Should term limits be imposed on Catholic bishops?

The possibility of further Irish State inquiries has been mentioned by commentators this past week following the publication of the most recent reviews of child safeguarding procedures in six Roman Catholic dioceses over a 34 year period.

Further State inquiries will achieve little if they were not to be accompanied by a contemporaneous systemic root and branch reform of the Church in Ireland by The Holy See. While the six reviews did cite one bishop, Dr Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore, Cavan as a role model exemplar and two others bishops for being disciplined and constructive in their safeguarding obligations, the reviews also reveal a horrifying catalogue of dereliction, incompetence and incapacity - euphemistically described as ‘errors of judgement’, which have weakened the moral authority of the entire Church and impair the prospects of credible transformation and transparency.

A vital component of reform relates to bishops’ tenure. There have been no more than five individuals holding the position of bishop in each of these six dioceses that have been reviewed in the last century. Some Irish bishops have been in office for over thirty years.

Longevity of tenure and the fact that there are no structures of checks and balances, other than accountability to self, lead to an impossible and intractable position when a bishop’s moral authority wanes, an outcome that is further aggravated by the absence of new people entering the priesthood and the ageing of the current cohort.

Therefore term limits of five to seven years ought to be considered and the foundation of tenure and advancement needs to rest on demonstrable leadership credentials and moral authority rather than rigidly conservative theological pedigree.

Have Irish bishops ‘with the stroke of a pen really made themselves answerable’?

The title of an article by Breda O’Brien The Irish Times on Sat, May 21 that ‘With the stroke of a pen, bishops made themselves answerable’ strikes me as being disingenuous and misleading because it is simply not the case.   If readers were to accept this exclamation at face value they might reasonably construe that the much put-upon bishops’ have become accountable to something other than their own foggy shaving mirror, or someone other than the face that smiles at them from the contents of the whiskey glass held in their own hand from time to time.  But the incontrovertible evidence is that The Hierarchy have engaged for over two and a half years in yet another Machiavellian episode of cunning subversion intended to hoodwink the public with their own toxic blend of metal reservations and double entendre.

Shortly after the Safeguarding Board exposed two diabolical child sex abuse allegations in Cloyne Cardinal Brady stated that his friend of 50 years, Bishop John Magee, should not resign.   Brady also issued a statement on 2 January 2009 about the role of the Safeguarding Board in which he said that its role is to accomplish a ‘consistent child safeguarding policy throughout Ireland based on verifiable and accountable structures of best practice’.  Brady acknowledged that the handling (also referred to by Magee as a ‘lacuna’) of two child abuse allegations in Cloyne brought into question the efforts of all who implement policy on safeguarding and statutory guidelines.

“Everyone is entitled to be reassured that when commitments have been given to implement statutory guidelines and agreed policies for safeguarding children in the Church, these are reliable and trustworthy. The Board is in a unique position to provide such assurance. It must continue its work in cooperation with the statutory authorities and with the full support of everyone in the Catholic Church in Ireland”. It was also Brady who suggested in January 2009 that the Board might explore the possibility of conducting a review of current child safeguarding practices in every diocese across the island in cooperation with the relevant statutory authorities.  ‘The core principle of safeguarding policy is a Gospel value’, Brady added.

His counterparts met on 23 January 2009 and they unanimously requested the Safeguarding Board to review current practice and risk in the safeguarding of children within their dioceses.

When the Safeguarding Board issued its 2009 Annual Report two diocese, Clonfert and Ossory, had not even appointed child safeguarding representatives and according to the 2010 Annual Report it took all of 2009 to just agree the objectives of the proposed audit of child safeguarding practices in each diocese.

The 2010 Annual Report reveals that is was not until March 2011 that the ground rules for conducting these audits were agreed.  But the audits may only now proceed on the basis that the Board will not comment publicly on the findings of the review of each Church authority, nor will the Board comment on any recommendations in practice or procedure that they deems necessary.  Furthermore, the introduction of any information into the public domain is to be only possible with the consent of the implicated relevant Church authority.  Placing a muzzle on this Board is hardly a policy by bishops’ that could be remotely construed as making them answerable to anybody or to enhance their credibility.

This basis for beginning these diocesan reviews also ought to be considered  in the context that the Safeguarding Board has an approved and, what it describes, as a ‘top-rate data protection policy’ to which it fully adheres in all its operations and the Board is fully confident that it fully complies with data protection legislation as it exists in Ireland and Northern Ireland.  Access to relevant documentation when responding to safeguarding concerns had been specified in the listed objects of its company.

It is also pertinent to point out that the number of child abuse allegations continues to be alarmingly high, notwithstanding their longstanding history in many instances.  It is also deeply troubling that this Board has not been contemporaneously informed about allegations of child abuse when these have been reported to the civic authorities demonstrating again contempt for transparency, candour and directness.  What is this a symptom of?

The non-binding sex abuse policy issued on 17 May by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks to reinforce bishops’ exclusive authority in dealing with abuse cases and states that lay review boards, such as the National Board for Safeguarding Children, ‘cannot substitute’ for bishops judgement and power. How can this be taken seriously in Ireland when not alone have bishops failed miserably in following their own guidelines and muzzling lay review boards to make them impotent ensuring that compliance is impossible.

