Bishop John Magee was reckless and dangerous when it came to the protection of children.He didn’t give a perceptible hoot for vulnerable young people at risk from alleged rapists and sexual predators.
He lied to the Health Service Executive (HSE) to conceal a child-abuse allegation. He lied again when he claimed his diocese complied with all child-protection guidelines.
And he did his level best, including legal sabre-rattling, to impede a report exposing this behaviour by a body set up by his own church.
We’ve had to wade through acres of media coverage to figure that much out. Dell might think it has mastered the weaselly euphemism, with lines like “manufacturing migration”, “release of employees” and “career outplacement” to avoid saying it has sacked 1,900 people in Limerick, but we heard far more impressive examples of dodgy double-speak in the official reaction to the Cloyne scandal last week.
Barry Andrews, the minister for children, has given the church three weeks to provide full information on all allegations of clerical sexual abuse known to the bishops, and dismissed their reservations about “legal difficulties”, but he stopped short of using the frank language this situation demands.
But then, perhaps out of some lingering awe of the cassock and the crozier, so did everybody else.
Instead, we’ve heard about “deficits of trust” (lies), the bishop’s failure to “faithfully report actual compliance with child-protection procedures” (damned lies), the “minimal” co-operation given to gardai, (sins of omission), expressions of “disappointment” (disgust) and calls to “consider his position” (have you no shame?) from other senior churchmen, and admissions of “lacunae” (deceit) in Cloyne’s child-protection history.
The central issue is perfectly simple. The alleged and potential victims of two priests were scarcely considered by Magee. His demonstrable concern, at all times, was for the alleged abusers and, by extension, the status and coffers of the Catholic church.
Yet after an inquiry into allegations of child abuse by the Catholic church in Ferns, the church vowed that its guiding principle in approaching allegations or suspicions of abuse would be the protection of children.
Not canon law, not episcopal politics, not even the risk of injustice to priests falsely accused would override the obligation to protect children.
It is unfortunate for innocent priests who find themselves under suspicion, but any such injustice is something the Catholic church is going to have to accept for a while. True men of God would anyway accept sacrificing their own good names for the greater good of saving children from abuse if that, after the years of unchecked evil, is what it takes. From now on, the protection of children, the church promised us, would be its foremost concern.
Astonishingly, there are senior churchmen who need reminding that protecting children is not just a statutory or civic aspiration.
This is not just a reluctant and temporary little truce with officious state authorities, not an Oberammergau of ostentatious self-flagellation that can be toned down when it gets a bit close to the bone.
This stuff about protecting children, guarding the vulnerable, woe to the scandal-giver — it’s all in the Bible, guys.
Somebody drafted those guidelines long before the National Board for Safeguarding Children long before the Catholic Church in Ireland, or even the Catholic Church was ever heard of.
I was wondering when somebody would get around to mentioning this, and Cardinal Brady duly did in his statement on the affair last week.
“At all times the welfare of children must be the paramount consideration,” he said. This isn’t just “a core principle of safeguarding policy”, said the cardinal.
“This is a gospel value.”
So even by the fundamental principles of the political system within which he is a senior member, Magee broke the rules. He should have resigned by now. It doesn’t matter that no prosecutions were brought against the two priests; Magee is not the DPP, he is not empowered to make qualitative judgments on the strength of allegations or to pronounce on the credibility of witnesses.
The existence of allegations was his cue to act, and he failed to do so, while claiming that he had.
We don’t have a culture of resignations or climb-downs in this country - Beverley Flynn, the Mayo TD, even had to be forced last week to relinquish a fat allowance to which she had no moral entitlement.
Fianna Fail, of which Flynn is a prominent member, was a party to squandering the prosperity of the boom over several terms in office. So now the government is attempting to make amends by pledging itself to pare back all unnecessary spending, and by asking senior public servants to give up a portion of their salaries. Entirely at odds with such aspirations, Flynn shamelessly pocketed money to which she had no moral entitlement.
But if Magee were a minister in the government rather than in the church then the opposition would be baying, aptly enough, for his head on a plate right now. It should be a golden opportunity for the Most Revd Alan Edwin Harper, primate of the Church of Ireland, to bag some floating voters but, regrettably perhaps, organised religion doesn’t work that way.
However, when you strip away the crozier and the mitre and the jewelled rings and the purple robes, Magee is a senior politician who has been found out in misleading and self-serving behaviour. He has hidden behind legal and constitutional arguments to validate his behaviour.
He has conveniently ignored the fact that whatever flimsy legal justification he can contrive for his actions, by all moral and conscientious standards they are indefensible.
As a former private secretary to three popes, Magee was privy to church strategy on clerical child abuse. He was part of the administration that squandered generations of trust and goodwill.
Now, at a time when his church is desperately trying to restore confidence, demanding sacrifices from its priests, and seeking painful measures from its senior figures, Magee acts in a manner at odds with such aspirations.
Among other things, Magee has breached a core party principle — a “gospel value”. He has said he will not resign unless his boss, Pope Benedict, instructs him to do so.
Over time he can atone for the public damage caused with unctuous apologies and good public relations, but the loss of a “gospel value” is not quite so easily remedied.
It will be interesting to see which the Pope rates more highly.
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Sotto Voce
(Source: DM)