Irish Church�s new tomorrow

by Editor · Published June 3, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

The release of a 2,600-page report detailing physical and sexual abuse perpetrated against minors in Catholic institutions over decades has profoundly humbled the Church. At the same time, from its immediate position of weakness it can now emerge more solidly to truly serve Christ and the People of God.

It is a hopeful sign that Cardinal Se�n Brady of Armagh, the Catholic primate of all-Ireland, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin have taken a lead in welcoming the report, titled �Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse�, and acknowledging the Irish Church�s wretched failure in safeguarding minors in the care of Catholic institutions.

The nine-year independent investigation makes for distressing reading. Some of the physical and emotional abuses it details are repellent, going well beyond acceptable limits even by the standards of the era the report covers, the 1940s to the late �70s. Likewise, the endemic sexual abuse is thoroughly revolting.

Cardinal Brady spoke for the whole Church when he said: �I am profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions. Children deserved better, and especially from those caring for them in the name of Jesus Christ.�

The culpability, however, does not reside only with those who committed these abuses, which Archbishop Martin called �stomach-turning�, but also with those who could have taken action to prevent these, but failed to do so. Witnesses before the commission testified that they were intimidated and silenced when they sought to bring these abuses to the attention of Church leaders. This suggests very strongly that the cover-up went to the top of the Irish Church, to superiors and bishops.

The betrayal, therefore, was committed not only by the abusers and their institutions, but also by those who turned a blind eye to the suffering of children. That betrayal was not in the service of Christ, who reserved his most uncompromising words of condemnation for the abusers of children, but in the interest of an institution that clearly was inebriated with the hubris of its unchallenged power.

The betrayal goes beyond that of the survivors of the appalling abuse. All priests and religious, regardless of their virtue, are now liable to be suspected of being innate abusers. Indeed, Our Lord has been betrayed and violated by those who committed such detestable acts in his name.

The anger and hurt is felt widely. Catholics everywhere will have to find ways of reminding themselves that the salvific mission of the Church is not diminished by the abject failures of human individuals acting in its name.

After a series of abuse scandals and the rise of secularism in Ireland � which in part is a reaction to inordinate ecclesial power in secular affairs � the Irish Church is at a nadir. For all the good it has done among the bad, the Church in Ireland as we knew it is broken. Where its vocations were once so rich that Ireland lavishly sent priests and religious to the missions, today few men and women enter the consecrated life. Where its priests once were honoured, they are often publicly disrespected, to the point that some don�t even wear their clerical garb in public so as to avoid being maligned. And where once trust in the Church was implicit, it is now lost.

The Church in Ireland, as its leaders know, is in need of a profound restoration. The rotten old structures are crumbling. On a superior foundation the Church must build a new, solid house; a house where the arrogance of power and moral corruption have no place; a house from which the light of God�s infinite love truly shines.