BishopAccountability.org
 
  Irish Church Faces a Long and Bitter Road

Montreal Gazette
February 19, 2010

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Irish+church+faces+long+bitter+road/2584426/story.html

Irish church leaders are going to have to do a lot more than meet with the pope and express profound sorrow for the "heinous crimes" committed by their clergy if the Catholic Church in Ireland is to recover from the wounds it has inflicted on itself over the last several decades.

But this week's meeting in Rome between Pope Benedict and 24 Irish bishops was at least something of a start on what promises to be a long and deservedly bitter road to an uncertain destination.

The pope was suitably blunt in criticizing the Irish hierarchy for its failure to protect its youngest members from decades of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of priests, religious orders, and church employees. And the bishops themselves seemed contrite enough, admitting that the church had betrayed tens of thousands of children and promising measures to assure it doesn't happen again.

But until now, at least, there has been little in the way of concrete consequences for anyone in this miserable affair. Four bishops have offered their resignations, but so far the pope has accepted only one of them.

Not surprisingly, the victims want and deserve more. Criminal charges against some of the perpetrators would be a good start, and church authorities have promised to co-operate with state prosecutors.

The Irish church's failings were revealed in a pair of devastating reports published last year by two separate commissions of inquiry. The first found that the religious orders that run Ireland's reformatories and industrial schools have treated their young charges like "slaves," systematically beating, humiliating, and sexually abusing them.

The second, on the sexual abuse of youngsters by priests in the Dublin archdiocese, concluded that until the mid-1990s, church authorities ignored both state and church law to cover up the clergy's sexual depredations. Avoiding scandal and preserving the church's reputation and assets trumped the welfare of children, the report found.

What makes this mess particularly sad is that both the church and the government had plenty of warnings. As early as 1948, Father Tom Flanagan, founder of Boys Town in the United States and the Mother Teresa of his day, warned church and state authorities that the reformatories were a disgrace. Both church and state ignored him

Much like our residential-school scandal, the Irish experience illustrates the damage a too-cozy relationship between church and state can do to both parties, breeding vice in one, complacency in the other, and hubris in both.

 
 

Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.