EMBRYO RESEARCH AND MORALITY

Church objects to latest embryo research

The complexity of many disorders means the latest breakthrough cannot be used for many disorders

• The Irish Times
• 4 Aug 2017
• Patsy McGarry Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Catholic Church in Ireland has voiced its total opposition to the use of embryos in research following a breakthrough study by scientists who “edited” human genomes to remove mutations linked to heart failure.

Scientists believe such “editing” could also work for other conditions caused by single gene mutations such as cystic fibrosis and some breast cancers.

None of the research so far has involved the birth of babies from the modified embryos.

However, Bishop Kevin Doran, chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Consultative Group on Bioethics and Life Questions, said – as part of the research – human embryos were “being deliberately generated under laboratory conditions with a higher than average risk of congenital heart disease”.

They were being “deprived of any other purpose than to be used for research and then disposed of”, he told The Irish Times. “These individual human beings are all the more entitled to protection precisely because they do not yet have the capacity to speak for themselves or to give their consent.”

His comments come as an Irish expert on genetic law warned that Ireland had no concrete legal framework to deal with these issues, and was effectively operating in a regulatory vacuum.

Dr Aisling de Paor, a law lecturer in Dublin City University, said the new research was a “game-changer” in scientific and ethical terms but Ireland was ill-prepared to deal with its implications.

Medical intervention

Setting out the church’s stance, Bishop Doran said: “Medical intervention on human embryos should only be permitted if it is designed to protect the life and health of the specific embryo being treated.”

This position is contained in the bishops’ submission to the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction in 2003.

More recently, in its New Charter for Healthcare Workers, the Vatican said it was “gravely immoral to sacrifice a human life for therapeutic ends”, the bishop said.

That charter stated: “To create embryos with the intention of destroying them, even with the intention of helping the sick, is completely incompatible with human dignity, because it makes the existence of a human being at the embryonic stage nothing more than a means to be used and destroyed.”

This, Bishop Doran said, reflected “the consistent belief of the church that ‘a human embryo has, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person’.”

Research published in the scientific journal Nature has, for the first time, shown how editing genes in human embryos can repair a disease-causing mutation and produce apparently healthy embryos. Although it is a long way from clinical use, it raises the possibility that gene editing, in the future, may protect babies from hereditary conditions.

What is a gene mutation?

A gene mutation is a permanent alteration in the DNA sequence that makes up a gene. Mutations range in size; they can affect anything from a single DNA building block to a large segment of a chromosome that includes multiple genes.

There are two types of gene mutation: hereditary mutations, which are inherited from a parent and are present throughout a person’s life in virtually every cell in the body; and acquired mutations, which occur at some time during a person’s life and are present only in certain cells. These changes can be caused by environmental factors or can occur if a mistake is made as DNA copies itself during cell division.

What disease did the researchers focus on?

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which affects the muscles in the heart, occurs in about one in 500 people. It leads to heart failure and has been implicated in some cases of sudden adult death. It is caused by a mutation in a gene called MYBPC3.

What did they do?

Using sperm from a man with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and eggs from 12 healthy women, the researchers created fertilised eggs. They injected Crispr-Cas9, which works as a genetic scissors, to cut out the mutated DNA sequence on the male MYBPC3 gene. Next they injected a synthetic healthy DNA sequence into the fertilised egg. The male gene then copied the healthy sequence from the female gene, thereby eliminating the mutation that would otherwise have caused the heart-muscle problem to develop.

Will the new treatment work for other diseases?

Yes, but it will not be of use in all diseases.

Most are caused by multiple factors – often a combination of genetic factors, the environment, lifestyle and infection. The new technique may work in disorders caused by mutations in a single gene, for example sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis.

But common medical problems such as heart disease and diabetes do not have a single genetic cause: they are associated with the effects of multiple genes in combination with lifestyle and environmental factors.

And although complex disorders often cluster in families, they do not have a clear-cut pattern of inheritance. This means the latest gene-editing breakthrough cannot be used to treat many common diseases.

Are there ethical or legal issues surrounding this treatment?

Critics of the Crispr technology have argued that gene editing could lead to eugenics and to the production of embryos with certain features, in order to develop so-called designer babies.

Gene editing has yet to be shown to be completely safe in people; there are concerns it may affect future generations in unexpected ways.

The technique already faces substantial regulatory hurdles. The United States Congress has barred the US Food and Drug Administration from even considering human trials with edited embryos.

