“The Irish Bishops Don’t Get It”

From Austen Ivereigh:

“Look at the statements and homilies made by some of the Irish bishops yesterday following their two-day meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, and one thing will be perfectly obvious: they just don’t understand the problem. There is plenty there about sin and repentance, God’s loving and healing mercy, and the evil of abuse of children — and of course, mention of guidelines which prevent it happening again. But what none of them mentions is the culture of collusion and cover-up which prevented the priest perpetrators being dealt with until at least the mid-1990s. Nothing about the decades of denial. No mention of clericalism. Not one reference to institutional idolatry.”

Ivereigh is absolutely right. This is a deep-rooted cultural and societal problem. What is often forgotten is that primary responsibility for some of the worst abuses lies with the state, not the Church. Successive generations of Irish politicians created a gulag system whereby Irish children were locked away on the most meager of pretenses and subjected to the most horrendous abuses. This was never talked about in Ireland, but everybody knew what was going on, as the bogeyman of the industrials schools (always mentioned in hushed and horrified tones) was used to scare generations of Irish children into behaving themselves.

These horrors came out in the Ryan report). On top of this came the Murphy report, detailing a pattern of abuse and cover-up in the Dublin archdiocese that persisted until the arrival of archbishop Martin. By then, the damage was done. Ryan had seeped into public conscienceness. The Irish population was utterly disgusted, and rejected the Church in greater numbers than ever before. Again, it should be noted that the politicians quite deftly deflected blame toward the religious orders, not taking any responsibility for the their own policies and the connivance of the department of education. The fact that blame is widespread points to an underlying sickness in Irish society. And much as a Jansenist-ridden French Canadian Church imploded a generation ago, the Irish Church is now involved in gut-wrenching changes.

The Church stands at a crossroads. Its reputation has never been more battered. Anecdotes abound of priests in Dublin fearing to wear clerics in Dublin city because of the abuse they will receive. If we want to save the Church in Ireland, renewal is urgently needed. It must start by recognizing the cultural sickness that bought us to this point, and not gloss over it with mealy-mouthed references to sin and forgiveness. Only one Irish cleric seems to understand the stakes – Dublin archbishops Diarmuid Martin (David Gibson has a must-read essay on him). Unfortunately, the Vatican seemed unwilling to support Martin in the tough line he was taking. The only loser here is the Irish Church.