Would you believe it? Prime Time Investigates gets an award tonight. I have no doubt that, if we hadn’t been in the position to challenge them through the courts, the award would probably have gone to Mission to Prey.
If the Church behaved like this it would be condemned on all sides. I would have thought that common decency, if nothing else, would have prevented such an award being given this year.
Tony Flannery (ACP)
A BRIEF UPDATE ON DEVELOPING A SUPPORT GROUP FOR PRIESTS OUT OF MINISTRY We continue to make steady if slow progress. We will not call a meeting of priests out of…
We Are Church International (WACI) is inviting us to join in supporting Pope Francis.
Chris McDonnell writes in The Catholic Times about the shortage of priests and states that “It will soon be too late to consider a possible resolution to the problems we face unless we take active steps now to address our difficulties.”
“there is a now a clear necessity for Commissions to be set up both in the UK and Ireland by the respective bishops’ conferences to examine the whole issue before the model we are currently struggling to manage breaks and we are left to pick up the pieces.”
Chris McDonnell writing in the Catholic Times, January 5th 2018, offers a reflection for the new year.
RTE carried coverage by Joe Little of comments made by Gerry O Hanlon SJ by video-link from Dublin to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
UPDATED
Updated with a Link to a statement from The Truth Justice and Healing Council, the body set up by the Catholic Church in Australia to coordinate the Catholic Church’s response to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse with a commitment to justice and compassion for survivors.
And a Link to opening statement by Senior Counsel at the Royal Commission’s 50th public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
Brendan Hoban delights in Pope Francis’ efforts to control careerism in the clergy, seen most recently in his decision to restrict the creation of new monsignori. He suggests those currently holding the title should also resign it. (Article first published in the Western People).
Why should one awful defamatory atrocity, even with the subsequent months of silence and cover-up, vitiate good work by other PTI team members on quite separate exposures of either the home care scandal or connivance by NAMA with some of the same “developers” who were at the root of our problems? No more, it seems to me, than abuse and cover-up by some clergy and bishops should allow the media to detract from all the good in the day-to-day life of the Church, or from its right to celebrate what it does best. Can’t the ACP be deservedly happy that it was able to nail the lie at the heart of one PTI “investigation” without aspersions on the good it may have done in other areas?
Sure it’s RTE, what would you expect?! I wouldn’t be paying any licence fee to them I’ll tell you that much. Watch anything you like online free on the RTE player. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: throw away your television now!
Is this related to the story in the Irish Independent a few days ago (8 February)?
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http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/miriam-is-hoping-suspended-series-wins-tv-award-3012778.html
Miriam Is Hoping Suspended Series Wins TV Award
MIRIAM O’CALLAGHAN said yesterday she hopes the suspended series ‘Prime Time Investigates’ wins an award this weekend. The critically acclaimed series has been off the air while an investigation has been carried out into editorial processes in the wake of the Fr Kevin Reynolds defamation affair.
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But two programmes in the last series have been nominated in the Best Current Affairs/News category of this weekend’s Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs).
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The following may partly explain why our media elite feel they can get away with anything. An Irish Independent article on 28 November 2011
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/media-responsibility-must-be-guaranteed-and-independent-regulation-is-the-way-martin-2947240.html
Speaking on Morning Ireland [Archbishop Diarmuid Martin] said there may be an anti Catholic bias on the part of some journalists, but you could not say that there was an anti Catholic bias in the media in general. !!
Could not agree more with you, Fr.Tony. A simliar situation in the ‘Soap’ Coronation Street, where the four ( at the last count) male and female homosexual script writers are pushing their agenda unashamedly. Now, if that were Christians…?
God bless.
Martin,
To clarify my comment above, certainly Brian Paircéir, Mark Lappin and Miriam O’Callaghan could have been more abject and sensitive about the ‘difficulties’ and ‘scrutiny’ experienced by ‘members of the team’ when compared with Fr Kevin Reynolds’ experience. It is also unfortunate timing that the IFTAs took place before the publication of the reports from the Broadcasting Authority and the RTÉ Board.
BUT Adrian Lydon’s ‘The Home Care Scandal’ (broadcast six months before ‘Mission to Prey’) was a quite independent investigation, well deserving of an award. I feel sure many Irish men and women, of my age and older but much more dependent on so-called home care, would agree.