Earlier this year a US National Academy of Sciences committee endorsed modifying embryos, but only to correct mutations that cause “a serious disease or condition” and when no “reasonable alternatives” exist.

In the UK it is illegal to implant genetically modified embryos in women.

PAT SAYS:

All the moral questions that surround embryo research should be important to all of whether or not we are believers.

On the one hand you have the spectre of Hitler's perfect race - and on the other hand, you have the possibility of preventing millions and millions of people being born with and suffering from horrible diseases.

I would not take the likes of KEVIN DORAN too seriously.

During the equal marriage referendum in Ireland, he said that being gay was like having Down's Syndrome!

That's how much he knows about science.


But there are very important moral and ethical issues involved.

Is it morally permissible to create a human embryo purely for research purposes and then destroy it when the lab is finished with it?

Involved in this question, of course, are those two other questions: "When does an embryo became a person" and "When does an embryo have a soul"?


As a Christian and a human being, I am very worried about using human embryos for research.

But then is it ok for use a small number of embryos to save or improve millions of lives.

These are very tough corners in morality and ethics.

Is is a case of "Better for one man to die for the people"?


It would be less of a problem for me if we could establish that embryos were not "persons" or did not have souls until a certain stage.

Thue use of "pre-personed" or "pre-soul" embryos would be less problematic for me. 


I'm not sure the debate is helped by black and white absolutes.

The Roman Catholic Church is coming down with black and white absolutes.


This whole issue needs more debate.

We need to hear more about it from a wide range of experts on morality and ethics. 


I suppose we Christians must ask ourselves "What does God think"?

We will find some answers to that question in our Scriptures, in listening to many experts, in reading, in thinking, in praying, in listening to people with horrible diseases etc.

I, for one, with not be paying any attention to a man who thinks that being gay is like having Downs Syndrome!

INSPIRATIONAL THOUGHT:

Pointlessness of worry

The worried cow would have lived till now
If she only saved her breath:
But she feared her hay wouldn't last all day,
And she mooed herself to death.

EVIL DEEDS

20 years after Brendan Smyth,

• Sunday Independent (Ireland)

FACE OF EVIL: The iconic photograph by Steve Humphreys of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth being led from the Central Criminal Court 20 years ago

IT is high summer in Kilnacrott, Co Cavan. Not even the ominous evergreen trees that surround the one-time Norbertine house and its small graveyard can darken this glorious summer’s day.

On a country road near the village of Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, there is a grotto to the left of the entrance gates, but the statue of the Virgin Mary has been “removed for maintenance” and a sign declares that this is now a ‘Soul Sanctuary.’ Ignoring a garish blue sign tacked to one of the trees declaring ‘Private Grounds’, I cross a stile and walk up the pathway to where the most notorious paedophile in the Irish Catholic church’s sorry history of abuse is buried.

Apart from the distant drone of a tractor saving hay, there is a stillness and silence that belies the harsh reality of one man’s notorious life. Can you feel evil? Not on the short walk from the gate to the graveside.

To the left, is the large modern complex bearing a white cross that the priests deserted in 2015, leaving the building now known as Holy Trinity Abbey and, to the right, a rectangular formation of graves.

Each contains a headstone with the departed priest’s vital religious statistics: Born. Vested. Professed. Ordained. Died. Between these milestones of their lives, many of these men probably did a lot of good, but all that has been destroyed by the man whose grave I came to see.

It has no headstone, just an inscription in the polished dark limestone surround, with white crosses on either side inscribed: Brendan G. Smyth O.Praem 1927 to 1997 Rest in Peace. This innocuous monument contains the last remains of a man whose image came to embody the horror perpetrated by his ilk on the innocent. A man who hid out here in the idyllic Cavan countryside and who, on this day, July 23, 1997, on the eve of his sentencing, finally admitted his “sins against God, offences against individual persons and offences against the laws of the Church”.

A month later, he died of heart failure in the Curragh prison.

In the dead of night, his body was brought back to Kilnacrott and his fellow priests assembled in the church for Mass at 3.30am. Then, bathed in the headlights of the hearse, his coffin was lowered into this grave at 4.15am. Four gardai stood nearby in the shadows as dawn broke over the rolling countryside and Smyth was encased in concrete in his last resting place.

In life, he not only desecrated those around him, but the ripples from his activities sullied the reputation of Cardinal Sean Brady and swamped the government of Albert Reynolds.

