The lies and deceit of the Roman Catholic Church revealed
An article for the Irish Daily Mail, published on May 27th 2009.
They lied, at times by omission, at times by distorting the truth and at times just blatantly. The most senior leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland lied to and deceived us all, and sacrificed children in the interests of their authority and most damningly, their money. Not terribly Christian of them was it? Can you imagine what Christ might say to Cardinal Desmond Connell and his fellow Bishops about their bizarre relationship with the truth and their willingness to turn the other way whilst children were raped and abused by their Priests?
Reading the Dublin Report was a shocking experience. Even after all these years, after all that I know about the scale and extent of the abuse and the cover up by Church leaders, I was profoundly shocked. The depth of the self-deluded and self-preserving betrayal of all that is decent by men sworn to a higher power and who placed themselves in positions where they told the rest of us we were flawed is staggering. In their world their lies are not lies, merely examples of ‘mental reservation’. Ever hear of that one? No? Well it means that an Archbishop can tell a blatant untruth as long as he lies by omission and then ‘reserves’ the missing words that would turn his lie into truth to himself, saying them only inside his own head.
So when Cardinal Connell failed to tell the truth, he didn’t lie. He just omitted the bits that would have been self-incriminating and said them to himself, inside his head. Children remained at risk and victims and their families were deceived. But that’s ok, because the Cardinal can tell himself he didn’t lie.
The State failed too of course. In traditional style, it deferred to the crosier. Too often, state officials, with some notable exceptions, failed to investigate credible reports of abuse and looked the other way, deferring to the majesty of the Church and its princes.
It may be the past, but this is not ancient history. The Commission investigated cases of abuse right up to 2004 when Cardinal Desmond Connell surrendered control of the Archdiocese of Dublin to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
Back in 2002 when I began to campaign on this issue, our Government didn’t believe the abuse of children by priests was any of its business. Asked for a comment of the Ferns scandal in March 2002, then Taoiseach Bertie Aherne retorted that is was a matter for the Church, and he wasn’t going to cross religion and politics.
Unsurprisingly Cardinal Connell agreed with him. The Church, he proclaimed, was above the law of the Land. Canon Law, the rules of the Roman Catholic Church was superior to state law. The State could not investigate the Church.
But the past is not some other country, or some faded reality with little relevance to us today. This history matters today. It affects the lives of not just those who experienced abuse, but all of us, most especially our children. It reveals huge flaws in our child protection law which leave children at risk today.
Back in October 2005 the Ferns Report found an alarming gap in Irish child protection law. Mr Justice Frank Murphy discovered that the HSE had no explicit legal power to act in cases of third-party child sexual abuse, i.e. cases where the abuser is not a family member. The HSE could investigate and validate the abuse, but once it had done so, the only power it had was to inform the employer of the abuser of the risk. It could do little to ensure that people who pose a risk to children were prevented from accessing children.
The Ferns Report recommended that the Minister for Health and Children explore the introduction of new legislation which would give the HSE power to apply to the High Court to restrain any employee, including a priest, from having unsupervised contact with children where a concern exists about his ability to interact safely with children.
The Dublin report again details the same gaps in our current child protection law, four years on from the publication of the Ferns Report.
Responding to the publication of the report, Minister for Children Barry Andrews said, “Judge Murphy in writing this report noted the extraordinary delay in introducing child protection legislation in this State. Successive Governments failed in their responsibilities as legislators to put in place a comprehensive child protection legislative framework.”
We now know the consequences of such delays. The four years which have passed since the publication of the Ferns Report is a current and unacceptable example of this, as is the delay to enshrine children’s rights in our constitution.
So enough of delays and apologies and procrastination, instead, it’s time for resolute action. Where the state fails to guarantee and defend the rights of children and abdicates responsibility for their safety, then abuse and exploitation are all too often the consequence. Our children are our responsibility, and not the responsibility of any agency which places itself outside or above the law. Today we see the consequences not only of cover up and deceit on the part of the Catholic Church, but also of state failure to guarantee children’s rights and child protection.
Yesterday was an important day, a day on which as Minister Andrews put it “Church and State respond with words of sincere and fulsome regret.”
And those are good words, but they remain just words. And they are not enough.
Colm O’Gorman is the author of Beyond Belief and the Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland
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That the whole issue goes right to the Vatican is explained in an article by Keith Porteous Wood in the current issue of the “New Humanist”. The article explains that the Holy See’s accession to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child allowed it to exclude the Vatican City form its ambit. This is the very place to which all abuse accusations are mandatorily forwarded. Surely no-one believes the allegations in Ireland stopped at the level of the various bishops in such a hierarchical and authoritarian bureaucracy.
The Vatican is the place to where the former Archbishop of Boston moved when he was implicated in the suppression of the abuse allegations. He remains a cardinal and a member of the Pontifical Council of the Family. No cardinal or bishop has ever been sacked in connection with such matters. It may also be of interest the Benedict was in charge of church discipline form 1981 until his elevation.
As a child protection practitioner in the UK, I find it difficult to comprehend the culture of deference that exists toward the Catholic Church in Ireland and the failure of the State to establish child protection procedures which govern ALL areas of society.
Nevertheless, I also worry that both Catholic and Anglican church institutions in the UK continue to place self-preservation and self-interest before the basic need to protect children and adults from abusive individuals.
Indeed, what would Christ say and do?
And, as an aside, “mental reservation” must stand alongside ‘collateral damage’ and ‘extraordinary rendition’ as one of the most self-deceptive and cynical euphemisms of the modern age.
As a lapsed ie wised up Irish ctholic, I totally understand the denial that many members of the Catholic Church are in . A patriarchal, judgemental,homophobic, mysoginistic, hierarchical organisation that dominated an emerging post colonial state lost contact with reality – reality being the message of its ‘founder’ and the lived experience of its laity and clergy. Any human group that thinks it really is a priestly caste that can sentence others to eternal damnation if it doesn’t do what it orders willeventually collapse. Irrespective of the fact that the love it preached it didn’t practise the instrument of its downfall is the internet. The hypocrisy of the pulpit and secrecy can’t compete.
In Ireland the Catholic Church has imploded. The Irish people are the much better for it.
Joe Curran
Just another deceit of the Roman Catholic Church. Let’s be fair, this institution has been one of the most deceptive, corrupt and power crazy organisations in Christendom yet still believe they have the one and only voice of God on earth. It beggars belief!!