dial m for archie

Browsing through a book about Catholicism in Ireland.
It contains testimonies from people the authors are willing to allow to pose Catholic.
These include a coterie of plush bottomed liberal atheists, such as the Irish Times former editor Conor Brady who's about as Catholic as Karl Marx, and current Irish Times religious affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry, who is in fact less Catholic than Karl Marx.
Here's larks, thinks I as I read.
And lo!
I have come to the testimony of a liberal leftist called Garry O'Sullivan.
Liberal leftist Garry O'Sullivan edits a liberal leftist newspaper, run for profit and owned by the Farmer's Journal no less, and styling itself The Irish Catholic.
I have suggested to Mr O'Sullivan that if he wishes to be honest with his readers, he should at least retitle his newspaper The Irish Liberal.
Honesty is not something these people are interested in.
By the way I have a passing acquaintance with Garry O'Sullivan's brother Andrew.
Andrew is what I would call a liberal leftist priest.
He is a pal of former Irish President Mary McAleese a socialist feminist lawyer who made a reasonably good and thoroughly ignoble career for herself by pretending to be a Catholic.
Father Andrew is more famous in my town for having cut down the hundred and twenty year old trees which had stood beside Kilcullen Church from time immemorial.
(Time immemorial = One hundred and twenty years. - Tautological Ed note.)
Andrew performed this little operation while the then Parish Priest Father Drubble was on holiday.
When Father Drubble returned from his holiday his red faced took on a deeper red that was truly a sight to behold.
Father Andrew was also responsible for the installation of crazy paving around the statue of the Lord near our Church.
The paving which circles the statue is crazy in the sense that it resembles a circle the same way I resemble Tom Cruise.
Finally Father Andrew is renowned for sermons in which he suggests that the miracle of the loaves and fishes merely involved Jesus asking everyone to check their pockets and share any bread or fish they might be carrying.
Ah gentle travellers of the internet.
You wanna have seen my gentle preraphaelite features when he came out with that one on the altar.
Oh.
There was another thing.
I met Father Andrew by chance the last time I was in Rome.
And it was hilarious because both our faces were transfixed as we walked towards each other on Main Street Rome, transfixed with disbelief, that here so far from home, we could each meet the last person in the world either of us wanted to see.
But I digress.
Father Andrew is not at issue.
We're talking about his brother, liberal leftist Garry O'Sullivan editor of the liberal leftist Irish Catholic.
I'm reading Garry O'Sullivan's testimony about his faith.
As I read, I'm muttering a la Cartman from the objectionable Southpark cartoon, things like: "Weak," "Lame," and "Yuccch."
Then I come to a doozie.
Garry O'Sullivan mentions a run in with Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
My eyes widen.
What possible difference could there be between these two fine upstanding giants of Irish liberal atheism?
I read on.
As editor of the Irish Catholic Liberal, Garry O'Sullivan had published a letter from a member of the public, mildly critical of Archie.
And Archie had replied by sending him a solicitor's letter threatening legal action.
Even though Garry O'Sullivan had been using the Irish Catholic Liberal to cheerlead Archie's attempts to label every Bishop in Ireland (except Archie) as a concealer of child abuse, precipitate their firing, and remake the Church in his (Archie's) own image.
Archie had sent the lawyers after one of his friends over an outright triviality.
Flippin heck sir, as Tucker Jenkins always used to say when confronted with the mendacious megalomaniacal machinations of Archbishop Machiavelli Martin.
I mean, I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns.
Archie sent in the lawyers against the editor of the Irish Catholic Liberal simply because that editor had printed a letter Archie didn't like.
Archie set the lawyers on his own friend for allowing the merest criticism of Archie.
Hilarious, no.
As the broader ramifications sank in, the smile vanished from my porcelain features.
For a long moment I stared into space.
Then ever so softly I intoned:
"Uh oh, Jungo."