Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil): Joe O'Donnell and family members, (RIP).
11.00: Maura Heaney, Bowling Green, (Anniv).
6.30: Bridie & Tom Lenihan., Bowling Green, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Writing on Ryan Report, even in a lowly parish leaflet, is a risky business. The subject matter is highly sensitive, obviously. But there is also the question of 'saturation coverage' and 'readership fatigue'. I can imagine many of you saying: 'Not more stuff on child abuse!' But we turned a blind eye and a deaf ear for generations! There is no doubt but that it is a harrowing topic. However, regardless of our own sensitivities, the welfare of the primary victims should remain at the centre of all this discussion. Justice demands that their pain be constantly acknowledged, and tangible reparation made. Nothing we 'outsiders' have to say should add to the suffering of those involved.

I have written deliberately of 'primary victims'. Because there have been secondary victims too. Institutional abuse caused enormous collateral damage also. Those numerous Religious who lived fruitful and loving lives of service now find themselves tainted by the abusive behaviour of the few.

The Ryan Report was a raw, relentless document. It exposed the horrific damage done to little children and, to Ryan's eternal credit, he made no attempt to pull his punches or 'gild the lily'. Understandably, the media reacted with horror, in some instances with hysteria. In fact it fell to the Protestant Bishop of Cork, Dr. Paul Colson, to appeal for some perspective. He said there had not been "sufficient pause for thought and reflection" in the wake of the Ryan report. He went on to say that sections of Irish society used the report as a springboard towards a secularising agenda. I think I know what the bishop was saying.

For example, lots of 'recovering Catholics' had been 'lying in the long grass', longing for that day when a really destructive missile would be directed at the Catholic Church. The fact that it was a domestic missile made it all the more destructive. They could hardly conceal their glee! This was 'pay-back time' in spades.

Vincent Browne was one of the very few to swim against the tide. On Wednesday last in his Irish Times column, he drew attention to a Government report of 2002, "Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland" (SAVI). It revealed a shocking reality: over 100,000 women and around 57,000 men being raped in childhood! This is enormous. No wonder the report was buried.

Browne tried to broaden the debate to embrace this wider reality. Only a tiny fraction of abusers (about 3 per cent) have been clerics. However, that fact that the Catholic Church enjoyed such a position of trust renders the crimes of its foot-soldiers all the more egregious. Betrayal of trust compounds the abuse.

But it still remains true that clerics are, numerically, but a small part of the problem. According to the SAVI Report, one-quarter of abusers are family members - usually not immediate family members - one-quarter are figures of authority, one-quarter are neighbours and one-quarter are strangers.

The SAVI Report recommended initiatives to cope with the problem. These were ignored by the politicians. Now these same politicians are treating the Ryan Report as a window onto the religious life, rather than approaching it as a mirror, reflecting accurately the dysfunctional nature of the society to which they too belong. This does no service to politics, or to abuse victims. The denial continues as scapegoats abound.

-Dick Lyng

A Witch-Hunt?

Sympathy for priests and nuns is thin on the ground at present but spare a thought for those thousands of members of religious congregations who bore no direct responsibility for the abuse that took place in residential institutions.

The anecdotes are as tragic as they are numerous: stories of frail, elderly men and women - whose only sin was to share the same clothing as their betrayers - afraid to go outside their front doors in case they are spat upon, literally or metaphorically, by the public.

To praise the courage of priests and nuns invites outrage. Yet we should acknowledge that those religious who attended the recent march in Dublin were courageous. Courageous because ordinary priests and nuns have felt the pain of abuse victims more keenly than almost anyone else.

There was a poignant intervention in the Irish Catholic in which the Kiltegan priest and theologian Fr Donal Dorr issued a public apology. Fr Dorr, a former missionary in Mozambique, and author of the influential book Option for the Poor - wrote: "I confess the inadequacy of my understanding and my response and I ask forgiveness of God and of all those who suffered abuse."

Is this where the Ryan report has brought us? A man who has given his life to serving others, campaigning for the poor; a man who did much during previous decades to drag the church, and Irish society in tandem, into a new understanding of Christianity; a man who has no wealth; the same man who is the first to seek penance.

Surely, there are others - teachers, judges, politicians, gardaí and ordinary people like you and me - who should be ahead in the queue, prostrating ourselves on the altar of public opinion, and asking for forgiveness from victims of abuse.

A few years ago, the Department of Social and Family Affairs was in discussions with Catholic missionary organisations about extending the State pension to elderly and retired missionaries living overseas. After intensive negotiations, the Irish Missionary Union - the body representing Catholic missionaries - pulled out. Why? Because they felt it was wrong for them to get a pension that an unemployed Irish bricklayer in London, or a homeless Irish emigrant in San Francisco, or an infirm Irish alcoholic in Sydney, would not be entitled to receive.

What is more, they never advertised this decision. It is just not their style. Nor is it their style to advertise the help they have given to former victims of institutional abuse through organisations like Faoiseamh. The counselling service, set up by Cori in 1996, has attracted occasional criticism from certain survivors' groups but it is also partly thanks to information received by this service that the lid was lifted on clerical sexual abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne.

We should be angered by the Ryan report, and we should condemn those members of religious organisations who have tried to cover up, or excuse, wrongdoing. We should also ask them to pay more. But, for all our sakes, we need to avoid a witch-hunt. To dump on priests and nuns (without differentiation) will only compound the injustice.

-Joe Humphreys, The Irish Times, June 17, 2009.

SUMMER FESTIVAL, 2009

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