ARCHBISHOP OF Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has warned that further
investigations of clerical child sex abuse in dioceses will not get to
the truth if people in the Catholic Church are not prepared to tell the
truth.
Senior church figures who were not prepared to be honest
would only be “discovered” through an “invasive” audit of child
protection practices in their dioceses, he said.
Asked if he believed his fellow bishops could be trusted on child protection issues, Dr Martin said he hoped they could.
He
suggested anyone who was not prepared to act honestly should learn a
lesson from the Taoiseach’s remarks Wednesday, in which he attacked the
church and the Vatican for their record on child protection.
Dr
Martin was reacting to an attack by Enda Kenny on the Vatican’s handling
of clerical sex abuse during a Dáil debate on the Cloyne report.
Mr
Kenny said the report “excavates the dysfunction, disconnection,
elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this
day. The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to
uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and
‘reputation’.”
Dr Martin said the Vatican, in responding to the
findings of last week’s report on child abuse cases in the Cloyne
diocese, should reiterate its support for the Irish church in applying
existing “norms”, or rules, on child protection.
The Vatican should also
support the reporting of cases to the State authorities and the
carrying out of audits to show exactly where the situation was in
relation to child protection.
“Obviously the Vatican defends its position but it doesn’t defend the rape of children,” Dr Martin told RTÉ’s Six One News.
He
expressed disappointment that the Taoiseach had not apologised for the
failings of State institutions identified in the Cloyne report, which
was critical of the Garda response in a minority of abuse cases.
Lessons had to be learned by looking at the failings of the past, and people were let down “across the board”.
Dr
Martin said he was very disappointed and annoyed at the findings of the
report. “What do you do when you’ve got systems in place and somebody
ignores them? What do you do when groups, either in the Vatican or in
Ireland, . . . try to undermine what is being done and . . . simply
refuse to understand what is being done?”
Acknowledging that
people could feel deceived by the church, he said the norms set down by
the present pope in 2001 had been ignored in the Cloyne diocese.
“What sort of a cabal is in there and still refusing to recognise the norms of the church?” he asked.
All the other Irish bishops had put these norms into practice, “as far as I know”, he added.
Dr
Martin said six elderly priests were verbally abused at a colleague’s
funeral this week when someone challenged them, claiming they “should be
ashamed of themselves”.
“Those who felt they were able to play
tricks with norms, they have betrayed those good men and so many others
in the church who are working today,” he said.
Dr Martin said he
found himself asking if he could be proud of the church of which he is a
leader, but from what he was seeing he had to be ashamed.
He felt
ashamed because of what had been done to the victims of clerical child
abuse but also because of the effect of this on other people in the
church.
“I have a responsibility to defend the not just good but
exemplary priests. Anyone who has played tricks with norms has betrayed
those men.”
He denied that he had been marginalised within the
church for the stance he had taken, and said he had never been told that
what he did was wrong.