Irish Catholic Clergy Abuse Scandal: A Spectre Again Awakens
This Thanksgiving has been somewhat of a mixed holiday. Spending time with Rubb Ed and the in-laws was wonderful, and the holiday meal was pretty much picture perfect.
But during this time of Thanksgiving here in the U.S., the citizens of Ireland are dealing with the publication of the Murphy report that describes more than 30 years of abuse of children by Catholic priests in that country, along with the totality of Irish bishops and archbishops who looked the other way, and an Irish police force that refused to get involved.
I have only scanned a few sections of the report, but it is horrific, and even more so for those of us in the U.S. who were the objects of abuse by Catholic priests in this country. The report brings back the pain of the American Catholic clergy abuse scandal of the last decade. The facts in Ireland are astonishing especially since the bishops and the police let the abusers have free reign over the lives and bodies of children.
Here are just a few of the nauseating highlights:
1. One priest abused over 100 boys and was moved to another parish instead of being turned over to authorities by Church officials.
2. Another priest admitted to abusing at least one child ever two weeks for over 25 years.
3. The Church claimed it never had full knowledge of the rampant abuse as it was on a "learning curve", but the report said the Church took out liability insurance for clergy abuse in 1987 to stem any financial loss.
4. The Church felt it more important to maintain secrecy, protect the reputation of the Church and to ensure that it did not lose assets rather than protecting victims.
Of course, there is a lot more in the report and it is chilling, mostly because the mantra seems to have been, "To hell with the victims; we have a church to protect!"
I wish I could put into words the feelings that have been churning in my mind and soul since the report was released yesterday. Things in Ireland are no different than they were here in the U.S. when the scandal broke here. It is always the same: kids get abused, clergy get moved around, the Church hierarchy gives an exceptionally insincere mea culpa, and then ... nothing.
The Murphy report makes it clear that the covering up of the abuse was just as harmful as the abuse itself.
One would have thought the Vatican would have drawn a line in the sand on this after the American scandal, the least of which should have been that any priest or bishop involved in the actually abuse or facilitation of said abuse would immediately lose their positions in the Church including employment and would forfeit any pension or benefits from the Church. In some cases, excommunication would be necessary.
But, like in the U.S., Church leaders in Ireland are not willing to do much about anything. When asked about the dismissal of bishops who were named in the report as accomplices to the scandal, the Archbishop of Dublin responded:
“I have always expressed the position that every bishop should evaluate their ministry in terms of commitments they make in reality to the protection of children.”
That vision would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic. And, now, the Vatican has become mute on the subject, much like it did during the American version of this play.
So, the number of lives damaged or destroyed by pedophiles in the Catholic priesthood (all but abetted by the Catholic heirarchy) grows and the next scandal waits to be uncovered. Those of us affected even 30 years ago still bear the emotional scars and see those wounds reopen slightly as the news breaks and these tragedies unfold.
But, what is important, of course, is that the Church's reputation be protected and its holy assets sheltered from the likes of me and others who suffered at the hands of demons.
If the consequences weren't so monumental, the Church's position would be fodder for a Monty Python skit.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
The worst thing I've seen mentioned in connection with this sad story is that the police were notified of many of the kids' cases and dropped them, saying it was "a church matter". Paedophilia = church matter, apparently. Even in 2001, a local politician, in response to a book about the conspiracy published by a victim, refused to comment because he "did not want to mix politics and religion, and this is a church matter." The guy that published the book was interviewed on the C4 news and he said that only recently have the Irish really started to deal with the problem in any way without trying to dismiss it.
Ratboy wrote:
Nosferatu wrote:
For those looking for the Irish perspective on this you can watch the Prime Time show here. I'm pretty sure its available worldwide. If not you can get find it here as well. Very good show that RTE produces that covers Irish current affairs.
I tried to make a thread yesterday but its hard to keep level headed with all that is going on both in my family and in wider society each time one of these stories break. Just try to remember that the generation ahead of me is still in the thrall of the Church.
