The Roman Church shows its true ministry in Ireland
As the increasingly
vocal survivors of Ireland's Catholic sexual abuse scandal wait for
answers and apologies, Pope Benedict XVI began an unprecedented two-day
summit with Ireland's bishops at the Vatican today. The Pope's direct
involvement marks a milestone in a crisis that has deeply marred the
Catholic Church's image in what was once one of its most devoted
countries.
The meeting comes a little more than two months after the release of a
devastating investigation, known as the Murphy Report, revealing the
scope of child abuse by priests in the diocese of Dublin. Like previous
reports on other parts of the church in Ireland, it laid out how for
decades the Catholic hierarchy appeared primarily concerned with
covering up the crimes of its priests.
The Irish bishops, who formally apologized to Ireland in December, will
reportedly be allowed seven minutes each to speak and may be questioned
by the pope and senior curial officials. Twenty-four bishops went up,
one-by-one, to see the pontiff as the summit began, according to
published reports.
But there is no guarantee any written response will be enough for the
Irish people who feel betrayed by the church."I have a feeling the pope
will just disappoint us again," said Andrew Madden, who became
the first victim to go public in 1995 with the revelation that church
officials paid him off to stay silent after he told them the family
priest had abused him for three years. "I'm not confident about much
coming out of it. Every time you engage with the Vatican you hold out
hope they'll react in a way that's real and human and connected and they
never do."
What happened in Ireland goes beyond the Catholic sexual abuse scandal
in the U.S. in part because the church is so entrenched in the economy
of the country. The Catholic church, for example, runs 92 percent of the
state-owned primary schools and owns some of the country's biggest
hospitals.
"A lot of people in Ireland are so shocked and angry," said Maeve Lewis,
executive director of One in Four, a Dublin-based support and advocacy
group for victims of sexual abuse.
"In a way the worst part is finding out how much was known about these
abusive priests and how much was covered up. The most heartbreaking
calls we get are from victims who realize that if the church had acted
sooner, they wouldn't have been abused."
Some of the Irish bishops at the Vatican summit were identified in the
reports as participating in the cover-ups and will be resigning. Some of
the victims have made sure their presence will be felt as well during
the talks.
A
letter,
signed by two of Ireland's most prominent abuse victims and sent
directly to the Vatican in time for the summit, chides the pope for not
cooperating with the most recent investigating commission. It asks that
he write to the people of Ireland "accepting fully the harm" caused by
the culture of priestly abuse and cover-up in Ireland.
The Murphy report examined the cases of more than 320 victims of
priestly abuse in the Dublin diocese from 1975 to 2004. Among its many
findings was that one priest admitting molesting children more than 100
times. Another said he molested children at least once every two weeks
for 25 years.
The report found that church officials routinely ignored complaints from
children and their parents about abusive priests, concluding that all
the Dublin diocese cared about was "the maintenance of secrecy, the
avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church,
and the preservation of its assets."
The findings came just seven months after the release of the Ryan
report, the result of a harrowing nine-year investigation into the
chronic beatings, rapes, near-starvation and humiliation of 30,000
children in state-run "industrial schools" and orphanages all run by the
Catholic Church. Both reports detailed the cover-ups of the crimes by
Irish church officials as well as the stonewalling and lack of
cooperation on the part of everyone from the Christian Brothers to the
Vatican.
The Murphy report specifically said that Vatican officials refused to
deal directly with investigators, saying they had not gone through
proper diplomatic channels.
Benedict XVI issued a strongly-worded statement in December after the
release of the Murphy report, saying he "shares the outrage, betrayal
and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland." But many
survivors of the abuse in Ireland believe the Vatican knew more about
pedophiliac priests in Ireland and elsewhere over the years. They want
the Pope to accept more public responsibility.
Some point to two Vatican documents that outline how clerical sexual
abuse should be handled as characteristic of the culture of secrecy
surrounding pedophile priests. The document titled crimen
sollicitationis was issued in 1962 and revised in a different form in
2001 as Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Both were written entirely in
Latin.
Filmmaker Colm O'Gorman, who said he was raped by a priest in County
Wexford when he was 14, addressed the subject in his 2006 documentary,
"Sex Crimes and the Vatican."
Since Madden's revelations, Ireland has been increasingly conscious of
clerical sexual abuse over the past 15 years. Awareness was heightened
the same year when the infamous Father Brendan Smyth was finally
arrested at age 67 after about 40 years of abusing children in Ireland
and the U.S., despite his behavior being known to higher-ups.
"Catholic priests have been the country's aristocracy since the 1850s,"
says Patsy McGarry, the religion writer for the Irish Times who is
considered one of the experts on the sex abuse scandals. "It's hard for
those outside Ireland to understand the kind of power they've had."
But that power is waning. Ireland is 86.7 percent Roman Catholic but
regular Mass attendance dropped from 90 percent in 1973 to 43 percent.
Andrew Madden said he always wanted to be a priest, even after being
molested for three years by Fr. Ivan Payne. After he was turned down by
church officials -- because, he believes, he'd gone public about Payne
-- he went through years of depression and alcoholism.
As a result of these devastating crimes, many Irish have abandoned the Roman church. Unfortunately, they do themselves even more harm by not making the choice to remain a Catholic, just not a Roman. We pray earnestly for the Irish people and will make very effort to show them that they do have a choice and not to fall further into the evil that the Roman church has brought them.