Censored – the Catholic Church's clunky attempt at keeping Fr Brian D'Arcy 'on message'

Fr. Brian D'Arcy, censured by the Vatican
for his newspaper columns.

Popular Irish priest Fr Brian D'Arcy has been censured by the Vatican. Or, as the Irish media tells us, Fr D'Arcy has been muzzled, silenced. One columnist even referred to the Vatican "bullyboys" giving Fr D'Arcy the "mafioso treatment." The Irish media can be a tad emotional at times.

Fr. D'Arcy was censured, apparently, for articles he wrote for the Sunday World newspaper in 2010. Fr. D'Arcy has been a weekly columnist for the paper since 1976. He is also has a regular slot on BBC Ulster radio and a regular contributor on other Irish radio and television stations. The Irish media can rely on Fr. D'Arcy to tweak the hierarchy whenever the opportunity arises and he's generally described as a "liberal priest."

Fr. D'Arcy is more than just a media darling, he is also a member of the National Union of Journalists, as I learned over the weekend. One outraged journalist's tweets seemed to indicate that the Church was not entitled to censure Fr. D'Arcy seeing as he is a member of the union.

I find that last tidbit more than a little odd. Why is a Catholic priest a member of labor union? After all, his primary occupation, the job that puts food on his table, is his position as a priest. He is also a member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.
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I know being a priest is not like working for a bank or a software development company or a professional sports team, but nonetheless in a practical sense the Church is an organization with employees and a mission just as banks, software developers and sports teams are. Do they have employees who are members of the National Union of Journalists?

All of those employers have employees who deal with the press. Banks, software developers and sports teams have official spokesmen, who provide the 'voice of the organization,' but they also have employees who offer opinions on what is going on in their business or even the wider world.

For example, you'll often hear a bank employee on the radio talking about the economy or the industry. Some bank employees write regular columns in newspapers. Software development personnel seemed to be asked regularly for their views on education. Members of professional sports teams are all available to the media for comment on their own play, sometimes on the trends in the game and occasionally on issues that have nothing to do with sports. Again, are any of these people members of the NUJ as well? I doubt it.

All these people – the banker, the software developer, the athlete – all write or comment under a censor of some sort. They all know there is a line that their employers won't let them cross.

So while a bank's investment manager might discuss the workings of his industry, he almost certainly will not discuss what his bosses are doing wrong. Same goes for software developers and even star athletes, although the big stars are often given a lot of leeway due to the uniqueness of their talents. Yet even big names can be reined in, sometimes even for saying something about the wider world that interferes with the employer's "message." (See Ozzie Guillen for a recent example.)

Message. That's one of our modern day buzzwords. You gotta stay on 'message.' The bank, the software company, even the professional sports team all want to "stay on message." So does the Catholic Church.

Fr. D'Arcy wasn't staying on message. In fact, he's made a habit of calling into question the management of the organization he works for and even the "product" they're selling, if you can forgive my crudeness. So the Church reprimanded him. They didn't silence him. They told him he can go on writing his column and doing his piece on the BBC, but his media work has to be run past a Church censor; they want to make sure he  stays on message or at least does not go too far off message.

Is this a good idea? Will censuring and censoring Fr D'Arcy work for the Church? I don't know, but I'm skeptical.

Fr. D'Arcy is not my cup of tea, but he doesn't shock me. Ever. In fact, I hardly listen to him when I hear him on the radio because he's always saying the same thing. He never surprises. I doubt anyone in Ireland is ever surprised by Fr. D'Arcy. Therefore, it seems to me censuring Fr. D'Arcy will accomplish little other than providing  succor to those who love bashing the Church – and they've had lots of that lately. I can see no real up-side to this.

On the other hand, in this internet age, it's possible Fr. D'Arcy's newspaper columns and radio work could well be sowing confusion in far-flung places. For all I know Fr. D'Arcy straying off message is wreaking havoc with the Church's work in the Philippines or Uruguay or even El Paso for that matter. That seems unlikely to me, but I don't know.

I'm not charged with running a 2000-year-old organization with a billion members, millions of employees and global reach. Keeping such a vast organization on message is a mighty task. Censuring Fr. D'Arcy might be the right option, but it just feels ham-fisted.

