Mags GarganDear Editor, Serious questions now arise for the National Management Council of the Society of St Vincent de Paul following the revelation (IC 04/09/2014) that they appropriated substantial funds to an organisation (Amach! LGBT Galway) whose ethos furthers activities which are contrary to Catholic Church moral teaching.
So far, the response from the SVP smacks of the kind of double-speak of spin doctors within the political arena with which we are all too familiar and which has so deeply undermined public trust in politics.
The only way that trust can now be re-established in the SVP is by an independent root and branch investigation of where, to whom and how monies collected, donated or willed to the society are allocated and under whose, and in which, direction.
This investigation should be transparent and also needs to examine levels of salaries paid within the organisation.
In the meantime the members of the National Management Council should consider their position.
It would be hard to believe that the late Miss Maureen O’Connell would have intended any of her bequest (€7.8 million) to go to support any activity other than helping the poorest in society. Certainly there is no evidence to suggest that she would have wished any of it to go to support a gay activist group. It would be impossible to believe that Blessed Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the society, would have supported this either.
I congratulate Bishop Martin Drennan for his great courage in speaking out publicly on the matter, and particularly in the face of the powerful anti-Catholic ideologies washing over society like an unstoppable tsunami. Please God the other bishops will take courage from his stance and at last stand up for the Faith that they are ordained to proclaim and defend.
Yours etc.,
John Skelly,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.