Vatican Inquiry Finds Progress in Irish Abuse Scandal

By Rachel Donadio
New York Times
March 20, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/world/europe/vatican-inquiry-finds-progress-in-irish-abuse-scandal.html?_r=1

[the report]

The Catholic Church in Ireland has made “excellent” progress in addressing a sexual abuse scandal and reporting new abuse cases directly to the Vatican, but would-be priests need better screening and training, according to a summary of a nearly yearlong investigation issued by the Vatican on Tuesday.

The summary also noted that there was evidence of “dissent” from church teaching among priests, religious and lay people, a “serious situation” it said should not be tolerated.

The investigation — an Apostolic Visitation, in Vatican parlance — was announced by Pope Benedict XVI in March 2010. Four high-ranking prelates chosen by the pope conducted the inquiry last year, including Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who investigated Irish seminaries and other religious institutions, and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who examined the Dublin Diocese.

The investigation was part of the Vatican’s response to scathing reports by the Irish government that found cases of sexual abuse by priests and evidence of a widespread cover-up.

At a news conference in Dublin on Tuesday, the top Roman Catholic official in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, welcomed the findings and repeated the church’s plea for forgiveness from victims. “Innocent young people were abused by clerics and religious to whose care they had been entrusted, while those who should have exercised vigilance often failed to do so effectively,” he said.

One in Four, a charity representing child abuse victims, said that it appreciated the summary but that the Vatican still did not accept responsibility for its role in creating the culture that facilitated cover-ups. Maeve Lewis, the organization’s executive director, also said there had been a “hardening of attitudes” by the church authorities in recent years when it came to compensating abuse victims financially.

“We have had grotesque situations where senior churchmen meet survivors, assure them of their remorse for what happened while at the same time instructing their legal teams to defend civil compensations suits,” she told the Irish broadcaster RTE News. “This only compounds the pain and hurt of survivors.”

The sexual abuse scandal has led to a crisis in the Irish church and broader society in the majority-Catholic country, as well as to tensions with Rome.

A major report on the Irish scandal released last July led to a near breakdown in diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Ireland. The so-called Cloyne Report — 400 pages long — found that clergy members in the rural diocese of Cloyne had not acted on complaints against 19 priests from 1996 to as recently as 2009, and said that the Vatican had encouraged bishops to ignore the reporting guidelines. Abuse guidelines adopted by Irish bishops in 1996 require that abuse cases be reported to the police, but the guidelines are not part of canon law, leading to confusion.

In response, the Vatican withdrew its ambassador to Ireland. It has since sent a new one, Archbishop Charles Brown, a New York native who was a top official at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the doctrinal branch responsible for adjudicating abuse cases.

Frances Fitzgerald, Ireland’s minister for children, said Tuesday in a statement that her department was finalizing a bill that, if passed by Parliament, would turn the current national guidelines on child protection into law, which would require priests to report all cases of suspected abuse to civil authorities.

In the report issued on Tuesday, the Vatican said it had found that Irish dioceses had made progress in recent years and were now reporting all new cases of sexual abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But it said that seminaries should have stricter admissions guidelines and should train seminarians better, in theological as well as in “in-depth formation on matters of child protection, with increased pastoral attention to victims of sexual abuse and their families.” It added that more steps should be taken to ensure the enforcement of Ireland’s child protection guidelines.

The report also said it had found evidence of “dissent” from church teachings by priests and religious and lay people. “This serious situation requires particular attention, directed principally toward improved theological formation,” the report found. “Dissent from the fundamental teachings of the church is not the authentic path toward renewal,” it added.

The report did not go into detail, but Irish priests say they struggle to balance church teaching with everyday reality, including whether to grant Communion to faithful who are separated from their spouses, or whether to baptize a child whose parents do not regularly attend Mass.