Cowen shows little separation between Church and State

IT is just about the last bastion of deference to the Catholic Church in this country, but it also just happens to be the most important one — Government Buildings.

Brian Cowen’s responses to the Ryan and Murphy reports, and now the storm raging over Cardinal Seán Brady’s involvement in helping to hush-up paedophilia in the Church, have been worryingly vague, belated or displaying an unhealthy obsequiousness to the Vatican.

Cardinal Brady’s involvement in trying to hush-up paedophilia allegations against Fr Brendan Smyth in 1975 have convulsed the nation since their emergence on Saturday, but Mr Cowen has refused to be drawn into the affair.

The Taoiseach initially claimed he was not “au fait” with the issues involved as he is on a St Patrick’s Day tour of the US. But what hard details does the national leader need to have an informed opinion, other than the fact that then Fr Brady helped make child abuse victims swear an oath of secrecy and saw fit not to involve the police, or other civil authorities in the matter?

By last night his position shifted subtly to insist the church and state both needed their own “space” and as taoiseach he would not comment on the matter. But where is that “space” when the Church is still allowed to dominate so much of state education? And where is the leadership on civic morality we expect from a Taoiseach?

Labour has led from the front on the issue, demanding a Garda probe into whether Cardinal Brady broke the law, with justice spokesperson Pat Rabbitte insisting the primate cannot survive the gathering storm.

Fine Gael has been more tepid in its approach with no statement from would- be alternate Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the party’s children’s spokesperson Alan Shatter refusing to comment on the affair at all — or even comment on why he won’t comment on it.

However, the party has insisted “no one is above the civil law” and said the gardaí should investigate “any outstanding matters”.

Green leader John Gormley made the strongest remarks, saying the cardinal allowed “evil to triumph” by standing back from the situation he was involved in during the 1975 Church inquiry into Smyth.

The attitude is in marked contrast to the Taoiseach’s hands-off approach to the national psycho traumas unleashed by the vile revelations in the Ryan and Murphy reports last year.

Initial silence was then followed by a stream of ministers sending out conflicting signals before the Government was forced into a major, very messy, U-turn on the issue of Church compensation to abuse survivors, on foot of public uproar.

It was a depressingly familiar picture in December when the Taoiseach went out of his way in the Dáil to defend the way the Vatican snubbed the Murphy probe’s plea for information on child abusing priests. He insisted Rome’s note to the Department of Foreign Affairs stating the independent inquiry was not going through the proper diplomatic channels was in keeping with international norms.

But it was certainly not in keeping with the need for the Church to be seen to do everything in its power to try and cleanse itself of the evil allowed to exist and thrive within it in the form of paedophile priests left free to rape children again and again.

Mr Cowen described as “a matter of regret” that the Holy See didn’t give a substantive response — hardly a ringing rebuke for what many saw as an attitude of deliberate obstruction towards the abuse inquiry.

NAMA was rushed through in days, but only now, nearly a year after Ryan is the Government even talking of bringing in some of the report’s basic recommendations on how to keep youngsters out of the clutches of abusers.

It would seem the Government’s forelock-tugging towards the Church hierarchy is only matched by its foot-dragging on child protection.