Apologies are no longer sufficient
Sunday November 29 2009
Enda Kenny, the Fine Gael leader, is correct. Apologies from the Roman Catholic Church, no matter how sincere or how contrite, are simply not enough when set against the shocking depravity that last week's report on the Dublin diocese revealed. Even though the contents of the report had been anticipated and the scale of the abuse had been known about for many years, the detail of Justice Murphy's report was deeply disturbing.
To all intents and purposes the Church operated as a paedophile ring: there may not have been enough evidence for Justice Murphy to conclude that an actual, organised ring existed, but it did not need to. The Church did the job for them. It not only protected its own perverts from investigation and prosecution, it knowingly placed them where they could continue to prey on defenceless children.
Callousness and cruelty ran like blood through the Church's veins and the children who were abused counted for nothing. How could men who professed a love of God, who had committed themselves to serving His will and living by His word, commit such evil? And how could the Church leaders, once they knew of that evil in their midst, implicitly condone it and explicitly conceal it? The abuse was widespread and its obscenity was compounded, if that is possible, by the places where it took place -- in the confessional, in hospital, in priests' homes. This was depravity on a grotesque and unimaginable scale.
And now, they think an apology will suffice. It will not.
Their conduct has been inexcusable and there is no appropriate response other than immediate removal from office. If the Church cannot understand that basic requirement, then it has no chance of ever coming to terms with what it allowed to happen, and no chance of redeeming itself in the eyes of its own congregation.
Justice Murphy's report is by no means an exhaustive study of the abuse perpetrated by priests in Ireland: it is a glimpse of a vile scandal that has scarred this nation, a snapshot of brutality that was repeated across the country and which has blighted the lives of so many.
No words can repair the damage. Nor will resignations ease the pain of the victims but it will at least show that the Church grasps the seriousness of what has been revealed and the sheer inappropriateness of any of those five bishops remaining in office. For the perpetrators, the courts await. The gardai have received the report and we can be confident that there will be no hesitation to level prosecutions. As Dermot Ahern, the Justice Minister, said last week, a collar will no longer protect a priest from the full rigour of the law.
It is not just the Church that failed our children. At every level of Irish society a blind eye was turned to their torture and the blame cannot rest solely on the Church's shoulders. Yet that spreading of blame cannot mitigate the Church's own particular blame. It spread the poison, abusing its special position in Irish society to corrupt it.
Contrition in 2009 is welcome, but it is not an antidote for that poison. Fr Michael Canny, spokesman for the Derry Diocese, got it right last week when he said that he would spend the rest of his life as a priest trying to rebuild trust and confidence in the Catholic Church. He said: "There is no good in saying other than the truth. The Church at this stage has no credibility, no standing and no moral authority. The issue is now one of trust, and that is why it will take the rest of my lifetime as a priest to build up that trust again, because the trust and confidence in the Church has been broken on a fundamental level."
Some resignations, announced today, would help Fr Canny in his new life mission. Without them, he is doomed to fail.
Sunday Independent
