VOICE of the Faithful Ireland

STATEMENT ON
THE FERNS REPORT
by Francis D. Murphy, Helen Buckley, and Larain Joyce,
to the Irish Minister for Health and Children

The Ferns report marks the conclusive failure of the system and attitude by which our Church hierarchy have chosen to govern our Church since Vatican II. The failure to put in place structures that would have allowed a culture of openness, equal dignity, dialogue and enlightenment to develop has meant that a culture of deference, denial, inertia and secrecy was allowed to flourish in its place.

It has taken the appalling suffering of children and their parents to reveal this clearly - but so far there has been no recognition of the failure of the Church system itself by those charged with its leadership. As a consequence, it is now Ireland's secular institutions alone that can be trusted to ensure that children are safe in our Church. The failure of our hierarchy has, therefore, been a betrayal of their evangelical responsibility and a major cause of the anti-Catholic secularization those same Church leaders have lamented.

We now call upon our hierarchy to face squarely their own sins of abuse of trust and of power, to acknowledge the failure of a system, and to bring the whole people of God fully, for the first time, into the intellectual and administrative life of our Church.

Sean O'Conaill

VOTF Ireland, coordinator
sm.oconaill@btopenworld.com

[About Voice of the Faithful: Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) is a worldwide movement of concerned mainstream Catholics formed in response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The group's mission is to provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church. Its goals are to support survivors of abuse, support priests of integrity, and shape structural change within the Catholic Church in full accordance and harmony with Church teaching.]