A response to the Papal letter to the ‘Irish Faithful’.
Below is a response to the Papal letter issued to the ‘Irish Faithful’ earlier today that I recorded for the PM programme on BBC Radio 4.
Its a first response, I will post a more detailed response soon. The full text of the Papal letter is available here.
“God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice”, said Pope Benedict XVI in his letter to the Irish faithful released today.
But not it appears if you are the Pope.
For nowhere in the eight page letter is there an unambiguous acceptance of responsibility for the global systemic cover up of child sexual abuse by priests. Nor is there any acknowledgement of the years of aggressive refusal on the part of the Vatican to accept the simple fact of clerical crimes and institutional church cover up.
Nowhere is there a pledge to act to protect children by putting in place global church law that requires those aware of such crimes to report them to the police or civil authorities and place child protection ahead of the preservation of the power and wealth of the church.
The Pope tells victims that he is “truly sorry” that we have suffered, and then goes on to tell us that we can be healed by a return to the communion of the church. This letter is primarily concerned not with the protection of children but with getting people back into the church.
If the Pope is truly concerned for the welfare of victims, his primary focus would be on ensuring that there are no further victims, and not only here in Ireland but across the global church he governs as Supreme Pontiff.
It was a simple enough an exercise. Acknowledge the fact of the cover up by the Church, take responsibility for it, and show how you will ensure it never happens again.
But the Pope failed to do any of these things.
If you think I am being too judgemental, then consider the following.
At the end of the eight pages of fine words which fail to address the real issue at all we read what the Pope thinks are the steps to be taken to put things right.
Catholics should pray, fast and do penance for a year in an effort to bring about the rebirth of the church in Ireland.
And the Vatican will organise an Apostolic Visitation, a visit by its enforcers to some dioceses to ensure they are enforcing church law in dealing with child abuse.
The same church law that has been previously used by bishops and church defenders to explain their cover up of abuse.
You couldn’t make it up could you?
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Colm
Spot on. Draw it out, keep control, devolve ‘concrete’ action to a meaningless exercise in prayer and devotion by the sheep ( sorry, the laity) and send in the clerical SS to keep the clergy in line. All so predictable, all so pathetic. And it will not work. The church will continue to retreat into its bunkers: keeping control of education where it can. As for the children of abuse, well, they never really counted. And Jesus, who’s he?
Only the RCC has the luxury of having its own state and therefore state immunity and immunity for the head of state. No other church could get away with what the RCC is and has been getting away for centuries. Look at the Roman Catholic Church, its temporal power, its worldly riches, its diplomatic agents, its investments, limousines, multi-billion properties – where is Christ’s Gospel in all that?
Exactly what I thought when I read it myself. It’s nothing more than a figleaf towards current churchgoers who might be feeling some rumblings of discontent, but it contains absolutely nothing substantive. Truly sickening were all the references to canon law, especially in light of his other famous letter and the pronouncements of Monsignor Dooley during the week. They still uphold canon law as above and beyond civil law and that is unacceptable.
And finally when he said “I now wish to propose to you some concrete initiatives to address the situation” and then continued “At the conclusion of my meeting with the Irish bishops, I asked that Lent this year be set aside as a time to pray blah blah”, my jaw literally dropped in disbelief. The entire exercise was a waste of time, a truly disgusting, mealy-mouthed piece of propaganda.
May I respectfully request Mr. O’Gorman to reveal fully the amount of money he has received from the Catholic Church in terms of compensation? Since he uses Amnesty International in his profile (not sure of the connection) maybe he can enlighten us as to the connection with political prisoners> I also find it difficult to understand his connection with AI and what were formally the PDs! Talk about political opportunism!
John Benedict Kelly
John,
The amount of damages I was paid by the church has never been a secret. It was widely reported at the time and is a matter of public record. You could have simpy googled it if you were interested. But to save you the trouble heres a link: RTE report of the case.
I would have thought the reference to Amnesty International was pretty obvious. Its my full-time professional role. Normal enough for people to list their job in their profiles.
As for my former involvement in politics, again I am not sure what your point is. Are you of the view that a concern for human rights is political opportunism?
I have posted your comments because you seem to be trying to make some kind of sideways assertion that I have done something shadowy or wrong. I will not however post any future comments that make some sort of charge hidden in innuendo.
Colm
Thanks for the link. Glad to see its still there. Hope it stays there for all the ‘long time’
those Bp.s are saying it will take … and hope there are millions of copies that float on
and on in cyberspace … and hope there are generations down the years that get to
see it.
