Feb
14
The Hypocrites: Der Spiegel on the Catholic Church and Sex
Filed Under Child Abuse, Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse., Newspaper Articles on Child Abuse | 31 Comments
click on image to enlarge
The English translation is
The Hypocrites
The Catholic Church and Sex
Protecting Offenders, Ignoring Victims
A tremor is currently passing through the Catholic Church in Germany. It could be merely the beginning of an earthquake of proportions which have so far only been seen in the American and Irish Church. Tens of thousands of abuse cases were brought to light in both countries. Could Germany be next?
Full Der Spiegel Article online in English
Includes Graphic: Results of the SPIEGEL survey of German dioceses
OTHER CATHOLIC CHURCH ABUSE CASES
* Austria
* Canada
* United States
* Australia
* Philippines
* Ireland
Comments on Der Spiegel article are here.
German translation of The God Squad. click on image to enlarge.
Feb
7
There have been so many novels about abuse that they seem glib compared with real life, writes Mick Heaney.
His experience had damaged him but, for a long time, Paddy Doyle resisted writing about it. In the late 1980s, Doyle was a budding scriptwriter who had tackled disability in his early works but had never faced up to the horrors that left him disabled. Institutionalised as a child after the death of his parents in the 1950s, Doyle had suffered such physical and sexual abuse at the hands of nuns that he ended up requiring brain surgery. Confined to a wheelchair, he had been unable to escape the legacy of his childhood, yet he tried to avoid the ghosts of the past.
”Then on day I sat down in front of the computer,” says Doyle. “I looked at it and I said: ‘I want to tell you something’. And I started typing. People said it must have been very cathartic and I always say, ‘You must be joking’. Because what you’re actually doing is rewinding the tape and reliving the whole business again. Especially if it’s autobiographical, you’ve to put yourself back into situations you’d rather not be in. I wondered whether anyone would care about it, so I would leave it only to come back [to it]. And The God Squad came out the other end.”
It may have been a struggle but, by writing about the abuse he suffered, Doyle made his name: The God Squad was a bestseller when it was published in 1988. The book also helped to change the Irish Literary landscape.
What started out as one man’s painful attempt to lay bare hidden crimes is now in danger of becoming a tired trope in Irish writing. Harrowing autobiographical tales have become ubiquitous in the years since The God Squad appeared and child abuse – be it domestic or clerical – has become a hot topic in the literary world. Doyle may have been unable to confront his demons in fictional form, but many Irish novelists have felt no such obstacles. In the process, a once searing subject has become mundane.
Skippy Dies, the new novel by Paul Murray, is the latest and most egregious example of the overexposure of child abuse in recent Irish fiction. Murray’s novel revolves around Daniel “Skippy” Juster, a mousy pupil at a fictional Dublin boarding school, who is buffeted by a futile romance, dysfunctional classmates and, yes, sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted authority figure.
Whereas Murray’s first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was a louche comedy, Skippy Dies aims for something darker, in the form of ambiguous passages about its protagonist’s encounters with a creepy priest and a swimming coach. But given the schoolboy humour and the undergraduate philosophising that make up the rest of the novel, Murray’s exploration of such a sensitive subject looks like a botched effort at artistic significance.
Murray, however, is only following in the footsteps of more accomplished writers, notably Anne Enright, who won the Booker prize in 2007 with The Gathering, her claustrophobic novel of family abuse. William Trevor’s short story Men of Ireland, from his 2007 collection Cheating at Canasta, featured a priest who bristles at allegations of molestation of a former altar boy while paying him off; Patrick McCabe took a homicidal paedophile as a symbol of Ireland’s uneasy relationship with its past in his 2006 novel Winterwood; while Colm Tóibín’s collection of short fiction, Mothers and Sons, has two stories dealing with child abuse.
“Obviously, if you live in Ireland the issue of child abuse emerges strongly,” says Tóibín. “It is hard to leave it out. It comes in from the side for me, or sneaks in, rather than being the theme of anything I have published.”
