Judge bishops by what they do, not by what they say

 THE posturing continues.  The bruised egos are being paraded on the catwalk of public opinion.  The imperial pride is wounded but there is no appetite to place the common good ahead of personal vanity.  As the moral authority of bishops’ ebbs away they need to be judged on what they do rather than what they say.

It is now 23 days since the release into the public domain of The Murphy Report which portrays decades of the most devastating sex abuse by 46 priests that was shielded from civil process by the secrecy and antics of generations of archbishops and bishops of Dublin.  These are merely specimen cases within the time frame 1975 – 2004.  The bishops have had access to this report for several months but their response has been, at best, lacklustre and at worst, devious (“I dun nothin’)

Donal Murray former auxiliary bishop of Dublin resigned as Bishop of Limerick on December 17th  on the grounds that “my presence will create difficulties for some of the survivors who must have first place in our thoughts and prayers”.

Bishops are in a fish bowl – no term limits, no process of accountability and no established means of revalidating their mandate.

Open Terms

Five serving bishops served as auxiliary bishops of Dublin during the period covered by The Murphy Report.  All were ordained by the disgraced Cardinal Connell and between them have in excess of 90 years tenure as bishop.

Name	Ordained bishop	Years service as bishop
Martin Drennan (65)	28 May 1997	12.24
Raymond Field (65)	28 May 1997	12.24
James Moriarty (73)	26 Jun 1991	18.24
Donal Murray (69)	4  Mar 1982	27.67
Eamonn Walsh (65)	7  Mar 1990	19.66

 

Response to article in The Irish Times

It is interesting to compare the response to The Murphy Report with the response to an article published in The Irish Times on 27 July 2002.

This article was concerned  a group of seminarians in the ‘senior division’ of St Patrick’s Seminary Maynooth, Co Kildare, who in 1984 had expressed serious concerns to the senior dean regarding the strange and worrying behavioural patterns of a senior staff member towards younger students.  That staff member was Michael Ledwith vice president of the College. .

The article reported that the senior dean transmitted those concerns to some bishops.  Senior students who had conveyed their concerns directly to certain bishops and whose reports were responded to with reactions of incredulity, began to fear (especially when their actions became known) that their interventions might result in disciplinary action, such as a denial of ordination, being taken against them.  The article indicated that the bishops ignored the allegations. 

The senior dean was promptly sent on a 1-year leave of absence to Rome after which his resignation from Maynooth was demanded by the Primate Cardinal O’Fiaich, on the rounds that “the bishops are gunning for you”. 

Four days later on 31 July 2002, The Irish Times published a letter from four of the surviving nine bishops named rebuking the paper for publishing to original letter without any prior reference to them.  These four categorically stated in that letter that “such an allegation was never made to any of us at any time”.  None of the other bishops named ever mentioned such an allegation to any of us” 

The signatories of this letter were Cardinal Cahal Daly (aged 92),  a bishop since 26 May 1967 who retired on 1 October 1996; the retired Archbishop of Tuam Joseph Cassidy (aged 76), a bishop since 24 August 1979 who retired on 28 June 1994; retired bishop of Derry Edward Daly (aged 76), a bishop since 31 January 1974 who retired on 26 October 1993 and serving bishop Colm O’Reilly (aged 75 on 11 Jan 2010) a bishop ordained by O’Fiaich on 24 February 1983 and who has served for almost 27 years as Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise in succession to Cahal B Daly.

 

Investigation by senior counsel

Mr Denis McCullough SC was retained by the bishops in June 2002 to investigate the allegations reported in The Irish Times that complaints were made alleging sexual harassment of seminarians at Maynooth College in the early 1980’s and that those complaints did not receive a proper response.  Specifically it was alleged that complaints had been made by seminarians to the bishops and Trustees of Maynooth College that Monsignor Michael Ledwith who was then Vice President of the College had sexually harassed seminarians.

