Child abuse: the system is rotten

THE Minister for Children, Barry Andrews, had the audacity to assume that role in government while refusing to publish the report into child abuse in the Cloyne diocese which he had in his possession for several months.

Your editorial (December 17) asked the pertinent questions concerning his motives: “Whose interests is he representing? Who is he trying to protect? What is he trying to hide? Why is the senior minister in the department, Mary Harney, not insisting that the report be published?”

The simple answer to these important questions is that our whole system — political and religious — is rotten to the core.

Since the foundation of the State every Taoiseach and all relevant ministers and other lower-ranking politicians colluded in the concealment of cruel physical, emotional and sexual abuse heaped by heartless, evil clergy and religious upon innocent children and the most vulnerable in our society such as widows and orphans.

Bishops such as John Magee say they are guided by the Vatican document, Crimen Sollicitationis, written by the present Pope Benedict XV1 while he was then Cardinal Ratzinger.

Crimen Sollicitationis, which was also given the papal seal of approval by Pope John XXIII and distributed secretly to the clergy in 1962, commands, under threat of excommunication, that every incident of clerical and religious rape and sexual, emotional and physical abuse committed by them against widows and orphans and altar boys should be covered up.

So we should not be surprised at Bishop Magee’s lengthy silence on the matter.

Patrick Geaney

13 South Bank

Swords

Co Dublin