VINCENT NICHOLS TRIED TO LOOK KOOL WHEN HE APPEARED BEFORE THE INDEPENDENT INQUIRY CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE – BUT HE WAS EXPOSED AS A CYNICAL OPERATOR.
On a number of occasions I actually verbally express my exasperation and shock at what he said.
One of those occasions was when he said that “A MORAL CONVICTION CANNOT OVERRIDE LEGAL PROCEDURES”!
One would have thought that for a Christian moral convictions should be the most important of one’s convictions.
But not for Vinny. Like so many of his colleagues they must the so called “good name” of the RC Church before anything else – including the justice, truth and the suffering of victims.
He failed miserably to answer the Inquiry’s legal representatives who put it to him that while he was speaking fine words on child protection his actions contradicted those words.
It became clear, for instance, that when to appointing a new Child Protection Officer Nichols and Birmingham archdiocese did not, as they should have, advertised the post, but gave a favoured member of staff, who was not fully trained, a tap on the shoulder appointment. This is of course what RC bishops and dioceses do all over the place.
The Inquiry also played to Vinny a recording of a Birmingham victim criticising Vinny himself and calling his a “so called cardinal”. During this time Vinny looked flushed and decidedly uncomfortable. He was fidgeting and nervous.
It also emerged that Nichols, like archbishops before him, had kept a 1968 sexual accusation against a priest hidden from victims and their legal representatives.
The barristers for the victims spoke at the end of Nichol’s evidence and they were scathing about him.
They said he was like the Three Monkeys – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
One of the vicar generals of Birmingham had warned a priest that the police were coming for him and gave him money to escape to the USA.
They said that Nichols had misled the parishioners of a Father Jones.
Birmingham was giving a paedophile priest – Father Robinson – £800 a month or £9,600 a year for his upkeep and were giving one of his victims £100 a year for counselling!
They said that the RC Church cannot be trusted with child protection and that a new civil body should be set up to inspect the RC Church,
As people on this blog have said, Nichols is suave and thinks he is clever.
However Thursday’s televised interrogation proved that Nichols is like the rest of them. He is an RC Church hack – who will do what is necessary to protect the Church and help his career prospects.
What Vinny needs to realise is that the interrogation he got on Thursday is child’s play to the interrogation he will receive on the day he dies and appears before the infinitely just God.
“What would it profit a man if he gained the whole world (including Westminster and a red hat) and suffered the loss of his own soul”.
Vinny has long ago sold his soul to his Roman Mistress.
Let him enjoy his short lived rewards.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 