The footage showed a man unsure of himself.The sands are shifting beneath his feet.
On Tuesday evening, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin answered questions about the latest crisis to engulf the Catholic church.
Cardinal Sean Brady's role in interrogating and swearing to secrecy two victims of Brendan Smyth in 1975 has emerged from under the latest upturned stone.
Another cover-up from the days when the church ruled the state. Another scandal that illustrated the warped priorities pursued by the hierarchy.
It couldn't have come at a worse time for Diarmuid Martin.
He has been a pillar of moral rectitude for the last few years, a rare figure who represented the philosophy of the church at a time when the institution itself is facing moral bankruptcy.
On Tuesday's Prime Time, Martin answered questions in a faltering voice. He stumbled over words a few times.
He was asked whether Brady should resign.
"I never tell people to resign, I never tell people to stay," he said.
While the statement is accurate, he certainly intimated that those bishops criticised in the Murphy report should take a hike.
He denied that he was now isolated by his fellow bishops.
"I, I, I have to maintain my independence of thought," he said. "What I want to do most of all… I'm listening to what the people are saying in the parishes, and what they want is the truth to come out."
This was not the man who strode confidently through the damage wreaked on the church by the Murphy report last year.
Then, he represented the way forward.
Now, he looks unsure, and why wouldn't he?
In 2003, he was sent home by the Vatican to steer the church through the gathering storm of child abuse scandals. He had been in Rome for 27 years. He was a creature of the Vatican, and entitled to believe he could draw his power from headquarters.
Now he looks at the bishops at home and sees hostility towards his forthright – and commendable – reaction to Murphy.
He looks to Rome and sees a Pope who is stumbling himself through his own cover-up scandal, resurrected from his days as an archbishop in Germany.
Martin can still draw moral authority from the flock, but is that enough?
And how should he react to the fate that has befallen the primate of All Ireland?
Brady is clinging onto office. He claims that what he did differs from the actions of others bishops who have resigned. He may have a point. He has said his actions in 1975 should not be judged by the standards of today.
Against this, the main charge of those calling for his head is that the children abused by Brendan Smyth post-1975 would have been saved if Brady had gone to the cops.
However, context is missing in this hypothesis.
Over the course of a week in March/April 1975, Brady interviewed a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old on separate occasions about allegations of abuse against Smyth. It is unclear whether the two teenagers were both male or if one was female.
In the first interview, Brady took notes as two other clerics asked the questions.
In the second, he acted alone, interviewing and recording.
He sent his results to the Bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan.
The two teenagers were sworn to secrecy.
Brady may well have allowed his career ambition to overrule any human feelings he had for the young teenagers whom he interviewed. If he went to the cops, he would have been disobeying a 12-year-old edict from the Vatican on child sex abuse.
He would have been on the next train to a curate's house in the arse end of nowhere.
Thirty-five years later, he would have been regarded as a man of great moral courage if he had acted in the correct manner at the time.
But it's wide of the mark to extrapolate that his actions would have stopped the crimes that Smyth went on to perpetrate over the following 18 years.
What would have happened if he went to the cops?
The evidence suggests that the matter would have been passed up the line.
There, a senior member of the force would request an audience with the relevant bishop and bring him the findings, along with a suggestion that something be done about this errant priest.
The Murphy report recorded instances where this course of action was followed, including one case where Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan handed over a file to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
The report notes:
"There were a number of inappropriate contacts between the gardaí and the archdiocese… A number of very senior members of the gardaí, including the commissioner in 1960, clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit.
"There are some examples of gardaí actually reporting complaints to the archdiocese instead of investigating them. It is fortunate that some junior members of the force did not take the same view."
So it went as recently as the 1970s. The state had a veneer of a democracy, but where the church was involved – either through criminality or imposing its will – Ireland was as much a theocracy as the Islamic states run by mullahs.
The cops who valued their career prospects knew what was expected of them.
Culpability for the crimes of Smyth can't be laid at Brady's door. If he had acted properly and informed the gardaí, his conscience would be clear, his bravery deserving of serious plaudits.
But it is highly unlikely that Smyth's depraved progress would have been arrested.
Where Brady really fell short of the required standards was with his silence, particularly since the matter resurfaced in a court action in 1997.
Through recent years, as the church struggled to project itself as purging the evil that had festered, Brady, at its apex, kept his dirty secret. He didn't tell his flock. He didn't tell his fellow bishops.
There is no indication that he told the Vatican.
He must surely have invested a few prayers in the hope that it might slip off into the night where many other secrets from a dark era have been gobbled up.
It didn't and now he is badly damaged. Whether or not he resigns is no longer the issue. He has forfeited the moral authority to speak on the one issue that threatens to destroy the institution in Ireland.
Brady is a humble man who has done a lot of good, but he now finds himself in a cold place for a church leader.
Meanwhile, Martin must decide which path he takes.
Does he distance himself from the damaged primate for the greater good of the church?
He is already distanced from the bishops who were angered at his reaction to the Murphy report. In intimating that the criticised bishops should resign, Martin was in keeping with the sentiment among the public in general and Catholics in particular.
Some of his fellow bishops, however, appear to long for the day when their writ held the upper hand.
Brady supported Martin on that occasion, but now the past has come looking for the cardinal.
In Rome, the Pope is falling under the lengthening shadow of Germany's clerical abuse scandals.
In 1980, when he was archbishop of Munich, a priest who was accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy was given refuge in the diocese.
The priest was given therapy and subsequently allowed to resume his duties. In 1986, the priest was convicted of abuse.
Pope Benedict, or Archbishop Ratzinger as he then was, denies any knowledge of the case, but it is difficult to believe that he didn't know what was going on.
And so Diarmuid Martin, a creature of the Vatican, must now decide how he advances in his efforts to keep the institution afloat.
If he veers off the path on which he has embarked over the last few years, his moral authority begins to slip.
If he becomes too isolated from both the Vatican and his fellow bishops, his capacity to effect change is weakened.
The welfare of the victims of clerical sex abuse must be central to the future of the institution, and that means coming clean about everything that has happened.
But the victims are not the only ones who have been betrayed.
Legions of innocent priests and the lay faithful bowed before the power of the institution in the decades of Rome rule.
Having invested their moral wellbeing and spiritual health in their youth, the least they deserve from the hierarchy at this late stage is the whole truth, and nothing but.
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