Mr. O’Gorman – are you telling us the full truth! It will come out in the end – even if you hide behind AI!
I’m all for truth Brendan, or John, or whatever version of your name you chose to use. Have you a point?
The same old words being churned out again. Why should we fast ect. for the sins of those b……s.
This is more lip service from Rome.
Mary you defame the B…….s when you call these criminals by that term.
Colm
This is pure non sense, ‘The same church law that has been previously used by bishops and church defenders to explain their cover up of abuse.’
Did u read ‘Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation Report’?
The Church’s failure to implement its own rules
1.25 The Church authorities failed to implement most of their own canon law rules on dealing with clerical child sexual abuse. This was in spite of the fact that a number of them were qualified canon and civil lawyers. As is shown in Chapter 4, canon law appears to have fallen into DISUSE and DISRESPECT during the mid 20th century. In particular, there was little or no experience of operating the penal (that is, the criminal) provisions of that law. The collapse of respect for the canon law in Archdiocesan circles is covered in some detail in Chapter 4. For many years offenders were neither prosecuted nor made accountable within the Church. Archbishop McQuaid was well aware of the canon law requirements and even set the processes in motion but did not complete them. Archbishops Ryan and McNamara do not seem to have ever applied the canon law.
page 7
http://www.dacoi.ie/
Tony,
This week we have heard a Professor of Canon Maw tell us that for Cardinal Sean Brady to report crimes against children would have been a breach of canon law and a betrayal of his office. In the past we have heard bishops assert that they did not have the power or means to control abusing priests.
Fr Tom Doyle and many other experts are clear in their view that many aspects of canon law are obsessed with secrecy and the prevention of scandal as opposed to the protection of children.
I didn’t say that Canon Law also provided means through which errant and abusing clerics could be controlled, rather that bishops and other church leaders had asserted that they did not have the power to limit the activities of offending priests and prevent abuse.
Colm
There is no question that the pope’s pastoral letter to Ireland is extremely well crafted, etc., but that is to be expected at this level. But the more important thing to note is that, once again, what is heard are words, words, and more words. Words of concern, words of sorrow, words of apology.
The “problem” of the sexual abuse of children, however, is not something that suddenly just hit the radar as far as church authorities are concerned.
Read through the pages of the reports and investigations that have been done here in the U.S.
Read through the pages of the 2005 Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, not forgetting to read the archdiocese’s response and District Attorney Abraham’s response to their response.
They are shattering.
What the grand jury uncovered is shocking beyond belief as it what the church authorities knew, when they knew it and what they did not do to care for the “Lord’s little ones,” their parents and their families.
It broke my heart.
With much of their actions outed, church representatives played a number of cards but one of the most ridiculous was when someone claimed that the attacks on the church were an attack by people similiar to the “Know Nothings” of over a century ago.
I commented in one newspaper article I wrote that the church didn’t have to worry about any damage coming from any outsider “Know Nothings” because they had done such a good job of destroying the church’s authority and credibility from the inside!
Yes, it is a beautiful letter if one comes to it with absolutely no background in what has transpired even just these last eight years in the U.S.
Let me add a few thoughts that struck me on a first reading of the pope’s pastoral letter to the Irish people -
They are as follows:
The pope does not mention “justice” along with his proposal as in “…and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation.”
Where is justice? What happened to justice?
The pope distances himself from the problem when he says, “the task you now face is to address the problem of abuse that has occurred within the Irish community….”
He chooses not to place the physical, mental, psychological, spiritural and sexual abuse of those in Ireland into the church’s larger sexual abuse problems which are worldwide – that of children, young women, men, vulnerable adults and women religious, nuns in coutries around the world.
While the pope mentions “this grievous wound,” and goes on to “acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children,” he does not acknowledge them as the crimes against the humanity of children which they truly are.
As far as I can find, the pope uses the word, “crime” only once in his pastoral letter to describe the sexual abuse of a child.
Nowhere does he use the word “crime” to describe the actions of the bishops.
After distancing himself by using the phrase, “your country,” the pope then attempts to place the blame on “priests and religious,” whom he accuses of adopting “ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.”
The problem of sexual abuse was recognized and written about as early as the fourth century.
Sounds like making excuses and more passing the buck then presenting valid reasons to me.
Then he appears to blame the “programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council,” which, according to the pope, “was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.”
Talk about disturbing!
Is this another attempt to polarize groups of people who remain in the church? One wonders hows that accounts for all the documented cases of abuse that pre-date the Second Vatican Council?
