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Eamonn MCann: Why Pope must pray victims forgive Vatican’s role in abuse
Thursday, 21 May 2009
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To discuss the scandal of child abuse in the Catholic Church without factoring in the role of the Vatican is to miss the main point. Irish Catholics had been told in advance, by Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in his Holy Thursday homily, that the contents of the report of the commission of inquiry published yesterday would “shock us all”. But we may doubt whether all were sufficiently prepared for what’s emerged.
We are set for days of discussion of the different levels of culpability of priests, bishops, diocesan authorities, the institutional Church, society at large. Pope Benedict will likely issue a statement expressing dismay and distress. What he won’t do is accept share of the blame.
Benedict will take the long view. It has been well said that while other institutions measure the passage of events in months, years, decades, the Catholic Church sees the world in a perspective of centuries. Benedict knows there’s nothing new in what’s been brought to light by the inquiry under Mr Justice Seán Ryan. He will be confident that this, too, shall pass.
We used to be taught as children that the fact that the Church had survived all manner of scandals down the ages was proof positive that it was the One True Church. Benedict knows the history and will see yesterday’s headlines as another trial to be overcome with God’s help.
The oldest known instruction to Church officials, the Didache, dating from the second century, commands, ‘Thou shalt not seduce young boys’.
The earliest recorded gathering of bishops, the Council of Elvira, in 309, spelt out 81 Canons, of which 38 dealt with sex. Among those excluded from receiving communion were ‘bishops, presbyters, and deacons committing a sexual sin’, ‘those who sexually abuse boys’, and ‘people who bring charges against bishops and presbyters without proving their cases’.
Why would the Church have mentioned such things had they not already become problems?
Celibacy has had something to do with the proclivity for sexual abuse. Constrained to express their sexuality in secret, furtively, some have tended towards abuse of the vulnerable. When all sexual pleasure is deemed abominable, perversion and excess become nebulous concepts.
The Pope, custodian of Church teaching, is chief enforcer of clerical celibacy. So strongly is he committed to celibacy, he has seemed at times to suggest that the rule is part of the Magisterium, the infallible teaching of the Church, not open to amendment, ever.
Against that background, the suffering of children can be seen as part of the price to be paid for proclaiming Truth in a world stained by sin. It is not that Benedict or any of his bishops are not genuinely anguished at the thought of the agony of the innocent. But viewed in the context of the grand narrative of heaven, for them, this isn’t a decisive consideration.
The first US prelate granted a personal audience with Benedict following his 2005 election was Cardinal Bernard Law. Three years earlier, Law had resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston following revelations that he had systematically, over a number of years, moved predator priests from parish to parish, never alerting parents to the danger in which their children were being put.
Law’s case sparked a huge scandal. The Vatican had been bombarded with demands to explain why he was being retained in the ministry.
Yet this was the man Benedict chose personally to honour 12 days into his papacy. Whether with conscious deliberation or merely by instinct, he was making a point. The same approach emerged in his response to the report three years ago on abuse of children in Ferns, Wexford. In a 271-page document, retired Supreme Court judge Frank Murphy (inset below) identified more than 100 allegations against 26 priests.
He found that, in turning a deaf ear to the pleas of the victims while hiding the abusers from the law, the diocese had been following standard instructions from Rome. Responding, Benedict described the behaviour of the priests concerned as “incomprehensible” and declared that they had “devastated human lives and profoundly betrayed the trust of children.” But as to the finding against the Vatican, not a word of explanation, much less an apology.
In Ferns, as elsewhere, Church control of schools was key to the predators' access to children. “That fairly leaps out of the Murphy report,” commented Mary Raftery, whose 2000 documentary States of Fear sparked the firestorm which the Church hopes will soon now die down.
Says Colm O’Gorman, one of the victims of Ferns’ adherence to Vatican policy: “We still have a situation where an institution that was so entirely negligent in how it addressed child protection in the past, has full legal responsibility for child protection in the majority of Irish schools ... The State needs to do more in Ireland to take on that responsibility.”
