DUBLIN CLERICAL child sex abuse victim Marie Collins has repeated her call for the remaining bishops mentioned in the Murphy report and still holding office to resign.In a letter to The Irish Times today she says “NO, NO, NO [her emphasis] – Bishops Field, Drennan, Walsh and Moriarty, you cannot hide the fact that you met month after month in the archdiocese, seeing the policy that was in place, and none of you stood up and cried STOP!”
Ms Collins was abused by Fr Edmondus, as he is referred to in the Murphy report. She was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, where he had been chaplain when the abuse took place.
She recalls how the Irish Bishops Conference earlier this month admitted they were ashamed of what had gone on in the Dublin archdiocese.
She noted that in a statement from their winter meeting, they said: “The avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children. This should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again.”
She continued: “They asked for our forgiveness, yet of the five bishops who were in positions of power in the archdiocese during the period of the Murphy report, all seem to feel they can be excluded from that plea as they feel they have no need of forgiveness.”
She felt “the damage it causes to the Catholic Church to see these men hanging on with a vice-like grip to power, prestige and title is immeasurable.
“Is there any real repentance in the church or are the words from the bishops conference just that, ‘words’? ”
She said that “as a survivor, I found the resignation statement of Bishop Murray hard to swallow. He was resigning to save ‘survivors’ from ‘difficulties’. Not taking any responsibility at all for his mishandling of an abusing priest, rather he was doing us ‘the survivors’ a favour by stepping down!”
Similarly, she said of the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin: “Bishop Moriarty has indicated he might step down if it would serve the people, the church and victims! Not because he feels any responsibility whatsoever.”
Addressing Dublin Auxiliary Bishop Dr Ray Field, the Bishop of Galway Dr Martin Drennan, Dublin Auxiliary Bishop Dr Éamonn Walsh and Bishop Dr Jim Moriarty directly, she says: “You do not seem to realise you must go, not because of how you might have handled individual cases, but because you were part of the regime that facilitated abusing priests to carry on abusing and did nothing to stop it or expose it.”
She said when she was a child she learned of the sin of omission. “Have none of these men ever heard of it?” she asks.
“They variously say, ‘we were not criticised in the report (it was only a sample) or we do not feel we did anything wrong etc’ . . . Examine your consciences and realise [that] standing by and doing nothing was a crime. It left children to be hurt and suffer who should never have been touched.”
She said all of the bishops were “guilty of knowing what the system was and all must take responsibility for being part of that system and not having the courage then to say stop – have the courage now to take the responsibility you should have then and please, please go!”
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