SPECIAL parish meetings are to be staged in the Diocese of Cloyne in a
bid to address public shock and anger over the mishandling of clerical
child abuse complaints.
The meetings were proposed at a gathering
of clerics organised last week by the Association of Catholic Priests
(ACP) as several clerics in the Cork diocese urged former bishop Dr John
Magee to return and publicly answer questions arising from the Cloyne
Report.
The ACP meeting took place in Ovens and was attended by 25 clerics from both the dioceses of Cloyne and Cork and Ross.
It
took place just 48 hours after one Cloyne priest, Fr Joseph McGuane,
had said there was "a culture of fear" within the diocese and that
clerics needed to speak out.
Fr McGuane -- who is a chaplain in St
Raphael's Centre in Youghal, Co Cork -- said that the hierarchy had
sailed the church into "a perfect storm".
Now, individual parish
priests will be asked to consider staging special meetings at which
people will have the opportunity to raise their concerns and anger over
the Cloyne Report revelations.
Barryroe parish priest Fr Eoin
Whooley, spokesman for the ACP clerics, said they were as upset as
ordinary parishioners over the report's findings.
"There was a strong sense of being let down by people who should know better," he explained.
"There
was a sense of disappointment that the (childcare) guidelines were not
followed -- we thought we had moved on. There was also anger," he added.
Fr
Whooley said it was now proposed to provide a forum whereby ordinary
mass-goers would have a chance to "talk about their opinions and their
fears".
These would be staged in parish halls and would be organised if the local clergy felt that to do so would be useful.
Another
cleric, Fr Michael Kelleher, former parish priest of Mahon, said it
clearly highlighted weaknesses in the church's internal structures, in
terms of how it deals with such issues.
A key issue that emerged
from the ACP meeting was that morale amongst clerics has taken a major
hit because of the report and its shock findings.
The
administrator of Cloyne, Archbishop Dr Dermot Clifford, also
acknowledged that the report had had a devastating impact on clerical
morale.
It was highly critical of Dr Magee and his vicar-general,
Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, over the manner in which they mishandled
complaints of clerical child abuse.
Dr Magee -- a private secretary to three popes -- left Ireland before the Cloyne Report was published. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Monsignor O'Callaghan has apologised for his role in the controversy.