IRELAND
Irish Independent
Why protection of vulnerable children must always take precedence over the seal of the confessional
EILIS O’HANLON – PUBLISHED 20 APRIL 2014
HISTORY is full of pioneers who stood up bravely against unjust laws and brought about change. Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. The abseiling lesbians who famously stormed the House of Lords and later broke into the studio live on air as Sue Lawley read the BBC News.
To that illustrious list can now be added a new name, that of Fr Gearoid O Donnchu, who last week told Newstalk that he wouldn’t co-operate with new laws on the reporting of child abuse. Truly, the spirit of principled civil disobedience fostered by Mahatma Gandhi lives on.
Meanwhile, back in the real world …
Fr O Donnchu was responding to the publication of the Children First Bill, which makes it mandatory for certain professions and holders of official posts to report their suspicions of child abuse to the Child and Family Agency. This includes doctors, nurses, teachers, guards, social workers, psychologists, childcare workers, as well as priests. But of course, it’s the clergy who’ve been hogging the headlines with their concerns about the new system and its impact on the sanctity of the confessional.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, retired parish priest O Donnchu practically painted himself as a martyr to the cause, telling Chris O’Donoghue: “The seal of confession takes precedence over everything – even my own safety.” In his own mind, no doubt he was the heir to Montgomery Clift in Hitchcock’s I Confess, who was willing to stand trial for a murder he didn’t commit rather than tell the police that the real killer had admitted all in the confession box. To the rest of us, he just came across as a man who needs to rethink his priorities.
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