Paleocon wrote:
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I think there are many parallels to draw between clergy and the US armed forces. In all practicality, when your available force is spread too thin, you do not exactly keep and maintain the best and the brightest. What happened when the US armed forces were spread out? We end up hiring murdering, raping mercenaries, rules are loosened on criminal backgrounds, drug use, physical fitness.
It is no great secret that even among those who identify as Catholic, in the US, few of them truly identify with much of the American Bishop's focus(abortion, sex ed, birth control, gay rights). And as a result fewer donations, fewer men and women joining as priests and nuns.
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My days of not taking you seriously have certainly come to a middle.
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That isn't what happened here. At the time this occurred being a Priest in Ireland was probably the most respected path who could follow. What you had was an institution that had absolute power with easy access to kids. There are a lot of very decent men in the Church but it attracted people who could hide their criminality in the cloth. It represented a vocation that Paedophiles could enter and avoid searching question from even Gardai. Those who did were threatened with excommunication and were treated horribly by the populace itself.
The lesson here is putting any institution, person or idea on a pedestal. It is also what happens when church and state become one and the same.
Paleocon wrote:
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I'd have absolutely no problem with these priests being tried and sentenced as common criminals. Once confined, the hardcore criminals could teach them a lesson about sin. When this first became a big story back in the US I told my wife I'd have no problem with them issuing a subpoena to the Pope if necessary.
Using the "cloth" as protection from criminal prosecution is the worst form of abuse. The victims of these crimes live with it every day of their lives. The perpetrators should suffer accordingly.
“When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its
acquaintance and hear what it had to tell.” -- John Muir
Unfortunately, there are far too many apologists for the Catholic Church that refuse to hold the Church accountable for its enabling of these child rapists who would rather sweep the issue under the rug.
One player that always gets overlooked in this discussion is the complacent laity within the Catholic Church that is completey immobile in relations to reaction against this sort of scandal. During the U.S. exposure of this issue, I know members of the Catholic laity who shrugged their shoulders and asked, "What do you want me to do about it?" I can think of a myriad of things I would do if I discovered that my church had been and probably is continuing to cover up child abuse. My tithes and time would evaporate first and foremost.
There are far too many Catholics who still perceive the Roman Church as the arbiter of salvation for people and fear that any vocal descent of Church law, policy or practice will endanger their immortal souls.
It is beliefs like that which allow evil like pedophilia to flourish in the Church.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
By pulling your money and time from doing good works under the name of the Church does that help? Through my Church, every Thursday I teach a personal finance class for poor people. If I stopped donating my time and efforts, would I still be helping my community? Well, I could do something else but my parish already has this program set up. I'd be letting down the people who come every week.
Tanglebones wrote:
There are other good works for that money and time to go. Since the church responds to money now days (as well as in the past, but especially now) I think its entirely appropriate to pull tithes and donations form them. After all, why give to an organization that protects child rapists? Because some good people are still there? Well maybe they should rise up and toss out the rapists. Those who shrug their shoulders at this as they continue support are just as culpable as those to perpetuate it.
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I am fairly certain a personal finance class for poor people would thrive in a host of other places besides a Catholic Church setting.
Nevertheless, I am sure any disappointment your students might feel by the termination of your services is exponentially minuscule compared to the disappointment felt by those who are victims of child rapists and an organization that gives them cover.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
Sadly, secular charitable institutions are much more rare in the US. You can look at the Diocese in DC and how they are close to holding the city ransom on the gay marriage and health benefits issue.
Which gets to a whole host of other issues of tax money spent on religious organizations here in the US.
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The human capacity to bury any information that inconveniences them, even in the face of these horrors, never ceases to amaze and appall me. This invalidates any moral claim made by the people involved in the cover-up within the Church. The deafening silence emanating from the Vatican in the wake of these revelations do not shine a favoring light on the current Pope either.
Also, you know you've played too much Mass Effect lately when the first thing popping into your mind after reading the thread title is "Hey, Saren is back?"
