Action needed on child abuse, not just words

TALK is cheap.

In response to the decades of clerical child abuse to which the Church authorities and law makers acquiesced, I hereby declare that the time for revolutionary speeches has long since passed and action is needed.

Although Mr Kenny’s speech is welcomed by many, including victims of clerical child abuse and the Dalia Lama, it fails to address the central issue: the failure on the part of the Irish legislature to foresee and act on the part of its people where situations of abuse were being reported and ignored.

Through this failure the legislature upheld the idea of elitism in which Church officials hold themselves above the letter of the law.

Mr Kenny in his speech describes clearly the, ‘dysfunction, disconnection and elitism ... the narcissism ... that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day’. In essence his critiques imply that the Catholic Church has failed in its moral duty to its people and that they continue to do the same by placing themselves above the law.

The thought of placing on trial those individuals within the hierarchy of the Church is a penumbra of sorts as the church itself has placed itself above the law. By failing to report matters of clerical sexual abuse to law enforcers the judiciary has not had an opportunity to wade its way into these waters and victims of clerical sexual abuse have not had the opportunity to question those who defiled them in a manner which offends not only thought, but also the natural law. Further, the failure to try individuals within the Church’s hierarchy is a violation of the right to fair procedure and due process.

We live in a country where an individual can be jailed subject to the jurisdiction of the District Court for failure to pay a television licence because the law says it is so.

Comparatively this law seems fundamentally flawed, when we consider the children who were abused by clergy members and those clergy members benefiting from the protection of the Catholic Church and going untried by the courts.

Until investigations are carried out by the gardaí and forwarded on to the Attorney General’s office with a view to prosecution all those individuals involved continue to receive the protection of Irish law makers and that failure no longer belongs to the Church alone, but to the law makers and those who find themselves privileged to information pertaining to mistakes of the past.

Lorraine Wall

Bantry

Co Cork