Now, apart from the grave, all that remains of Brendan Smyth is the iconic image of him leering into the camera as he was led in handcuffs from the Central Criminal Court, a photograph that came to represent a scandalous era of clerical sex abuse.

Born John Gerard Smyth in Belfast on June 8, 1927, he was ordained a priest in 1945, changing his name to Brendan when he joined the Norbertine Order, also known as the Premonstratensians. He was to receive psychiatric treatment over the years, but nothing would stop his rampage of sex abuse against young boys and girls.

“Over the years of religious life, it could be that I have sexually abused between 50 and 100 children — that number could even be double or perhaps even more,” he told one doctor.

Perhaps even worse was that his crimes were known within his order and within the church in general. But he wasn’t reported to the RUC (much of his early abuse was in Belfast) or the gardai.

The Norbertine Order shielded and sheltered him, moving him to new parishes and different countries, knowing that he was a serial abuser, which allowed him to continue his appalling litany of crimes against children.

One Norbertine priest, Fr Bruno Mulvihill, made attempts to alert the church authorities. But the order to which he belonged was independent of the Diocese of Kilmore and the senior churchman in Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh.

Although Cardinal Cahal Daly was privately furious about what he called the order’s “incompetence”, his successor Cardinal Sean Brady admitted in 1975 that, as a priest, he did his “duty” when he asked two victims of Smyth to swear an ‘oath of silence’ after testifying against him at a church inquiry.

He said he did so at the behest of the then-Bishop of Kilmore, Dr Francis McKiernan.

Arrested in 1991 by the RUC, Brendan Smyth fled across the border to Kilnacrott to await the next move in a game of cat and mouse.

Like a lot of disasters, the seeds of Albert Reynolds’ destruction began to emerge in two different places, but when they combined, it unleashed a political force that would topple the then Taoiseach.

As if mirroring more recent events, it began with judicial appointments. Reynolds, for some unfathomable reason, decided to appoint Liam Hamilton as Chief Justice and Harry Whelehan, then the Attorney General, as President of the High Court.

Determined to get his own way in the teeth of spirited opposition from his coalition partner Dick Spring, leader of the Labour Party, Reynolds’ obstinacy led to a very public squabble between the two men, who were travelling in different parts of the world at the time.

When they finally met, at Baldonnel Aerodrome in late September 1994, an ‘accord’ was reached to prevent an unwanted election, although Spring did not specifically agree to the appointment of Whelehan as President of the High Court.

Simultaneously, journalist Chris Moore had put together a frightening documentary on Fr Brendan Smyth and the cover-up that allowed him to abuse with impunity.

Broadcast on Thursday, October 6, 1994, the programme, Suffer Little Children, revealed among other things, that nine extradition warrants by the authorities in Northern Ireland had been lying in the Attorney General’s office in Dublin unprocessed on the desk of a senior official, Matty Russell, for seven months.

The Sunday Independent carried a front page story on the delay, written by Veronica Guerin, and as controversy raged about the issue, Spring’s advisor John Foley told his coalition counterpart Sean Duignan: “The priest changes everything.”

At a Cabinet meeting on November 10, Reynolds forced through the appointment of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court and Spring and his ministers walked out as the Government teetered on the brink of collapse.

The days that followed were characterised by confusion in the Reynolds camp and hysteria in the corridors of power. There was a document “that will rock the foundations of this society to their very roots”, claimed Labour minister Pat Rabbitte.

“At the end of the day, when all other questions have been dealt with, one remains,” Spring told an emergency meeting of his parliamentary party.

“We have allowed a child abuser to remain at large in our community, when we had it in our power to ensure that he was given up to justice.”

As he furiously tried to save his government, Albert Reynolds told the Dail on November 15, 1994: “I must, today, explain the failure of a system in this specific case; a failure with ghastly and specific consequences for the children of the country.

“I must not excuse the failure: I must ensure that it never happens again.

“I will give this House a full and detailed report, but a full and detailed report of a failure in our method of dealing with such a crime as child sexual abuse will never and can never be satisfactory.”

He never got that chance. As the government unravelled, Labour Minister Ruairi Quinn told Reynolds: “We’ve come for a head, Harry’s or yours, it doesn’t look like we’re getting Harry’s.”

After his resignation on November 17, Albert Reynolds lingered in the Taoiseach’s seat in the Dail chamber until almost everybody had shaken his hand in commiseration.

