Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran: God doesn’t make mistakes but when a child is born with Downs’ syndrome or grows up to be gay that’s on him.
God doesn’t make mistakes and the Pope is considered infallible, but when a child is born with Downs’ syndrome or grows up to be gay that’s on him.
It’s his own fault. Heaven has already washed its hands.
Sound harsh? It doesn’t to Ireland’s Bishop Kevin Doran, the conservative Catholic leader whose comments on the Newstalk Breakfast program this week started an international media firestorm.
On the program Doran said that homosexuality - like Down’s syndrome or spina bifida – “was not part of God’s plan.”
Bishop Doran omitted to mention whose plan they were part of? Perhaps Satan’s? Predictably, the call lines erupted with angry parents who took exception to Doran’s ill-considered comments.
Then the radio host asked Doran to qualify if people being born gay was “as God intended.”
Doran replied: “That would be to suggest that some people are born with Down’s syndrome or spina bifida, that that was what God intended. The thing about it is, I can’t see it in the mind of God.”
Doran failed to explain how he had gained access to the mind of God, of course and the radio host clearly wasn’t buying it. “The things you mentioned are disabilities,” the host pointed out. “Your sexual orientation is not a disability.”
“Well, I’m not entering into that,” Doran replied. “I’m just saying it would be wrong to suggest that everything that happens, happens because God intended it. If that were the case, we’d be talking about a very different kind of God.”
If God didn’t intend for cancer and Downs syndrome and leukemia and insanity and a host of other terrible misfortunes to happen, what was He otherwise preoccupied with when they actually did - gardening? You would think one of them might have caught His attention?
But that’s the thing with flagrantly made up claims. If they get awkward you can make up more flagrant claims to explain the glaring inconsistencies in the flagrant claims you already made up. But at some point you’ll start to look like an insufferable fool and on Monday Bishop Doran did.
Even the Church higher ups feel Doran has made an idiot of himself. On Wednesday Primate of All Ireland Eamon Martin took to the airwaves to claim that Bishop Doran was sorry for “any offence” he “may have caused” during the Newstalk Breakfast interview.
Doran also sparked outrage during the taped interview by suggesting that rape victims who seek abortions do so to “get back” at their attackers.
Asked about the morality of seeking an abortion after a rape victim has fallen pregnant, Doran replied: “Objectively speaking, to kill another human being is always sinful. The child is still a human being, you don’t destroy a life in order to get back at the mother’s rapist.”
The Irish go to the polls on May 22 to vote in the marriage referendum on same sex marriage.