Others take a more explicit approach. Last week the Abbey Announced a series of plays on child abuse: works include No Escape, a drama by journalist Mary Raftery drawing on the Ryan report, as well as James X by Mannix Flynn. Fiach Mac Conghail, the national theatre’s director, said the strand, entitled “The Darkest Corner, was intended to “investigate” the topic.
It could be argued that in writing about such a difficult subject, authors are living up to their reputation for intuiting the unsayable. Just as Joyce, Synge and O’Casey revealed the ambivalent truths beneath public pieties, so contemporary writers are throwing new light on a troubling issue. But in this case, Irish fiction is not saying anything original. Rather, literary novelists are following a path blazed by a less vaunted genre: the so-called “Misery memoir”.
Since the publication of Doyle’s book, memoirs about Irish childhoods blighted by abuse have become a publishing staple. The early 1990s produced Patrick Galvin’s Song for a Raggy Boy and Patrick Touhers’ Fear of the Collar. At that stage, writers had to tread carefully: a chapter about a Christian Brother who played classical music while he was abusing inmates at Artane industrial school was left out of the first edition of Touher’s book. “We thought there was a chance the Brothers would sue,” says Michael O’Brien of O’Brien Press, which has since published several memoirs.
Dec
14
13 December 2009 By John Burke Public Affairs Correspondent – Sunday Business Post.
A panel set up by the government to review the finances of Catholic congregations has challenged the spending practices of several of the state’s major religious orders.
The panel, which is headed by Frank Daly, the former chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, has passed its review of the assets of the 18 religious orders to education minister Batt O’Keeffe. He is expected to present it to the cabinet next week.
The panel has issued draft reports to several of the religious orders, instructing them to clarify significant elements of their projected spending in future years.
They include spending on the future care and welfare of ageing members of their congregations, the maintenance of premises and the provision of existing services to the community.
However, well -placed sources said the orders had made a ‘‘robust defence’’ of all their projected spending as part of the review into their assets.
O’Keeffe will also present a separate report to cabinet on the offers made by the orders to a new trust which will be established for the redress of survivors of abuse in Church-run residential institutions.
The total value of the amounts offered to the new trust is expected to exceed €360 million.
About a quarter of the total amount is in cash and the remainder is in property. The largest offerings are from the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers.
Nov
25
The Irish Times – Wednesday, November 25, 2009
STEPHEN COLLINS and PATSY McGARRY
THE CABINET was briefed yesterday by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern on the report into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations by Church and State authorities in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese.
A Government spokesman said the 750-page report would be published tomorrow.
Plans to publish it earlier were changed because of yesterday’s public sector strike. There were concerns that helplines would not be available for people who had suffered abuse.
In the High Court on Thursday last the report was cleared for publication, following some edits, by Mr Justice Paul Gilligan after a series of in camera hearings.
Victims’ groups yesterday called for victims to be given copies of the report a day before publication.
Meanwhile, Catholic Bishop of Kilmore Dr Leo O’Reilly has expressed “profound sorrow and regret” to a victim of abuse by a priest of the diocese who was jailed last Monday. Fr Michael Molloy (44), was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of defilement of a boy and one of possession of child pornography. The offences took place at a number of locations including a parochial house in 2006 and 2007.
Bishop O’Reilly said yesterday that he was first made aware of allegations against the priest by gardaí following Fr Molloy’s arrest in September 2007.
“This was the first complaint of any kind received against Fr Molloy during his years of priestly ministry. The gardaí and the HSE have been advised of all previous appointments held by him,” he said.
“I have referred his case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome and I now intend to initiate a canonical process in relation to Fr Molloy,” he said.
He said that “these past two years have been an extremely difficult and painful time for the victim and for the family of the victim.” He assured them they had been in his “thoughts and prayers”.
Aug
25
Is the Catholic Church entering into exile?
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
PATRICK CLAFFEY
RITE AND REASON: THIS YEAR the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin is celebrating a year of evangelisation. The project’s website notes that “evangelisation is . . . an essential mission of the church”.
Necessary, courageous, no doubt, but, one might well ask the question, “why now?”
