The Church’s mindset over child abuse is frozen in time

CARDINAL BRADY is a learned man and the many bishops, priests and lay people who have worked with him over the course of his esteemed career speak of him with the highest regard.

However, his failure to come clean on his role in the Church’s irresponsible and shameful approach to Fr Brendan Smyth has done irrevocable damage to his legacy. How could he have felt that it was in any way acceptable to ask a 10-year-old child and 14-year-old child to sign oaths of secrecy around their sexual abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth?

And why, even if he wasn’t the child protection delegate, didn’t he feel that a predator like Smyth needed to be removed from society by the country’s justice system and not just dressed down by a canonical court and then sent off to another parish to resume his reign of terror?

The Church had known of Brendan Smyth’s sadistic streak since the 1940s.

This canonical court hearing that took place in 1975 clearly demonstrated that the Church was either choosing to or else was totally unaware of its responsibilities to protect children.

These secret canonical trials with their odious oaths of secrecy just demonstrated that it was Church protection first. We cannot even say that it was child protection second as the Catholic Church blithely allowed Fr Smyth to carry on — albeit stripped of the right to say confession. It was child protection last.

Nobody would ever have known about the despicable deed that the cardinal was engaged in unless one of those victims summoned up the courage to take a High Court case against him in a personal capacity. However, the cardinal knew the case was coming down the tracks and why, before now, didn’t he choose to issue a statement on the matter?

Did he expect the people of Ireland to react in any other way but with disgust? Or did he think the case would be settled?

His failure to own up to his role in a secret court that effectively belittled Brendan Smyth’s actions to date and enabled his continued rape of children suggests once again that the Church, with some notable exceptions such as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, still haven’t faced up to the travesties they enabled.

And this culture of battening down the hatches and blaming the media whenever stories break about clerical sex abuse has only been cemented by the Pope who, in the words of abuse victim Andrew Madden, “clipped the wings” of Archbishop Martin when the bishops visited him in Rome. The Pope’s failure thus far to accept the resignations of the Irish bishops clearly shows that he does not believe that failing to protect children from rape is grounds enough for Irish bishops to stand aside.

When the National Board for Safeguarding Children’s report into the mismanagement of abuse complaints first emerged in Cloyne, Bishop Magee said that he wouldn’t resign and wanted to build best-practice child protection guidelines.

Bishops Murray, Field, Moriarty and Walsh all made initial statements running along the same lines.

Bishop Magee has since stepped aside from the day-to-day running of the diocese and the other bishops have tendered their resignations. Not one of these bishops had a “crise de conscience”.

It was public pressure that finally forced them to bow their heads in shame.

Cardinal Brady has made it expressly clear that he won’t resign unless he gets the nod from Rome. The Bishop’s meeting in Rome has taught us that won’t happen. In the 35 years since Cardinal Brady took notes from a child who had been sexually violated by a priest, the Church’s attitude to reporting abuse has changed wholesale. In response to political pressure, a clear system is in place whereby all complaints have to passed on to gardaí and the statutory authorities.

However, the most frightening thing is the Church’s mindset has not changed.

Despite living in a world which recognises child sexual abuse as the lowest of the low, the men of cloth still turn away from children and towards the Church.

Just look at how the Papal Nuncio ignored information requests from the Murphy Commission? The events regarding Brendan Smyth and Cardinal Brady may have been historical but the cardinal’s reaction to calls for his resignation show the moral and human response is frozen in time.