Using a simple racing metaphor, he summed it up: “It’s amazing, you cross the big hurdles and when you get to the small ones, you get tripped up.”

Nearing the end of his fouryear sentence in Magilligan Prison, Smyth applied for parole. By now the case was getting the full attention of the Irish Attorney General, who successfully applied for Smyth’s extradition to the Republic.

In March 1997, he was flown from Derry to Dublin and stood trial on five specimen charges of child sex abuse at the Central Criminal Court.

On July 23, he made a public apology to his victims in a hand-written statement read to the court by his counsel Gemma Loughran.

On July 26, Judge Cyril Kelly asked and answered his own rhetorical question: “Is the defendant likely to re-offend?... in my view, yes,” and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

Incarcerated in Arbour Hill Prison, Smyth was later moved to the Curragh in Kildare where he died of a heart attack on August 22 after collapsing in the prison yard. He was 70 years of age.

Kilnacrott Abbey and its 43 acres of land was put up for sale in 2008 with a price tag of €3m, but apart from the timing, on the cusp of the property collapse, who wanted to buy a property which contained the grave of one of the most notorious paedophiles we have ever seen?

Eventually, the estate was divided. The old abbey, a Tudor-Gothic building some of which dates from the early 1800s, is now The Cavan Centre, a “residential centre for education and community development” established in 1977.

When you pass the en- trance gates, it is clearly identified as private property “and not open to the public”.

A lay group calling itself Direction for Our Times, which has 400 prayer groups, including 35 in Ireland, paid €610,000 in 2012 for what is now called Holy Trinity Abbey, containing a large modern building, the graveyard and some surrounding land.

It took over Kilnacrott as a “site of pilgrimage” in August 2015, when the Norbertines finally left.

“The grave (of Brendan Smyth) can serve as a reminder for all of us of the enormous wounds of so many,” the group’s chaplain Fr Darragh Connolly was quoted as saying.

“We do not feel that these wounds should ever be forgotten or dismissed.”

As long as Kilnacrott stands, that won’t happen.

‘A failure with ghastly consequences for children’ ‘These wounds should never be forgotten or dismissed’

PAT SAYS:

Its hard to believe that it is 20 years since the Brendan Smyth affair caused outrage across Ireland and the world.

He was a truly evil man and seemed to have no remorse until the  end.

Yet his religious order - the Norbertines - gave him a full priest's burial in the middle of the night.

And people like Cardinal Sean Brady are still wandering around as if nothing had happened and they had no part to play in it.

If I was Sean Brady I would have retired into a private life.

But Brady still goes around dressed to the nines as a cardinal and is celebrating Confirmations and hanging around Rome and its functions as if nothing happened.

At the time Cahal Daly sacked me in 1986 he was allowing Brendan Smyth to minister in Belfast.


There are many clerics in the Church today as arrogant as ever in spite of what people like Smyth did - and in spite of the revelations about Maynooth and Grindr priests.

As we speak Amy Martin is protecting Eamon McCamley - the PP of Keady who was caught masturbating on line.

Have they no fear of God at All?

Have they no shame?

All that matters to them is that they protect each other and the corrupt system.

But ordinary people have lost all faith in them.

The abuse of children was their worst.

But there is so much more going on that they do not want you to know about.

This Blog will continue to inform you.

TWO MARTINS ORGANISING MAYNOOTH VOCATION DO

MAYNOOTH VOCATIONS

• d

DIARMUID AND AMY MARTIN ARE ORGANISING A NOVEMBER MAYNOOTH VOCATIONS CONFERENCE.

IS THIS THEIR PR EFFORT TO TRY AND SAVE MAYNOOTH?

IN ANY EVENT ITS A PR EXERCISE ON GOD KNOWS HOW MANY THOUSANDS OF POUNDS WILL BE SPENT.

HERE ARE THE DETAILS:

Models of Priestly Formation: Assessing the Past, Reflecting on the Present and Imagining the Future

Venue: St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

Date: 16-18 November 2017

In November the Faculty of Theology here at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth are organising an international conference on ‘Models of Priestly Formation. Assessing the Past, Reflecting on the Present, and Imagining the Future’ and an international list of speakers will address the theme.

Rationale: The purpose of the conference will be:

• to reflect on the issue of priestly formation since Vatican II
• to assess the current situation
• to look at best practice from elsewhere
• to imagine new models of priestly formation into the future.