The Chairman of the Safeguarding Board has highlighted the opinion that a cultural correction is required within the Irish Church in making the point that the work of the Board alone is not enough to ensure the adequate safeguarding of children and specifically cited inherent weaknesses in areas such as institutional management and governance in the Church.

A fundamental issue at this stage is whether the bishops trust, or do not trust, their own Safeguarding Board – an entity conceived by them; populated by them, overseen by them and remunerated by them.  The leadership of the Board has demonstrated tenacity, fortitude, independence and candour which is a crucial foundation to winning and maintaining public confidence.  The purpose of these reviews of safeguarding practice is to mitigate risk to children and that has to be accomplished without jeopardizing public confidence in the Board, including dealing with personal data in an appropriate manner.

The bishops’ have severely strained public confidence and credibility.  They are led by an individual who concealed the vile criminality of Brendan Smyth from the civic authorities for 19 years before it was exposed in a television documentary and who refused to regard this as a resigning issue as the pews continue to empty

How can the public trust bishops’ and the notion that they can muzzle a so-called independent review body answerable only to themselves is derisory and contemptuous.  Perhaps this facets of their attitude to accountability might be discussed in another article as the public are likely to be agitated about this issue once again when the report on allegations against 19 priests in the Diocese of Cloyne, a diocese with just 46 parishes, is published.

Child safeguarding initiatives lacking transparency

The Head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Brady stated on 2 January 2009 that the mandate of the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) had his full support and that the Board intended to obtain the support of his fellow bishops’, in writing, to implement policy agreed by the Bishops’ Conference. He also stated, unequivocally, that the welfare of children is a Gospel value. He recognised that verifiable and accountable structures, based on best practice, are critically important to safeguarding children and sustaining public confidence in the Church.

The most important initiative of the NBSC in 2009 was to undertake an audit of child safeguarding practices in all dioceses. That was to have been completed by the end of 2009 and the benefit of risk mitigation that would be reasonably expected to ensue from this should have been well rooted by early 2010.

But it took all of 2009 for the bishops’ to merely agree the objectives of these reviews and by April 2010 two dioceses, Clonfert and Ossory, did not even have a single parish safeguarding representative in place in the 66 parishes administered by these dioceses.

The 2011 annual report of the NBSC contains the appalling disclosure that the conduct of the review of dioceses has been systematically thwarted by what are described as ‘unresolved (and unspecified) data protection issues’  which fundamentally stymies the mandate of this Board – notwithstanding that the NBSC has comprehensive data protection procedures which comply with all statutory obligations . The bishops’ response is therefore self-serving, egregious, outrageous and indefensible.

The Statement issued on 11 May by the Bishops’ Conference reduces the audit review, that was set in the context of a Gospel value in January 2009, to being a generic and inchoate ‘important area of challenge that has yet to be completely resolved’. The 2011 Annual Report indicates that any information gleaned in the audit will only be disclosed to the public with the consent of the head of the relevant authority. The authoritarian muzzle to be applied to this process after a protracted delay to date will now supplement the reporting deficits of 2010 whereby the number of sexual abuse episodes disclosed far exceeded those previously communicated to the NBSC by a factor of 300%. The Chief Executive of the Board described the impact of inaccurate reporting as ‘problematic’. It actually corrupts the basic integrity of a monitoring process.

The behaviour of the bishops continues to be lamentably typical of the leadership that has reduced the Catholic Church in Ireland to a toxic cocktail based on a blend of double entendre and mental reservations. The impact of the NBSC, which has earned public trust and estimable esteem, is being reduced to that of a posse of passive plane-spotters, who monitor international best practice elsewhere, but are faced with impossible inertia and cultural impediments in introducing best practice into Ireland - based on adequate reference points and candour. Change never occurs in a leadership vacuum but decay and curmudgeonly connivance thrives in such circumstances.

The ‘full support’ of a credible leader means that the leader can be relied on to deliver an outcome within an agreed timeframe, particularly with respect to a primary objective, especially when the scale of reported sexual abuse continues to be as alarmingly high as it is.

Brady has failed to ensure that these reviews are promptly facilitated with the same blind, thoughtless, stubborn intransigence that you chose not to report the Brendan Smyth saga to the civil authorities for 19 years until it was independently exposed by a television journalist.

The Chairman of the NBSC has drawn attention to inherent weaknesses in area such as institutional management and governance. You and your pathetic colleagues have chosen to recruit a partisan lawyer rather than ensure that this Board swiftly obtains the statistics and other pertinent data to safeguard the children of Ireland. It is not good enough to publish claptrap about ‘continuing to work with the Board’ when it is abundantly clear that you will use concocted legal excuses to avoid doing so.

Thus impasse ought to be a resigning issue not just for Brady – but for each bishop whose talents, energy, outlook and disposition are incapable of leading change or inspiring public confidence.

The investigation of allegations in the Diocese of Cloyne commenced with a review of two cases in 2008 but the Report of the Commission of Investigation subsequently examined allegations against 19 priests in that relatively small diocese of 46 parishes. None of these are likely to have emerged into the public domain if such a blanket embargo existed.

Public confidence in the proposed audit of safeguarding practices by the Board will not be enhanced if the findings are to be muzzled by the Church authorities. Tardiness with respect to critical communications neither serve the interests of children, the Church or the Catholic community as a whole.