Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is out of place in a disgraced and dishonoured Church, writes Emer O’Kelly
Sunday July 19 2009
HIS Grace Diarmuid Martin, DD, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, a 64-year-old scholar now in religious charge of his native city, has been much in the news lately. Not least because his is the name which automatically springs to the minds of non-Catholics who want to find some excuse for his Church. They don’t want to believe that the Roman Catholic authorities are vicious, arrogant, uncaring, amoral, power-hungry and often sadistic. And Diarmuid Martin is the one man who seems to offer reassurance.
He offers it consistently and persistently. When the Ryan report into institutional child abuse was published in May, Diarmuid Martin called its contents “stomach-churning”. Prior to the publication, he had uttered dire warnings of expectation that the findings would be shaming and shameful for the Church. And even the faithful thought, if they thought at all, that he might be exaggerating; what could be revealed in the report that was not already known? That the Church — through many of its ordained and consecrated members who chose to desecrate the vows which imposed compassion and decency on them — had abused their positions and the trust Church and State vested in them?
But more, much more, came out. It was deliberately sadistic, vicious, and institutionalised. It was not the actions of a few disturbed or psychopathic men and women. It was the system. Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to a regime which, under the United Nations definition, amounted to torture: daily torture of years’ duration directed against suffering helpless children who had committed no crime, but were poor or unruly.
Cardinal Sean Brady, Diarmuid Martin’s direct superior, said what he had been saying for several years beforehand, and what we expected him to say: that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed”.
Diarmuid Martin, on the other hand, called the contents of the Ryan report “stomach-churning”, his usually rubicund, cheery face grey and furrowed, his eyes as haunted as though the children had been his own blood. It was a phrase a father would use.
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