“Since the early 1990s a spate of appalling revelations on how Catholic priests and religious have blighted the lives of many young people through sexual abuse have tumbled out. Abuse was usually followed by cover-up.”There is a more serious problem in Cork than whether its star hurlers will play this year under the management of Gerald McCarthy.
Let’s look at a report of the National Board for Safeguarding Children, an independent body set up by the Catholic Church as part of its response to the clerical and religious sexual abuse of children, which has deeply tainted the image of the Church in recent years.
A few days before Christmas, Ian Elliott, the head of the board, presented a devastating critique of child protection policies in the diocese of Cloyne. According to the report, Bishop John Magee seriously mishandled two cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests in the last decade.
In the first case the bishop learned of the alleged abuse in 1995. Further allegations about the priest came to the bishop’s attention in 1996. Yet the priest, who was a career guidance teacher in a convent secondary school, remained at his post until 1998.
In 2006 another serious allegation of the abuse of a young girl by this priest emerged. A Garda enquiry began, but Elliott’s report asserts that ‘the policy of the diocese in their contacts with the Gardaí was to give minimal information. In particular, it is indicated that no information was to be volunteered in respect of any previous complaints involving this priest.’
In the second case the alleged abuser had frequent contact with teenagers. Here, Mr Elliott concluded, from his perusal of Bishop Magee’s papers on the matter, there was a glaring absence of ‘the need to protect vulnerable young people. Current risk to young people is not referred to at all.’ The overall verdict of the report is that there was an overwhelming emphasis on the needs of the alleged abuser, rather than on those of the children of the diocese.
Clerical and religious sexual abuse of children is the nightmare, to paraphrase some words of James Joyce in another context, from which the Catholic Church in Ireland is seeking to awake.
The American writer, Howard Bleichner, in his book, ‘A View from the Altar’, states that ‘by any measure, the sexual abuse scandals have struck the Catholic Church in the United States with the force of a tsunami, dealing the Catholic priesthood the worst blow in memory’. So it has also been in Ireland.
Since the early 1990s a spate of appalling revelations on how Catholic priests and religious have blighted the lives of many young people through sexual abuse have tumbled out. Abuse was usually followed by cover-up.
The Ferns Report of 2005 documented definitively how one diocese mishandled and covered up allegations for several years. A similar report on the archdiocese of Dublin is in preparation and is expected to be published shortly. Nothing in its long history has done so much damage to the credibility of the Church in Ireland.
When the allegations began to emerge in the 1990s the initial Church response was furtive and governed by a desire to protect the image of the institution rather than attend to the needs of those whose lives were haunted by the abuse they suffered.
As editor of the church magazine, ‘Intercom’, in 1993 I published an article on the matter. Soon afterwards, in a telephone conversation with Bishop Duffy of Clogher, he raised the subject of the article. He said he wanted to ‘mark my card’ for the future. He implied that a Church magazine should not be raising the matter. I sensed that he felt the publication of the article was unhelpful, even disloyal to the institution.
He referred me to Dr Forristal, then Bishop of Ossory, who, he said, was chairing a committee dealing with sexual abuse allegations. I contacted him offering space in the magazine to respond to the article and to outline the Church’s child protection policies. He emphatically refused to do so. Should he wish to make a response in the future he would contact me.
Soon Church leaders were facing more searching questions than the polite enquiry of a perturbed editor of a religious magazine. Dreadful revelations, most notably in the case of Fr Brendan Smith, dominated the national news.
Under extreme pressure, Church leaders prepared guidelines on child protection which, hopefully, will prevent repetition of such abuse. First published in 1996, they have been updated and revised in 2000 and 2005.
That is what makes the revelations in the Cloyne report so astonishing and disturbing.
Bishop Magee has been in charge of the diocese of Cloyne since 1987. He could not have been unaware of his responsibility to follow the guidelines devised during his reign. He has now apologised to the victims and asserted that ‘the safety of children is the priority for me and the diocese of Cloyne’.
Is this enough? I think not.
There are times when apologies are not enough.
There are times when firm purposes of amendment are not enough.
There are times when only resignation can restore confidence.
This is one of them.
May I use to Bishop Magee some words of Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, as the country’s war effort disintegrated in 1940 – ‘In the name of God, go’.
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Sotto Voce
(Source: Mayo News)