Apr

28

Whistleblower Paddy Doyle – I walked in, I didn’t walk out…

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Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done!’.

DUBLIN, April 26, 2010 (AFP) –

One of the first whistle blowers in the clerical abuse scandal which has shaken the Catholic Church in Ireland to its foundations can still recall the fear that stalked his wretched childhood. Sent to a Church-run school at the age of four, Paddy Doyle was severely abused. It was not until he was 38 that he was able to open up about the horrors he had suffered.

“For saying anything at all, you would be seriously punished,” he recalls in an AFP interview, when asked why the systematic abuse meted out across the predominantly Catholic country was allowed to continue unchecked for so long. When his mother died of cancer and his father hanged himself in front of him and his two-year-old sister, the Irish justice system in 1955 labelled him as “not being in possession of a proper guardian”. He was sent to the now notorious St Michael’s Industrial School, at Cappoquin, County Waterford, south-east Ireland, where he was viciously assaulted and sexually abused. “They were very serious abusers. We couldn’t even dream of speaking out.You could be deprived of food, of any kind of social interaction with other children.
“So you just went with the way things were. All the children were under the age of 10, so it was very difficult.
“There was a silence,” he said, recalling Ireland at a time when the Catholic Church in Ireland was all-powerful.
“The country was run by religious orders: schools, hospitals and some say even the government.
“The Church called all the shots, decided practically everything. There wasn’t a school that wasn’t run by the Catholic Church.
“In fact, 20 years ago, you couldn’t open a school if no member of the Church was on the board.” Doyle soon developed dystonia, a severe neurological disorder. He was sent to a succession of Church-run hospitals and says he was subjected to”surgery experimentation”.
“I walked in but I came out in a wheelchair,” he said. He never recovered the use of his legs. When he finally felt able to reveal what had happened to him, he was worried how others would react.
He recalled: “I sat in front of my computer and told (it): ‘I want to tell you something’. It didn’t answer me back.” Eventually he poured all the pain of his ordeal into a book, “The God Squad”. The first publisher he approached “said it was a brilliant book but too risky to be published”, but an independent publishing house took it on (Raven Arts Press)and the book went on sale in 1989.

The initial reaction was underwhelming. “It fell on deaf ears. The Irish psyche didn’t want to believe (it),” Doyle said. The disbelief was perhaps even greater because Doyle recounted in the book that he had been abused not by men, but by the nuns who ran the school.
“An awful lot of people couldn’t get their head around the idea of a woman who could become an abuser,” he said. “The God Squad” became a success and showed the way forward for other victims to overcome their fear.

Subsequent government investigations have revealed substantial levels of abuse in many Catholic-run institutions from the 1950s to the 1970s and the Church’s complicity in covering it up. Even the current head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, has faced calls to resign after it emerged that he had required two abused children to sign an oath of silence. Doyle says that despite the progress, and financial compensation for victims, he is still appalled that the “denial” of his country’s dark years continues. “There is no abuser in jail. Why aren’t they in prison?” he asks,dismissing Pope Benedict XVI’s recent apologies for the handling of the abuse scandal as “farcical”.

“From the Pope right down, they should be before the court.”

