The controversy had grown too large. The pro-life spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster in England has resigned.
Austen Ivereigh, the spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster, announced on July 19 that he had decided to resign because of “persistent and untrue reports about my private life.” In a slightly different statement, the cardinal said that Ivereigh had “offered his resignation some time ago. I have now formally accepted it.”
We’d discussed this in two previous posts (1, 2) and the general consensus among commenters seemed to be that while media was gladly using the scandal to bash the Church’s position on abortion law, Ivereigh was fast becoming a distraction whether he was actually guilty of hypocrisy or not and that for the good of the Church he should step aside. Apparently the final straw was when other bishops started criticizing him and demanding his resignation. We’ll likely never know whether he was guilty or innocent of what he was accused, but maybe now everyone can move on. We’ll see if the media does.
