July 12, 2007

To:
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor
Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley OFM Cap
Archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins
Archbishop Terrence Thomas Prendergast
Archbishop Timothy Dolan
Reverend Joseph Tobin, CSsR
Gero McLaughlin SJ
Sharon Holland IHM
Mairin McDonagh RJM

Dear Apostolic Visitors,

Welcome to Ireland. Voice of the Faithful in Ireland, along with many of our fellow Catholics, looks forward to renewal in the life of the People of God in our country following the appalling scandal of the abuse of children by priests and religious and the cover-up of that abuse by their superiors.  We join with Pope Benedict in hoping that your work can contribute to this renewal. VOTF has already publicly welcomed the announcement of the visitation (see attached press release). In this letter we offer some suggestions for your Instrumentum Laboris, which we understand is still in preparation. We have suggestions for the substantive questions which the visitation should address and for the procedures to be followed in conducting the visitation.

Voice of the Faithful is a group of Catholics, including lay people, priests and religious, who have come together in response to the revelations of clerical abuse and cover-up with the goals of supporting survivors of abuse, supporting priests of integrity and shaping structural change within the Catholic Church. Our 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. The movement was founded in Boston (www.votf.org) and in recent years has grown in Ireland (www.votfi.com) to a membership of about 160 throughout the country.

VOTFI is a representative group, with articulate members from across the whole of Ireland, including its known and anonymous survivors. We have taken part in conversations with Irish bishops and their representatives as well as engaging in media discussions on the scandal. We are in communication with other groups who share our aims, both in Ireland and internationally. Individual members are active in a variety of initiatives to support survivors and to raise consciousness about the needs of survivors and the urgency of reform in the Irish Church.   

The announcement of your appointment indicated that your task will be to explore more deeply questions concerning the handling of cases of abuse and the assistance owed to the victims, and to monitor the effectiveness of and seek possible improvements to the current procedures for preventing abuse, taking the existing norms as references. In the case of some dioceses notably Ferns and Dublin and in the cases of the residential institutions run by religious, we have already had extensive explorations of the handling of cases in the published judicial reports. No doubt the exploration will take these as their starting point in exploring more deeply.

While noting that this visitation is for Ireland, we urge you to keep in mind that the problems to be investigated are widespread across the Church. Please ensure that global factors as well as local circumstances are addressed in the visitation.

Pope Benedict’s letter already indicated certain factors which he feels are relevant, namely problems in the selection and formation of priests and religious, a social privileging of clergy and a misplaced concern for their reputation. These are identifying characteristics of the phenomenon known as clericalism. We would urge that the examination of this phenomenon be a major focus of the visitation.

Combating clericalism will require an enhanced understanding of the role of the laity in the Church. We urge the visitation to examine why lay participation in the life of the Church in Ireland has not expanded in the ways promised in the Second Vatican Council and whether this underdeveloped lay responsibility contributed to the abuse scandal. You will no doubt be aware that one of the Dublin Archbishops strongly criticized in the Murphy report, John Charles McQuaid, told the people of Ireland in 1965, on his return from the Council, that nothing that had happened there should disturb the 'tranquility' of the Irish church. Knowing now that this 'tranquility' was an illusion, we know also that this dismissive attitude towards the Council was a key enabler of the national tragedy revealed starkly last year.

Clerical sexual exploitation is not limited to children. The abuse of clerical position and privilege in the engaging in exploitative sexual relationships with adult women and men by some priests is the product of a dysfunctional nexus of power and sexuality related to that which leads to the abuse of children. The visitation should consider this issue.

There is a need to examine the connection between structural reform in the Church and child safety. As John Morgan, the Chair of the National Board for Safeguarding Children wrote in the 2009 annual report, it is necessary to “examine what Church structures brought about the situation that has unfolded before us and how such structures must be changed.”

In the visitation's work with religious communities, attention should be paid not just to the Ryan report but also to the McCoy investigation into the Brothers of Charity, which deals with the victimization of people with disability. This is just one example of a case in which religious orders exploited their international character to transfer abusers outside the jurisdiction to avoid censure or the civil law. Diocesan priests too were transferred overseas and the visitation should examine whether there are sufficient ecclesiastical safeguards in place globally to prevent this occurring in the future and whether efforts have been made to follow-up with their victims in other countries, including mission territories.

