'Church falls from grace' [Update: Resignations]

Reviewing the Irish Catholic Church's 2009 record, John Burke of the Dublin Post wrote:

Nobody can doubt the prevailing thesis which has emerged thus far - that the Church which purports to live the word of a loving Jesus has utterly failed to do so.

That isn't the "Irish anticlericalism" the Telegraph's Will Heaven fantasized while conjuring up a nightmare of St Mel’s Cathedral arson.

It's a straightforward editorial assessment of inquiries into sexual predation and abuse by Irish Catholic clergy:

Counting the two concluded inquiries and the extant Cloyne probe, the three judicial inquiries will have covered a period ranging from the pre Emergency Free State to this year.

For a factually sound view, please read on.

Irish priest resignation numbers grow

Radio Netherlands reports:

On Christmas Eve, auxiliary Bishops of Dublin Eamon Walsh and Raymond Field announced that they had offered their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI. Four Irish bishops have now resigned in the wake of the Murphy Report, commissioned by the government, which found that Roman Catholic authorities in Ireland covered up the sexual abuse of children by priests for decades.

Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan, the fifth named in the Murphy Report, is under growing pressure, Irish Central reports.