COMMENT: Lost opportunity to draw a line under abuse scandal
Thursday February 25 2010
IT is a matter of deep regret that the Catholic Church has so far failed to provide a satisfactory public apology to the victims of clerical sex-abuse in this country following last week's meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops of Ireland.
Once again, survivors set aside their justifiable cynicism after years of fudging, mental reservations and the obscure workings of redress-boards, in the hope the Church would draw a line under the whole, sorry debacle of this great wrong.
It would have been the least they could have expected; a full and frank apology for the Church's failings in Ireland by its Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, with the Irish bishops united behind him. For many, the event represented the greatest opportunity the Church would ever have to advance, in a very real sense, the process of healing and reconciliation. Sadly it is clear that, despite good intentions, it failed to achieve this.
In this diocese at least, Bishop Bill Murphy has assiduously overseen the introduction of the Church's new child-protection measures and has said he would welcome, and co-operate fully with, any investigation that might arise into clerical sex-abuse in the Kerry diocese. These are welcome assurances from one individual leader of the Church.
It is is an institution that operates far above the individual level, however. This is true of all organisations, of course, but few display such a disparity of thought and behaviour between the individual and the whole, as the Catholic Church does.
The very fact that our bishops were required to travel to Rome at all raises many questions about how the institution operates and regards itself. Would it be too much to expect the summit to have taken place in this country, with the Pope travelling to Ireland and addressing the wrongs on Irish soil?
After all, the native Irish paid a heavy price for their unstinting devotion to the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. As British forces exacted hideous punishments against Catholics at the height of penal times, the Irish clung ever faster to their faith, with little expectation of help from Rome and, indeed, few offers of support.
The Church here is now at a crisis far beyond any censure the British could have ever imposed in the 21st Century as it loses its hold on the hearts and minds of its people. A full and frank apology made on Irish soil by Pope Benedict XVI would truly represent a great opportunity for the Church to begin healing all this hurt and to completely renew its age-old mission in Ireland.