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Vatican-pope-religion-child-abuse-Ireland,FOCUS
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Child abuse in the Catholic Church: why Ireland kept quiet
DUBLIN, April 26, 2010 (AFP) – The extent of the unimaginable sexual and physical abuse suffered by thousands of children in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland is becoming clear, but why did it remain secret for so long? Academics and victims say that the Church itself as well as police,teachers and even victims’ families all helped maintain the veil of secrecy. This was because of the huge authority wielded by the Church in Ireland which meant that some parents actually blamed children for bringing abuse on themselves. Until the early 1990s, “it was simply impossible to challenge the Church”, said Kevin Lalor, head of the School of Social Sciences and Law at the Dublin Institute of Technology. To understand the Catholic Church’s central role in society, you have to recognise its role as an “anti-British force” prior to Irish independence in1921, Lalor said. “As the centre of identity, it had an overly inflated status. More so than in any other country, the Church was an official arm of the state,” he added. The majority of schools and hospitals were managed by the Catholic Church, and it even influenced the composition of governments.
“The Church was extremely dominant. People were living through the Church,” said Dr Helen Buckley, senior lecturer in child protection at Trinity College Dublin. It set the moral code and victims of abuse committed by priests or nuns who dared to speak up faced formidable obstacles. “The priest was the ultimate symbol of morality and chastity and was highly respected. The victim might not have been believed by the community,friends and even relatives,” said Sue Donnelly, a sociologist at University College Dublin. A significant breakthrough came in 1990, when a local newspaper dared to print accusations of abuse against a priest in Ferns diocese in south-eastern of the country.
“People reacted in complete disbelief. They gathered in front of the offices of the newspaper, burned some issues and boycotted the businesses that advertised in it,” Donnelly recalled. But the story sparked a huge investigation which eventually led to the government-backed Ferns report of 2005. It detailed serious abuse and the failure of senior churchmen to identify and remove paedophile priests. A fundamental lack of understanding about sexual abuse also helped to keep the lid on what was happening in orphanages and state-run reform schools. “There was a lack of awareness about sexual abuse. Up to 15 or 20 year ago, people thought it was committed by very strange people, living in remote areas, who had mental difficulties or drink problems,” Buckley says. Ignorance of sexual abuse and the belief that the Church could do no wrong meant some parents would even say “you must have deserved it if a child would come and say he was punished by his teacher,” according to Lalor. The police were reluctant to rock the boat. “They felt a quiet word to the bishop was the best option, that it was a moral issue, not a legal one,”Lalor added. Reports into institutional abuse have repeatedly found that priests found to be abusing children were quietly moved to another parish, where they often started abusing again. Donnelly stressed that victims also faced the difficulty of talking about sexuality in the extremely conservative Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s, and those who “told tales” faced being accused of not being “a good Catholic”.

Paddy Doyle, one of the first victims to lift the lid on the scandal with his 1990 book “The God Squad”, says that small children also lived in fear of being “punished even stronger” if they tried to denounce their abusers. “For saying anything at all, you would be seriously punished, beaten, you could be deprived of food, of any kind of social interaction with other children,” he recalls of his childhood in a Catholic-run institution where he was sent as an orphan aged four in 1955. Then, in the 1990s, people gradually started to talk about their experiences, encouraged by various counselling services set up around that time.

Lalor said that “all of a sudden, we went from a total absence of the subject” to the start of the chain of events that led to the resignations of a succession of Irish bishops for failing to stamp out abuse. The latest to stand down, on Thursday, was James Moriarty, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who recognised that the “long struggle of survivors” had revealed an “un-Christian” culture within the Church.

Apr

26

Ireland was silence as child abuse took place

Filed Under Child Abuse | 9 Comments

26 April 2010

AFP – The extent of the unimaginable sexual and physical abuse suffered by thousands of children in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland is becoming clear, but why did it remain secret for so long?

Academics and victims say that the Church itself as well as police, teachers and even victims’ families all helped maintain the veil of secrecy.

This was because of the huge authority wielded by the Church in Ireland which meant that some parents actually blamed children for bringing abuse on themselves.

Until the early 1990s, “it was simply impossible to challenge the Church”, said Kevin Lalor, head of the School of Social Sciences and Law at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

To understand the Catholic Church’s central role in society, you have to recognise its role as an “anti-British force” prior to Irish independence in 1921, Lalor said.

“As the centre of identity, it had an overly inflated status. More so than in any other country, the Church was an official arm of the state,” he added.

The majority of schools and hospitals were managed by the Catholic Church, and it even influenced the composition of governments.

“The Church was extremely dominant. People were living through the Church,” said Dr Helen Buckley, senior lecturer in child protection at Trinity College Dublin.

It set the moral code and victims of abuse committed by priests or nuns who dared to speak up faced formidable obstacles.

“The priest was the ultimate symbol of morality and chastity and was highly respected. The victim might not have been believed by the community, friends and even relatives,” said Sue Donnelly, a sociologist at University College Dublin.

A significant breakthrough came in 1990, when a local newspaper dared to print accusations of abuse against a priest in Ferns diocese in the southeast of the country.

“People reacted in complete disbelief. They gathered in front of the offices of the newspaper, burned some issues and boycotted the businesses that advertised in it,” Donnelly recalled.

But the story sparked a huge investigation which eventually led to the government-backed Ferns report of 2005.

It detailed serious abuse and the failure of senior churchmen to identify and remove paedophile priests.

