Crisis of Credibility Transfixes Irish Church
By Sean O’Conaill, VOTF Ireland
However the very next day, on January 3rd, the Irish Times reported a strange contradiction. According to a source in Ireland’s health ministry—the Health Services Executive (HSE)—no Irish Catholic bishop had been able to complete a crucial section of an HSE questionnaire relating to its child protection practices in all dioceses. That section would have revealed for all dioceses the kind of information we had all received on December 19th 2008 about one. The southern diocese of Cloyne (in County Cork) had still in that year been placing Catholic children in danger of clerical sexual abuse by failing to report serious allegations about two serving priests to the police.
That information on Cloyne was contained in a report completed by the church’s own child safety czar, Ian Elliott, in July 2008, but not published until December. CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), Elliott revealed that despite clear undertaking made in the wake of Ferns, Bishop John Magee of Cloyne had failed to pass on to the local police allegations of abuse against two priests of the diocese, who had continued their ministry there.
On January 7th , Ireland ’s Minister for Children, Mr. Barry Andrews, confirmed the Irish Times report of January 3rd, and revealed that Bishop John Magee had made a false declaration to him personally: “… There is evidence … that Bishop Magee … did not faithfully report actual compliance with child protection procedures and the manner in which clerical sexual abuse allegations have been dealt with.”
What can ‘paramount’ mean when speaking of the welfare of children, other than ‘more important than anything else’? Whatever consideration prevented Irish bishops from completing a questionnaire designed by the Irish state to audit child protection measures in all Irish dioceses—that consideration is what appears to be paramount for Cardinal Brady and his colleagues. Combined with Bishop Magee’s willingness to mislead his own government, it means that the parents of Ireland’s Catholic children can’t be sure of just how safe they are in most dioceses.
Especially because some of Bishop Magee’s fellow bishops have since expressed their support for him. They can’t have reflected long enough on the implications of that. Especially that they apparently think it acceptable for a Catholic bishop to make a false declaration relating to child safety to an Irish government minister. (If it is OK for bishops to make false declarations, what is the point of all of them signing a declaration of compliance with child safety rules that the Cardinal himself has now called for? Why should we believe any such declaration?)
Ian Elliott’s report on Cloyne has therefore precipitated a far wider crisis for the Irish Catholic church. Ireland’s next ranking cleric after Cardinal Brady, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, has felt compelled to insist that if Irish bishops cannot implement a single national system of child protection, he will feel obliged to act unilaterally to impose a uniform system for all clergy serving in the archdiocese, which is by far Ireland’s largest.
There is no precedent for this implicit rebuke delivered by Dublin’s archbishop to a fellow bishop. There is no precedent for a bishop as totally discredited as Magee still clinging to office. And there is no precedent either for the crisis of credibility and trust that now surrounds Irish bishops’ assurances that children are their paramount consideration.
The commitment of the Irish government to child safety is also seriously open to question, because that government ‘audit’ would not have revealed what was going on in Cloyne, and the government was evidently prepared to accept non-disclosure of crucial information from all dioceses – until it had learned about Bishop Magee’s failures from the NBSC.
There is no possibility that this crisis will be over soon. Two major state investigations of past clerical abuse are due to report early this year. One – into the Dublin archdiocese—will probably cause greater shock than the Ferns report of 2005. The second, into the Irish state residential institutions for children at risk that were run by Catholic clergy until the 1970s, are also expected to be traumatic and damaging.
Ian Elliott is also expected to deliver his first annual report on child protection progress in all dioceses soon. That will help to answer the most pressing question: the safety of Catholic children now in all Irish dioceses. Despite everything we know about the trauma caused by clerical sexual abuse, Irish bishops are still apparently placing legal obstacles in the way of complete transparency over that. They argue that Irish law places them in danger of being sued if they are completely transparent, but to Irish parents and survivors this clearly implies that for them it is the legal considerations, not the safety of children, that is paramount.
Archbishop Martin and a few other bishops do inspire some confidence still, but when all of them will make truly paramount the welfare of Irish Catholic children is still not clear. Until then, all merely verbal assurances will be sounding brass and clanging cymbal. Ireland’s Catholic church is in its deepest ever crisis. Cromwell’s depredations never came anywhere close to bankrupting our church’s most important moral capital – it’s appointed leaders’ reputation for integrity.
To read more on the Irish Crisis:
Sunday Business Post Dublin Ireland
Gardaí didn’t disclose Cloyne abuse complaint for two years
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=38747-qqqx=1.asp
The actions of the bishops are an absolute disgrace
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/commentandanalysis.aspx-qqqt=COMMENT+AND+ANALYSIS-qqqs=commentandanalysis-qqqx=1.asp