A friend told me, several years ago, of a conversation he had with a prominent Irish bishop whose diocese had the first exposure of an abuse scandal. “With this, what time do you think I have left for evangelisation?” asked the forlorn pastor. But worse was to come.
In recent times, it can be argued, the Catholic Church in Ireland has reached the nadir of its long history on this island. This institution is paying the price for its past success and for the kind of clerical dominance that almost inevitably leads to arrogance and the abuse of power.
Is it entering a land of exile?
Aug
24
Ryan report fallout poses major test for country
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By Conor Ryan, Political Correspondent
Monday, August 24, 2009
THE author of the report on institutional child abuse has said the country will be tested by how it deals with the fallout from the inquiry’s revelations.
Mr Justice Sean Ryan, chairman of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, also said but for the tenacity and courage of the victims, their horrific treatment at the hands of religious orders would never have come to light.
He said the ability of the perpetrators to get away with their crimes reflected wider problems.
“It says a lot about our society, institutions and our systems in the past that these events happened.
“It will also say a lot about our present situation as to how we respond to the disclosure of these events.”
Mr Justice Ryan made his comments when accepting the Humbert Award, which was given to him in recognition of the work the Commission had done.
It was his first public statement since the shocking results of the inquiry were published in May. He said now the report was in the public domain it was up to society at large to ensure it effected the necessary change. “Our work is there to be seen, to be analysed, to be discussed, debated and reflected upon. This is the best report we could make.
Aug
24
Bitter words for Church in salute to abuse-probe judge
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Monday August 24 2009
IT was a far cry from that bleak May day when survivors of institutional abuse were not admitted to the long-awaited news conference in a Dublin hotel at which Mr Justice Sean Ryan published his damning report into systematic abuse of children by religious orders in State run institutions.
At the weekend, three months later, Judge Ryan stood side by side for a family photograph with representatives of survivors’ groups and journalist Mary Raftery, whose documentary, ‘Suffer Little Children’, first alerted the public to the scale of child abuse in what was known as “Catholic Ireland”.
The judiciary, the abused and the media came together in the Co Mayo market town of Ballina to receive special awards presented on behalf of the Humbert Summer School by its honorary president, John Hume, the peacemaker in Northern Ireland and Nobel Laureate.
Saturday on the banks of the rain-swollen River Moy was a day of remarkable salmon leaps in the torrential saga of state and media probing into what has become known as ‘the Irish disease’.
In his first public appearance since his explosive findings were made public, Judge Ryan paid a moving tribute to “the courage and fortitude” of the abused, whose horrendous evidence about their experiences as children is now permanently recorded in the landmark report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which he chaired. Judge Ryan did not hold back from giving full credit to the residents of State institutions for bringing to light “events which were shrouded in darkness for so long”.
In turn, survivor Michael O’Brien, the former mayor of Clonmel who captured the nation’s imagination by challenging the platitudes of Government minister Noel Dempsey on an unforgettable RTE ‘Questions and Answers’ programme, bowed to the good judge and thanked him “for the momentous work you and your team have done”. But Mr O’Brien was only prepared to give conditional pardon to the religious congregations who locked up him and thousands of other children in penal institutions as serfs. He will forgive his oppressors only when he knows in his heart that “these people mean it when they say ‘we are really, really sorry’.”
“I do not want silly apologies. I want to see repentance,” he said.
Aug
24
Why is it that child sex abuse was more prevalent in Irish Catholicism than elsewhere? To answer that question it is necessary to go back to the Famine and examine how sex became a taboo, writes PATSY McGARRY
YOU MIGHT have seen that report on the RTÉ TV news last Monday from Charlie Bird in Mendham, New Jersey. There, they erected the first monument in the world to victims of clerical child sex abuse.
It is a 180kg basalt stone, in the shape of a millstone, with a chain running through it. An inscription attached reads, in those unequivocal words of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel, concerning those who would harm the young: “It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea”.
The monument was inspired by a suicide, in October 12th, 2003, of 37-year-old James Kelly, who had been sexually abused as a child by a priest in Mendham. His abuser was Fr James Hanley, who had served at St Joseph’s parish in Mendham.
