AFTER the Ferns report, the Ryan report and all the other hideous disclosures of clerical sex abuse, we await the publication of the report on the Dublin Archdiocese, expected on Thursday.It has been well signalled that this will be the most horrifying document yet to appear on the subject.
At its core will be the finding that four successive archbishops engaged in covering up terrible crimes of the clergy, including rape -- crimes that continued for generations, and blighted the lives of thousands of victims.
To a very great extent, disclosures of cover-ups are not new. We have known for many years about the practices in which senior clergy engaged, and why they behaved as they did: to protect the institution, the Catholic Church, at whatever cost.
They permitted manifestly unsuitable candidates to enter the priesthood. They "dealt" with abusers by moving them from parish to parish. They sent them for treatments which clearly did not succeed. Sometimes they moved them abroad, without informing a recipient diocese of their record.
But the bishops and other senior clergy thus involved are not alone to blame. Much of the fault lay with the Department of Education and other government departments which failed to do their statutory (and humanitarian) duty. Parents refused to believe allegations of sadistic behaviour. Abuses in institutions were well known. In parishes all over the country, many people had a shrewd idea what was going on, and stayed silent.
And when the protests of victims could no longer be ignored, the State tried to buy off its own share of responsibility in the scandalous deal with 18 religious orders.
That deal provided that the State should share the cost of compensation with the orders in a proportion of roughly 10 to one. After much controversy and prolonged negotiation, the orders agreed to review their contribution with a view to paying a higher proportion. The outcome, if any, remains uncertain.
More serious, however, is the fact that protocols were put in place to ensure proper procedures for inquiries into abuse allegations, and were in some cases ignored. This cannot but arouse suspicions that certain senior clergy co-operated unwillingly, if at all.
In fairness, many have made sincere apologies, deeply regret the sins of the past, and hope they will never be repeated. But one wonders what difficulties Archbishop Diarmuid Martin -- generally believed to have been appointed to the Dublin archdiocese with the specific brief of cleaning it up -- has faced in his years of toiling for reform.
In Dublin and elsewhere, reform means much more than preventing clerical sex abuse. The Catholic Church, the country's most respected institution, has lost its prestige and authority. The vocations crisis intensifies yearly.
The Church's role in education has become the subject of debate: as yet only a tentative debate, but it is certain to result in a diminution of Church influence.
More painful than loss of influence is the knowledge, which caused Archbishop Martin to shed tears, that priests and religious who inflicted dreadful suffering on the innocent broke their solemn vows at the same time that they betrayed the trust reposed in them.
For this, there must be reparation; and not only in the form of financial compensation. Even before the publication of the Dublin report, there is reason to be concerned about the victims' belief that they have not been treated with sufficient respect. That must be remedied, and its implications, going beyond the role of the Church, must be understood.
Maeve Lewis of the One in Four group accuses the bishops of taking, even now, "a very legalistic approach".
And points to a piece of information in the forthcoming report whose implications should not be ignored. She says victims have told her organisation gardai often dismissed abuse claims or said that they did not fall within its remit.
That, like the failings of the Department of Education, indicates the culpability of the civil authorities, which, like that of the Church, stretches back for generations.
The publication of this report is a challenge, not only to the Church but to the wider society which ignored, or even condoned, those vile and shameful crimes.
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