Catholic councillors cave-in to political correctness

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Bless me father for I have sinned. The Catholic priests of Galway City’s parishes will be working overtime this week – hearing confessions of city councillors.

Because, on Monday, a majority of elected members – many of them religious and in favour of retaining the prayer at the start of meetings – gave legal effect to new standing orders that replace the prayer with a period of silent reflection.

Yes, you read that right. Councillors who favour retention of the prayer at the start of City Council meetings, voted to give legal effect to new rules that get rid of the prayer. And they did it without debate.

Good luck explaining that one to your average Mass-going voters.

Perhaps, they’ll justify their actions through mental reservation. But Fianna Fáil – Peter Keane and the Crowe Bros, Michael John and Ollie, who love a good prayer before meetings – made every effort to point out that pact members (Fine Gael, Labour and all Independents bar Collette Connolly) were making a holy show of themselves.

Monday’s meeting had one item on the agenda: Standing Orders. The new Standing Orders had already been agreed previously and all that was required this week was for them to be rubberstamped. The vote to replace the prayer with silent reflection was lost – or won – at the last meeting.

The pact councillors in favour of the prayer had to take their beating, and accept all the new standing orders. It mustn’t have been easy.

Donal Lyons (Ind) is a regular reader at Mass in Knocknacarra. Declan McDonnell (Ind), a great buddy of Father Willie, former PP of Mervue, also reads at Mass on Sundays. Noel Larkin (Ind) is a eucharistic minister. Terry O’Flaherty (Ind) loves a good Mass and Pádraig Conneely is a regular visitor to the Poor Clare convent on Nuns Island.

It’s not the sort of left-wing, pinko, Pope-hating, group of commies you’d ordinarily expect to combine to remove the prayer. But they held their noses, and voted against their consciences.

With FF intent to inflict maximum embarrassment to their fellow Catholics, it’ll take more than saying an act of contrition to get them out of this pickle.

So, possibly the last ever prayer before meetings was recited at Galway City Council on Monday. One suspects it might make a comeback – elected members may revisit the decision in six months – but for now, officially, it was the last recital of the prayer before meetings.

Ollie Crowe, the Fianna Fáil councillor, and great defender of the prayer, ironically, missed the final prayer. Ollie only landed into the chamber midway through its recital.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.