IF the Catholic Church in Ireland, over recent decades, has lost its moral authority, due to child sexual abuse, allied to an ongoing authoritarian governance mode, it was with disbelief that the nation last week learned about the High Court proceedings taken by 81-year old Cardinal Desmond Connell, challenging the right of present Archbishop of Dublin Dr. Diarmuid Martin to release diocesan files to a Government-backed commission of inquiry into allegations of rape and child sexual abuse.Then, just a week later, came the news on Monday that the cardinal had withdrawn his bid to stop the commission examining the child abuse files and, suddenly, what was described as an attempt to promote secrecy was halted which, after a predictable storm of protest, must raise just as many questions. Has the Church learned anything after its years in denial and of turning a blind eye to horrendous abuse?
Furthermore, what has years of teaching philosophy (or the ‘love of wisdom’) taught an aged academic whose conception of truth and justice seems so desperately wanting ?
No wonder one columnist contended that the situation indicated ‘a shocking moral vacuum at the heart of the clergy and hierarchy in this country.’
‘Years of privilege blinded the bishops’ commented Professor Colum Kenny of Dublin City University who also contended that such a court case would be ‘a milestone on the road to their self-destruction’. While the Catholic Church’s influence has declined in the Western World, its position in Ireland is more unusual in that, from being persecuted and discriminated against under British rule, it was catapulted, on national independence, into a dominant position where it could challenge, and often did, the legitimate authority of elected governments.
Former Archbishop of Dublin Dr. John Charles McQuaid, when he returned from the Vatican Council in December, 1965, promised that ‘no change will worry the tranquillity of your Christian lives’. So, was it any surprise, years later in 1994, that the Jesuit quarterly review ‘Studies’ could make a damning conclusion on the Irish Church’s role, saying that its adherence to doctrine and practices were ‘unique in the Western world’ ?
This ‘uniqueness’, however, could hardly be laudable when the same editorial concluded that the Irish Church ‘is part of a larger institution that failed to grasp the opportunities of the second Vatican Council’ and not only alienates many but ‘runs the risk of repeating the mistakes of the 19th century ‘Syllabus of Errors.’
The Irish Church, having recovered from the dreadful Penal Laws and strengthened by Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, gradually increased in influence from the 18th century position when the powers of State were divided between the Anglican landlord minority and the British government.
Though Rome opposed national movements, Catholic priests were strongly involved in the Land League, with some imprisoned, and despite the 1890 Parnell crisis which spilt the nation, the Catholic Church’s influence grew and though ‘sitting on the fence’ with the British all the way through to independence, it emerged strengthened and, many will contend, ‘too strong.’
The Irish bishops, however, did back Ireland’s right to independence, in a statement issued in October 1930, with only a few dissenters, notably the Bishop of Ross, Dr. Kelly, a Tipperary man but by the time the new Irish Constitution was formulated in 1937, its powers were all-embracing.
Internally, however, in a doctrinal way, the Church had not shaken off prejudices imported through Jansenism, a Puritanical sect embracing a rigid orthodoxy on sexual matters and setting up an agenda making the Sixth and Ninth Commandments the number one diktats and which preachers attempted to enforce with threats of ‘fire and brimstone’, harassment of courting couples and other admonishments.
No wonder the Irish psyche was twisted and distorted by this asceticism and which produced generations of bachelors and spinsters in rural wildernesses but also, unfortunately, resulted in some clergy themselves, who were consigned to compulsory celibacy, resorting to other sexual voyeurism, with young children mostly the abused victims.
The Puritan agenda, inculcated in adult generations, however, led to the low marriage and birth rates of the forties and fifties, era of “The ‘Vanishing Irish” (title of Dr. John A. O’Brien’s book), and which, ironically, propelled some bishops, notably the late Dr. Cornelius Lucey, to tour the rural countryside, attempting through sermons at confirmation time, to undo the damage the Church itself had inflicted.
Child sexual abuse by clergy was not a recent phenomenon and, in the early 1930s, serious evidence was produced by the report of William Carrigan, an English King’s Counsel whose findings referred to ‘an alarming amount of sexual crime increasing yearly.’
Disgracefully, this government -commissioned report was covered up, no doubt at the Church’s behest, by both the Cosgrave and de Valera governments which felt it ‘would be damaging to public morality.’
Nothing about the damage to the unfortunate children but how ironic that, to-day, almost eighty years later, another government investigation was about to be impeded by, of all people, a cardinal of the Church.
This despite the welcome commitment of his successor in office Archbishop Martin to guarantee full transparency and openness in order to defend and protect vulnerable children and which examination of evidence would, anyway, be confidential at the early stage of investigation.
Cardinal Connell’s legal move was to block from the commission some 5,586 of a total 66,583 documents given to it by Archbishop Martin.
The Cardinal contended that these 5,586 documents are legally privileged or confidential and also complains that they contain some matters outside the representative sample of 46 priests.
So what, many retorted, and if complaints already in the courts amounted to 450 legal actions against the Dublin archdiocese, what was the sense in equivocation about precise numbers ?
All child sexual abuse, if proven, is wrong but to discover the truth requires examination of all evidence.
The question of legal privilege, technically, could be arguable, shades of the Mahon Tribunal ‘leaks’ but ultimately, these investigations are set up to protect the public interest and expose wrongdoing. They should not be thwarted by doubtful legal claims about privilege, the authenticity of which cannot be assessed by the public at large.
A government commission, like a tribunal, has the required capacity and authority but, if prevented from operating, the obvious question was what was the cover-up attempt hiding and who was being protected ?
While Cardinal Connell protested his determination to disclose all, he was dilatory and, from his 1988 appointment as archbishop, it took him seven years until 1995, to initiate a trawl though the files, subsequent to his sole action of removing two priests.
Then in 2002, the cardinal supplied to gardai the names of 17 priests but, more significantly since then and referring back to 1940, Archbishop Martin disclosed that 135 abuse allegations were made against 147 priests.
Need one say more ?
Cardinal Connell inherited the failures of his predecessors but, despite the pious utterings, was slow to make amends. His rigid orthodoxy was often demonstrated in other controversies as, for example, in the 1999 incident where he strayed into what one newspaper called ‘twilight philosophical areas’ by contending that the babies of parents using contraceptives were ‘technological products’ and not real people.
Earlier, he caused ecumenical offence by describing as ‘a sham’ the action of President McAleese in receiving communion at Christ Church Cathedral and, later, was embroiled in the ‘marriage breakdown’ scene when, at a State reception in Dublin Castle to mark his ‘red hat’, he objected to the presence of Celia Larkin, then partner of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
The Catholic Church has been a most important force for good in Ireland over centuries but, if also blinded by privilege in overstepping itself, actions such as attempted by Cardinal Connell suggest that some clerics still fail to understand the enormous damage done by the child abuse scandal. Nit picking about questionable legal privilege, in such a horrendous scenario, could only heap further odium on a Church that was close to the point of pushing the ‘self destruct’ button.
For decades, the silence of clerics, the bishops’ inaction and the long standing covering up, damaged the Church’s credibility and some asked that since Cardinal Connell was no longer archbishop, did he even have an authority to attempt such court action ? By putting legal nicety before Christian compassion and the need for reparation, he was turning back the clock and the silence from other bishops showed that many live in a time warp.
And now, by an almost ‘blasphemous’ sense of timing, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is going down a similar calamitous road and, he, certainly, cannot claim to be a St. Thomas Aquinas or, otherwise, some kind of modern ‘lover of wisdom’ !
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