Northern Ireland’s former Police Ombudsman, Baroness Nuala O’Loan,
has urged the Church in Ireland “not to get lost or consumed” by the
“darkness of the child abuse scandals.”
Speaking about her public lecture, Honesty, Healing and Hope: Divided Communities and the Structures, Approaches and Strategies Needed to Move Forward, last Monday evening in All Hallows College in Dublin, Baroness O’Loan told ciNews she had two specific messages.
“One is that we haven’t finished the job with regard to child abuse
and we need to get the structures right and make sure that they work.
The second is that we need to create new structures and a new culture
and a new attitude which is about our duty to be active in our Church
and the responsibility which comes with baptism,” she said.
Speaking about the context in which the Church in Ireland finds
itself in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan reports and the apostolic
visitations, Baroness O’Loan said it was important to acknowledge that
“the Church has made mistakes.”
She said “the fact that people didn’t own up to or weren’t honest
about what was going on is important.”
However, she underlined that
Irish society, as a whole, was "to a degree complicit in not challenging
evil.”
“What has to be done in the midst of all the darkness, terror, pain
and suffering” is to “find remedies” and “introduce new structures.”
She said there was “so much to do” in the area of child protection
and added that the Church “hasn’t cared for the victims in the way it
should have done.”
Addressing the 2011 Developing Parish seminar, she called for the
establishment of a programme of structural reform in the Church in
Ireland and she told parish council representatives that this needed to
include developing “some sort of listening arm” and accountability for
the Church’s actions.
Baroness O’Loan told ciNews that “For years there has been
constant calls in Ireland for some sort of process through which there
can be a meeting of the Catholic people in Ireland so they can express
the issues that concern them and identify solutions.”
Highlighting that there was still nothing in place to cater for this
need for a forum for the laity, she added, “The only collegial meeting
that takes place really is the meeting of the bishops. And it is not
delivering what the people of God need.”
“Over the years I have watched the changing of minds and hearts in
Northern Ireland and I think we need to change minds and hearts in our
Church too,” she said.
“The relationships which existed in our Church before were vertical,
hierarchical relationships and what we need to develop is horizontal
relationships where the balance of power is shifted,” Baroness O’Loan
suggested.
She said every diocese needed to establish a listening process that
would begin with a listening process at parish level.
“Once you have
got a listening process in the dioceses, we would have some
understanding of what the issues really are for the Church and what
people really need at the present time,” she said.
Baroness O’Loan described it as “profoundly important” that the
listening was accompanied by analysis of what was being said and that
there was a response to the issues raised. “The question is who is to
make the response – it cannot just be the bishops.”
She criticised the Church’s child protection procedures describing
them as “nothing more than embryonic.”
She added, “There is a huge
amount still to be done and there is a problem because it is not being
done and the National Safeguarding Board want to do it.”
She warned, “The NBSCCC is producing a lot of good ideas in terms of
how to ensure that things work: that there is accountability; that there
is an audit – but these aren’t being moved forward.”
Outlining other concerns, Baroness O’Loan said, “We don’t have any
proper procedures for the work of the bishops advisory panels, who
advise on whether a priest should step aside; we don’t have any proper
procedures for working out whether it is necessary for a priest to step
aside when an allegation is made; we don’t have any procedures for
somebody who makes a complaint in the parish which is not dealt with,
currently there is nowhere for them to go.”