The decision by Cardinal Desmond Connell, the retired archbishop of Dublin, not to proceed with his High Court challenge does not signal a massive change of heart by a Church very much on the defensive.

The scandal of evasion and cover-up over sex abuse by clerics goes far beyond the archdiocese of Dublin and the Irish Church. The full story may never come out, here or elsewhere.

What happened yesterday merely ensures that another part of the sordid story in Ireland cannot remain shrouded in official secrecy. Yesterday’s decision by the cardinal to give up his efforts to block the release by his successor of all files to a commission of investigation was a victory for common sense.

It was much more than that. It was a recognition by the cardinal, for whatever reason and however late, that far more was at stake than a commitment, no doubt given in good faith, to certain individuals that their stories would remain confidential.

Law does recognise that certain communications between individuals can be shielded from public disclosure by a confidentiality pact. But no such pact can ever be absolute, not when it is entered into by someone who is acting of behalf of a unique institution.

The institution known as the Catholic Church operates on the basis of Gospel values, which place a very high premium on respect for the dignity and integrity of the individual human person.

When these have been violated, as they were in a very brutal, cynical and sustained way over many years in Ireland by clerical officers of this Church, then its institutional leaders have to consider what is their true responsibility.

Is it to shield the institution at all costs? Is it to allow a personal commitment to a number of individuals to override the urgent need for institutional contrition and redress? No one who knows Cardinal Connell would doubt that he believed his determination to protect the confidentiality of certain files was sincere. On the other hand, promises had been made that the Church would co-operate unconditionally with any investigation in the shocking history of sex abuse by clerics.

It was imperative that this should happen, not only because of the hurt and the psychic devastation resulting from it, but also because the credibility of an institution was at stake.

These considerations alone should have caused Cardinal Connell to think twice before challenging the proper decision by his successor, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, to release all files to the committee.

The cardinal was claiming legal privilege over 5,586 documents out of 66,583 handed over by Archbishop Martin to the investigating committee. Apart from the question of whether these were diocesan documents, rather than the personal property of the cardinal, there was a much bigger question to be addressed.

How is justice best served within an institution where blatant injustice has for too long been smugly lived with and covered up? In defence of the cardinal, it could be said that he was merely the product of an ecclesiastical culture (founded in part on arrogance) which — emanating from Rome — regarded the right of the Church to run its own affairs as it saw fit as beyond reproach.

Make no mistake — this culture of arrogance and unaccountability persists today and will persist tomorrow, despite the change of heart by Cardinal Connell. Nor is the ecclesiastical establishment in Ireland alone to blame for this.

For far too long in this country the supine behaviour of the political establishment has been a significant contributory factor to this culture.

What the Church did was its own business — that was the guiding principle for successive governments in this country. That’s partly the reason why we are now trying to clean up an appalling mess.

It would have been made all the more shameful if the cardinal had persisted with his ill-conceived High Court challenge. Of him it can be said, charitably, that he is a man out of his time. But it would be extremely foolish to pretend that the culture that he represents died, along with his challenge, on the steps of the High Court yesterday.

The late Fr Joe Dunn wrote a book in 1994 critical of the leadership of the Irish Church entitled No Lions in the Hierarchy — no lions today either, as it happens, but Cardinal Desmond Connell was not and is not the only dinosaur.