In some cases problems have been found relating to canon law and its implementation. The visitation should examine whether the provisions of canon law should be changed. In particular the canonical concept of secrecy has particularly unfortunate resonances for survivors of sexual abuse, which is a crime largely predicated on secrecy.  As it stands at present, canon law also permits the clericalist denial of regular opportunities for clergy and lay people to meet in dialogue and to develop a truly co-responsible relationship, based upon the common priesthood of all of the faithful.

The adequacy of the provisions made for redress to survivors should be a focus of the visitation. This includes support to meet the material, psychological and spiritual needs occasioned by their abuse. How have needs been assessed? What evaluation if any has been made of services provided? This is a matter of justice and is one of the ways in which the Church can become a sign of the Gospel message in Ireland.

The Church in Ireland has much work to do and will require strong leadership to do so, including from the bishops. Some bishops have already offered their resignations because of their collusion in the mishandling of clerical child abuse. The visitation should examine the qualities required for leadership of the renewal and whether some existing bishops might be disqualified because of their past. The criteria and procedures for selecting new bishops should be examined.  Given that all of those Irish bishops who have failed in their shepherding duty in recent decades were appointed by Rome, you will surely need to consider this Roman dimension of the Irish problem. Do the criteria for selection of bishops give due priority to strength of moral character and pastoral concern, qualities so clearly lacking in bishops who endangered children?

The Pope’s letter refers to the missionary activity of the Irish Church and you yourselves have roots in the Irish diaspora. Unfortunately the evils of clerical abuse and its concealment seem to have travelled abroad alongside the precious gift of the Faith, and the lessons learned painfully by the Irish church will surely be relevant to other countries as well. It is also more than likely that local failures were compounded by aspects of universal church governance, and the visitation should not shy away from identifying these factors where they exist. Doing so will help the Church and protect children worldwide. The concealment of clerical abuse by bishops, acknowledged by the bishops of Ireland as a 'culture' of 'cover up' in their statement of December 9th, 2009, is a phenomenon now known to have been widespread throughout the church. Your visitation must surely consider the strong possibility that the concentration of authority in the hands of a single individual—the bishop—involves bishops too often in conflicts of interest that they can only resolve in ways that bring disgrace in the long run. A failure to even consider this possibility will lead many in Ireland to conclude that inherited structures of church governance are prized by the magisterium above the safety of children and the health of the church.

Priestly formation is one of the strands of the visitation and it is vital that this aspect of the life of the Church learn from the scandal. Lay people have a lively interest in this topic and should be afforded opportunities to participate in this aspect of the visitation.

The tragic harm inflicted on children through clerical sexual abuse and cover-up has damaged the capacity of the Irish Church to witness to young people. The visitation should explore how the young people of Ireland can be re-engaged in the life of the Church given the recent scandals.

As far as the procedures for the visitation are concerned the first step is that the Instrumentum Laboris should itself be the subject of widespread public consultation and an iterative drafting process. Lay input such as this present letter should be encouraged. Special efforts should be made to obtain input from survivors of clerical abuse. Please note that formal structures for lay participation in the Church, such as pastoral councils, are very poorly developed in Ireland and those that exist may not be very representative of or well known by the faithful.

The visitation itself should engage with lay people, not merely as providers of evidence, but as assistants in the collection and evaluation of the evidence. Direct participation by survivors of clerical abuse should be a feature of the visitation. The engagement with survivors will need to be handled carefully and should be facilitated by survivor advocacy groups and professionals.

The process of visitation should be transparent as regards the methods used to gather evidence and engage in consultation, the funding and other resourcing of the visitation, and the disclosure of any conflicts of interests that arise for the visitors themselves.

The findings and recommendations of the visitation should be published widely on completion. Secrecy is at the heart of abuse. The offences that occasioned this visitation will be compounded and the renewal of the faith compromised if the truth is not told in the light of day.

Voice of the Faithful prays that you will be given the grace to trust the Holy Spirit and to include the People of God, abuse survivors, lay and religious men and women in the difficult task of renewal of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Guímis rath Dé ar an obair.

Signed,
Bryan Maguire
on behalf of Voice of the Faithful Ireland

cc:
Cardinal Sean Brady
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop Dermot Clifford
Archbishop Michael Neary
Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza