Monday, February 10, 2014

Dublin Archdiocese Demands LifeSiteNews Article Naming Archbishop Diarmuid Martin Be Taken Down

One week ago, on Monday February 3, I posted on this blog a recent LifeSiteNews interview, a YouTube video, with Bernadette Smyth, Director of Precious Life in Ireland. The LifeSite report accompanying that video included the following account by Ms. Smyth:

…one bishop even “brought Enda Kenny Holy Communion to his seat after he signed this bill in, instead of Enda Kenny coming to the altar to receive, which he should have been denied…because he is in opposition to the Church.”  Ms. Smyth identified this bishop as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.

This was quite an explosive revelation, I thought at the time, and certainly warranted a blog posting. A couple days ago I reviewed that same posting to listen to the video once again, and to my surprise, found the YouTube video was now tagged private. I returned to the LifeSiteNews website and found what appeared to be the same video interview but after looking at it I realized it had been scrubbed of all reference to the Holy Communion encounter with Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Enda Kenny. The text of the report had also been scrubbed of any such reference.

Obviously something had hit the fan. I send along a message via the Combox to Steve Jalsevac at LifeSiteNews:

It appears that the reference to Archbishop Martin providing Holy Communion to Enda Kenny at his seat during Mass has been scrubbed from the original video. I wonder if you could tell me why this portion of the video was deleted? Was the information provided by Bernadette Smyth not accurate?

His response:

We received a call from the archdiocese demanding that the article be removed. For now we have removed reference to the archbishop pending further independent investigation by ourselves.

I trust that LifeSiteNews will indeed do the follow up investigation that will either confirm or refute Ms. Smyth’s testimony, regardless of her motives or intentions. If true, then we shall have more to say to Archbishop Martin.


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