The Irish Church is stronger than it seems
SIR – I find it hard to recognise the very negative picture of the Irish Church given by Jon Anderson (Cover Story, March 31). Mr Anderson is unfair to the three Irish cardinals of the last quarter of a century – the late Cahal Daly, the late Desmond Connell and Seán Brady – when he describes them as having been tarnished by the child abuse controversy.
Child abuse was not a very critical problem in any of the three dioceses over which Cardinal Daly presided, and the one case most often linked to Cardinal Brady involved his presence as a young priest at an inquiry; Cardinal Connell’s record in regard to abuse is generally recognised to have been much better than those of his two predecessors in Dublin.
