An Innocent Man

Just when you thought I would never bother you again, here I am.

Life has been very busy here on the Hill, it is starting to calm down a little now and hopefully later this week we will return to normality - or a new state of normality at the very least.

It doesn't take much to throw the normal routine of life into chaos does it? A family illness, a mechanical issue with your car, a dispute with a large corporation over £60 being nabbed from your bank account - it all makes day to day life a little less cheery.

Then there was the weather of course, bucket loads of rain falling all over the country adding to the misery levels.

I sometimes think that if we didn't have the weather to moan about, some folk would never have a conversation!

Perhaps we should move to the substantive part of todays communiqué or Bull as I would like it to be known.

A Papal Bull is a letter from the Pope and most of them are just that....bull!

Collective muttering - 'Here we go, another swing at the Catholic Church'.

I sat and watched Darragh MacIntyre's documentary about child sex abuse in the Catholic Church last night, it made disturbing viewing.  Much of what he reported had been in the public domain for a while but the really shocking thing was the revelation that Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of the church in Ireland, had been involved in an alleged cover up of abuse.

He had been a priest at the time, charged with investigating allegations into the conduct of Father Brendan Smyth and he took a statement from a very brave boy who outlined the levels of abuse he and others had suffered. The young boy, Brendan Boland, even provided names and addresses of other victims he was aware of, before being sworn to secrecy by Brady.

The information was never passed on nor acted upon and the abuse of the other children continued for many years.

Brady had formerly stated that if he thought any action or inaction of his had led to young people being victimised, then he would resign and yet faced with this allegation he steadfastly hangs onto power and uses weasel words to justify himself.

He claims he is an innocent man - well thank goodness his innocence is important to him, because the innocence of the children his church was supposed to care for was obviously not important at all.

Father Brendan Smyth died in prison, does that make his victims sleep easier? I doubt it.

The Catholic Church should just come out and apologise totally and without any caveats, there can be no excuse for the perpetuating of abuse by hiding the facts.

There we have it then, my little Bull. And if any of you are thinking of Tommy Steele, you must be as old as me!