McCullough’s investigation did not require him to inquire into the behaviour of Ledwith either in the early 1980’s or at other times but simply to investigate whether complaints about him were made by seminarians to bishops or trustees of the College.

 

Ledwith Promoted

Ledwith was appointed Presdient of Maynooth College in 1985, a post he held until 1994.  The Ferns Report cited him for sexually abusing a boy aged between 13 and 15 years.  Ledwith is now a teacher at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, in the United States.

 

McCullough’s Conclusions

McCullough completed his report in March 2005 and it was published by the bishops who commissioned it on 16 June 2005, less than three months before the publication of The Ferns Report.

Those he interviewed agreed that there were no complaints made by the seminarians themselves to bishops about sexual abuse by Ledwith of seminarians in Maynooth College.  But McCullough confirmed that “concerns of apparent propensities rather than accusations of actual crime or specific offences” had been communicated to a number of bishops by the senior dean of the college – the whistleblower who had been ostracised by O’Fiaich.  McCullough concluded “that to have rejected the senior dean’s concerns so completely and so abruptly without any adequate investigation may have been too precipitate, although, of course, to investigate in any very full or substantial manner, a generic complaint regarding a person’s apparent propensities would have been difficult”.

So the decided to promote him as the principal figurehead in charge the education of future priests rather than turn him over to the police.

Response to McCullough

Cardinal Brady stated when the report was published “we accept the findings of the report.  A complaints and disciplinary procedure is included in the revised College Statutes.  These procedures are kept under constant review in the light of best practice in that area.  We regret any hurt felt by those involved and that the investigation in 1984 was not more thorough”

Rome Rule, corrupt power and Irish child abuse

The history of the Catholic Church in Ireland over the past 60 years provides specimen case studies that demonstrate the adage that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.  Irish bishops’ manipulated themselves into a position absolute power that was sufficiently robust to enable them panic the government of the day in much the same way as bankers do nowadays.  They did this without any mandate whatsoever except a presumption of trustworthiness, a benign acceptance that they act in the common good, like neighbourhood enforcers in gangland, the maintenance of secrecy and a tolerance for prevarication.  They were experts at flattering, smooching and cajoling politicians and still are.

Their deviousness was manifested in their manipulation of social policy on issues such as the availability of contraception, divorce and sex education and was clearly evident until the mid 1980’s.  But even before the publication on May 20th 2009 of The Ryan Report into child abuse at industrial schools, the Christian Brothers were routinely and stridently denying any culpability on their part.  There is now a new phenomena in Irish society – trust breakers who only respond to culpability when they are exposed.  They are wholly capable of reposing in a world of denial and obfuscation until the veil of secrecy is removed.

It is sometimes hard to comprehend the positive impact of the world wide web on the flow and velocity of information across the globe against this background and culture. I would imagine that the Irish bishops would have put a veto on the establishment of the internet in the early 1990’s had they the savvy to understand its potential. But, of course their technical know-how was restricted to the versatility of a fountain pen that used black ink and their cultivation of an ethos in Ireland that  ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule’ . 

A milestone of this wretched environment concerned the legislation in 1951 to facilitate what was known as Mother and Child Service Scheme that had been introduced by Dr Noel Browne TD, then Minister for Health.  Browne became a minister on his first day in the Dáil following the 1948 general election at the age of 33.  This was intended to provide free maternity care for all mothers and free healthcare for all children up to the age of 16 years.  Browne, a medical doctor, had a particular interest in the treatment of tuberculosis which had reached epidemic proportions in Ireland in the 1950’s and he was also keen to overhaul the standard of public healthcare.

The bishops did not agree with his proposals and fought them vigorously on seven grounds:

1. The State would control nationwide education relating to “very intimate matters of chastity – individual and conjugal”
   
2. The health service proposed, the believed, ought to be secured on an individual basis and by “lawful associations”.  This meant they did not want any doctors involved on whose neck they could not stamp their ecclesiastical jackboots.
   
