Two Church issues that won’t go away

YOUR columnist Rónán Mullen went to bat regularly for Pope John Paul II and on various occasions he has also defended US President George W Bush. But he seems to have an aversion to tackling the really difficult issues.

For example, John Paul II insisted that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was wrong and would be a disaster. Would Rónán care to explain why he thinks the Pope was wrong.

The response of the institutional Church to clerical child and female sexual abuse is wrong and is also a disaster. Maybe Rónán would like to explain why it’s right that two cardinals, Bernard Law and Desmond Connell, could participate in the election of the new Pope in the light of their response to paedophilia among the clergy in their respective dioceses.

The case of Fr Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, is scandalous. He was accused of serial sexual abuse in testimonies by seminarians claiming to have been abused by him.

The case of Juliusz Paetz, Archbishop of Poznan in Poland, who was a member of the papal household in the ’90s, was equally scandalous. He was convicted in 2001 by an internal church inquiry of sexually abusing seminarians in his diocese and was forced to resign. Some of the most shocking cases of all occurred in Africa.

In 1995, Sr Maura O’Donoghue, a medical Missionary of Mary nun, presented a report to Cardinal Eduardo Martinez, alleging that Catholic clergy in 29 different countries were sexually abusing nuns. This, and other similar reports, arose in the context of the AIDS pandemic in Africa. The official response has been late, minimalist and totally ineffective.

The issue of clerical abuse of the vulnerable won’t go away in the absence of very radical self-criticism by the bishops and the new Pope.

I would be interested in Rónán’s considered response to just these two issues.

Con Hayes

Ath Trasna

Kerry Road

Tower

Blarney

Co Cork