Innocent religious should not be victims of a rush to judgement

PEOPLE may have felt a sense of betrayal over the disclosure that Bishop Eamon Casey had fathered a son, but in the last analysis it was their own sense of innocence that was exposed.

He ultimately became the victim of a system that preyed on ignorance for far too long.

For generations 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 hierarchy. It was as if the concept of infallibility was invested in the Irish Catholic Church.

Eamon Casey was admired because he seemed to be such a human bishop.

He had displayed a deep love of humanity with magnificent work for the poor, forgotten Irish people in Britain.

Hundreds of thousands of poorly educated Irish people emigrated to Britain in search of a living and found themselves stranded there in old age.

Our government didn’t give a damn, but Eamon Casey made a name for himself, as a young priest, helping those people. This was forgotten, however, because of his human failings.

Sure, as the saying goes, it could happen to a bishop. One pope died in bed with his mistress, and another not only had a son, but also arranged for the son to succeed him. In more recent times, Cardinal Cody of Chicago died while under criminal indictment as a result of his long-term involvement with a woman, and Cardinal Jean Danielou died on the stairs of a Paris brothel as he was going to visit a young prostitute.

Some of those who knew the cardinal argued that the visit was just part of his priestly duties. “The press aired all the expected innuendoes,” according to the British Dominican Timothy Radcliffe. “But, as far as I could see, he was a holy man being a good priest. In a way it was the perfect place for a cardinal to die.”

Wow!

In many respects the Casey affair opened this country up to a healthy scepticism and ultimately helped to undermine the temporal power of the Church here. Only a few years earlier, for instance, the Catholic hierarchy had played a leading role in persuading people to reject constitutional change that would have provided for divorce.

By the end of the decade the constitution was changed and we had not only a taoiseach who was effectively divorced but also a president who had even more effectively told the bishops where to go when they had the audacity to criticise her for receiving communion in a Protestant church.

People had finally matured. A public opinion poll found that 78% of the people approved of the president’s conduct in defying the bishops.

As the clerical paedophile disclosures developed from a flood to a deluge, Archbishop Desmond Connell publicly stated that his biggest problem was that Eamon Casey kept showing his face.

The Gospels tell us that the prodigal son should be welcomed home, but welcoming Bishop Casey was just too much for the Irish bishops until the week of the Ferns report when the current Bishop of Galway said he would welcome Bishop Casey home. Of course, they probably would have quietly welcomed even Joe Stalin that week because he would have taken some of the spotlight off the Ferns disclosures.

Since then we have had the new allegations against Eamon Casey.

Doesn’t it seem strange that, despite all the hype over the past 13 years, there was no hint of any kind of paedophile allegation against him, and now this one comes like a bolt out of the blue?

The coverage given to an unspecified charge by an unidentified woman about something that allegedly happened sometime up to 30 years ago has lent an unwarranted degree of credence to the allegation, even though the accuser reportedly “made similar unproven claims against others” in the past.

Would the media have carried a report of such a vague allegation made against a bank manager or a lawyer? This does not mean the allegation should be dismissed without being seriously considered, but it was grossly unfair to seek Bishop Casey’s removal without even knowing the nature of the complaint. The whole thing is taking on the aspect of an old-fashioned witch-hunt. Why did the woman wait for up to 30 years before making the allegation?

It was timely that the Nora Wall case was back in the news the same week. The Court of Criminal Appeal found she was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. It would be hard to come up with a more evil scenario than having a nun invite a down-and-out alcoholic to rape a ten-year-old girl while she held the girl down. It seemed incredible, but the court convicted the nun.

WHAT was the message - as a people, we are now ready to believe any allegation against the religious? One of the two main witnesses, Patricia Phelan, has since stated that the alleged victim, Regina Walsh, told her she had filed a complaint with the gardaí and asked her also to make a statement, if asked. Patricia Phelan testified at the Wall trial that she had witnessed the rape through a doorway. This provided vital corroborative evidence, but she later admitted she was lying.

In the wake of the guilty verdict there was an amount of media coverage, especially in the tabloids.

One of them ran an outrageous story because at the time it would have seemed impossible to defame Nora Wall.

She subsequently sued the tabloid and was awarded €175,000 in damages.

Reading one of the post-trial stories, a Kilkenny businessman recognised Patricia Phelan as the woman who had made false allegations against him in a case that was thrown out of the High Court, as she was considered an unreliable witness.

The DPP had instructed that she should not be called as a witness in the Wall case and the defence tried to have sentencing suspended until the matter could be fully investigated, but the court refused.

Judge Paul Carney clearly believed the charges had been proven, and he sentenced Wall to life in prison - an unprecedented sentence for rape in this country.

The late Paul McCabe, who was accused of the actual rape, was given a 12-year jail term.

After four days the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed their sentences at the request of the Director of Public Prosecutions. On Thursday of this week the same court finally ruled that the whole case was a miscarriage of justice.

For too long in this country the plight of people in residential institutions was ignored. Their complaints against the religious who ran the institutions were not taken seriously.

Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction, but that is not right either. If anyone thinks it is fair that Eamon Casey or any priest, brother or nun should be railroaded, they have a perverted sense of justice.