When you put Archbishop Martin’s speech to abuse victims last Sunday
week through Wordle.net it produces a ‘word cloud’, essentially a jumbled mix
of words with the most used words larger than the rest.
The most used
words by Archbishop Martin were ‘forgiveness’, ‘silence’, ‘Jesus’,
‘abandonment’ followed by ‘courage’, ‘truth’, ‘survivors’ ‘Dublin’.
Wordle.net says it all and the Ballyfermot archbishop played a
‘blinder’ last Sunday week.
The pictures of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston
who is the Pope’s investigator for Dublin in the simple habit of a
Capuchin friar, and Archbishop Martin in a simple black cassock without
any trimmings to designate his office, both lying prostrate in front of
hundreds of victims and their families is an image that needs to be seen
the world over.
For all his time at the UN and travelling internationally to speak at
conferences, the handling of abuse in Dublin is Archbishop Martin’s
legacy to the modern Church.
This is his issue and he is literally
brilliant at it, and while he might say that he is only doing what any
good Christian with an ounce of compassion would do in his place,
bishops all over the world have failed where he has succeeded.
Yet the Irish Church is moving on, slowly, from the abuse saga which
has dogged it for 15 years. It may be that Archbishop Martin will move
on to.
The Vatican might be afraid to move the archbishop because it
could be interpreted that he was being removed for his courageous
efforts to speak out for victims.
Yet those in the know, know there are problems in Dublin.
There is a
mountain of change needed and it is increasingly clear that the
archbishop may not be the man to handle this change.
He has admitted as
much: “I would have to say that despite all my efforts I am failing in
my attempts to lead such change...change management has to have the
patience and the strategy to bring everyone along with it and that may
not be my talent.”
And yet a question poses itself despite the obvious humility of the
archbishop to recognise the areas in which he is not strong, namely that
there are many laity in Dublin who are gifted strategy people, with
careers in management and human resource management, there are people
with the patience of Job who would gladly lend their skills, people who
are not asked can’t give their time and skill.
If you put that last statement of the Archbishop through Wordle.net
it would highlight ‘I’ and ‘my’. This is the flaw in the archbishops
management vision; he thinks it all has to come from him, the
Archbishop.
A good leader knows when to lead and how to delegate; he
also knows his weaknesses and gathers people around him who make up for
those weaknesses.
Perhaps Archbishop Martin would be well advised to
have a shuffle of his inner-circle and get in some good advisers and
talented assistants.
As Theodore Roosevelt said in a speech called The Man in the Arena:
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs
and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without
error or shortcoming, but who knows at the worst, if he fails, at least
he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”