Priestly formation is a universal and international need in the Church. The promulgation of the new Ratio fundamentalis(2016) provides a road “roadmap” for this formation. The conference will reflect on existing models of priestly formation in dialogue with key ecclesial documents including Pastores Dabo Vobis and the new Ratio fundamentalis. The conference coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis (1992).

Themes to be covered include:

• the qualities required of those entering formation,
• models of priesthood,
• formation for collaborative ministry
• training in safeguarding.

The conference will hear perspectives from Europe, North America and beyond. It will consider how the new Ratio might be implemented in diverse cultural and ecclesial contexts and examine the important challenges facing priestly formation into the future.

The conference is specifically aimed at formators, vocations directors, bishops, and congregational leaders and others engaged in seminary formation.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

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PAT SAYS:

Imagine the hard neck of the two Martins organizing a vocations event in a seminary that is now world famous for strange staff and homosexual activity by seminarians?

It is akin to organizing a nursing conference for nuns at the site of the burial of the Tuam Babies?

Or

Akin to organizing a conference for abuse victims at Brendan Smyth's old monastery in Kilnacrott in Cavan?

Or

Organizing a conference for the Magdalen Laundy survivors at the headquarters of an order of nuns?

What readers of this Blog have to realise and Catholics in general, is that there is no bottom to the depth of arrogance of Irish Roman Catholic bishops.

They are even inviting the Vatican's seminaries archbishop to give a talk - to try and fool the Vatican into thinking that all is well in Ireland and Maynooth.

The Irish Catholic Bishops are nothing more than the cynical ceo's of a multi million pound business who will do anything and everything they can tp preserve the "corporation".

And they are using YOUR MONEY and the MONEY OF THE GULLIBLE to create their hall of mirrors and their magic emporium. 

It's all lies! lies! lies!

And in the meantime, their "fun" will go on and on as they protect themselves and protect each other with their money, their lawyers and their press friends.

FATHER BERNARD LYNCH

Blog readers have been asking for the last tow days about Father Bernard Lynch and wanted to know more about him.

Bernard Lynch was born in Ireland in 1947. His father worked for the local railway making deliveries by horse and cart of goods from the train station around the market town of Ennis capital of County Clare. Clare is on Europe’s most western Atlantic coast. The land there is rocky and not arable, where Oliver Cromwell famously said, “there is no earth to bury a man, no water to drown a man and no tree to hang a man.”  Bernard was educated at the Christian Brothers' School and developed an interest in the Catholic priesthood at a very early age.  He began serving as an altar boy in the local parish Church when only eight years old.

In his teens he sought admission to the Redemptorist Fathers' secondary school in Limerick to pursue a religious vocation. He was rejected because his family could not afford the fees. After graduating from the Christian Brothers school in 1965 he joined the Society of African Missions (SMA). After one year studying ascetical theology at the SMA novitiate in Cloughballymore County Galway, he was admitted to major seminary in Northern Ireland twenty six miles from Belfast.  There he spent six years studying philosophy and theology.

During his first year of seminary he became friends with Alex; a relationship that became physically affectionate the following year. The two of them went to Liverpool during their third summer, where they worked in a factory to earn money to support their studies. 

 They took lodgings together in a boarding house. Bernard felt some guilt about the growing intimacy of the relationship and so confessed his concerns to the local priest. The priest insisted he cease all physical relations and report the fact that he had engaged in mutual masturbation with Alex to the seminary authorities. Returning to seminary, 

Bernard chose to speak with Fr. Jeremy Mullins a professor of Christology.  Although he would later learn of Mullin's conflict over his own sexuality, the priest ordered Lynch to cease all studies for the priesthood. A week later, Mullins relented and offered Bernard and Alex a second chance. Alex eventually grew so conflicted over his relationship with Bernard that he left the seminary in the spring of 1971. Bernard was broken-hearted but also saw that this new situation made it possible for him to commit anew to celibacy.

In June 1971, Lynch was ordained deacon and on December 20, 1971, he was ordained priest at Saint Coleman's Cathedral Newry. After completing his theological studies, he was sent to Ndola, Zambia. Lynch immersed himself into the life of the mission, but grew increasingly concerned over the attitude of some of the priests toward the Africans. After two years he shared his dissatisfaction with his Superiors and returned to Ireland to reconsider his ministry and vocation.

