Fergus Finlay: Why do we still allow religious orders to exist?

They should wind up their affairs and hand their assets over to the State: Until they do, the apologies are just spin and bluster

The Spiritans, also known as the Holy Ghost Order, last week confirmed that its records indicate 233 people have made allegations of abuse against 77 Irish Spiritans in ministries throughout Ireland and overseas. Picture: RollingNews.ie

DAY after day last week, Joe Duffy outlined a history of abuse and cover-up, all perpetrated by a religious order called the Holy Ghost Fathers. A few of the priests were named. Apparently, every time Joe Duffy’s programme got hold of the name of a priest they asked the religious order to confirm it. Once they had confirmation, they used the name of the priest on air.

It’s going to take them a while to name them all. The National Safeguarding Body in the Catholic Church published an “audit” of the Holy Ghosts in 2012. In that, they identified (though they didn’t name) 48 priests against whom allegations have been made since 1975.

The Holy Ghosts have apologised, of course. Through a public relations company, no doubt. The default position of these entities when they stand accused of abuse and cover up is to regard it as a PR problem.

When that earlier audit was published — the one that identified 48 alleged abusers in the order — the Holy Ghosts issued a statement: “What happened to these victims and their families is inexcusable. As a religious congregation we are filled with shame, but our shame cannot compare with the immense suffering and hurt experienced by victims and their loved ones.”

While they were apologising the order fought (successfully) right up to the Supreme Court to prevent two people ( Mark and David Ryan) who had been savagely abused as children from ever seeing their abuser face a court. The hypocrisy of these organisations is boundless.

Listening to it all, something finally dawned on me. It has taken me the whole of my adult life to recognise it, and that makes me even slower than I thought I was. But I see it now: Why do we still allow these religious orders to exist? They are nothing more than vehicles for corruption and abuse, and they need to be shut down.

There are more than 150 of them in Ireland. You’ll find them on a website helpfully called catholicireland.net, which describes itself as an online source of information and inspiration.

Religious orders should have no recognition in law.

They should not be allowed to incorporate themselves as companies or as charities. They should not be allowed to be heard in the courts. They should never be allowed to present to the Houses of the Oireachtas or to lobby the government. They should under no circumstances be allowed to collect money from the public.

They should not be allowed to own property in the name of the order, nor to buy and sell property. They should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to run any entity — school, hospital, or any other institution — that is funded in whole or in part by the State.

I know good and decent people who are members of religious orders — my late brother, whom I loved — was one, and I have other relatives I’ve written about before. But I don’t know any religious order that is capable of refuting the accusation that it is, in its essence, a corrupt and secret society.

They are all unbelievably rich. We have made them so, in our personal and family contributions and by giving them huge amounts of public money to do things we asked them to do (like teach and protect our children).

Billions in assets

If you don’t believe they are rich, it’s not actually that hard to find out some of the basics. Take the little-known, at least until recently, Spiritans (they were better known as the Holy Ghost Fathers) who presided over the abuse of children in Blackrock College. (Or you could take the Jesuits, who protected abusers in Belvedere College and other schools, or the Carmelites, whose protected abuser destroyed lives in Terenure College.)

But let’s talk about the Spiritans for a moment.

Because, in addition to whatever else they are, the Spiritans have chosen to register themselves as a charity, we know a tiny bit about them from public sources. They claim to exist in order to carry out religious activities, to relieve poverty, to educate and train others, to provide overseas aid and famine relief, and to provide accommodation to those in need. That’s what they say, anyway, although you mightn’t have seen much evidence of any of that on the ground.

In the last year for which they reported, they had an income of just under €19m. A little over €2m came from donations, another €2m or so came from commercial activities (presumably from their large land holdings) and €14m from the State.

This “charity” declares itself as possessing net assets of €165m. That’s an enormous amount — but given the huge amount of land and prestigious buildings it owns on the south side of Dublin alone, I would guess that €165m is a conservative estimate.

But if you take them as one example, and if you have the time and energy to search some of the others, it won’t take you long to realise that the 150 religious orders in Ireland control several billions in assets. A lot of the searching you’d need to do is through public documents, but some of the really cunning entities — the Christian Brothers, for instance — hide their wealth successfully in private charitable trusts.

Power leads to corruption

These corrupt, wealthy secret societies were invented to do good. I’m not sure why it was ever considered a good idea for groups of single men to live together in tight secret communities and to be given almost total power over the lives of children, but that was the basis on which they were founded and built. I don’t know when the corruption started, but I do know that power —especially power exercised with impunity — always leads to corruption.

In Ireland, the corruption goes hand in hand with the overall power of the church itself. Certainly, throughout the last century in Ireland, that power was exercised through fear, and it was unrelenting.

I've just finished reading a powerful book of short stories by the retired journalist, John Devine. One of the stories, ‘The Mission’, transported me instantly back to my own childhood being forced to attend the missions in Bray, and listening to priests thundering from the pulpit about things I didn’t understand — occasions of sin, impure thoughts, the certainty of hell. It was an exercise in control and nothing more than that.

But we know now from a whole series of reports, all available now for a decade or more, that one of the main uses of that control was to give impunity to abusers.

Ultimately, abusers were protected by the obsequious relationship between church and state.

Although that has changed now (I hope) at least to the point where people who are abused are more often believed, and abuse is often more thoroughly investigated, it is still the case that religious orders are cosseted and sheltered in their dealings with the state. That needs to end.

If there was any real honour or meaning to the PR apologies of the religious orders, they’d be winding up their affairs and handing their assets over to the State. Until they do that, their apologies are all spin and bluster.