No apology to the Catholic Church from SFA after Dallas.

EXCLUSIVE

The Catholic Church in Scotland has revealed to this journalist that the Scottish Football Association has failed to contact them with an apology following on from the Dallas Email incident late last year.

Peter Kearney of the Scottish Catholic Media Office stated:

“In a statement issued on 10 November 2010, The Chief Executive of the SFA

stated “categorically” that he did not “condone the transmission of any

email content that might cause offence to anyone” The SFA subsequently

dismissed a senior official for what was found to be a breach of their

‘Information Systems Acceptable Use Policy’. They have not however issued

any apology to date.”

James MacMillan the internationally renowned classical composer and noted Scottish Catholic was quick to add his comments:

“My feeling is that, since the SFA is a public body, it owes an explanation or an apology to the general public for the behaviour of its employee, especially those people offended by his gratuitous insult to the Pope; i.e., it is not the Church that deserves the apology, it is the wider community, who look to the SFA to be a responsible and respectable organisation and credit to the nation, that deserves one. Also, the general public need an explanation as to why the SFA announced that Hugh Dallas was resigning for family reasons, when subsequently we discovered that this was not the case. Was the SFA spokesman lying to us?”

Ex-footballer Kieron Brady, who is now the director of Celebrate Identity, Challenge Intolerance gave his view as an anti-discrimination expert on the SFA’s lack of apology to the Catholic Church.

“Assuming an apology could be offered without obstructing or prejudicing any outstanding legal and employment matters it is surprising and sad that a body such as the national association of the national game in Scotland has not saw fit to apologise to the Catholic church.”

He continued:

“It casts doubts on any initiatives that they, as a body, have around reducing sectarianism, notably anti-Catholicism. What is key in this matter also is whether those involved were solely investigated around a breach of IT Policy. If this is the case then it begs the question that if the content of the e-mail was in some way verbally espoused, or communicated in a manner that did not leave any trail, would those involved have immunity from any action. It is unfathomable, that when we consider the depths of anti-Catholicism in Scotland, if the motives surrounding the e-mail were not even explored. We only have to look at another issue around Equality matters recently, that of the furore around sexism within employees at Sky TV. Within a matter of days the employer of those involved had made a public apology for the offence caused, this was followed by a public apology from one of those involved. Although such apologies may not pacify all aggrieved parties it is incomprehensible that there has not been any sign of an apology, especially as this is a norm when many high profile employers and organisations are embroiled in various controversies.”

I contacted the SFA’s partner organisation Show Bigotry The Red Card, but their national director Ged Grebby refused to comment.

Finally I contacted the SFA but they refused to comment of the association’s failure to issue an apology to the Catholic Church for the offence caused by their employee Mr.Dallas.

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