After the July 12 revelations of the damning Cloyne Report, which
uncovered church failures to report allegations of abuse to the civil
authorities as recently as 2008 (NCR, July 22), it would have been hard to imagine the crisis gripping Irish Catholicism getting any worse.
That was until Irish Prime Minister -- the Taoiseach -- Enda Kenny took to his feet in parliament July 20 to address the crisis.
In an attack probably without parallel anywhere else in the world
from such a senior figure, Kenny accused the Vatican of adopting a
“calculated, withering position” on abuse in the wake of the report that
accused the Holy See of being “entirely unhelpful” to Irish bishops
trying to deal with abuse.
He said the Cloyne Report “exposes an attempt by the Holy See to
frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as
three years ago.”
“And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction,
disconnection, elitism and the narcissism that dominate the culture of
the Vatican to this day,” he said. “The rape and torture of children
were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the
institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation.’ ”
What is more startling than Kenny’s speech is the widespread -- near
universal --praise it has received, even from some members of the
hierarchy. Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said he was “impressed by
the emotion” of Kenny’s speech.
In an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE, Martin urged the Vatican
to respond to the Cloyne Report by reiterating its support for the Irish
church in applying existing norms on child protection, for full
cooperation with civil authorities and for comprehensive audits of child
protection procedures in all Irish dioceses.
“Obviously the Vatican defends its position but it doesn’t defend the rape of children,” Martin said.
Yet Martin, who has won widespread praise for his forthright
leadership on the issue, also laid bare divisions among members of the
Irish hierarchy.
“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?
“What sort of a cabal is in there and still refusing to recognize the norms of the church?” he asked.
The Vatican was clearly less impressed by Kenny’s intervention.
The
Holy See Press Office announced July 25 in a brief communiqué that the
papal nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, had been recalled
to Rome for “consultations” in preparation of an awaited Vatican
response to the criticism.
The use of the word “recall” indicates a serious detrition in
relations.
A week earlier, Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore had
summoned Leanza and demanded an official response from the Vatican on
the Cloyne Report.
Vatican deputy spokesman Fr. Ciro Benedettini said July 25 that the
recall “denotes the seriousness of the situation and the Holy See’s
desire to face it objectively and determinately,” but he also indicated
that there was “some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain
excessive reactions” to the report and its accusations against the
Vatican.
The overwhelmingly positive reaction in Ireland to Kenny’s speech
shows just how frustrated Irish Catholics have become with the church.
Mass attendance is still high by Western European standards (a recent
survey found some 43 percent of Irish Catholics attend Mass weekly), but
attendance at Mass certainly does not imply an uncritical approach to
the church, especially in the field of child abuse.
Even 10 years ago, such a strident attack on the Holy See by the
leader of their government would have outraged Irish Catholics.
Now, the
prime minister’s office has revealed that it has received thousands of
letters of support for Kenny’s comments, including from many priests and
religious.
“The numbers of members of the clergy who have been in touch in the
last few days, to say it is about time somebody spoke out about these
matters ... has astounded me,” Kenny said.
“I haven’t made any other comment except to say that we await the response from the Vatican,” he said.
It’s a remarkable turnaround on Ireland’s traditionally close -- some
would say obsequious -- relationship with Rome. In 1948 the
newly-elected Prime Minister John A. Costello chose as his first act of
governance to transmit a telegram to Pope Pius XII.
“My fellow ministers and I,” he wrote, seek “to repose at the feet of
Your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and our devotion to
your August Person, as well as our firm resolve to be guided in all our
work by the teaching of Christ and to strive for the attainment of
social order in Ireland based on Christian principles.”
The historic hand-in-glove relationship between church and state
articulated by this telegram is rapidly unraveling as church failings
are increasingly revealed.
However, this reaction also has a lot to do with the particular brand
of authoritarian Catholicism that has ruled supreme since the Irish
state won independence from Britain in 1922.
As the only credible institution in the new state, the church assumed
absolute control of schools, hospitals, health clinics and many other
public services.
In return, a grateful government was willing to defer
to the church’s teaching on a range of issues. Divorce, which had been
legal under British rule pre-1922, was soon outlawed (and remained so
until 1996).
Contraception was illegal in all but the rarest
circumstances until the mid-1980s and the banning of books deemed
inappropriate by church authorities was rife.
Accordingly the Catholic
church exercised a lot of control over the day-to-day lives of Irish
people.
Fueling today’s reactions to the church hierarchy and structures is
not only anger over revelations about the abuse crisis, but also the
anger of many who have felt repressed or curtailed by this restrictive
environment.
Any road to recovery for the church in Ireland will be as long as it
is rocky.
Bishops confidently talk about the need for renewal, but shy
away from the word reform.
Rome has promised that it will
publish the long-awaited report on the apostolic visitation to the
country in early 2012.
The report, bishops say, will chart the future of
Catholicism in the isle once revered as the “Land of Saints and
Scholars.”
Some are saying that the future of the Catholicism in Ireland will be as a minority church.