I cannot see that any of the comparisons made above by Fr Flannery or Martin Gordon, or Rory Connoe’s (?Connor’s) highlighting one sentence from Diarmuid Martin’s pretty thorough criticism of RTÉ’s role in ‘Mission to Prey’, add up to a useful or mature response to the IFTA judges’ award to ‘The Home Care Scandal’ programme. And, Martin, if I withheld my BBC licence fee every time I felt like putting my boot through the screen, I could probably afford to live in Ireland and not have to rely on RTE Player with all its ‘RoI Only’ exclusions.
Eddie Finnegan asks good questions. I would like to ask another: why is the ghastly EWTN still the only widely available English-language Catholic TV channel?
Those who mistakenly want to broad-brush the whole of the secular media as anti-Catholic need to heed what was said by CDF head Cardinal William Levada at last week’s abuse symposium in Rome. The church’s response to clerical child abuse in most of eleven different named countries came, he reminded us, “only in the wake of the revelation of scandalous behaviour by priests in the public media”.
Ireland was one of the countries he named. Ireland’s Catholic bishops in December 2009, in response to the Murphy report, said the following:
“We are shamed by the extent to which child sexual abuse was covered up in the Archdiocese of Dublin and recognise that this indicates a culture that was widespread in the Church.”
Does anyone here really need reminding that it was the Irish secular media, including RTE PrimeTime – and not any internal Catholic discovery process or Catholic news outlet – that ended this culture (we hope)? Until we have Catholic media capable of fully addressing the church’s internal problems we should continue to expect – and hope for – external secular media to do so.
We could wait forever for the likes of EWTN to address this need.
Eddie, once again you are spot on. I am so pleased that you have the time to contribute as frequently as you do. And you are the essence of wisdom and common sense.
I think that the point that was beng made is that Prime Time Investigates abused its power when it produced the programme “Mission to Prey”. Given that abuse of power, it is somewhat surprising that IFTA gave it an award this year and, to me, it smacks of the media closing ranks and failing to examine its own conduct. Maybe I should not be surprised because that is mostly what professions do when their wrongdoing is exposed. I believe that it is this very tendency to close ranks that led to the Catholic church cover up of the fact that some clerics had a sexual orientation that caused them to repeatedly engage in sexual activity with minors who could not give consent. I am aware that some people might say “But we expect more from the church”. I no longer do as I see it as a human institution riddled with human frailty (my own included).
Just one further point, my faith in “Prime Time Investigates” is no longer robost. I now wonder about the veracity of the programme on home care and on other matters. But maybe that is not fair and is the equivalent of believing that most clerics are abusers.
Why should Miriam O’Callaghan not express her views that ‘Prime Time Investiagets’ win an award?
If the programme series deserves an award, then why not.
The church needs to stop pretending it is a ‘victim’. It’s far from being a victim, especially with the wealth portfolio it boasts.
How many presbyteries and church residences will be paying the new property tax? Church claims ‘charity’ status.
Please.
If the Irish Catholic had published obscene lies about a Rabbi or a Protestant minister, would it be OK if it received some kind of international Catholic press award a short time afterwards? Even if the award-winning article was written by a DIFFERENT journalist?
Who was the RTE big shot who said that “It’s difficult for rolling heads to learn any lessons”, when asked if those responsible for “Mission to Prey” should be dismissed?
This is reminiscent of Roman Polanski winning several awards at a European film festival in December 2010 shortly after surviving his close shave with extradition. Some of his admirers made little effort to conceal the fact that the awards represented a vote of solidarity for Polanski as a result of his unfortunate ordeal.
Michael Commane, where is your sense of justice? The TV program blackened a man’s name and was publicly found to have done so. You see no problem with that?
I think that Michael (No 9) is getting the issues a bit mixed up. In my opinion, there is no necessary connetion between the payment of our household charge (and impending property tax) and the Prime Time Investigates programme. Anyway, I believe that it will be easy to talk to the Church’s wealth when all the compensation has been paid out to persons who make claims on the grounds of clerical child abuse. This could be a positive outcome and could lead to real renewal of our church.