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The headline reads: Tell bishops "to get the hell out of our cathedral," says writer. The story in the Irish Independent is about writer Robert Blair Kaiser, known to many NCR readers, a long time church writer who covered the Second Vatican Council for Time magazine.
Kaiser is never one to overly engage in subtleties, but this piece catches him at an especially fiery moment, a speech he gave at a conference in Ireland. Kaiser said he was not attacking the faith, but rather the "special and corrosive tyranny that popes have been exercising over Catholics everywhere".
In his response, Michael Kelly, deputy editor of The Irish Catholic, said he did not so much blame Rome as the culture of the Irish Catholic Church. "What I have experienced in Ireland is a Catholicism that has betrayed the best tradition of our church," he said.
"The dreadful truth about the 'cabal of egomaniacal clerics' who failed Irish Catholics so dreadfully," the Irish Independent reported, referring to Kelly's response, "is that these bishops did not come from Rome or Constantinople -- but from Caherciveen, Tullamore, Cavan, Roscommon and Castlebar."