In the following months, Lynch came out as gay to another priest. His Superior suggested he go to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies and reflect on his vocation rather than return to Africa. Lynch arrived in New York City in August 1975. He was assigned to Saint Gabriel's parish in the Bronx and enrolled at Fordham University in the Master's program in counselling Psychology. He completed this degree in 1977.

During this time Lynch was invited to celebrate Mass for a fellow student who had committed suicide. After the Requiem he met members of Dignity New York and learned that the deceased student was gay. He agreed to come and say mass for Dignity at the Church of the Good Shepherd, behind Lincoln Centre. Dignity was meeting in this non Catholic Church because the Archdiocese would not allow them in Catholic facilities. Lynch met and soon became good friends with Fr. John McNeill and Robert Carter, SJ, and with them became leaders of Dignity.

His superiors agreed to allow Bernard to stay in the U.S. to pursue a doctorate on the condition that he pay his own tuition fees and expenses. He secured a position as Campus Minister and teacher at Mount Saint Michael's Academy in the North East Bronx. At the same time he enrolled at New York Theological Seminary in lower Manhattan to study in the Doctor of Ministry programme;  he completed the degree in 1980.

On a trip home to Ireland in 1978 he met again with Fr. Jeremy Mullins who confided that he was struggling with his sexuality. Even with Lynch's counsel, Mullins became increasingly conflicted and unhappy and finally took a leave of absence from his Religious Order and moved to New York in the summer of 1981. Lynch helped Jeremy find an apartment and got him a position as Freshman Counsellor at Mount Saint Michal Academy. By 1983 it was evident that Mullins was having health problems. He moved to Boston to teach in the SMA seminary but was soon hospitalized and grew more seriously ill. Mullins went to Florida Christmas 1983 to be with his brother Bruce, also a priest. After the holidays, Lynch out of the blues was told by Father Bruce that he was to have no further contact with Jeremy. Jeremy subsequently died and Bernard was refused permission to attend his funeral by Bruce who threatened to ‘have the police evict him if he as much showed his face’ at the funeral of his former mentor, confessor and dear friend. Bruce blamed Bernard for Jeremy’s death from AIDS.  

1984 was a tumultuous year for gay people in New York City. AIDS was sweeping through the community with hundreds of people sick and dying.  Bernard was in the midst of the holocaust and had founded the city’s first AIDS Ministry programme at Dignity New York in 1982. Soon he was drafted onto the mayor of New York’s – Edward Koch – task force on AIDS. Six hundred of Dignity’s own membership died at this time. Conflict between Dignity and the Archdiocese of New York was exacerbated especially when Cardinal Ratzinger issued his famous ‘Halloween letter’ in 1986 calling gay people ‘disordered in their nature’ and ‘evil’ in their love. Cardinal O’Connor expelled Dignity from all Church property and to add to the crisis Fr. Bruce Mullins, Jeremy’s brother, came on a crusade to New York from his diocese in Florida distributing flyers outside Mount Saint Michael's Academy condemning Lynch’s ministry. Three of the faculty out of a total of sixty-five, formed a group called S.A.F.E. This is an aphorism for Students Against Faggotts in Education. Aided and abetted by the Archdiocesan authorities they harassed Lynch and eventually pressurised the school administration to force Father Lynch’s resignation on December 20, 1984.

 However, Lynch became more visible and vocal as the AIDS pandemic worsened. He testified in New York City Council on a bill granting rights on employment and housing without regard to sexual orientation to protect those most vulnerable with the virus from losing their jobs and being evicted onto the streets. He made a TV documentary on his AIDS Ministry with Channel Four from the United Kingdom. After the infamous Ratzinger letter was released by the Vatican, Lynch was denied canonical rights by the Archdiocese for refusing to give up his ministry to the sick and dying. This effectively banned him from serving as a priest in the U.S. and left him without any source of income.  In June 1987 he was ordered to Rome for sabbatical leave and to reflect on his future.    

While still in Europe he received word that criminal charges were being filed against him in New York for the alleged sexual abuse of a former 14-year-old student at Mount Saint Michael's. The media coverage that followed was widespread and salacious in the U.S. and in Ireland. Lynch and those closest to him immediately smelt a rat. They already knew that the Archdiocese was out to get him. The Archdiocese had tried unsuccessfully to have him deported and sent back to Africa.  Lynch secured legal counsel and prepared against the advice of his legal counsel to return to New York City to face the charges. His advisors warned him that he was up against the two most formidable institutions in the world: The Catholic Church and the F.B.I. He arrived in the city on June 28, 1988, to find strong support among his many friends and colleagues. It was evident that officials in the archdiocese supported the prosecution and were highly instrumental in bringing it about.

