Censored – the Catholic Church's clunky attempt at keeping Fr Brian D'Arcy 'on message'
By: The Yank | Published Tuesday, May 1, 2012, 8:15 AM | Updated Tuesday, May 1, 2012, 8:15 AM
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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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Read More:Nuns and priests wear gags as they protest against Vatican censorshipCensored Irish priest Father Brian D’Arcy is critical over Vatican decisionMaureen Dowd slams Bishops over nuns, Vicki Kennedy snub_____________
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.}
10 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.misneac | May 10, 2012, 07:04 PM EDT
I never had any time for DArcy . He has taken advantage of his status as a priest , and should make up his mind and decide between his obligations or showbusiness !
barneyjo | May 02, 2012, 04:18 PM EDT
@The Yank. Program is repeated tonite (wed) on BBC2 at 9:20pm. Therafter should be available on BBC iPlayer. Hope you get to see it, because it puts his role way beyond that of a note taker. Watch if you can and see what you think. You are quite correct in your assessment. This "wounded healer" (The Cardinal's view of himself) has shot himself in the foot too many times now to have any vestige of moral authority bestowed upon him by the majority of the struggling Irish Faithful. With any problem, how can you be a solution if you are deemed to be the actual cause in the first place??
Bythebay | May 02, 2012, 12:53 PM EDT
Brady will remain in his job as long as he wishes.
TheYank | May 02, 2012, 07:53 AM EDT
barneyjo,
I didn't see last night's BBC program, but unless there's something more that's been omitted from the papers today I don't know how Cardinal Brady can remain in his job. I accept what the Church says that he was only a note-taker at the time and that he did his job properly, but I can't understand how he didn't 'keep an eye' on things to make sure Fr Brendan Smyth was promptly moved away from being near children. I don't understand how any adult wouldn't have insisted on that happening.
barneyjo | May 02, 2012, 07:45 AM EDT
@eiriamach - no, this programme deals with Cardinal Brady's investigation of abuse by Brendan Smyth on Minors. If you google news from Ireland you should be able to view some segments from the program embedded on the webpages of either the Irish Times or Independent. You ask where it will end? Well as a (struggling) believer, I have to hope it will end where the Holy Spirit intends it to end!! My personal view is that God is calling time on the "Donkeys" who seek to lead the lions within our church and who have caused so much havoc in the process!!
eiriamach | May 02, 2012, 07:27 AM EDT
Thanks for the tip, barneyjo. I assume you mean the breaking stories about Cardinal Brady and the cases against Fr Smyth. Being in the USA, I cannot access the video but will read up on the news. I cannot fathom the psychology at the Vatican: the more the "shame" surfaces, the more they impose silence on priests and nuns (57,000 nuns are now "managed" by a male prelate in the USA through the Vatican's action against the LCWR). Where will it end?
barneyjo | May 01, 2012, 07:06 PM EDT
@eiriamach - There is little chance of this "Empire striking back" You might want to visit the bbc iPlayer and view a programme broadcast this evening entitled "This World" on BBC Northern Ireland (Yank you might find it interesting also)
eiriamach | May 01, 2012, 11:25 AM EDT
Yank, The Church is a monarchy with decisions increasingly centralized in the Curia. Some Catholics even talk in hopeful terms about RCC becoming an "empire" again! And the RCC defenders on IC repeatedly *boast* that "the Church is not a democracy," as though excluding millions from participating in the work and decisions of the institution were somehow a good thing! The age of monarchy and empire is long past, and while my calling RCC a "tyranny" may over-state the reality, thousands of censored nuns and priests would see the point. Freedom of conscience is at the core not only of Christianity but of humanity itself, as the US Constitution recognizes. Those who defend the hierarchy apparently need to have in their lives an absolute moral authority that no one dares to challenge and that will brook no criticism. Why? Probably because it terrifies them to do their own thinking, especially to decide about right and wrong. They cling to any human being who claims the "authority" to do that for them, even while his "moral" rules do perceptible harm in our society. I thank God for the priests who keep some people thinking for themselves, even when they make mistakes, because the only alternatives to exercising conscience are moral dissoluteness and mindless obedience. Both are dehumanizing.
TheYank | May 01, 2012, 10:55 AM EDT
eiriamach, May not be a perfect analogy, but it's better than your analogy to the Church as a tyranny. Based on what you've written below once you become a priest there are no bounds on what you can then allow yourself to believe because you're a priest forever. And, Fr D'Arcy's views have been refuted by the Church, but he continues to make such statements in an extremely public manner. You think the Sun World & BBC would give over as much space & time to a theologian refuting Fr D'Arcy? Never.
eiriamach | May 01, 2012, 09:04 AM EDT
Yank, your argument turns on a false analogy. Priests are not like corporate employees. They cannot be "fired" the way that employees can be discharged for criticizing their corporations: they are priests "forever." Their "mission" comes from God, NOT from the Church, and the Church is not free to tweak God's mission nor to change it! As the Anglicans say, there is church because there is mission-- God's mission-- not mission because there is church. Priests, like all other believers, must follow their consciences before any human voice of "authority," especially when the moral "authority" is wrong. And in this case, censorship and similar acts of tyranny simply provide more evidence that RCC IS wrong and needs reform. IF Fr D'Arcy had made false statements, a church official schooled in theology could refute them, and the Vatican would not need to censor the man who made the statements. Truth has indeed been silenced; that's what "censorship" means. More on your illogical argument: the fact that he is a "media darling" is irrelevant: deal with the statements he made, rather than attacking the man who made them. Oh, you can't do that? Then just what is your point?