The National Secular Society (NSS) has backed former referee’s chief Hugh Dallas who was sacked by the Scottish Football Association (SFA) for sending a joke email about the Pope and child abuse within the Catholic Church. And they are quite right to do so. No group of people who profess an irrational belief in a being for which there is no evidence has the right to call for anyone to be dismissed from their employment. And especially not this one.
In the days leading up to Mr Dallas’ disciplinary hearing the Catholic Church called for his dismissal if the allegations that he sent the email were proved.
Mouthpiece and apologist, Peter Kearney, the Director of the Catholic Media Office (CMO) said of the email that it was “gratuitously offensive to the Pope, deeply offensive to the Catholic community of Scotland and an incitement to anti-Catholic sectarianism,”
This is the guy, may I remind you, that demanded the banning of the “Hokey-Cokey” because he erroneously claimed, on behalf of the Church, that it was anti-Catholic. Non-Hokey-Cokey style knee-jerk reactions and Mr Kearney are not strangers. Neither are hypocrisy and this particular Christian sect.
The Catholic Church’s take on dismissing people who do wrong is matter of public record. Of the thousands of its own employees, who the church authorities knew had abused children, how many were dismissed?
None.
They quite unbelievably kept in employment all of the known child abusers in their ranks. They did not report the matter to the prosecuting authorities. They moved them to new parishes where they continued to pray on innocent children.
Hugh Dallas sent a joke email.
I wonder which of these might be considered the more “deeply offensive to the Catholic community of Scotland and an incitement to anti-Catholic sectarianism.”
Still, on with age-old mantra - “Do As We Say – Not As We Do”.
