Day: May 6, 2021

Tonette Orejas  Philippine Daily Inquirer May 04, 2021

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—A five-minute video showing a furious man confronting a Catholic priest for coveting his wife began circulating in Pampanga since Monday (May 3).

In the video, the man whacked a family portrait in front of the priest during the confrontation in the social hall of the church where the priest serves.

The video has been shared on Facebook’s Private Message.

The priest was heard saying “I’m sorry.” The man shouted back: “You ruined our family.” He accused the priest of taking advantage of his wife.

The man recited with sarcasm one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

The man’s son warned the priest that he would face investigation, hinting that a case for adultery was coming.

The man said his Catholic faith was not shaken but likened the priest twice to a “snake.”

Several persons milled around the priest in an apparent move to protect him. The priest was silent all throughout the clip.

The identities of the priest and the woman, although confirmed by Church sources, are being withheld pending investigation and to protect the man’s family.

“I am in contact with the priest and the family involved, We pray for God’s assistance and guidance,” Archbishop Florentino Lavarias told the INQUIRER when sought for comment on Tuesday.

PAT SAYS

While the RC Church has a massive problem with sexually active gay bishops, priests and seminarians, it still has a problem with priests having affairs and sex with women – as we saw in the Ennis Ger Fitzgerald case.

I think in places like Africa, Asia and South America there are more heterosexual priests than there are in the West.

I think many Irish missionaries in the past had relationships with women.

And I imagine there are many Murphy, Brady, O’Brien children in the African bush, the forests of South Anerica and the rice fields of Asia?

The compulsary celibacy rule has NEVER worked and is still not working.

It is a hypocrisy to keep the rule on the books.

But as long as it is on the books, priests are bound by it.

Today / Yesterday, May 5 th was the 40 th of the death of Bobby Sands during the 1981 Hunger Strike at Long Kesh Prison.

Nine other men followed him on hunger strike and to the grave.

I met Bobby soon after he began his hunger strike and was in the prison hospital wing.

I was saying Mass in Long Kesh every Sunday in different wings.

After one such Mass a prison officer told me that a prisoner in the hospital wing had requested Holy Communion and asked me to bring it to him. Of course, I immediately agreed.

The prisoner turned out to be Bobby Sands.

After giving him Holy Communion, I asked him if we could chat.

He replied: “Only if you are not going to preach at me”.

There was no question of that at all.

We had a long talk and at the end, I asked him how he felt about dying. His answer was awesome:

“When I close my eyes in this world I will in an instant be looking into the eyes and face of the only one who could ever understand me, Jesus Christ”.

Bobby Sands had an amazing faith.

On the following Sundays, at Bobby’s suggestion, I celebrated Mass for all the hunger strikers in the hospital wing common room.

The prisoners were not allowed to associate with each other normally.

I kept them in the common room for a couple of hours, celebrated Mass for them in about twenty minutes and allowed them to chat away for the rest of the time. They appreciated this precious opportunity to be with each other.

I visited all ten hunger strikers in their own room, heard Confessions when asked and generally offered nonjudgemental support.

When they died I went to all their funerals despite fierce opposition from fellow clergy.

The Sands hunger strike was the second hunger strike.

The first one was led by a parishioner of mine, Brendan “The Dark” Hughes.

I visited him regularly too.

IN CONTEXT

We have to view the hunger strikers in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles – and indeed of the 800 year British / Irish conflict.

Great wrongs and evils were perpetrated on all sides by all sides.

Thousands dead and tens of thousands maimed.

The Hunger Strike is a chapter in a massive book.

But for those of us who lived that chapter, it has left a deep mark on our souls.

The Ennis woman who was wooed and taken to bed by her parish priest, Ger Fitzgerald, is demanding a public apology from the cleric.

To date the only apology Fitzgerald has made was via text to his Ennus Co PP, Fr Tom Ryan.

Ryan read this out at last Sunday’s Mass at 11 am in Cloughleigh Oratory, Ennis.

The text said Ger was “sorry for the hurt he had caused”.

Who has Ger “hurt”?

He has obviously hurt the faithful Catholics of Ennis by breaking his vows.

He has hurt his fellow Killaloe clergy by visiting another huge scanal on the Killaloe presbyterate.

He has hurt his bishop who placed his trust in him to behave properly with the People of God.

He has added to the ocean of scandal enveloping the Irish Roman Catholic Church.

But above all else, he has hurt a young woman who met him in the course of his ministry as a priest.

The young woman, with little or no experience of priests, was vilneralbe at the time as the result of her father’s death, and the mire recent dissolution of the family home.

Fitzgerald engaged in a sixth month long relationship with the woman – leading her to believe it was not a casual relationship.

He confided in her about at least two other relationships he had with females – one of whom he still spends every New Year’s Eve with. He did say that relationship was no longer sexual.

APOLOGY

Ger certainly does owe the woman a profound and fulsome apology – and it needs to be public so that his Cloughleigh Fan Club know he did sleep with the woman.

He is still giving that Fan Club the message tgat the woman is lying.

CONSEQUENCES FOR THE WOMAN:

The consequances to date are very serious for the woman.

She has had to abandon her home after death threats from associates of the Fan Club.

She has had to seek Garda protection.

She has had to go into hiding.

CONSEQUENCES FOR GER

A three to twelve month holiday which the diocese will pay two thirds of the cost.

Access to private counselling and therapy that can cost up to € 30,000.

The prospect of returning to priesthood as if nothing had happened.

AN APOLOGY IS REQUIRED.

MORE IS REQUIRED!