Meet Cardinal O’Brien “Lifelong Friend”

The news is very recent that Cardinal O’Brien would have been ordered to leave Britain and retire in a location evidently chosen by them.

The decision isn’t surprising as, rather astonishingly – or perhaps not; you choose – the troubled Cardinal planned to retire not in a monastery, to spend the rest of his life in retirement and prayer as would be natural in a man just disgraced for his sexual perversion, but in a rural cottage in the fairly remote East Lothian (Country? Scotland, of course!), near a “lifelong friend”. Now let us reflect…

an old homosexual; living apparently alone; in an isolated cottage; located in a parish led by an “old friend” of his; in the same country he has disgraced. 

Hhhmmm…

Is it surprising the Vatican has now intervened? I don’t think so.

What is surprising, though, is that the “old friend” of the Cardinal plans to challenge the plan himself, and here the echoes of “vicious” (old queens) become too loud to be naively dismissed. This “lifelong friend” of the Cardinal is so incensed at not having his lifelong buddy oh so near to his old friendly bosom, that he plans to challenge the decision all alone because he is the (legal) landlord of the cottage in the question and the Church can’t say to him whom to have as guest in his cottages.

Cue his words: “I am 72 years old”, “I have nothing to lose”. How passive-aggressive. Truly, this one looks like a first class bitch. The “I have nothing to lose” hint is also profoundly disquieting, as priests aren’t disgraced for challenging a Vatican’s decision and this, in itself, wouldn’t be a problem at all. What would be the problem is if it emerged the lifelong friendship of the two was anything less than appropriate. In which case the reference to the 72 years old with “nothing to lose” and preferring to risk loss of face to the loss of his “lifelong friend” does begin to make sense. 

We do not live on the moon, Father Creanor, and your undue bitching in things that have nothing to do with you are wildly inappropriate in the best of cases, and extremely suspicious – not to say scandalous – in the worst. We are talking of a Cardinal of whom a lifelong homosexual attraction has just been revealed, causing a great scandal and loss of prestige for the Church in Scotland. How near you would prefer to have your homosexual “lifelong friend” is utterly and completely irrelevant.

The Church doesn’t want the Cardinal to live in an isolated cottage, in Scotland of all places, because it is simply not fitting, and actually scandalous, that he does. To whom the cottage belongs is neither here nor there. The Church can order every clergyman to leave wherever they want him to live, period, and it is for no prospective “landlord friend” to challenge this. The Cardinal can, of course. I very much doubt he will.  

This a “lifelong friend” of the Cardinal.

Perhaps it would be good practice to get information about one’s “lifelong friends” before considering one for a red hat. Who knows how many painful mistakes might be thus avoided. 

M