeral Mass of former Bishop of Galway Eamonn Casey among 1,600 other mourners.
My memories in real life are of him walking up and down the main aisle of Galway Cathedral during the solemn Novenas which still attract large numbers of worshippers every February.
The large crowd at his funeral Mass is testament to the affection that ordinary Galwegians had for this man despite the fact he had resigned from his position as Bishop nearly 25 years ago in welldocumented circumstances.
Bishop Casey had apologised for his transgressions. After his fall from grace he spent time in ministry in Ecuador followed by a number of years in England. But he never publicly practised his vocation in Ireland afterwards.
I always felt the punishment of never being allowed to practise his vocation in his own country far exceeded the wrong he had originally committed. While it was fantastic he was honoured in death befitting a former Bishop, it is sad he had to die before the Catholic Church felt it could honour him so publicly.
Had he been allowed to publicly practise his vocation after his time of ‘penance’ spent abroad there would have been few Catholics who would have objected to this.
We have seen in recent years the attitudes of parishioners when certain clergy have come out as being gay for example.
Bishop Casey would have been an asset to any parish.
While Bishop Casey’s funeral was a time of mourning, it was also a healing time. His sins were acknowledged as well as his achievements, of which there were many. It was also an uplifting experience to see the amount of ordinary people who came out to pay their respects to a good man who had some faults just like the rest of us.
TOMMY RODDY, Galway.
...I AM prompted to write to you to express my chagrin and disgust at the comments made from the pulpit by Bishop Kelly at the funeral service for Bishop Casey.
Instead of concentrating on all the good work the man did for the deprived and underprivileged, he deliberately focused on one known human slip. What a golden opportunity wasted to espouse the basic principles of Christianity, i.e. love, compassion and forgiveness.
What is it about the clerical culture that they continue to treat people in such an unChristian manner?
Not content with having him banished for the last 14 years they have to pillory him again.
VICTOR WHELAN, via email.
Warning from history
PETER Keating (Letters, March 8) attributes partial blame for the Tuam babies scandal to the men of 1916 who made the Roman Catholic Church ‘the senior partner in government’.
It might also be argued that the partnership was joint, and had been long before 1916.
At least a generation before the Rising, 19th-Century historian James Anthony Froude, who spent a good deal of time in Ireland from the years before the Famine until his death in 1894, questioned how a ballot vote could work in Ireland when the chief governing powers were secret societies and the confessional.
He argued that without even the nucleus of a middle party, there was nothing to prevent an endowment of monastic and conventual orphanages and charities becoming involved in the welfare of the young.
Froude shuddered at such a prospect then, just as we shudder now. JANET MURPHY, Killarney, Co. Kerry.
Let ’em back in
UNQUESTIONABLY, the political scene in Europe at this present time, including Britain, along with the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland could not be in more disarray.
On a definitive note, one way or the other, Brexit is at long last going to take place, and Britain will leave the European Union.
The border separating this island of Ireland will still have to be addressed.
Now I am sure I am not alone when I say that I would love to belong to a 32-county Ireland. At present this is being denied to me by the intransigent, anti-British policy Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin hold.
Honouring those gallant men of 1916 who sacrificed their life, hoping to achieve Ireland’s freedom from British rule and obtain an independent free Ireland, governed by its own people, was a worthy aim then and still is to this day.
However, today the 26 counties that constitute the Republic of Ireland is governed by and in debt to the EU.
Surely those gallant men of the 1916 uprising who sacrificed their life for freedom did not envisage that their abhorrence to British rule would now be replaced by being ruled by a European Union of 27 foreign countries?
As I view the EU as a corrupt organisation and feel that if a 32county Ireland could bring itself around to accepting Britain as, say, an associate member then the country would be united, the border would disappear, and a 32county Ireland would benefit every indigenous person on this small island that we all love dearly. HARRY STEPHENSON, Kircubbin, Co. Down.