A fundamental lack of understanding about sexual abuse also helped to keep the lid on what was happening in orphanages and state-run reform schools.

“There was a lack of awareness about sexual abuse. Up to 15 or 20 years ago, people thought it was committed by very strange people, living in remote areas, who had mental difficulties or drink problems,” Buckley says.

Ignorance of sexual abuse and the belief that the Church could do no wrong meant some parents would even say “you must have deserved it if a child would come and say he was punished by his teacher,” according to Lalor.

The police were reluctant to rock the boat. “They felt a quiet word to the bishop was the best option, that it was a moral issue, not a legal one,” Lalor added.

Reports into institutional abuse have repeatedly found that priests found to be abusing children were quietly moved to another parish, where they often started abusing again.

Donnelly stressed that victims also faced the difficulty of talking about sexuality in the extremely conservative Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s, and those who “told tales” faced being accused of not being “a good Catholic”.

Paddy Doyle, one of the first victims to lift the lid on the scandal with his 1990 book “The God Squad”, says that small children also lived in fear of being “punished even stronger” if they tried to denounce their abusers.

“For saying anything at all, you would be seriously punished, beaten, you could be deprived of food, of any kind of social interaction with other children,” he recalls of his childhood in a Catholic-run institution where he was sent as an orphan aged four in 1955.

Then, in the 1990s, people gradually started to talk about their experiences, encouraged by various counselling services set up around that time.

Lalor said that “all of a sudden, we went from a total absence of the subject” to the start of the chain of events that led to the resignations of a succession of Irish bishops for failing to stamp out abuse.

The latest to stand down, on Thursday, was James Moriarty, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who recognised that the “long struggle of survivors” had revealed an “un-Christian” culture within the Church.
Click here to find out more!

Apr

26

O’Grady revelations are of major concern

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The discovery that one of this country’s most notorious serial paedophile priests has been living under an assumed name within a Catholic church community in Holland is a chilling reminder of how cunning and manipulative such abusers can be. It is also a reason to review how well-supervised potentially dangerous abusers are when they are released from prison.

Fr Oliver O’Grady served seven years in the US for repeatedly raping two young brothers in their Californian parish. They were just two of as many as 40 children he sexually molested, one a nine-month-old baby. Every time he was discovered, his bishop moved him on to another parish. For that sin of omission, the diocese has had to pay record damages in America.

On release, he was deported to this country, but because he arrived here before the sex offenders’ register was established, there are conflicting reports over whether he was put on it. Even so, gardaí try to keep tabs on him. They are not always effective. In the past, he was filmed for the documentary Deliver Us From Evil in the playground in Merrion Square. He lived close to a national school. His move to Rotterdam over a year-and-a-half ago saw him assume a name and identity as “Brother Francis”. He volunteered at a women’s shelter – full of vulnerable women and their children. He inveigled his way into a Catholic parish that, as our pictures show, meant he could indulge his fascination for children – even standing close to them at the baptism of his friends’ baby.

The implications are enormous. We do not know whether O’Grady abused any children, or attempted to, while in Holland. He is now back in Ireland, having fled the country following a visit from Dutch police in February. He since returned to Holland briefly and was spotted wearing a fake beard at a station in Rotterdam on 14 April.

But his supervision, or lack of it, is alarming. Were Dutch police warned of the danger O’Grady posed? Did any of the priests in the parish where he helped out with mass, coached the choir and generally acted as a church warden, know of his background? People on the sex offenders’ register are not allowed take any work that involves access to children.

Psychiatric reports for court cases in the US labelled this former priest a serial abuser who needs lifelong monitoring. It is clear that for the past 18 months, that monitoring has been defective.

Whether O’Grady is on the sex offenders’ register or not, his behaviour is a cause for major concern. Ways of ensuring that O’Grady, and men like him, have no contact with families and children need to be rigorously enforced.

Sunday Tribune April 25th 2010

Apr

25

Notorious paedophile priest found ‘helping’ with children

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Defrocked Irish cleric Oliver O’Grady discovered running children’s parties, volunteering at women’s refuge and assisting at Dutch church
EXCLUSIVE Ali Bracken Crime Correspondent

DEFROCKED Irish paedophile priest Oliver O’Grady has been living in the Netherlands where he acted as a church deacon assisting mass and helped out at a shelter for vulnerable women and their children, the Sunday Tribune has discovered.

