THE DUBLIN archdiocese got child protection spectacularly wrong as the Murphy report and the tsunami of outrage and disgust that followed it demonstrated.However, there is an opportunity to position the archdiocese by this time next year, January 2011, as a national champion for children and propose that every other civil institution would be held to its standard.
At first glance this might seem hopelessly optimistic. Yet it is clear that Archbishop Martin in his comments on New Year’s Day has a vision of where he wants to go in 2010. Renewal will happen in more than just child protection structures he said “because when you have seismic moments you need a qualitative leap to a different view of church”.
It will not be too difficult to make a qualitative leap in terms of child protection; the Dublin archdiocese has structures in place that are beyond anything any civil institution currently has.
By establishing the archdiocese as a national leader in child protection Archbishop Martin would position himself as a champion for Irish children and challenge the State and its institutions to follow suit at a time when the State is cutting resources to social services..
If 4 per cent of abusers are clergy or religious (SAVI Report 2002), then who is championing the rights of the children affected by the other 96 per cent?
Reform of the archdiocese is actually a more difficult task however. The first step in this leap to a renewed church will be the pope’s letter, most likely on Ash Wednesday.
It will acknowledge the tremendous contribution of the Irish to the church worldwide from the time of the golden age of monasticism to the modern missionary movement. The pope will express his complete abhorrence at clerical child sexual abuse.
There may well be a call for a proper understanding of proper sexual health among clergy but also in society and a re-statement of the church’s position on healthy sexual morality.
He will commend the child protection initiatives taken to date and ask that they be brought to fruition within the church. Finally, he will call on the whole Irish church to sit in fellowship and ask that the Gospel be preached by clergy and religious, working together with the laity in order to bring about the renewal of Gospel values and faith in the Irish church.
In other words, there are great people in the Irish church, so face up to your problems, don’t run away from them but solve them, stop bickering (bishops and CORI) and make the Irish church accountable to the Holy See and civil society.
Archbishop Martin will push ahead with reforms in the Dublin archdiocese based on his experience of the church in Europe, removing the failed structures so clearly identified in the Murphy report and distancing the archdiocese as fully as possible from those priests who were “collectively responsible” for what his administration agrees was a “cover-up”.
He may go to each of the deaneries as he did before and try to rally the priests around a vision of the future. To bring his priests, indeed the archdiocese with him, he is going to have to overhaul the communications structure that so failed the diocese in the past.
His own communications style at present needs polishing; it is being openly criticised by his priests and indeed by many bishops. The handling of the auxiliary bishops is seen as being rough and priests are asking themselves if a bishop can be treated so, how would they fare.
That said, while priests are quick to point out that their archbishop has feet of clay, they are by no means demoralised.
Change is being talked about; the albatross of mismanagement is finally being removed, and the diocese will be positioned to expend all its energies in reaching out and ministering to people in the challenges of their daily lives, the life and death stuff that they, priests, were ordained for.
For the Dublin archdiocese and the Irish church, in 2010, at last, there will be good news.
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