Never mind the Euro - it's time to break ties with Rome
Date Published: {J}
I know it's only an acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, but couldn't they have made it SPIG, or maybe GIPS? Calling us the PIGS makes it sound as if we got into this situation because we're greedy, dirty little animals with our noses buried firmly in the . . . oh right, I get it now.
Greece faces a choice between leaving the Euro or being put into a sort of fiscal receivership – and I wonder if it is really possible to leave. The Euro is already the de facto currency of several countries not officially in the zone. The Greek government might print the Neo-Drachma or whatever, but would anyone want to take it?
But it's been an interesting week, even if the first half was overshadowed with yet another silly attempt by Michael O'Leary to harm Aer Lingus. I can't understand why everyone is playing along with this. Nobody has asked the one obvious question: What airline is going to trust a company run by him to replace an engine? It's not a matter of safety – Ryanair have a good record there – but of pricing. They'll think they're getting a bargain, only to find (when their plane is in bits on the hangar floor) that it didn't include screwing the screws back in. Or the screws themselves. Or a screwdriver. Of all the things that this government deserves firing out for, a Ryanair publicity stunt doesn't even make the top one hundred.
And among important things that happened this week, it comes nowhere near the way the Pope dealt with clerical abuse. His message to the bishops of Ireland: “You were very bad boys, don't do it again.”
That seemed to be about it really. At no point was there any suggestion that the Vatican had anything to apologise for. Does anyone really believe that Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican department responsible for dealing with sexual abuse cases, was entirely unaware of the cover-up? That's simply incredible. Yet the Papacy would like it to be seen as a purely Irish problem.
Worse, he chose to claim that the sexual abuse of children was due to a lack of faith. Could anything be further from the truth? It occurred precisely when faith was at its strongest in this country, when people never dared to question the actions of the clergy. This abject obedience is what the Pope wants us to return to. If he has his way, more children will suffer. But obedience is the ultimate goal of the Church, and overrides such trivial material things as the suffering of children.
The locals have to be scapegoated because the Papacy can only be responsible for the good things to do with the Catholic Church. And come to think of it, what have they done for us lately? Now that Ireland is not the handy priest-breeding factory it once was, you can't help thinking we come about nowhere in the Vatican's priorities.
If the best reaction they can give to the bitterest crisis in the history of Irish faith is to tick bishops off and say "Must try harder", you begin to suspect that the reason child abuse continued unchecked is not that the Vatican didn't know, but that the Vatican didn't care.
Don't you think it's high time we broke with Rome?