It reminds me of what bishops and others, here at home as well as abroad, said in 2002.
It’s an American problem.
Santorum of Pennsylvania blamed it on the permissiveness of the New Englanders and foreign bishops blamed it on homosexual priests and promptly commenced a purge of the U.S. seminaries.
The pope goes on to talk about “the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.”
Odd, but I thought that the “weakening of faith,” “loss of respect,” etc., had a more direct cause and effect relationship to the terrible, self serving way the hierarchy mishandled the “problem.”
I could be wrong but I don’t think so.
I don’t think there will be “a clear-sighted diagnosis” as long as the real causes and the hierarchy’s responsibility continues to be mitigated.
The pope mentions, “existing canonical penalties.”
What about the failure to apply existing criminal and civil penalties, laws, while safeguarding “the dignity of every person,” as the Holy See pledged to do in its signing its name to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child?
On page 6: But what concrete steps toward accountability have actually been taken? Of the bishops especially?
Yes, it is “hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church,” but is it not more correct to say that it is the institutional Roman Catholic Church that needs to be reconciled with the victims?
The church in the collective person of the hierarchy, needs to pursue reconciliation.
On page 8: The pope speaks of priests and religious who have abused children.
Why does the pope continue to address these perverted individuals as “priests” and “religious” in the present tense?
They should not be priests or religious.
They should be removed from the priesthood and the religious life.
To my knowledge, not one priest or religious has been denied reception of Holy Communion much less excommunicated for such grievous violations and crimes against children to say nothing of mortal sins.
And yet there is evidence of threatening victims, their parents and families with excommunication, lawsuits and the like.
Victims were shunned, dismissed from school and threatened with lawsuits themselves if they did not back off.
Victims in Philadelphia were forced to have abortions, for the love of God! It’s all there to read and my sources tell me that there was much more that never got into the report.
Again there is an excessive concern expressed about “damage” done to the institution and the public “perception of the priesthood and religious life.”
On page 12: Attempts are made once again to mitigate the responsibility of the bishops.
“Grave errors in judgment?”
Nooooooooo, crimes were committed by bishops.
These crimes are sometimes called a conspiracy to commit a crime, a felony, reckless endangerment, facilitating a crime, and a host of other terms in other jurisdictions.
“Cooperate?” How about the directing the bishops to obey the laws of the government regarding Childhood Sexual Abuse within the jurisdictions of their dioceses?
The faithful, of course, are enjoined once again to “play their proper part.”
“The lay faithful, too, should be encouraged to play their proper part in the life of the Church. See that they are formed in such a way that they can offer an articulate and convincing account of the Gospel in the midst of modern society (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) and cooperate more fully in the Church’s life and mission. This in turn will help you once again become credible leaders and witnesses to the redeeming truth of Christ.”
“Credible leaders?”
That will be a long time in coming, if ever, and that in itself may not be such a bad idea.
Never in his pastoral letter, does the pope once refer to any of the structural problems that have contributed to this “problem” as he calls it and certainly there is no mention of the systemic and endemic causes.
And so it goes.
All in all this was another opportunity to get to the crux of the problem and once again the pope, like so many of his underlings, choose not to do what he needed to do.
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
Platitude of the day has a nice deconstruction.
http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php
Colm – Spot on and I could not agree with you more. Today’s letter…more of the same. A complete waste of time and an insult to any intellegent person. The church cares about the church and NO one else. Has always been that way and will never change.
As for Brendan J. Kelly / John Benedict Kelly…more of the same there too. The sheep are threatend and the rest of the world has an “agenda” against the church. That’s the problem!! LOL.
The sheople will follow no matter what the church does. So people like Brendan/John are best off left alone to let themselves self derstruct along with the RCC. There is no saving them. They refuse to jump of a ship that is certainly sinking. Sad indeed…
You are absolutely right! What a letdown this letter is, after so much Vatican and hierarchical hype. Can they not understand that the people are not stupid and naive. We all know that the hierarchy as a whole, with few exceptions, is tainted with protecting itself from any sanctions either civil or canonical? The pope’s record is tainted with the Hullerman case and others in Munich and his letter to the bishops of the world in 2001 to shield offending clergy from teh civil authorities. Can he and the rest of the “boys in the band” not realize that if they only admitted their guilt explicitly and stepped aside it would begin to restore credibility in the Church? People are leaving not only because of the abuses themselves but even moreso because of the persistent and pervasive cover up from the Vatican on down. Only the intense light of the media has forced the hierarchy and the pope too to make their limp and watered down statements of supposed outrage. As they hold fast to their mitres and thrones the people are losing their faith.