Roo wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
The issue is that the Church simply cannot admit that it is at any point of time that can be called "now" ever wrong. Like any business, the hubris and pride of the small executive management team can completely destroy the reputation of a company that has a beating heart made up of people not like them at all.
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Bloo, there are people in this country who will still think that these Bishops are "good" men. I'm really not sure what they mean at all but somewhere in there mind they are still worthy of support and this is where the corruption of the Church comes from. Sure the Church is full of hubris and pride but it is only the case because of the reverence people give them which Ireland was packed to rafters with. We did it too ourselves.
In fairness not all had that reverence..
Paleocon wrote:
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They can't do that because they'd get the living sh*t sued out of them. All that gold, jewelry, and fancy hats in the Vatican would be up for grabs.
I lost the last bit of respect I had for the Catholic Church when their lawyers were making arguments that there was no legal connection between a local parish and the Vatican when the scandals broke here. Instead of being concerned about justice, they wanted to make it very clear that each parish was an independent legal entity, and no blame, specifically, no civil lawsuit, could touch the deep pockets of the Vatican.
It's not good when a supposedly moral institution hides behind weaselly lawyers and a corporate structure to duck their responsibility for doing very bad things. Once they did that, they lost the moral right to tell anyone what they could or couldn't do.
Yonder wrote:
That is exactly what they did here in Phoenix. Every single Catholic Church within the Diocese of Phoenix is now independently incorporated to prevent someone from suing the Diocese for every last penny it has. Meanwhile, the laity in the pews shrug their shoulders and have more concern if their will be additional Masses on Christmas Eve.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
Yup, its disgusting. Sheriff Jackass Joe should be doing something about it.
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
I don't always run Windows, but when I do, I use MSE. (Stay uninfected, my friends) - *Legion*, TMILUITW
How does bankrupting the Church help? I think the lack of criminal action is far worse than the lack of money being taken. Throw people who did it and those who protected them in jail.
Tanglebones wrote:
I think their point is that, rather than doing exactly what you're saying, the Church instead rushed to protect itself financially. It shows a lot about the character of an entity when their response to something this horrific isn't "Let's get rid of the people who've caused this travesty," but rather "We need all hands on deck... we'll just shuffle things around and brush the evidence under the rug."
The Church should have excommunicated and defrocked the pedophiles to the person as soon as they found out it was going on, not protected them.
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The financial aspect is two pronged: to pay for damages caused and for punitive reasons. Simply removing the abusive member of the clergy and his protectors from the equation is some, but not much, solace to the victims who have to pay for prolonged therapy and pain and suffering.
One would have thought that the financial drubbing the Catholic Church took during the U.S. scandal would have caused massive reform within the Church. However, all it seems to have accomplished is a wave of chancellors moving to incorporate individual parishes to stop the financial hemorrhaging.
Meanwhile, some four days after the Ireland scandal broke, the Vatican remains silent.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
From the Murphy Commission report (p. 647):
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
Agreed.
I was working for the Catholic Church when the child abuse scandal exploded in Boston, and we spent a lot of time discussing it in our little parish and in the Archdiocese of Seattle. It was interesting to see the range of responses from parishioners, from well-deserved outrage and disgust--and believe me, there was plenty of that--to stubborn defensiveness. I think that some Catholics are so accustomed to the perception of being persecuted by the mass media, that when the truth started emerging about those horrible events, a lot of people just refused to believe it could possibly be that bad, or worse, believed that it was part of some media conspiracy to destroy the Church.
The leadership in our Archdiocese had no such illusions. They'd had a series of similar scandals back in the 80's, and while I don't know how things were resolved back then, I do know that during the crisis in the early 2000's it was emphasized that clergy who broke secular law would be subject to secular punishment. Since the events of the 80's, screening for seminarians had been made much more rigorous, ministry to reach out to victims of abuse by priests had been put in place, and so on. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the country was several steps behind.
I know it's not nearly enough, but I think that it's important to note that the whole apple isn't rotten. It's just that someone needs to stop f*cking around and get in there and cut out the bad parts for once and for all.
