It happened to a bishop but the cardinal was even more to blame

IN A public opinion poll published this week, 56% of the people surveyed in the Galway diocese felt that Bishop Eamonn Casey should not be required to explain his past actions.

This finding was obviously because he has already done so.

Nobody needs to know the explicit details of how Peter Murphy was conceived. We also know that when confronted with extortionist tactics, the bishop "borrowed" £70,000 from diocesan funds, because he was unable to get hold of money due to him. That was wrong, but the money has been returned in full, with interest. We don't need a judicial tribunal to investigate any of it.

Some 74% of the people think that Bishop Casey should be allowed to return to Galway either in retirement, as a bishop, or in some other ministry.

"I want to be able to go home a free person," Bishop Casey told the late Veronica Guerin during an interview in November 1993.

But Desmond Connell, the Archbishop of Dublin, left little doubt in a subsequent interview that Bishop Casey would not be welcome. He described the scandal involving the bishop as a low point of his own period as Archbishop of Dublin.

"There is," he said in an interview with the Sunday Business Post, "an obligation to repair scandal because people have been deeply disturbed, not by the initial revelation of say, the Bishop Casey scandal, when there was a wave of compassion, but by the subsequent behaviour of Bishop Casey."

That sounds as though he's saying that the Annie Murphy affair and the "borrowing" from diocesan funds were not of great consequences; rather, it was Bishop Casey's subsequent behaviour that was the real problem.

"Every so often he seems to come back and tear open the wounds again," the archbishop explained. "What worries me is that he doesn't seem to have any conception of the damage, the injury which has been caused, particularly to young people."

There it is! The archbishop's main concern was the young people that Eamonn Casey damaged by giving bad example.

"It has to be said," Dr Connell insisted. "I know that people were utterly shocked when they saw him appear in episcopal insignia in Cork. The scandal is there. He turns up at the World Cup, and the scandal is reinforced."

Bishop Casey quietly returned to Cork for the funeral of his brother-in-law, a good, loving man who gave up his career to look after his invalid wife, the bishop's sister. It was an outrage to suggest that there was anything improper about the bishop's attendance at that funeral, and the idea there was something wrong about

being seen at a football game was utterly ludicrous.

If you believe that the archbishop was primarily concerned about the damage being done to young people, you probably also believe that the cow jumped over the moon, and the dish ran away with the spoon. It has nothing to do with protecting children; it was all about protecting the power and prestige of clerical institutions.

The arguments that the archbishop used in relation to Eamonn Casey were a portent of his own appalling judgement.

But he did not learn. He repeatedly made the same mistake in relation to the clerical paedophiles, to the point that the institutions he was trying to protect have been disgraced, and his own position is now utterly untenable.

Eamonn Casey did no damage to young people by providing living proof that the princes of the church are not paragons of virtue that they are really only human. Is there anyone, including the cardinal himself, so naive as to believe that Bishop Casey did more harm to young people than the clerical paedophiles that the

Archdiocese was protecting, and even

facilitating?

It is noteworthy that the recent survey found the highest support for the bishop's return is to be found among people in the age-bracket from 18 to 24. They are adopting the Christian attitude from which the so-called Church leaders should learn.

The Casey affair probably did rock the superstitious complacency of those older people who liked to think or pretend that an episcopal appointment was like some kind of seal of divine perfection.

In the process Casey unwittingly did more than anyone to shock people into the world of reality. For too long people in this country were prepared to tolerate and even facilitate the covering up of the outrageous behaviour of clerical paedophiles, but after Bishop Casey fled, the spell was broken.

It was largely thanks to Eamonn Casey that people finally began to question the clerical misbehaviour of Fr Brendan Smyth and others.

The superstition which led to the according of a supernatural prestige to the hierarchy, has been largely undermined. For generations too many Irish people shirked their responsibility to inform their own consciences and think for themselves, preferring instead to follow blindly the dictates of the clergy and the hierarchy with an unquestioning loyalty.

We now know how foolish this was, and the Casey affair initially did an enormous amount to highlight that foolishness. That was the main reason that Desmond Connell was so annoyed that he sought to depict Bishop Casey as a disgrace, who should be kept in permanent exile.

The pseudo-moralists keep telling us that Bishop Casey was living the life of a hypocrite, because he espoused standards that he did not live up to himself.

We are all supposed to strive for perfection, but we know that, given human nature real perfection is an unattainable aspiration for everyone from the Pope as well as the humblest person. Nobody accuses a smoker of being a hypocrite when he advises people not to start smoking. So why should people condemn a bishop because he has broken some commandment?

The sixth commandment is not more important than all the others, even if the Irish Catholic Church has talked about sexual sins as if they are the worst sins. Could this be because they are all so damn frustrated themselves, as a result of the unnatural celibacy law?

Now 82% of the people in Galway believe that priests should be allowed to marry. When Christ chose His apostles, nearly all of them were married men. But for the past millennium His Church has been run by people with the arrogance to behave as if they were improving on Him.

Love and forgiveness are supposed to be the fundamental pillars of Christianity. But there was little evidence of either love or forgiveness in Cardinal Connell's attitude towards Eamonn Casey, who has apologised and asked for forgiveness. He wronged both his son and the boy's

mother.

"I have grievously wronged Peter and his mother Annie Murphy. I have also sinned grievously against God, His church and the clergy and people of the dioceses of Galway and Kerry," he declared in the statement that he issued as he fled the country. "I have confessed my sins to God and I have asked His forgiveness, as I ask yours."

If he had called a press conference and said that on camera, the whole thing would probably have been little more than a seven-day wonder.

Eamonn Casey was popular as a bishop because he seemed so human. Are people supposed to remain in permanent shock because of his human failings?

Sure, as the saying goes, it could have happened to a bishop!