PRIESTS, eh?You can't live with them, and you can't find them when you're looking for them.
I find it utterly bewildering that nobody knows where Bishop
Magee is.
He can't have just disappeared.
He can't have just popped out to the shops for
some milk and bread and hopped on a plane to nowhere.
No one seems to know where this man has gone.
His friends don't know, the Church doesn't know.
He has gone into the fourth dimension.
That place where Bishop Casey went all those years ago.
I wonder what it looks like, this priestly never never land. I wonder who's there?
And how do they get there?
Is there a teleportal in some church that transports these men?
Has he arrived in a world where everybody looks like him, and all they say is "Bishop Magee ... .Bishop Magee".
All joking aside, and I could go on for a while, how the hell does a priest disappear?
He's a man who, along with the Vatican, encouraged the concealment of child abuse allegations.
Now he has gone underground and being the true weakling that he is, hasn't emerged.
And there are those who are hiding him, or at least know his location.
On Sunday Archbishop Martin told his congregation: "Some years ago I was criticised in some Church circles for speaking of strong forces still present in the Church which "would prefer that the truth did not emerge".
"There are signs," I said, "of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the Church of Jesus Christ in Ireland and how it was covered up."
Archbishop Martin knows it and we know it.
Denial, dishonestly and cover-up are integral to the Church's mindset.
And now cowardice is up there.
Priests, eh?