The Mire » mental reservation

New dawn as ordinary people to hear confessions of priests?

Donal Conaty — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:15:44 +0000

The Catholic Church is considering changing the way the confessional operates so that ordinary people hear the confessions of their priests.

“It is abundantly clear that priests have much more to confess than ordinary people do,” a spokesman said.

“In order to facilitate the large numbers of people hearing these confessions, priests will confess from the altar,” the spokesman added.

Breaking: It has just emerged that the first sentence of this story was written with mental reservation.

It should in fact read: The catholic church is not considering….

Gardaí to use mental reservation when chatting amicably about rape

Donal Conaty — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 07:51:48 +0000

Senior gardaí investigating the Corrib cops rape tape controversy may recommend that gardaí use mental reservation when idly discussing raping and deporting women.

“We should look to our brothers in the church for guidance on this matter,” a source said.

Alternatively, gardaí could be advised to switch off recording devices before chatting amicably about rape. “There are various ways of doing this, we recommend using a sledgehammer,” a member of the garda intelligence unit said.

“Some devices may have a black box which is indestructible,” he added. “You have to hit them lads extra hard.”

Bank crisis inquiry to proceed with ‘mental reservation’

Donal Conaty — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:49:11 +0000

The Mire understands that Fianna Fail and Green Party negotiators have reached a compromise that will allow some elements of the inquiry into the banking crisis to be heard in public.

The impasse was broken early this morning when it was apparently agreed that witnesses giving evidence in public would be encouraged to use the “mental reservation” system made popular by the catholic church.

“Bankers, regulators and politicians are all cunning fellows,” a source said. “Once they know they can use mental reservation we don’t think any of them will inadvertently tell the truth.”

Mental reservation, more commonly known to the layman as lying, is a system whereby people state the harsh truth in their heads and bland platitudes out loud. Practitioners of mental reservation believe they lead their lives bathed in God’s light.

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Bishops say report quite positive when read with mental reservation

Donal Conaty — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:08:45 +0000

Some of the country’s most appalling bishops have written to The Mire in support of Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh’s assertion that there had been a “gross misreading” of the Dublin diocesan report leading to calls for the resignation of Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray.

Bishop Murray has been under pressure to resign for his mishandling of complaints of child sexual abuse by priests during the period up to 1996 during which time he was an auxiliary bishop in the Dublin archdiocese.

However, the bishops have suggested alternative ways to read the report which, they argue, would make its contents far less disturbing and, incredibly, could even show the catholic church in a positive light.

“We would like to humbly suggest that interested parties use one of the following tactics when reading the Dublin diocesan report,” the bishops said.

“The tactics are:

- read the report with eyes closed

- read the report backwards

- read either consonants or vowels but not both

- read the report aloud but read parts that make you feel uncomfortable in silence.

“These reading aids are part of our mental reservation philosophy and we feel sure that anyone who uses them will realise that the report is in fact quite positive about us,” the bishops concluded.