This Is No 'Witch Hunt': Cardinal Brady Has Lost His Moral Authority over the Paedophile Priest Cases
By Jenny McCartney
My column calling for Cardinal Sean Brady to resign from his post as Primate of All Ireland has prompted a great deal of discussion, in particular from the distinguished commentator William Oddie in this week's Catholic Herald, in which he suggests that my words exemplify a mood that "may well be nearer to the phenomenon we call today a 'witch hunt' than to a common understanding based on an equitable understanding of the reality of the situation." Since my comprehension of a "witch hunt" is that it is a highly public effort to uncover wrongdoing, but one based on flimsy or negligible evidence, I would argue the opposite: in fact, my view is founded in the facts of the case surrounding the late Fr Brendan Smyth, the notorious paedophile priest, and in what Cardinal Brady has said and argued about it since. I will not restate the detail of the then Fr Brady's involvement in the Smyth case, which I set out in the original column. But Mr Oddie – feeling that the Cardinal had been unjustly maligned – asked if anyone had bothered to read the full text of his response to the BBC Two This World programme. I had of course read it closely, and it was this text which disturbed me. It referred to the question of who in the Church at the time had the "authority" to stop Brendan Smyth in his rampant abuse of children – children whose horrifying evidence, incidentally, the 36-year-old Fr Brady fully believed. The Cardinal's recent statement concluded that, in 1975, "I had absolutely no authority over Brendan Smyth. Even my bishop had limited authority over him. The only people who had authority in the Church to stop Smyth having contact with children were his abbot in the monastery at Kilnacrott and his religious superiors in the Norbertine Order." In that statement I saw a worrying vision of personal morality paralysed by hierarchy. As it turns out, it was also misleading. In fact, Fr Brady's bishop at the time was the late Bishop McKiernan of Kilmore: he had much more than "limited authority" over Smyth, but he exercised it in precisely the wrong direction. In 1984 – as confirmed by the current Bishop of Kilmore, Dr Leo O'Reilly – Bishop McKiernan personally overturned the "children ban" on Smyth in response to a written request from the head of the Norbertine Order to which Smyth belonged. The "children ban" was intended (ineffectively, as it turned out) to prevent Smyth from activities which would bring him into contact with children. Bishop McKiernan – despite knowing Smyth's background, not least from Fr Brady's report – specifically permitted the paedophile priest to return to the role of hearing confessions, celebrating Mass and abusing a wider circle of children, which he did up until 1993. Let's get some things straight. I do not think that Cardinal Brady bears primary responsibility for Smyth's continuing abuse of children after 1975. But he does bear a measure of responsibility. Even given the greater ignorance and secrecy of the times about such matters, if you are aware that an individual has been regularly abusing a wide number of children in the most brutal and ruthless fashion, and you also know that individual is not confined within a prison cell, you bear some basic responsibility for ensuring that they are not permitted to continue. Instead, after the 1975 inquiry, Fr Smyth continued to abuse at least one of the very boys who was allegedly named as a victim by the 14-year-old Brendan Boland to Fr Brady, and then extended his attentions to the boy's own sister and four of his cousins. Now, Fr Brady was no longer Bishop McKiernan's secretary at the point when the "children ban" was lifted, and says that he had no idea until the 1990s that Smyth was still in contact with children. But, one wonders, would the appalling revelations in 1975 not have made a sufficiently forceful impression on any of us to justify even some regular, casual inquiries of one's fellow priests as to the current status of Fr Smyth, who always seemed so eager to get close to the trusting families of parishioners? If it didn't, then why on earth not – or was the lightly buried subject of Smyth too explosive even to be approached? I take no pleasure in the discomfort and undoubted regrets of Cardinal Brady, a 72-year-old man who diligently performed the role expected of him by his superiors at the time. But what happened was wrong then, and it is wrong now, and I do not see how it can be compatible with being the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland. We are perpetually reminded by the Church of the need to speak up for the powerless, even in circumstances in which that might be personally disadvantageous, and in this test Fr Brady was found wanting. Nor do I take any joy in the embarrassment this scandal has caused to the Roman Catholic Church. I am not myself a Catholic, but many of my friends and family are, and they have drawn strength from the the traditions and teaching of the Church. I have known Catholic priests who worked tirelessly to make the world a better place, and it is unfair that they should be touched with the fallout from events in which they had no role. It is unfortunate, too, that such scandals feed into an aggressive secularism that wishes casually to dismiss the entire Catholic Church as corrupt, when in fact it remains a source of comfort and moral authority to many. But the lessons from this go beyond the Church, just as its failures are mirrored in the many secular institutions in which child abuse was swept under the carpet. The Church needs to grasp the nettle firmly. The people who were most betrayed by the Smyth case and cover-up were themselves Irish Catholics, many of whom have since spoken out to say enough is enough. Fr Vincent Twomey, the retired professor of moral theology of St Patrick's College in Maynooth, said last week that "the Cardinal unfortunately has lost his moral credibility". He said this with evident reluctance, but he disputed the dry view of "duty" to which the Cardinal adhered: "How is it that this legalistic approach, this preoccupation with law – 'I've done my duty, therefore everything is OK' – what's behind that? Where's the humanity? The imagination?" I would echo Fr Twomey in that, although I might do so in a somewhat less diplomatic manner. But he's not going on a witch hunt. And nor am I.
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