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  Church Needs to Beg Forgiveness

Irish Independent
May 24, 2009

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/church-needs-to-beg-forgiveness-1749258.html

If Ireland's religious orders are to rebuild the public's shattered faith, they have no choice but to voluntarily revisit the shoddy agreement that was stitched together on the last day of Bertie Ahern's first government in June 2002.

That deal, presided over by Michael Woods, then the minister for education, granted immunity to the religious orders from future legal actions and capped their contribution to the compensation fund for the survivors of child abuse at €128m.

It was a shameful compromise and a shameful deal. Last week's report by Mr Justice Ryan has catalogued in awful detail the scale of the violent physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was meted out to thousands of vulnerable children who had been entrusted to the care of the religious orders.

The abuse of those children and of that trust was an abomination. No amount of money can compensate those children now. For many, their lives were destroyed by priests and nuns who took pleasure in violating them, and who were protected from prosecution by their superiors and by the State.

We are all shamed by it, and our nation is forever stained. Year after year children were abused and their cries were ignored, and as the story started to emerge the cover-ups began in earnest. We still do not know the full story, and we may never know it, but we know enough to be enraged.

The Taoiseach tells us that there may be legal difficulties in unravelling the deal struck by Mr Woods and the Conference of Religious in Ireland. That is not the point. Cori's members cannot hide behind legal fine print, and neither can the Government. Cori's members have a moral obligation to tear up that agreement and negotiate a new deal forged on contrition and acceptance. The State, too, must pay its share, but Cori's members cannot escape the financial cost of their gross misdeeds.

The money is just a reckoning, but it is an important one. Almost €1bn has already been paid out in compensation and there is more to come, but even that process of compensation has been sullied by the sometimes invasive scrutiny to which some victims were subjected.

What matters now is honest contrition, and that can only be made real if the religious orders are prepared to recognise that the original deal was a scandal and that their responsibility to the children they damaged runs far, far deeper than the token payment they agreed seven years ago.

Cori's role in our society goes far deeper than the running of religious orders. Under the political stewardship of Fr Sean Healy it has become a social partner and a vocal force for change in this country. That voice, if it is to be heard again, needs to speak with moral authority. For the moment, it has none, and that moral authority will never return if Cori will not tear up the old deal and start afresh.

The Government, too, must do more than apologise and wring its hands. We all deserve to know the details of that original negotiation and the motives that drove it. Until there is transparency on that deal, the survivors of abuse have every right to question the Government's sincerity, and every right to wonder aloud if the spirit of institutional cover-ups continues to infect government in the 21st century.

Fr Healy must understand the concept of moral authority, and he must convince his fellow members that Ireland's religious orders need to get down on their knees before the people of this state and beg forgiveness for the sins they have committed, and which they allowed to be committed for so long, and at such great human cost.

If they do not, they will be forever shamed, and their sins will never be forgiven.

 
 

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