It is not surprising that the first monument to clerical child sex abuse victims worldwide should have been made necessary by the crimes of a priest with an Irish name.
Irish names are prominent wherever in the English-speaking world clerical child sex abuse has been spoken of. Even allowing for the uniquely high number of Irish men among Catholic priests and religious worldwide, this phenomenon is striking.
Nowhere else in the Roman Catholic world has another nationality been as dominant among clerical child sex abusers. What was so different about Irish Catholicism that it gave rise to this?
In spring 2002, I was commissioned by the editor of an English publication to write about clerical child sex abuse from an Irish perspective. I pondered whether it was an Irish disease.
On receipt of the article the editor said he couldn’t print it. His publication had spent decades trying to escape an anti-Irish perception and were he to carry the article it would undo all their success in finally escaping that, he said. The article was published in The Irish Times on May 4th, 2002.
It noted all those Irish names among clerical child sex abusers. In Australia, they included Butler, Claffey, Cleary, Coffey, Connolly, Cox, Farrell, Fitzmaurice, Flynn, Gannon, Jordan, Keating, McGrath, McNamara, Murphy, Nestor, O’Brien, O’Donnell, O’Regan, O’Rourke, Riley, Ryan, Shea, Sullivan, Sweeney, Taylor, Treacy.
In Canada: Brown, Corrigan, Hickey, Kelley, O’Connor, Kenney, Maher.
In the US: Geoghan, Birmingham, Brown, Brett, Conway, Dunn, Hanley, Hughes, Lenehan, McEnany, O’Connor, O’Grady, O’Shea, Riley, Ryan, Shanley.
In the UK: Dooley, Flahive, Jordan, Murphy, O’Brien.
And, of course, all those in Ireland itself.
WHY IS CLERICAL child sex abuse more prevalent in Irish Catholicism? To answer that, it is necessary to go back. Until 1845 the Irish were a happily sexually active people. With an abundance of cheap food, the population grew. Patches of ground were subdivided with ever-decreasing acreage, producing a sufficient supply of potatoes.
In 1841, the island of Ireland had a population of 8.1 million. By 1961, the country having gone through the Famine and emigration, it was 4.2 million.
Another effect was an end to subdivision of holdings and diversification away from the potato to other crops, cattle and dairying. This wrench in land use had a defining effect on Irish sexuality. An economic imperative dictated vigorous sexual restraint as, regardless of family size, just one son would inherit. Others – sons and daughters – emigrated or entered the church. This late 19th-century pattern persisted into the 1960s.
Sex became taboo. Allied to prudery and a Catholic Church fixated on sex as sin, sensuality was pushed under. A celibate elite became the noblest caste. They had unparalleled influence through their dominance of an emerging middle class, the fact that they were educated when most were not, and the control they had over what there was of an education system and healthcare.
In tandem, Rome was experiencing one of its most dogmatic papacies under Pius IX. The longest serving pope (1846-1878), he lost the Papal States and eventually Rome itself to Italian reunification. As his temporal power decreased, he increasingly emphasised the eternal, and compounded a trend – extant in Catholicism since the French revolution – of alienation from this vale of tears.
Life became a test, a preparation for death and eternal life under the eye of what Archbishop Diarmuid Martin described last weekend in another context as “a punitive, judgmental God; a God whose love was the love of harsh parents, where punishment became the primary instrument of love”.
Pius asserted himself in Ireland through the doughty Cardinal Paul Cullen of Dublin, the first Irish cardinal. He received the red hat from Pius in 1866. Cullen shaped the traditional Irish Catholicism with its emphasis on devotional practice, which dominated at home and abroad into the latter part of the 20th century.
As well as preaching absolute loyalty to Rome (Pius promulgated the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870) the Vatican’s celibate foot soldiers preached chastity as the greatest virtue. Irish women were expected to emulate the Virgin Mary. In 1854, Pius IX promulgated the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception – that Mary was born without original sin – embedding still further in the popular Irish Catholic mind a profound association between sex and sin.