Fortunately I have never been a victim of abuse, and I have interacted with many clergy over the years. What I would like to know, is what would be sufficient to help easy the suffering. I fear no amount of words will suffice and that many want to see everybody resign and ultimately destroy the church. Its time victims groups unite and clearly have a plan around what they would like and ensure the top elements are delivered upon. No one was exoecting the letter to sort anything, so why complain so much unless you tell them exactly what you want to help heal the victims.
Hi there,
I am looking for no more than truth, justice and a commitment to act to properly protect children from this point forth.
And that’s not about me at all. I have done what I needed to do to address my experiences of rape and abuse at the hands of man ordained by a church who knew he was a paedophile. I have done so in the face of at times aggressive refusal on the part of that same church to be answerable for their failures and negligence. In the end I succeeded in forcing an admission of negligence from the Diocese of Ferns, whilst the Vatican used their statehood and invoked diplomatic immunity to dodge truth and accountability.
So I got on with it, with the support of my family, my friends and many others, I did what I needed to do in order to heal the impacts of the crimes I was subjected to.
You are right when you say that no amount of words will suffice, or at least not words alone. Actions are what matter.
Take a look at the actions the Pope feels are an appropriate response to the issue of clerical child sexual abuse and its cover up by the institutional church.
He then goes on to say that he will initiate an Apostolic Visitation to some Irish diocese…a visit by Vatican enforcers who will bring Irish church leaders back into line with adherence to Church Law. The same church law which has been used as an excuse for the failure of bishops to report crimes against children to the police.
Nowhere in the letter does the Pope issue a simple instruction that all cases of allegations, concerns or suspicions of the abuse of children by priests are to be handed over the police or civil authorities. Nowhere does he pledge action on his part, as Supreme Pontiff and head of the global church to bring in new laws which will require church personnel and managers to place child protection at the top of their priorities in responding to clerical sexual abuse.
I have no desire to see the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. I strongly believe in the right of all people to be free to express and celebrate their personal religious beliefs and in my professional life I work to defend that and all other human rights.
However, I think that the actions of the leaders of the Church, up to and including especially the Pope are in truth the greatest threat to its survival.
best,
Colm
Colm, like, politics, banking and many old world institutions, the truth is unlikely to ever come out, justice will not be brought to all the perpetrators. do we need to hunt these down like the still ongoing hunt for Nazi criminals, there maybe an element in this that needs to happen, but i think that many now need to do what you have done, and get on with it. it is hard to move forward if you keep looking backwards and i think what we must fight for and have a incessant zeal about, is the need to put all the measures in place to ensure this never happens again. The church is dying of it’s own accord, the lack of new people joinging the clergy and poor mass attendances ensures that the church will never have the stranglehold it did on the irish pscyhe and we will be all the better for it! but i do think looking for something dramatic to come from rome is a waste of time and efforts could be better spent elsewhere. Kepp up the good work.
I don’t think the Monty Python Team could come up with anything as crazy as the reaction of the Pope to this.
At the Global Atheist Convention just held in Melbourne, Australia. Prof. Richard Dawkins compared many of the beliefs and practises of the Roman Catholic Church as “Pythonesque”. I was at that Convention.
The Pope and ALL who cover up child abuse should be charged with ‘VICARIOUS LIABILITY’
Due to the long and arduous legal battles of the ‘Medomsley Heroes’ a statute was set for ‘Vicarious Liability’ meaning those who witnessed abuse and who stood by and did nothing are also liable and could potentially be charged. Search: justice4survivors.org and pienmashfilms.com.
International award winning film director Bill Maloney was brought up in the care of brutal UK authorities as were the rest of his Catholic Irish immigrant family. His passion to expose the truth and ‘tell it how it is’ led a group of courageous abuse victims to approach Maloney to tell their stories.
Pie ‘n’ Mash Films and justice4survivors are part of a chain that is strengthening and linking up throughout the world to make is a safer place for our children – because THEY are the future. Please google ‘Adam Rickwood & The Medomsley Heroes’ and find Maloney’s latest video report about abuse at St Peter’s Approved School on YouTube: ‘St Peter’s Child Abuse Advert’.
We’re with all abuse victims who just want to hear “You were NOT liars, we’re sorry and WE WILL bring the perpetrators to Justice”.