The photograph published here today shows O’Grady, a serial abuser who has served seven years in a US prison for his crimes, watching over a christening at a Rotterdam church where he used his middle name, Francis.

The expatriate community attending the Church of the Holy Heart, Christ Our Redeemer, had no knowledge of the past of the man who called himself “Brother Francis”. He also volunteered at a homeless shelter and worked at a fast-food restaurant in Rotterdam where he helped organise children’s parties.

O’Grady, whose crimes include the sexual abuse of over 20 boys and girls, including a nine-month-old baby, recently returned to Ireland and is living in a hostel in Dublin city centre.

In an email to one of the Rotterdam parishioners on 30 March 2010, he referred to himself as “Brother Francis”, implying that he is affiliated with a religious order.

He worked at the Rotterdam restaurant, part of a global chain, until the end of 2009 and was a regular host of birthday parties there. Prior to this he worked as a telemarketer.

O’Grady is regarded as one the world’s most dangerous clerical sex abusers. He has admitted in depositions to the rape, molestation and abuse of over 20 children from 1973 onwards. He was sent to the US after his ordination in 1971 and never served as a priest in Ireland. The 64-year-old was deported to Ireland in 2000 after serving half his 14-year sentence in prison in California for sexually abusing two brothers.

He was defrocked after his conviction and gained notoriety when he agreed to feature in a critically acclaimed documentary discussing his sexual abuse of children. In Deliver Us From Evil, released in 2006, O’Grady tells how he preyed on children and how he was moved from parish to parish by church authorities.

The documentary, which has been broadcast around the world, was aired on national television in Holland two weeks ago. Several parishioners at the Church of the Holy Heart, Christ our Redeemer, recognised him. He had been volunteering at a weekly English language religious service at the church, to facilitate expatriates.

Parishioners told the Sunday Tribune he was acting as a church deacon, helping the priest with the sacraments and organising the choir singing. On one occasion, when the priest was late, the defrocked cleric celebrated the mass until he arrived.

Fr Avin Kunnekkadan, one of the rotating priests at the church, said he was unaware of O’Grady’s criminal past.

“I did not know about his background. I did not know about his past at all,” he said this weekend. An announcement was made at the church last week informing the congregation about O’Grady’s criminal past.

O’Grady also volunteered at the Missionaries of Charity in Rotterdam.

The religious order runs a homeless shelter and there is a refuge for vulnerable mothers and their children at the premises. No one at the charity was available for comment this weekend.

Last week, O’Grady was served with a civil action at his Dublin hostel by Californian attorneys Manly, McGuire & Stewart.

The firm specialises in clerical sex abuse cases and represents several of O’Grady’s victims who are taking civil actions against him.

Fr Tom Doyle, a Dominican priest from Virginia in the US who has met some of O’Grady’s victims, said O’Grady should never have been permitted to volunteer at the church in Rotterdam and that background checks should have been carried out.

The priest said he believed O’Grady should be institutionalised.

“It’s a concern that he was able to help out at the church. The problem with O’Grady is that he’s a highly compulsive sex offender and no matter where he is, he’s a danger to children. There is no effective way to monitor him other than to make sure he is not in the presence of children.”

April 25, 2010 The Sunday Tribune

Apr

19

Aosdána votes unanimously for motion seeking clarification of Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002

Filed Under Aosdána, Residential Redress Act 2002 | 23 Comments

photo of Aosdana members courtesy of The Arts Council of IrelandLast Wednesday and Thursday (April 14 and 15) Aosdána held its 2010 agm in the Armagh City Hotel, under the auspices of the Armagh City and District Council and the North South Ministerial Council, which is based in Armagh.
It was the first meeting to be held in Northern Ireland (the only other agm held outside Dublin was in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo), but the speeches at the welcoming dinner stressed that the meeting reflected the long-standing tradition of all Ireland collaboration and interaction between artists and arts organisations.

The agm was significant in other respects too, not least in the unanimous vote supporting the motion seeking clarifcation of the Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002, proposed by Margaretta D’Arcy, and seconded by Paula Meehan.

