THE unofficial eleventh commandment of the Vaticanand the Catholic Church is: "Thou shall not tell."
The reality is that a lust for secrecy is the rotten underbelly of the institutional church.
Too often we hear instances of popes, cardinals and bishops using secrecy as an instrument of crude power to silence innocent children raped by paedophile priests -- and to conceal the identities and costly settlements with pervert clerics.
Far from learning from the documented case files gathered by the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy state inquiries and the forthcoming Cloyne Commission, Irish church leaders continue to be addicted to secrecy.
Following Cardinal Brady's "shaming" over his 1975 bonding of two children to silence about their abuse by the arch-priest of paedophiles, Brendan Smyth, the 'Wounded Healer' finds himself at the centre of a fresh controversy over a priest of the archdiocese of Armagh.
A woman, who was 17 when she was raped by a cleric settled with the priest in February.
The cardinal insists he was not involved in the discussions between the complainant and the priest other than to make it clear that he would not be a party to any confidentiality agreement, and he invited her to give evidence in a secret canonical process against Fr X, which she has done.
The point is that the details would not have become public knowledge if the woman had not spoken to the media.
The church is mired in secrecy and thus is subjected to drip-drip revelations.
Yesterday, the 'Belfast Telegraph' revealed the Bishop of Derry, Seamus Hegarty, was party to a secret compensation deal between a priest and a girl who was allegedly sexually abused when she was just eight years old.
In a settlement reached in 2000 without admission of liability by the church, she was awarded £12,000 and a handwritten letter of apology from the priest.
The settlement document -- which was signed by lawyers on behalf of Dr Hegarty, his predecessor Bishop Edward Daly and the alleged abuser -- contained a confidentiality clause prohibiting the parties from discussing the case.
Bishop Hegarty last night said confidentiality "was proposed to the diocese by one of the other parties, and, to facilitate a settlement, the diocese agreed".
While there is much public bewilderment about church secrecy in abuse cases, it is not generally known that a huge area of the activities of the Vatican and bishops are governed under a blanket of secrecy.
This takes the form of a directive -- the equivalent of a government's 'Official Secrets Act' -- which came into force 36 years ago.
It was officially formalised in February 1974 after a Vatican official gave a journalist a letter from the papal nuncio in Germany demanding the dismissal of the Bishop of Limburg.
IT covers the preparation and editing of papal documents expressly placed under the seal of Vatican secrecy.
This directive covers Pope Benedict's Lenten Letter, which is due for release at 12 noon today Roman time.
This seal of pontifical secrecy is applied stringently to office information in the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Vatican's prime minister, and to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Inquisition.
Also under the secrecy seal are routine intelligence reports that are sent to the Vatican by papal nuncios from around the globe.
The directive extends to office information concerning the creation of cardinals, the selection of bishops and other high-ranking administrators, especially the appointments of all major officials working in the Curia, the Vatican civil service.
Indeed, it is virtually "a hide-all" directive as it includes coded correspondence of the Vatican and any matter considered by the Pope or other senior Vatican officials to be of sufficient importance to be placed under Vatican secrecy.
It will not go unnoticed in Ireland that when Pope Benedict signs his Irish letter, neither he, nor any senior Vatican official, has commented on the huge embarrassment caused by the admission of his older brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, that he often hit choir boys when he was in charge of them in Regensburg for 30 years.
Monsignor Georg has since gone into hiding and is refusing to answer questions.
However, bishops can sometimes be applauded when they clamp down on priests who express anti-social views such as the controversial Tipperary cleric who provoked outrage by saying he would not go to the police if any paedophile priest confessed to him.
MONSIGNOR Maurice Dooley, a retired canon lawyer in the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, has assured his future silence on this issue to Archbishop Dermot Clifford who has publicly disowned the cleric's views as personal ones at odds with diocesan policy of referral of abuse cases to the civic authorities.
While the Vatican and bishops argue that maintaining discipline and orthodoxy in the articulation of church views is necessary, the current restriction are excessive and unworthy of an institution which proclaims to its followers that the truth will set them free.
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