But there isn't a mainstream party North or South which would risk the wrath of the Catholic hierarchy by making any such move.
The topmost and implacable priority of Benedict’s Church is at all costs to retain control of the formation of the next generation of Catholic children.
It acknowledges the sin while resolving to retain the occasion of sin. It has no firm purpose of amendment. Priests may be prosecuted, bishops may resign. But the buck stops with Benedict.
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Come off it Eamonn! Judge not and you shall not be judged.Are you sinless?
Then again its a good time for Church bashing even though statistics confirm that about 3 per cent of abusers are clerical.What about the other 97 per cent from the laity?
Yes, arrest those 3 per cent and put them to prison but lets not ignore the 97 per cent.
As for those who support your opinion: Peter denied and Judas betrayed Jesus even though they were amongst his chosen disciples. Who will cast the first stone?
Posted by liam o'comain | 24.06.09, 17:03 GMT
Come off it Eamonn! Judge not and you shall not be judged.Are you sinless?
Then again its a good time for Church bashing even though statistics confirm that about 3 per cent of abusers are clerical.What about the other 97 per cent from the laity?
Yes, arrest those 3 per cent and put them to prison but lets not ignore the 97 per cent.
As for those who support your opinion: Peter denied and Judas betrayed Jesus even though they were amongst his chosen disciples. Who will cast the first stone?
Posted by liam o'comain | 24.06.09, 16:59 GMT
And what of the sacraments these priests have carried out when involved in this abuse over the years?
Council of Trent, Sess.V11 Can.11 - " If anyone says that in ministers, when they effect and confer the sacraments, there is not required at least the intention of doing what the Church does, let him be anathema."
How can a priest, guilty of this abuse be of right mind when performing sacraments?? How many have the invalidated??
Posted by Colin | 23.05.09, 22:48 GMT
Remember there are two higher spirits vying for power:
Almighty God and Satan the Devil (the two seeds of Gen 3:15)
By the actions of the Catholic Church with their horrendous record through the centuries with the Cru.sades, In.quisition, Child Rape, etc. who do you think is behind the Church. God? or Sata.n?
"By their fruits you will recognize these men." Matt 7:16
Posted by Marie Paterson | 23.05.09, 21:46 GMT
If these crimes had been perpetrated by a non-catholic organisation we'd be baying for blood. Never mind sins and prayers.There was murder, there was rape, there was torture and not once have the Catholic authorities or the Irish government tried to do anything to prevent it. In fact, everything was done to hide it. There should be hundreds of priests in prison, and there can be no absolution from a legal point of view. How anyone can feel an allegiance to such a criminal sect is beyond me.
Posted by Leunamme | 22.05.09, 19:05 GMT
to protect and allow the abusers to continue their activities was evil at its most basic kind
it is a corruption at the very heart of the catholic church
untill the church really deals with this
the situation will always be likely to reaccure
Posted by robert | 22.05.09, 10:56 GMT
Ed Patterson, you claim that it is wrong to focus so exclusively on the Church, given that sexual 'perversity', namely homosexuality and bisexuality are so rampant in the West. It really saddens me that you seem shocked at the level of focus given to this story. Secondly, you classify homosexuality as sexual 'perversity'. While this may be a religious conviction of yours, it is views like this that harbour scandals like this. Consensual homosexual sex harms no one, but child abuse DOES.
Posted by Dave | 21.05.09, 23:22 GMT
There are many good catholics out there who are like everyone else of any other religion or otherwise who would find this completely repulsive, and the best way to show support for all the tragic victims would be to leave the church behind, they are not worthy of your support. "Suffer the little children"
Posted by SHARON | 21.05.09, 22:52 GMT
Absolutely Eamon spot on. There are however no political parties willing to take on the Catholic Church and put it very firmly in its place in Ireland either North or South.
I am ashamed to be Irish and want the Catholic Church to be taken out of education. In the area where I lived in the 1960's around Forkhill and Dromintee County Armagh, there were many sadistic lay Catholic teachers who seemed to think that it was quite alright to beat students for whatever reason.