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I think that one huge step that the church could take would be to let priests marry and allow for women priests. This would make the priesthood far more attractive to people who really believe but want to live a regular life and cut down on the number of pedophiles.
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So we can arrest the Pope?
The problem is institutional. I mean the Church had special treatment centers it would send known pedophiles to. Think on that. The Church leadership knew there was a big enough problem with pedophilia that they had to set up special treatment centers for all the priests that couldn't keep it in their pants. They didn't turn those priests in like the criminals they were. Instead, they used all the resources of the Church to protect them and then secretly unleash them onto another parish where they could abuse more kids. How does an organization like that deserve any consideration?
Since the Pope and other senior Church leadership aren't ever going to see the inside of a jail cell, the best way to get them to clean up their act is to hurt the organization financially...the deeper the better. At the very least it will get those people to focus on a very real problem instead of spending their time telling AIDS-ravaged Africans they can't use condoms.
Yonder wrote:
And this is the impasse at which we always arrive. Ignoring the good works of the Church is as much a terrible thing as not punishing the predators in the system. The money of the Church comes primarily from tithes, and while my heart goes out to the victims of monsters, I'm not convinced that the Church's money should go to making them millionaires out of sympathy vs charitable giving.
But then, I'm pretty sure our species has had the Reform vs Schism discussion regarding this institution before.
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While I understand the concern, we still have to deal with the consideration of the victims of this abuse and what form of compensation should they be entitled to since their lives were damaged by the clergy and those who covered for them.
When the abuse scandal broke in Phoenix, the (Ret.) Bishop Thomas O'Brien of the Phoenix Diocese made the tragic suggestion that the diocese would offer free counseling through the diocese and a chance for reconciliation. Everyone's jaw hit the floor as he described how trained Catholic clergy and laity were ready to assist victims with counseling and a chance for people who felt harmed by the Church to return and become prospering members of their parishes. That only emboldened victims to sue the Church. It was a vile response particularly since the notion of reconciliation made it sound as if the victims had done something wrong and needed to patch up a little squabble.
What then should be the Church's responsibility in handling this? Should they not be at least obligated to pay for all of the medical bills and pain and suffering of the victims? How do you do that except through monetary means?
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
Yes, the Church has a long track record giving it all away. I mean the Vatican barely has a pot to piss in because they're so diligent about giving away all the money that people tithe them.
The logic that the Church is somehow special bugs the crap out of me. If it hadn't been the Church and it had been something like a school district that did this, knowingly hide pedophiles and then put them back into a classroom, people would be standing outside with pitchforks and torches ready to tear the place down.
But because it's the Church, people want to give them a pass because of their supposed good deeds. Well, if you want credit for the good, then take responsibility for the bad. Every person who gets AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Church killed them and damned their families to hardship. Every spouse who is stuck in an abusive relationship: the Church's stance on divorce is responsible for them getting beaten up. When the final tally is done, it's not so clear the Church is anywhere near positive territory.
And even then, believers can't follow the simple logic that the Church doesn't do *any* good deeds, its parishioners do.
Yonder wrote:
This is simply untrue. The Church will grant annulments in the case of an abusive relationship, and they can move surprisingly quickly in those situations.
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Yes. It is true. I know this personally.
Yonder wrote:
They're the #1 charitable organization and healthcare structure on the planet.
Bad analogy. The Church is not supported by taxes.
That said: I don't recall you calling for the bankruptcy of the entire public education system after the dozens of reports of teachers having sex with students came out. If your point is that the teachers actually went to jail whereas the priests did not, I wholeheartedly agree that the disparity is ridiculous. But I do not agree that the dissolution of the Church through bankruptcy is justice for anyone.
That's a tough argument to make. If you blame the Church for the AIDs epidemic, you must also blame the entirety of America for the deaths of every Iraqi over the last 7 years, every Palestinian for the last 60 years, and every North Korean for the past 60 years.
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