The motion reads as follows
With reference to sections 7 (6) and 34 of the Redress Act 2002, Aosdána calls on the Minister for Justice and/or the Attorney General to confirm that nothing in these sections can or should be construed in such a way as to inhibit any truthful treatment of the subject, whether factual or fictionalised, in memoirs, novels, short stories, poetry, plays, film-scripts, etc., or in any other art form.

From the Residential Redress Act 2002 (dealing with compensation to victims of clerical abuse)
7 (6).– A person shall not publish any information concerning an application or an award made under this Act that refers to any other person (including an applicant), relevant person or institution by name or which could reasonably lead to the identification of any other person (including an applicant), a relevant person or an institution referred to in an application made under this Act.

34.– A person who is guilty of an offence under sections 7(6) and 28(9) shall be liable–

(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding €3,000 (£2,362.69) or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or both, or
(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €25,000 (£19,689.10) or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years or both.

The motion was passed unanimously.

Source: Philip Casey, member of Aosdána

Apr

18

The truth is that child abuse and cover-up are not primarily about religion or sex. They are about power

Filed Under Personal Stories/Opinions | 10 Comments

In a week when the Pope’s right-hand man pointed to homosexuality as the cause of paedophilia, FINTAN O’TOOLE looks at the church’s response to the child abuse cover-up and asks what it is all about

THERE IS A word that became current towards the fag end of the Northern Ireland conflict, when evil had been reduced to banalities. An atrocity against one community would often be met on the other side, not with either outright support or condemnation but with “what-aboutery”. Yes, some would shrug, this is terrible but what about Bloody Sunday? What about Enniskillen? What about Cromwell?

That this form of moral evasion had its very own name was a mark of how pitiful and desperate it was. Even those who engaged in it knew that it was a last refuge. When the indefensible could not be defended, the only remaining strategy was to present the perpetrators as victims, and those who criticised atrocities as hypocrites.

As evidenced by this week’s attempt by Pope Benedict’s right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to blame homosexuals for the crisis in the church, what-aboutery is now the mainstay of the Vatican’s response to the continuing revelation of its global strategy of covering up the abuse of children by priests.

For a short period leading up to the issuing of Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter to the Irish faithful last month, the Vatican seemed to be inching towards some tentative reflection on its own moral responsibility for the protection of abusers. But as the flood of allegations has risen ever closer to the Pope’s own door, humility has been replaced by an aggressive backlash.

The church leadership has now adopted a three-fold strategy: blame the victims; invoke anti-Catholic persecution; and identify modernity as the root of the problem. Benedict himself began the process of blaming the victims in his Palm Sunday sermon when he spoke of not allowing oneself to be “intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion”. This was not an accidental or thoughtless phrase. It was directly echoed on Easter Sunday by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, former Vatican secretary of state and currently dean of the College of Cardinals.

He urged Benedict not to be dismayed by “the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers”. In one magisterial phrase, the stories of those who were attacked as children and the demands for accountability are dismissed as malicious tittle-tattle.

The next step of painting the church leadership, not as powerful people with questions to answer, but as innocent victims of persecution, was taken by the preacher to the papal household, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa.

Showing that no strategy is too tasteless to be deployed, he cited a letter from a “Jewish friend”, comparing attacks on the church’s record on child abuse to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism”. Cantalamessa himself linked demands for accountability in the church to the “herd psychology” and the search for a scapegoat through which “the weakest element, the different one” is victimised. The ironies in this exercise in self-pity are almost beyond satire.

Redefining the Pope, his cardinals and his bishops as the “weakest” members of society would be peculiar in any context. But in the context of child abuse, it is grotesque. And claiming the status of “the different one”, the outsider who suffers from stereotyping and discrimination, is a bit rich for a church that is happy to perpetuate, as Bertone did this week, the vile stereotype that identifies homosexuality and paedophilia.

If the church insists on drawing analogies with anti-Semitism, it might be well advised to avoid the subject of its attitudes to gay people altogether.

Underlying all of this, however, is a more considered strategy of constructing an intellectual framework within which an official narrative of the crisis can emerge. That narrative is self-consciously reactionary. The church was fine when it had authority in society. That authority was challenged by liberalism, free thinking and sexual openness, and paedophilia is the result.

In his pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Benedict could not have been more explicit about this. He urged the faithful to understand the crisis as a consequence of “new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularisation of Irish society”.

“Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values.”

