Ferns has a big lesson for Cloyne: There has to be a change at the top

By Ivan Yates

Thursday, January 15, 2009

BECAUSE I am not a Catholic, I was reluctant to wade into the Bishop Magee controversy. The Ferns diocese in Co Wexford went through a decade of turmoil, which Cloyne is now experiencing. We discovered more than 100 individual allegations of clerical sexual abuse between 1962 and 2002. These involved 21 priests.

I maintained a friendship with a number of priests and knew Bishop Comiskey well. He pioneered a number of genuine ecumenical initiatives — not least in the area of mixed marriages. He was sociable, witty and a good communicator.

He resigned in 2002 as Bishop of Ferns. This was the correct decision. His crucial mistakes were that he was too reliant on legal advice and naive about perpetrators of clerical abuse. The late Fr Seán Fortune was the most manipulative and devious of abusers.

I knew the Augustinian priest Fr Michael Mernagh, chairman of WORD (Wexford Organisation for Rural Development) which was financed under the Leader programme through the Department of Agriculture when I was minister.

Such was his abhorrence of the current situation in the diocese of Cloyne that he couldn’t ignore it. He spent two bitterly cold nights outside Cobh cathedral in his car. Then he carried out a nine-day ‘walk of atonement’ to the Pro Cathedral in Dublin — one of the most inspirational events of recent times.

The simplicity and humility of his action spoke volumes. I was proud to talk to him on the first day of his walk. He had no hidden agenda. At 70 years of age it was brave, even foolhardy, to trek 170 miles. He represents the 98% of priests in Ireland who have dedicated their whole lives to their vocation. They are selfless in their commitment to their parish and people. Nothing warms my cynical selfishness more than to encounter a clergyman with genuine spirituality.

It’s a disgrace that their reputation and that of the church is tarnished by criminal abusing priests. This is compounded by senior bishops such as John Magee who have failed to give effective leadership and discharge their responsibilities.

Despite Cardinal Seán Brady’s rather belated expression of support last Tuesday, Bishop Magee will probably resign later this year or, at the very least, find he has a coadjutor bishop to keep an eye on things.

The longer he hangs on, the more he undermines the credibility of the hierarchy. His failure to reveal to the gardaí and HSE ongoing cases, the threatened legal action to stifle publication of the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) report and untrue declarations in 2005 and 2007 make his position untenable. Last week the HSE published a report of their audit into the implementation of the recommendations of the Ferns inquiry. An important aspect of this survey was ‘Section Five’. This outlined a statistical questionnaire in eight sub-sections. It inquired into the number of cases of abuse, the follow-up action, the priests involved, data relating to priests who had served in and left the diocese — basically a statistical inventory of allegations and responses in each diocese. All 20 bishops refused to respond with any answers. They cited "insurmountable legal difficulties." Nonsense.

None of the questions involved identifying any individuals or probing personal circumstances. Having read the relevant data, I fail to see how it could infringe any one’s legal rights. Catholic bishops in Northern Ireland, Wales and England were able to give the relevant authorities such information.

The public have to consider that church leaders have a track record of secrecy, non-disclosure and obfuscation. The priority has been to protect the church against large court awards arising out of civil claims from victims. The rhetoric is reasonable, the response is litigious.

It is time we were blunt about the reality of what has happened. Teenage boys and girls have been brought into private rooms and told to "take their pants down". They have been molested, raped and abused by people they respected and feared. Some have been so terrorised they hid painful secrets through a misguided sense of their own shame and guilt. Victims and their families have been fobbed off and even ignored.

Justice should not be dependent on church authorities. The State should be the protector. The level of convictions in this area is appallingly and incredibly low. What’s needed are not endless investigations, reviews, guidelines and codes. We need a successful specialist investigative unit combining the Director of Public Prosecutions, HSE and gardaí to prosecute and ensure imprisonment.

This perversion is not confined to Catholic clerics. Abuses also occurred in Protestant boarding schools. The threat to children will continue to exist from paedophile relatives, teachers, social workers and family friends. Secular situations are not exempt from this horror. Child protection must be based on successful detection and proper deterrents. Voluntary organisations in this area have concluded mandatory reporting is the only foolproof way to ensure the cries of anguish from victims cannot be ignored.The Government should immediately legislate for this and ensure that all bishops are obliged to provide the information requested in Section 5. Lest anyone feels I am bashing the Catholic Church, I pay special tribute to Ian Elliott and the NBSC. The church alone set up this structure. It has probed the diocese of Cloyne more effectively than did the HSE. It stood up to Bishop Magee and revealed his patently untrue statements. For the church’s sake it’s vital that the NBSC get every future ongoing support from the hierarchy — and, where relevant, from the State.

This year is going to see a lot more revelations on this topic. Later this month the Commission of Inquiry into the Archdiocese of Dublin, under Judge Yvonne Murphy, will publish its detailed findings.

THEN in July, their Cloyne report. The Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse, initially chaired by Judge Laffoy and now Justice Murphy, is due to complete its work in relation to child abuse into enclosed orders, reformatories and industrial schools. More grim reading.

Irish society up to the last decade was deeply deferential. The majority of ordinary people had blind deference to their leaders. Politicians, bishops and clerics were respected and revered. Betrayal of trust shattered those illusions.

We haven’t clearly established what is to replace it. It must be the rule of law. No one can be above the law — not Haughey, senior ministers or bishops refusing to answer questions. Equality of citizenry.

Canon law and the administrative procedures of the church are the yardstick by which Bishop Magee seeks to continue in office. Despite the clearest signals from a number of senior churchmen here that he should consider his position, only the authorities in Rome can remove him.

He is part of the problem, not the solution. The clergy of the diocese and their parishioners are the heartbeat of the living church. They should collectively, politely but firmly make their views known.

Renewal in Ferns commenced under Bishop Eamonn Walsh. He came from Dublin, had no baggage and doggedly worked with the clergy to restore esteem. It would not have been possible to transform the situation with the same incumbent bishop. The same applies to Cloyne. The sooner Bishop Magee accepts reality the quicker a fresh start can be made.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, January 15, 2009