The clergy preached that celibate life was superior to married life; that sexual activity outside marriage was evil and even within where the intention was not procreation. Sexual pleasure was taboo, powerful evidence of an inferior animal nature that constantly threatened what was divine in the human.
The sermons of Irish Catholic clergy for most of the 120 years between 1850 and 1970 seemed dominated by sex. This railing, allied to a world view that saw the economic business of this earth as inferior activity in the eternal scheme of things, had inevitable consequences. Poverty and chastity saw to it that the marriage rate plummeted.
By 1926, for instance, the percentage of unmarried females in each age cohort was 50 per cent higher than in England and Wales and nearly three times as great as in the US. By 1961 the population of the Republic had dropped to 2.8 million.
The bachelor had become as integral a part of Irish life as the husband. So too had the spinster, with her penchant for overwrought piety. The Irish mother was totally dependent on her husband economically. It ensured an appalling time for some Irish women, as the absolute power of the husband was liberally abused in many homes. It drove many Irish mothers to seek solace in a higher purpose.
This often translated into a son becoming a priest. Nothing could bring such consolation to the devout Irish Catholic mother – whether in Ireland or abroad – as seeing her son with a Roman collar around his neck. It was said of Ireland’s seminaries during the middle decades of the last century that they were full of young men whose mothers had vocations to the priesthood. It helped that becoming a priest brought with it great power and status.
In 1954, a book, The Vanishing Irish: The Enigma of the Modern World , by John A O’Brien, was published in London. It questioned Ireland’s dramatic depopulation. Simultaneously the number of Irish Catholic clergy reached its highest level ever. In 1956, there were 5,489 priests in Ireland (diocesan and members of religious orders) – one for every 593 Catholics. There were also 18,300 nuns and Christian Brothers. Vocations were so high that between a third and a half of clergy went on the missions.
Read more
Aug
23
No more new priests until abuse addressed’
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Suzanne Breen in Paris
One of Ireland’s best-known priests has called on the Catholic church to halt recruitment to the priesthood until it has properly addressed the issue of clerical child abuse.
Fr Aidan Troy accused the church of “a wholly inadequate response to the horrendous abuse that has been uncovered”. He said the hierarchy must “take radical action rather than engage in window dressing”. The church here should ask the pope to visit Ireland to publicly apologise for the destruction of children’s lives, he said.
Troy came to prominence as parish priest of Holy Cross in north Belfast. For three months, he walked with the Ardoyne schoolchildren and their parents past a violent loyalist protest.
Read more
Aug
20
One of the country’s leading summer schools is to honour victims of clerical child abuse.
The Humbert Summer Schoolin Co Mayo will also give commemorative awards to investigative journalist Mary Raftery, who helped uncover the scale of the scandal in institutions and Judge Sean Ryan who headed the long-running inquiry into church and state run schools and reformatories.
The awards will be presented by Nobel Peace Laureate and school president, John Hume, during a day-long debate on child protection.
Humbert School director John Cooney said the honour will mark contributions of the Commission, the long hard campaign of survivors to have their testimonies believed and Ms Raffery’s documentaries which alerted the public to the extent of child abuse.
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Links
A Consultation Proposal - Statutory Fund
A PROPOSAL FOR A MEMORIAL TO PEOPLE WHO WERE ABUSED?
ABUSE: Minutes of meeting with Taoiseach 15/04/2010
Archdiocese of Dublin Report
Child Abuse Links
- 'ANOTHER REPORT ON ANOTHER SHELF'
- Child Abuse Commission – Implementation Plan 28th July 2009
- Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse
- Ferns Report
- Lord Mayor’s Statement on abuse suffered by Children in Residential Institutions
- STATUTORY FUND: MINISTERS RESPONSE
- SURVIVORS AT LOGGERHEADS OVER DENIAL OF SEX ABUSE.
- SURVIVORS SPLIT AFTER MEETING.
- The Hypocrites: Der Spiegel on the Catholic Church and Sex
- VICTIMS IN DANGER OF LOSING SUPPORT
Disability Links
Dr Michael Corry
Featured Posts
Redress Board
The God Squad
The Ryan Report
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