ARCHBISHOP DERMOT Clifford of Cashel has announced plans to hold a
meeting of all priests in the Diocese of Cloyne next month to discuss
the fallout and impact of the Commission of Investigation report into
clerical child sexual abuse in the diocese.
A spokesman for
Archbishop Clifford said yesterday the meeting would give the priests of
the diocese the opportunity to discuss in detail the Cloyne report,
which was produced by the Murphy commission and published last month by
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter.
The meeting had not been held
so far because it was peak holiday time, a number of priests were away
and it would not be appropriate to hold such a meeting when not everyone
would be able to attend, the spokesman said.
He pointed out that
one section of the report had been withheld for legal reasons but the
priests will be able to discuss the remainder of the report in some
detail and get an opportunity to express their views on its impact on
the diocese.
Archbishop Clifford’s spokesman was responding to
comments made by the Association of Catholic Priests, some 25 members of
which from Cloyne and the neighbouring Diocese of Cork and Ross met on
Tuesday to voice their concern at the lack of leadership by the church.
Fr
Eoin Whooley, parish priest in Barryroe in Cork and Ross, was one of
the priests who attended the association’s meeting in Ovens in mid-Cork
and he said morale among priests generally was very low in the wake of
the publication of the report.
“The Cloyne report was something we
could have done without. We felt we had moved on and we expected the
church’s own guidelines on child protection would have been implemented,
so it was very disappointing to discover that was not the case in
Cloyne.
“Morale among priests is at a low ebb and there’s a real
sense of exasperation but there’s also a sense of exasperation among the
churchgoing public who are struggling, like us as priests, with this
whole issue that the guidelines were not being implemented and we need
to talk to them about this.”
Fr Joe McGuane, a priest in the
Cloyne diocese, has challenged former bishop of Cloyne Dr John Magee,
whose whereabouts are unknown, to return to Cloyne to answer criticisms
that he failed properly to handle complaints of clerical child sexual
abuse.
Fr McGuane said he believed Bishop Magee should return
immediately to Cloyne to answer the criticisms of him, as failing to do
so will only prolong the controversy that has dogged the diocese since
the report was published.
“He should come back now and respond to
what the Murphy report said about his failure to properly deal with
complaints of child sexual abuse because if he doesn’t, it will continue
to fester and will erupt again whenever he does return or is tracked
down,” said Fr McGuane.
The priest, who is currently on indefinite
leave for family reasons but acts as chaplain at St Raphael’s Centre in
Youghal, said he believed the whole procedure to appoint bishops is
wrong and called for priests with pastoral experience to be appointed
bishops.
He said that hitherto bishops have been appointed who
fully support traditional Catholic Church positions on issues such as
papal infallibility, celibacy, opposition to women priests and the
intrinsic evil of the contraceptive pill for married couples.
But
few priests working in parishes would “score 100 per cent” on all these
issues so are never considered as bishops and yet those with experience
working as pastors in the community would make far more suitable
candidates for ordination as bishops, he said.
“Bishop Magee was totally the wrong man for the job here in Cloyne,” he said.
“He
had worked in Africa for six years but after that spent 20 years in the
Vatican and had no experience of working in parishes.
“He was completely the wrong choice.”