Posted by Patrick Murphy | 21.05.09, 22:35 GMT
Matthew 7:16 "By their fruits you will know them "...by these fruits, these men are not servants of Christ.If as you clearly state Eamonn, as early as Council of Elvira, in 309 - there is, and has been for centuries something deeply wrong. If these priests have a calling from God - why has He not bestowed upon then the holiness they claim, the same one that gives them the power to forgive sins ?? If the Church still had the power under the law, it would remain hidden.
Posted by Colin | 21.05.09, 22:02 GMT
Eamon, I suspect it's simpler than that. Maybe they simply don't believe their own religion? If they did, surely they would not commit these sins, then cover them up and finally run to Mr Ahern (that is, the Irish taxpayers, even the Protestant ones) for financial protection when the truth got out.
I can accept that there could be a paedophile in any organization, but any secular establishment would have outed them and accepted the legal consequences.
Posted by neil | 21.05.09, 20:21 GMT
Sexual perversity is rampant in the West - homosexuality, bi-sexuality, even bestiality. It is profoundly cultural. So why focus almost exclusively on such events in the Church, and why make it seem as if the Church has a worse problem with abuse than do public schools, other religions, the medical profession, secondary coaches, etc. - which all have statistically higher rates of such unfortunate abuse. It is wrong to focus so exclusively on the Church. It is part of our fallen condition.
Posted by Ed Patterson | 21.05.09, 20:02 GMT
what is wrong with the people of ireland
there is little to find fault with in the landscape or the temperate climate
would that all perverted religion and perverted people stay away the long view of the catholic church is not longer than the memory of this suffering
Posted by eoin | 21.05.09, 15:44 GMT
In 1946, on a visit to his native Irleand, Father Edward Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, condemned the Irish borstals and the Irish penal system. The government, under Eamon de Valera publicly called Father Flanagan a liar, but Father Flanagan did not back down in his condemnation of the way the Irish government treated its youth. He planned to return to Ireland to carry on a public fifght against the penal system, but died in Berlin on a mission from the U.S. Government to the youth of Europe
Posted by Clifford J. Stevens | 21.05.09, 15:03 GMT
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. [Luke 17:2]
Space is reserved for them in Dante's hell (level 100)
Posted by Ned Broc | 21.05.09, 12:03 GMT
The above is disgusting. I can't see how the Catholic church cannot bow down to what we have done in the Protestant church. I cannot believe that the Pope still stands by Celibacy. As for looking past the bad to the centuries ahead...how can you go ahead when you don't treat females as equal let alone deal with the celibacy issue which just doesn't cut the mustard.
My family and I have put much into women having a right to preach, I am not Christian..long story..but its my family not Queen.
Posted by Lisa A Williams Descendant of Captain Cook | 21.05.09, 10:01 GMT
Roman Catholicism claims universal truth and a peculiar ethos for all its institutions. The systemic perverted abuse of innocent children is also universal. Victims bearing the psychological stigmata of abuse should fight for justice and the criminal conviction of the abusers. '' Suffer the little children to come unto me'' has been suborned into a clerical paedophiliac paradigm of cruelty and evil.
Posted by George | 21.05.09, 09:32 GMT
I think you're right Eamonn. At all costs, the Church must stand. Already the church is saying this is in the past and we've moved on. Sorry and all that. Now, where were we ?
Posted by Yip | 21.05.09, 09:26 GMT
The dropping of the next shoe must be close - this time the birthrate/deathrate of children in nunneries. But one has to ask, why pick on Ireland; the situation is probably the same, or worse, in any Catholic country you care to name.
In spite of these obnoxious sins the good old Pope continues about his business dressed in his finery (relics of the days when ostentation was designed to scare people into submission), and still is able to find very ordinary but perhaps selfless persons to sanctify. The biggest hoax in the world will I believe continue to flourish as it is so easy to have ones sins forgiven with the recitation of a couple of "Hail Marys".
Posted by Alan Freeman | 21.05.09, 06:00 GMT