As an explanation for paedophile priests and for the abysmal institutional response to their crimes, this bears hardly a moment’s scrutiny.

In the Irish context alone, we know from the Ryan report that systematic child abuse by Catholic brothers, priests and nuns goes back at the very least to the 1930s and almost certainly beyond. We know from the Murphy report that “there is a two thousand year history of Biblical, Papal and Holy See statements showing awareness of clerical child sex abuse . . . it is clear that cases were dealt with by Archbishop McQuaid in the 1950s and 1960s”.

And even if one were to accept the highly dubious contention that paedophile priests are a result of the move towards greater sexual openness from the 1960s onwards, how would that explain the most damaging aspect of the scandal – the cover-up by bishops and the Vatican?

These strategies may be as desperate as they are clumsily evasive. But they are arguably necessary to the survival of the church’s current power structures. For if the organised cover-up of child abuse is not about petty gossip, not about victimising a defenceless Pope and not about secular modernity, what is it about? This is a question to which Benedict cannot give an honest answer because that answer would threaten the very system he embodies.

Some liberal critics of the church often fail to answer the question, too. They may blame Catholicism itself, as if other belief systems did not end up justifying vile crimes. They may blame celibacy, as if the vast majority of attacks on children were not perpetrated by non-celibates – often, indeed, by the child’s own parents. The truth is that child abuse and cover-up are not primarily about religion or sex. They are about power. The bleak lessons of human history are that those who have too much power will abuse it. And that organisations will put their own interests above those of the victims.

THE BEHAVIOUR OF the institutional Catholic church in Ireland and around the world is certainly a stark example of both of these truths. But it is not the only example, even in contemporary Ireland. The Irish Amateur Swimming Association, for example, gave coaches the power to do what they liked to children and then engaged in a process of denial that was, albeit on a much smaller scale, essentially the same as that of the bishops.

The problem is not swimming, any more than it is Catholicism. It is power.

The church’s combination of temporal authority, spiritual control and a closed, internal hierarchy created the power that corrupted it. The backlash of the past few weeks has merely confirmed what was already overwhelmingly likely: that Benedict is entirely incapable of grasping this reality, let alone altering it. He has spent much of his career crushing dissent and rolling back the anti-hierarchical spirit of Vatican 2. His solution, as he suggested in his pastoral letter, is more of the same – more obedience, more authority, more resistance to secular modernity.

Those who looked to the Pope to respond to one of the most profound crises in the history of the church now know they will have to look elsewhere.

Apr

17

Survivors split after meeting Taoiseach

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The Irish Times – Saturday, April 17, 2010
Survivors split after meeting Taoiseach
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

ABUSE VICTIMS and representative groups were bitterly divided yesterday following a four-hour meeting with the Taoiseach and a number of his Cabinet colleagues on Thursday night.

John Kelly of Irish Soca said last night that neither he nor six other survivor groups represented at the meeting wanted any more to do with the Government on the issue. Their intention now, he said, was to seek meetings with the religious congregations to ensure that the additional €200 million being sought from them by the Government goes into a compensation fund which will be administered by employees of the abuse groups.

Thursday’s meeting came immediately after three hours of talks between the Taoiseach and his Cabinet colleagues and representatives of 18 religious congregations which ran residential institutions for children investigated by the Ryan commission.

Mr Kelly said he was “taken aback” and “shell-shocked” at the later meeting when the Taoiseach “dropped the bombshell” that just €110 million from contributions by the congregations was to go into a fund for former residents of the institutions, which would be administered by the State.

At that point, Michael O’Brien of the Right to Peace group walked out, he said. Later, so did Tom Hayes of the Alliance group, Christy Heaphy of the Right of Place group, as well as representatives of Justice and Healing, Irish Survivors of Institutional Abuse, and an international survivors’ group.

The Taoiseach was called “a thief, a deceiver and a cheat” and was told that the monument to abuse victims recommended by the Ryan report should be “a statue of him with a balaclava”.

He said that “to describe the meeting as ‘angry’ would be mild”.

Christine Buckley of the Aislinn centre in Dublin, however, criticised some at the meeting. She said they were “destructive from the start and used very aggressive tones even before the Taoiseach opened his mouth”.

She welcomed the new fund and the further contributions from religious congregations, although she felt it was “a disappointing figure”. Still, she said, “you have to remember, the religious orders didn’t have to contribute another penny. They did so because of public outcry following Ryan,” she said.