{Photo thanks to the BBC.}

Ireland's cowardly government closes Vatican embassy

Villa Spada in Rome
Ireland's Embassy to the Holy See since 1946
{picture from DFA.ie}

Last week the Irish government announced that it is going to close its embassy to the Holy See. Despite what everyone believes, the government claims that the embassy's closure has nothing to do with the souring of relations between the Vatican and the Irish government over scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland. In fact, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny "reacted angrily" to the suggestion that the closure was due to anything other than budgetary constraints.

That Kenny and Tánaiste (Deputy PM) Eamonn Gilmore are willing to claim that the closing of Ireland's embassy to the Holy See is due to the need for the state to make savings says more about their cowardice than it does about the state of Ireland's finances. This decision is transparently NOT about saving money.

The Irish government will save €1.2m ($1.65m) with the closing of the embassy. While that's a lot of money to the average Joe, that's not a whole lot of money for a state, even a bankrupt state like Ireland.

Sure the government has to cut back and, yes, Gilmore's Department of Foreign Affairs has to do its share, but it doesn't take long to realize that there are inconsistencies in this tale of budget cuts that make a nonsense of the government's tale.

Start with the building itself.

Ireland's embassy to Italy
{picture from Google.com}

The Irish embassy to the Holy See is in a beautiful building, the Villa Spada {see photo above}, in a beautiful setting on the top of the Gianicolo. Selling that would probably net the government a fair amount, but they're not selling it. No, they're moving Ireland's embassy to Italy from its cheap, rented accommodation {see photo left}into the Villa Spada. If they were serious about saving money they would not give up those cars-parked-in-the-doorway, paint-peeling-off-the-walls offices for a perfectly maintained hilltop Roman villa.

Then there is the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) budget.

This same government department that decided it cannot afford the $1.65m for the embassy at the Vatican is still spending over €400m ($550m) on "Official Development Assistance" or foreign aid. Okay, yes, of course we can't simply cut all foreign aid to poorer countries simply because, well, we're bankrupt. We may be bankrupt, but the people in those poor countries who are dependent on our aid still need to be helped, even if it adds a dollar or two or half a billion to our debt mountain.

Fair enough because those countries are really poor. Right?

Well, if they're really poor and need our aid how come countries like Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe are all able to afford an embassy to the Holy See in Rome when we cannot afford the same? After all, those countries are receiving aid from us, yet somehow they can afford that which we can no longer afford. Will the DFA cut off aid to countries rich enough to afford a Vatican embassy? Of course they won't because the cost of a Vatican embassy is not worth worrying about. If it was only about the money we could probably share office space and administration costs with the Malawians.{Here's a great map of the world showing which countries have diplomatic relations with the Vatican and a resident mission, which is what Ireland is closing.}
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Read More:

Prime Minister slams suggestion that sex abuse row prompted embassy closure

Shock closure of Irish Embassy in Vatican Announced -- Further evidence of deep problems between Ireland and Holy See

More news stories on the Catholic Church in Ireland from IrishCentral
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No, it was never about the money. That is a fib they're peddling because they're worried about alienating the still fairly sizable minority here who take their Catholicism seriously. At the same time they want the kudos for taking a populist stand, for confronting the Catholic Church over its mishandling of its many scandals.

How gutless. How wimpy. If they want to make a statement on the Catholic Church in Ireland then make the statement and stand over it. They should take the flak.

They didn't. They used prevarication and obfuscation in an attempt to hide the truth from those 'knuckle-dragging' voters who still go to Mass on a Sunday. It didn't work. Now those same voters feel that the government insulted their faith and their intelligence.

This is what angered Kenny. Everyone saw through the official twaddle to the essence of what was happening. Even those Kenny and Gilmore probably assumed would support them conceded that cost was only a smokescreen. The Irish Times admitted it in the first sentence of its editorial. The Irish Examiner said that by its decision the government "has essentially thumbed its nose at the Vatican."

The Examiner then went even further noting that the Catholic Church's tremendous influence across the globe. This is why the United States has full diplomatic relations with the Holy See. "The U.S.-Holy See relationship is best characterized as an active global partnership on a wide range of global issues."

Mary Kenny in the Irish Independent noted that the list of countries with full representation at the Vatican includes many non-Catholic, even non-Christian countries. Thanks to this decision Ireland will now be "a less important link in the globalized network connected to the Holy See."

This is what diplomatic relations are all about. Even when you are in dispute with another state you try to maintain diplomatic relations. Closing the embassy in a fit of pique is short-sighted. Lying about it is stupid.