The trial opened in the South Bronx on April 18, 1989. A full account of the trial is given in "A Priest on Trial" which Lynch wrote and published in the U.K. (Bloomsbury 1993). The case against him hinged solely on the testimony of one student, John Schaefer, who admitted under cross examination that he had been forced to testify against his will by the F.B.I. He produced a letter showing how he was lied to by the police authorities and told that he would never have to take the stand if he made the false allegation against Father Lynch. He also had a civil suit for five million dollars against his former priest. The case collapsed. The judge – the Honourable Burton Robert’s—refused to simply dismiss the case. In light of the evidence before him the judge took the unusual step of exonerating Lynch finding him not guilty of all the charges.

In 1990 Father Lynch received the AIDS National Interfaith Network Award for Outstanding Contribution to HIV/AIDS Ministries. Lynch subsequently took a leave of New York and moved to London to work with an ecumenical AIDS counselling group in 1992. There he became the first minister of any religion to march in the LGBT parade in July of that same year. He founded the first support group for Catholic gay priests in the Archdiocese of Westminster London.  This group celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2012. In 1996 the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence canonized Lynch outside Westminster Cathedral. In 2008 he was honoured with the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement reward for "Longstanding Work and Witness" to LGBT persons and people with HIV/AIDS. 

Ireland the land of his birth honoured him with the Magnus Hirchfeld Award in Dublin in 1986. Again in 1995 he was amongst the first ever openly gay priest to be welcomed to the Palace of the President by Her Excellency Mary Robinson, President of Ireland.  In 2008 he was honoured by his own home County Clare by being listed in the top twenty most famous people of all time. Over the years Fr. Lynch has conducted numerous blessings and weddings of same-gender couples.

In 1998, he and his life partner, Billy Desmond, had their relationship publicly blessed. In 2007, they became legally married as the first Catholic priest and partner in a civil partnership. Father Lynch continues his work, writings and ministry in the LGBT and HIV/AIDS community to the present day. His book If It Wasn't Love: Sex, Death and God was published by Circle Books in 2012. 

(This biographical statement drafted from information in the book, "A Priest on Trial," with additional info provided by Bernard Lynch.)

Additional Resources

AIDS: A Priest's Testament: http://ow.ly/Dnle7
This compelling documentary shot for Channel 4 in the summer of 1987 tells the story of Fr. BernárdLynch and his ministry to people with AIDS in New York. The Irish born priest and psychotherapist was closely involved with the LGBT community and founded the first pastoral outreach to people with AIDS in the city. He was subsequently drafted onto the Mayor of New York's Task Force on AIDS. His ministry and his commitment to civil rights for LGBT people led him into conflict with the Catholic Church authorities as well as bringing him into the most harrowing situations; preparing young people for their untimely deaths. The documentary profiles the man, his ministry and the pressures that brought him close to the edge of his physical and spiritual limits.  (Conor McAnally, Director.)

A Priest on Trial: http://ow.ly/DnkZr   
This documentary film was made in 1992 and charts the savage attempt to silence the ministry of Fr. Bernárd Lynch. An openly gay priest in the Roman Catholic Church, Fr. Lynch was given an ultimatum by the Vatican and falsely accused of paedophilia. The accuser, John Schaefer admitted at Trial in the Bronx Supreme Court, that he had been forced against his will to bring the charges.The judge, Justice Burton Roberts, not only dismissed the charges and berated the politically motivated prosecutors from the District Attorney's office, but dramatically and fiercely declared Lynch wholly innocent.This film -- with live footage from the Trial -- is a vital testimony to the lengths that some will go to silence truth, love and compassion, with lies, hate and the abuse of power. (Conor McAnally, Director.)

Soul Survivor: http://youtu.be/P8kG9kGQ8CE
In 1986, Father Bernárd Lynch was immersed in the AIDS pandemic in New York City. During an interview about his ministry on World AIDS Day of that same year, in Ireland, he denied he was gay. This he later described as "the greatest sin I ever committed". This documentary made by Channel 4 in 1989 'to correct the lie', traces the personal struggle of this remarkable priest to come out at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Ireland. The truth cost him his job. He was never allowed licence to earn his living by the Catholic Church. With outstanding courage and dignity his father stands with him in the third of three personal profiles by Channell 4. (Conor McAnally, Director.)

