BishopAccountability.org

Eilis O'Hanlon: Eamon Casey Did Do Wrong, He Ignored His Only Son

By Eilish O'Hanlon
Irish Independent
August 11, 2013

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/eilis-ohanlon-eamon-casey-did-do-wrong-he-ignored-his-only-son-29489534.html

Sexual scandal: Donal MacIntyre, left, and Peter Murphy in the TV3 series Print And Be Damned

Back in 1992, the country was rocked by the discovery that a Catholic priest had enjoyed a sexual relationship with a consenting adult woman and had fathered a child. Those were the days. The bar on sexual scandal in the church has been raised considerably higher since then.

Nostalgia's probably misplaced, all the same. There may be a temptation to think that Eamon Casey did nothing wrong in having an affair with American divorcee Annie Murphy when she was staying at his home in the early 70s, at least not in comparison with the paedophile priests who would, in later years, be sharing the same parish with the Bishop of Galway; but it would be hard to sustain that comforting argument after listening to the first interview in 20 years with his son, recorded for the first of a four-part TV3 documentary series on the hidden history of Irish journalism and broadcast last week under the title Print And Be Damned.

Speaking to Donal MacIntyre, Peter Murphy recalled his first meeting with Casey, when he was only 15, in a lawyer's high-rise office in Boston. How he tried to engage with his father "and him having really no interest in engaging back with me". How he eventually fled in tears, a "blithering mess". It wasn't hard to see the hurt and bewildered young boy behind the articulate and affable 39-year-old that Murphy is today.

The argument that Casey was a hypocrite because, while always known for his progressive tendencies, he nonetheless backed the church's position on celibacy, doesn't really stand up. A man can have an affair while still believing that priests should be celibate. There's no contradiction. But there are sins other than hypocrisy. We're supposed to disapprove of the damage that can be done by deadbeat dads who wash their hands of responsibility for their offspring, and it's no better just because the culprit is a bishop rather than a welfare cheat.

In many ways, it's worse. Eamon Casey may have been blindsided by what had happened to his life, but he had a moral education which should have shown him a better path, and it clearly never did. Peter Murphy knew full well that he was Casey's "dirty little secret", as he put it, and that's no way to make a child feel. It's cruel. Not so much "suffer the little children to come unto me", more "keep the little children away from me, no matter how much they suffer". Simply being better than paedophile priests does not mean Casey was an angel.

The great pity was that he went away so quickly after the story broke. No sooner had the country absorbed the news than he was gone – summoned to Rome, forced to resign, then dispatched to South America. We didn't even know back then if he would ever return. Even when he did, it was firstly to England. Casey never really got a chance to tell his own story. Veronica Guerin managed to track him down to South America for an interview, and there have been intermittent comments since, but mainly what followed this explosion in the church was silence. How typically Irish.

That silence goes some way to explaining the famous comment made by Gay Byrne to Annie Murphy when she appeared on the Late, Late Show: "If your son is half as good a man as his father, he won't be doing too badly."

Last week on TV3, Peter recalled watching that interview. "I'm an only child to a single mother," he said. "I wanted to fly across the thing and deck him. You know, the first thing you want to do is drop him."

It was a funny and touching testament to his relationship with his mother, with whom he was clearly always close. Murphy added how proud he was too when his mother pointed out to Gay Byrne that she wasn't a bad person either. The love between son and mother was a sign of what Bishop Casey missed by keeping his son so far away for all those years.

That interview did not just happen in a vacuum, however. Annie Murphy had put herself out there in the public eye. It would be naive to expect it would all go one way. Casey also wasn't there to defend himself. Gay Byrne may well have felt it was his duty as a public service broadcaster to put the man's case for him in absentia. Seeing the harshly judgemental attitude still being directed towards the bishop last week on TV3 by Nell McCafferty, it could be argued that it was all the more important to remember the good that Casey had done for decades as well as the mistakes.

Note, too, the large round of applause in the studio after Gaybo's comment. It's another instance where we want to blame other people for whatever attitudes in Irish society we now find disagreeable, rather than admitting that they were widely shared by huge numbers of ordinary people.

Eamon Casey is now very sick, in his 80s and living in a nursing home in Co Clare. Some people think that raking all this up again after so many years is unkind. What Print And Be Damned reminded us is that this wasn't only his story. It was ours. The breaking of the silence by the Irish Times was a catalyst in Irish journalism, opening up so many more ugly corners of Irish life to the light, and it accelerated the diminution of the Catholic Church's influence here. Those who think this story should be left buried, where it belongs, are missing the point in the same way that the Vatican did when it sent Casey away in disgrace, even while it was covering up for the infinitely more heinous crimes of paedophile priests, and threatened to "destroy" the Irish Times for uncovering its secrets.

Silence has never served us well as a country. Avoiding difficult subjects is what gives them their power. They should have trusted us better back then and they should trust us now. Peter Murphy isn't bitter. "I've no time for that s***," he says candidly, "there's enough stresses in my life, I've to pay bills." His experience mirrors our own. It was a drama at the time, but we've left it behind. If the church hasn't, it's because it still can't deal with unavoidable issues rationally and openly. It's their loss.




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