Bruton criticises media obsession with blame game

THE MEDIA’S “relentless search for someone to blame” has been criticised by former taoiseach John Bruton.

“Vengeance does not cure the injury to victims. Sometimes it makes it worse. Retribution is not Christ’s way. No, that hard and unnatural thing, forgiveness, is Christ’s way.”

Mr Bruton said it would help modern Ireland – with its record prison population and its media engaged in a relentless search for someone to blame – if it could remind itself, this Easter, of the true meaning of Christ’s life. And of the meaning of his death. Mr Bruton was delivering a reflection at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Mullingar during the Chrism Mass on Thursday night.

“Our reason is a gift from God,” he said. “And we must use it to examine our own lives, our faith and our failings . . . if we did that more often, we would not need so many regulations and regulators.”

He said faith was one of the great gifts afforded to his generation, who were born in Ireland in the years after the second World War. “It is a gift we have an obligation now to pass on.”

The former taoiseach added that “our faith, as Catholics”, is a reminder that our obligations are to all humanity and not simply to family or nation.

Mr Bruton quoted Pope Pius XI when the late pontiff reminded the world in 1922 that even patriotism must be “kept within the laws of Christ”.