Bishops Have Again Deserted Their Flock

An interesting column in the Irish Times looks at the ongoing free fall of the Roman Catholic Church's reputation in Ireland. Hopefully, that free fall will begin to extend out to more country with the chance that maybe, just maybe, Benedict XVI and the bishops and cardinals will for once do the right thing since it will be a necessity if the Church is going to save itself from irrelevance. I am not going to hold my breath, however. I continue to believe that it is difficult for many to grasp just how morally bankrupt the Church hierarchy has become and just how self-centered and uncaring its members are when in comes to account for the misdeeds of so many bishops and cardinals and a number of the Popes, including John Paul II who I believe was anything but saintly. Again, I ask myself, why does anyone continue to show these disgusting men - who care nothing for the lives of children and youths - any deference much less give them money. Here are some column highlights:

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THERE APPEARS to be a view that Cardinal Seán Brady’s words of support this week for the Bishop of Cloyne John Magee have drawn a line in the sand where this latest Catholic Church clerical child sex abuse controversy is concerned. They have not. Rather, they have added to a growing deficit in the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a deficit now every bit as large as that in the State’s finances, if deteriorating more rapidly. In this, the bishops have only themselves to blame.

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Their first instinct, when alerted in 1987 to the probability of clerical child sex abuse cases emerging in Ireland, was preservation of the institution at all costs. You might say it established what has become a consistent pattern. They took out insurance.
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It would be another eight years before they addressed the protection of children from such abuse. Then, in 1996, they published their first guidelines on child protection. These were updated in 2000 and again in 2005. It was in 1996, coincident with those first guidelines, that Cardinal Desmond Connell, then archbishop of Dublin, let it be known they were “only guidelines”.

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It was believed such thinking in the Irish church belonged to the past. Not so. From what we were told last month it would appear to have been the mindset of Bishop Magee until late 2008. This was disclosed in a report published on December 19th by the church’s own watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

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But Bishop Magee’s culpability runs even deeper. This is a man who twice and recently misled the State, in writing, on child protection practices in his diocese. As recalled by Minister for Children Barry Andrews last week, on November 23rd, 2005, “in a direct reply” to then minister for children Brian Lenihan, Bishop Magee said Cloyne “fully complied with” the church’s 1996 guidelines and was “fully compliant” with the State’s guidelines.

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It has meant, as Andrews said, that because of “the discrepancy between stated policies and procedures and the validation of these policies and practices” in the diocese, Cloyne was being referred for investigation to the Dublin Commission. . . . Cardinal Brady thinks differently as to the gravity of Bishop Magee’s omissions. So also do two of the three other Catholic archbishops in Ireland – the Archbishop of Cashel, Dermot Clifford, and the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary. For his part, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, chooses silence.