Despite the failings the congregation still came to worship

FOR so long Bishop John Magee’s toughest battle in St Colman’s Cathedral was in trying to change and modernise an ancient structure that was protected by law.

In doing so he battled the civil planning authorities and, from his rostrum, told parishioners that he should be allowed build as he pleased because under the Constitution “every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs”.

At Mass yesterday, St Colman’s traditional edifice stood proud while Dr Magee skulked away in hiding.

And all this because he protected an institution that refused to change, modernise or respect the law.

Despite the bishop’s best intentions the cathedral remained, as it was, intact.

And despite his worst failures the congregation came, as they always had, to worship inside it.

Like elsewhere the numbers were small and the crowd was largest on the back 15 pews.

At the entrance massgoers were confronted by the letter of apology and explanation from their caretaker bishop, Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel.

Very few people carried or read directly from the letter of Archbishop Clifford. They explained afterwards that they were already well aware of its contents.

They were also less interested in what Dr Clifford had to say than what Dr Magee had not said since the publication of the terrible report on his tenure last week.

His palace was seemingly empty across from St Colman’s and Dr Magee was nowhere to be found.

Instead, at midday Mass, Reverend John McCarthy had to pause at the beginning of the celebration and ask for all prayers to be devoted to those who suffered because of his superiors’ failings.

“Today, we join together as acommunity to pray for the survivors in particular, who will continue to suffer trauma and memories of abuse,” he said.

Later, as Fr McCarthy read out the apology, a young child, oblivious to the message’s disgusting origins, played loudly.

This boy and the others who turned up were left sombre in the shadow of those who were holed up elsewhere.

A woman reading the Prayers of the Faithful had to make three different appeals for prayers for those abused and the people dealing with the fallout.

The response from the congregation was muted. This was after the Gospel coincidentally sought to offer an explanation for what had gone on in their name.

Fr McCarthy read the parable, which told how a good field of wheat was sabotaged by enemies planting seeds of darnel weed to corrupt the crop.

Reading the words of St Matthew, Fr McCarthy told how the darnel was allowed thrive until harvest time to avoid destroying the entire crop. They were only weeded out on the last day.

“The field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil.

“The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age,” he said.

Fr McCarthy, and the other priests left to pick up the pieces, had formed their vocation in the same seminaries as the 19 clerics named in the Cloyne report.

But it had taken until last week for these suspects to be publicly weeded out.

As Fr McCarthy stood at the altar where those now tarnished once towered, he tried to explain why these weeds and the evil they committed were allowed to blossom by both God and by his Church.

“These [events] challenge our faith in God and yet we believe God works through us. We are called to be the good seed in today’s world.

“We, though seemingly small in number, are called to be a good influence in today’s world... [But] why does evil and sin exist alongside good we do not know. That is the mystery of evil that can never be solved.”