Hi, Jim -
Yeah, I suspected one of those anti-dance bishops was English. But that opposition to dancing not the kind of thing you'd see from Catholic bishops in most places. One certainly wouldn't see it in Italy, or Spain, or Portugal, or the Slavic nations.
Now, if you look at the list of nations where sex abuse of children by Catholic priests occurred, I think you'll find that a good number of the priests accused of these crimes, were born in Ireland. That is most assuredly the case in the United States.
I live in a U.S. diocese that has very few American-born priests. After the Irish priests stopped coming here in the 1970s, they recruited priests from third-world countries. My ex-wife's cousin wanted to become a priest, and his pastor said, "You leave that to the Irish." So the cousin went to Wisconsin and became a priest in the Salvatorian order. I got divorced and got an annulment in 1992, and I retired the first time when my government job was privatized in 1996, when I was 48 years old. I applied to become a priest, already having completed 8 years of seminary. The Irish vocations director showed no interest in me, and I went in another direction and fell in love again. But I could have become a priest by the age of 52, and I could have given them many years of service. But I think the Irish Mafia preferred to get third world priests who would be easier to control.

The Irish Mafia or FBI (Foreign-Born Irish) priests had control of many dioceses in the United States until just recently, and they made sure that priests of other nationalities stayed in the minority. Same with police departments in many U.S. cities - they were under Irish control. And the Catholic Church in Australia and parts of Canada is similarly under strong Irish influence.

I had a friend here in California, an Irish-born priest named Tony Gurnell. His father was a Huguenot Protestant from France who emigrated to Ireland and made his living making stained glass windows. Fr. Tony said that Catholic seminaries in Ireland were heavily influenced by the heresy of Jansensenism, a theological movement from France that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. That's why, Tony said, that so many Irish-born priests seemed to emphasize the "dark side" of life. I believed all that, but then Tony told me that this happened because the British saw they couldn't defeat the Catholic Church in Ireland. So, they built the world's biggest Catholic seminary, and staffed it with priests from the area of France that had been most heavily influenced by Jansenism. I wasn't able to verify that, so I dunno. But that was one Irish priest's theory, and he agreed with my contention that Irish priests were unusually influenced by a negative view of humankind.

But there's no doubt in my mind that the Irish Catholic Church is thoroughly Irish. It is an integral part of the Irish people and culture, and the Irish people and culture are an integral part of it - unlike the Catholic Church in every other part of the world.

If you blame the sexual abuse of Irish children by priests on me, then you certainly have to shoulder part of the blame yourself. And you are just as much to blame as the Catholic guy who lives next door to you. All of Ireland shares the blame, because they did not put a stop to what these Irish Men of the Church were doing. The only ones who had the power to put a stop to all of this, were the Irish people. Jim, I think it's pretty lame of you to try to put the blame for an Irish problem on me, an American. Honey, we've got troubles of our own.

But all of this is because we're talking on your terms, Jim - and I concede that your perspective has an element of validity. The trouble is, you tend to see only one side of a coin. You see some things as good, and some things as bad. You see the Irish people and atheists as good, and the Catholic Church and religious people as bad.

I tend to see things both ways. It makes me wishy-washy, but I think it's a more honest approach. I see good and bad aspects of the Catholic Church and religion, of atheism, and of Ireland.

But to change the subject, let's talk about the United States. I love my country, but I hate my President. Last year at this time, I loved both my country and my President, and my life was much less conflicted. But since my country has a hateful President now, many people in other nations now think that the U.S. is a hateful country.

And the same goes for my Catholic Church. I hate the sex scandal my church went through and the terrible things that priests and bishops did, and I sure as heck hope that the measures put in place will prevent such a horrible thing from happening again. But I'm living in a racist, anti-immigrant country; and I am very proud that my Catholic Church is one of the strongest forces opposing racism and hatred in the U.S.

It's not black-and-white, Jim. The world is far more complex than that. And your sweeping condemnations just don't make sense.

-Joe-