Safeguarding Coordinator says priestly status is "almost inconsequential"

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Readers of this blog will be interested to note that during the BBC Radio 4 'Sunday' programme item reporting on how priests in the Diocese of Salford convicted of sexually abusing children have not been thrown out of the priesthood (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/sunday [the item starts approx 30 minutes after the start of the programme]), the Safeguarding Coordinator, Father Barry O'Sullivan says in response to a question about Doherty being allowed to remain a priest until his death, more than 12 years after his conviction

"whether or not he died as a priest, to me, is secondary; its almost inconsequential"

CAADS is very surprised that Father O'Sullivan views an individual's canonical status as a priest as "almost inconsequential", especially when, as a priest he is presumably aware that the catechism of the Church teaches that

“The sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a ‘sacred power’ which is none other than that of Christ” (Chapman, 1995: 347).

CAADS also notes that the attitudes which seem to underpin the somewhat belated attempts to justify the failure of Bishop Brain to send Doherty's letter requesting laicisation to the Vatican appear to be in very marked contrast to what the ten members of the Nolan committee said in their report in 2001. For example,

"…we were concerned to make plain that there is a level of seriousness, as demonstrated by the criminal courts, at which we would expect the process of laicisation always to be begun." (Nolan, 2001b: 14)

and, in even more marked contrast to what was said by Benedict XVI about the sexual abuse of children on 12 July 2008, i.e.

“It must be clear, it was always clear from the first centuries that priesthood, to be a priest, is incompatible with this behaviour…” (See http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=8303 ).