3. They opposed the “undue and intimate interference in the relationship between parents, children and doctors”
   
4. They argued that because they proposed services would be funded through taxation that citizens would feel compelled to avail of them and they objected to this.
   
5. They considered that the raising of taxes to pay for a service “independent of the necessity or desire of the citizens to use the facilities provided” was objectionable.  I wonder what they would think of the Irish Government throwing €3 billion this month at the recently nationalised Anglo Irish Bank following the duplicity of its former Chairman, Sean FitzPatrick?
   
6. The proposed scheme would “when enacted on a nationwide basis would damage gravely the self reliance of parents, whose family wage or income would allow them duly to directly provide whatever medical treatment they wished to avail of”.
   
7. They were concerned that ministerial regulations rather than legislation would govern the service
   
8. They pronounced themselves pleased that the proposed scheme did not have the support of the Government, as a whole.

The foregoing gives some insight into the unlimited capacity to connive and Machiavellianism and the concept of choice being limited to options that they approved of.

The prime mover on the part of the bishops was the Archbishop of Dublin (1940-1972) , Dr John Charles McQuaid who acted as principal manipulator and lobbyist with the politicians.  The consequence of their lobbying was that the proposal failed; the minister resigned from office and the Taoiseach, John A. Costello TD, took direct responsibility for health.

But it was this culture that also facilitated rampant child sex abuse; a culture of absolutism, denial, obfuscation, intolerance, autocraticism and a total absence of accountability and vicarious responsibility.

Following the publication of The Ryan Report on May 20th 2009 into child abuse in industrial schools and the appalling vista of paedophilia that it reveals, Ireland is awaiting the publication of another major judicial report into child sex abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin.  This is likely to implicate up to 15 bishops and 4 archbishops, including McQuaid and his successors, Ryan (1972-1984), McNamara (1984-1987) and Connell (1988 – 2004) in respect of how they responded to these matters and handled allegations that abused individuals made.  Three of the four are long dead while Connell is a Cardinal.  Connell was appointed but the former president of the national seminary at Maynooth, Michael Ledwith, was strongly favoured by the then Nuncio, Dr Gaetano Alibrandi.  Ledwith resigned in disgrace from Maynooth College in 1994 and is no longer a Catholic.  He had been nominated for the presidency of the seminary for the former Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey, who also resigned in disgrace in 2002 when sex abuse in his diocese and the schools of his diocese became endemic.

The Dublin report is understood to contain up to 1,000 pages of detailed forensic accounts of child abuse by priests but unlike The Ryan Report it will name perpetrators, three of whom are currently before the courts.

Two serving bishops Walsh of Killaloe and McAreavey of Dromore in Northern Ireland, sat on a tribunal governed by Canon Law in 1992 to investigate allegations against a former priest, Fr Tony Walsh.  They found him guilty and recommend that he be dismissed from the priesthood – but no civil authority was ever informed.

Walsh had been a curate in the Dublin working class suburb of Ballyfermot. 

He pleaded guilty in 1997 to 12 charges of indecently assaulting six boys aged from eight to 14 between 1980 and 1986. He had been in charge of 60 altar boys as well as the children's Mass each week.

The Chairman of that tribunal Monsignor Alex Stenson wrote to the Gardai indicating the address at which Walsh was residing following his dismissal. The letter also stated 'in view of Fr Walsh's behaviour in the past, you might give this information whatever attention you may think it deserves.'".  Stenson has been parish priest of Killester, Dublin since 2007.

Walsh decided to appeal the 1992 tribunal decision and he attended a funeral in Palmerstown, Dublin in 1995 as a 'priest' where he abused the 11 -year-old grandson of the deceased in a church toilet at the child’s grandfather’s funeral service, despite having been told to stay away from that funeral by two other serving curates.

But he also attended in full clerical attire including a Roman collar posing  was a friend of the family.

When this Dublin report is published bear in mind the history, context and the scurrilous and unaccountable culture that prevailed in this country for decades, if not centuries as being the oasis in which this cactus flourished.  There are even more formal reports pending.