She was pleased with the Taoiseach’s promise to look into the situation of women who had been in Magdalene laundries, and the issue of late applications for redress. Others pleased with the meeting included Mick Waters of Soca UK, Paddy Doyle, Noel Barry of the Right of Place group, and London councillor Sally Mulready, she said.

The Taoiseach had been “extremely patient throughout and very attentive”, she said. He was accompanied at the meeting by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, Minister for Health Mary Harney, and the Minister for Children, Barry Andrews.

Apr

17

Church in worst credibility crisis since Reformation, theologian tells bishops

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The Irish Times – Friday, April 16, 2010
Church in worst credibility crisis since Reformation, theologian tells bishops
HANS KÜNG

Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.

This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:

He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).

He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.

1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!

2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.

3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.

4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.

5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.

With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.

With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,

Yours, Hans Küng – (New York Times Syndicate) © Hans Küng

Apr

17

Lost credibility of our church leaders

Filed Under Child Abuse | 2 Comments

Lost credibility of our church leaders

Tuesday April 06 2010

IT may not be Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams’s place to speak about the troubles of the Irish Catholic Church, but sadly it does not take away from the truth of Dr Williams’s words: the Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all credibility.

I do not interpret this as applying to ordinary decent Irish Catholics attending Masses and who rightly are determined to hold on to their faith.

The lost credibility applies to their church leaders. It applies to their bishops, priests and Christian Brothers who continue to resist the truth and have not between them been instrumental in bringing a single perpetrator to justice. They have, however, effectively continued to hide the truth.

In fact, it is the tolerance and the spirit of forgiveness and a willingness to help their bishops and priests to start afresh by owning up, that distinguishes ordinary Catholics from their leaders.

Their bishops, priests, Christian Brothers and nuns continue to deny the truth. Shamefully, many who are culpable remain in their positions of power and influence in all communities throughout Ireland. Unless that changes, credibility will never be restored.

Despite many references and calls by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for “the whole truth to come out” I see no real signs of preparation to ensure that the whole truth of decades of abuse by the clergy is in hand and we will come to know the whole truth.

It is 10 years since Mary Raftery’s ‘States of Fear’ documentary on the suffering endured by children in industrial schools was first shown, and 10 years since the State apology for its neglect and more then 20 years since the publication of ‘The God Squad’ by Paddy Doyle, a landmark book of harrowing abuse of a young boy.

Still, politicians remain silent, show no leadership and give no voice to their own Irish citizens who cry out for justice.

Church leaders, particularly the Pope, have so far issued only qualified apologies, theologically laden with words that have brought no comfort or peace to those who suffered.

Cllr Sally Mulready

Irish Women Survivors’ Support Network, Camden Square, LONDON

Irish Independent

Apr

17

The world should unite to speak out on abuse.

Filed Under Child Abuse | 2 Comments

A Canadian human rights activist and child abuse whistleblower today joined with Irish survivors at a Dáil rally demanding redress for victims.
Kevin Annett, from Vancouver, who was invited to address the rally by the Templemore Forgotten Victims’ Group, said abuse was an international problem and the world should unite to speak out.
Mr Annett was presented with children’s shoes representing the children who suffered at the hands of clerical abusers.
“This is for the children who died, and the children who continue to suffer, so no more will suffer,” he told protesters.
The victims said a brief prayer for those died in the institutions and who suffered abuse from paedophile priests.


“For 20 years now in Canada I’ve been working with the survivors of the Catholic and Protestant boarding schools. And you hear the same stories all the time. The same crimes, the same murders and unfortunately the same cover-up,” Mr Annett said.
“Since we’re facing really the same international problem, you feel the need to unite across borders to let people know that you’re not alone.” Rosaleen Rogers, of the Templemore Forgotten Victims Group, called for a public inquiry into what went on inside institutions.
“The harm that was done to me, I just want to find out the truth of it, and I want some form of redress”.
“I want a public inquiry and I think that evidence should be given on oath.”
Her husband Roy said it was disgraceful that TDs would not come out and meet them during the protest.
“Why is there someone from the Government out here, listening to what we’re saying? They’re probably hiding. What are they afraid of?”
“The Church and the Government have an awful lot to answer for.”

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