PAT SAYS:

I greatly admire Bernard for his personal integrity, the sufferings he has endured and the decades of work he has undertaken.

In the beginning, he found it difficult to accept and publicly acknowledge who he was - but then got the courage.

His religious order was quite good to him in spite of all the pressure they came under from the Vatican.

Eventually he became free of all shackles and carved out his own life and ministry - while also forming a meaningful, loving and committed relationship with a life long partner.

Bernard Lynch is an example of what a priest can do openly and with integrity if he is gay.

There is life outside clerical Roman Catholicism.

MESSAGE FROM GAY PRIEST

Dear +Pat,

I am a priest who is gay. I'm comfortable with who I am and how God created me. I was ordained in the mid 90's and based in a parish. I think the treatment of priests who are gay is deplorable in Church and your blog is probably the place where greatest hate to shown toward us. 

Growing up I was the victim of bullying. The scars still remain with me. The bullying of gay priests on this blog is beyond what is called for. 

Thankfully, the God I believe in a God of compassion. I reflect on the Gospel accounts of Jesus who supported the woman caught in adultery, of the Prodigal Father who rejoiced at the return of the Prodigal Son, of meeting Jesus in the least of our brothers and sisters. 

Fr Bernard Lynch has done great work in outreaching to gay people and meeting them where they are at and supporting them. 

+Pat, you have two options, you can continue to bully gay people or help them in their difficulties and their struggles. The choice is yours. 

Yours, 

Fr James.

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A COMMENT MAKER ANSWERS FATHER JAMES

"This so called "Fr" James does himself and others of his sex no favors with his pathetic and nauseating bleating against Pat Buckley. Typical "screaming queen" melodramatic nonsense.

Listen here "Fr" - you took vows. You are supposed to keep your penis to yourself - not broadcast it on the internet, etc. If you are not engaging in sinful activities like the characters exposed (pardon the expression) by Pat, then you have nothing to fear from him.

No one is interested in your gayness. You are not being persecuted. If you have a mutually respectful relationship with a significant other, Good luck to you! But keep it to yourself. We are not interested.

But if you go prowling on Grindr, etc. Or make a nuisance of yourself to young fellows, or shoot your sperm live on line. And all that sort of thing - that@s a different "Ball game" (once again excuse the expression) God did not "make" you go off and do carry on like that.

So cop on to yourself and dry your eyes and stop your silly, self-pitying clap trap. Martyrs you and your ilk ain't.

Keep up the good work Pat and ignore these "gay haters" attacking you. If it's not one thing it's another. They are probably the musical friends of the frauds and charlatans you are exposing in any case".

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PAT SAYS:

Father James, Thank you for your email and what I saw as your constructive criticism of me and the Blog.

This Blog DOES NOT attack gay priests. I know many dozens of gay priests who I never mention on this Blog. Some of them are celibate and some of them are in loving relationships with one other person.

I'm sure you yourself would distinguish between those priests and priests who seek promiscuous sex of gay apps and priests who display their genitals on cam and priests who masturbate on cam?

And then there is the other issue.

As a Roman Catholic priest, you are a representative of the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings. Two of those teachings are:

1. That sex outside of a man and woman valid marriage is a serious sin.

2. Homosexual acts are disordered and sinful.

How do you square being a public representative of a Church that teaches these things when you don't agree with them?

How do you square a gay priest being sexually active with the promise/vow you have made to that Church?

Is living a double life, not hypocrisy? 

Also, many of the priests dealt with on here are part of the clerical establishment who "lick" their way into positions and kiss the paws of their clerical overlords and at the same time have a double life in gay saunas, on internet apps and exposing themselves and masturbating on line from their presbyteries. 

Maybe it's time gay priests who want to be sexually active made a choice - between priesthood in a gay condemning Church and having a gay lifestyle either inside or outside a gay marriage.

Maybe you cannot have it both ways.

AND - there are Churches, including my own Oratory Society, who allow priests, straight and gay to be both priests and have sexual intimacy.

It is not homophobia to say that celibacy professing priests having sex is a massive contradiction.

Is it not a case of pissing or getting off the pot?