Institutional Abuse

[Wasp]

Institutional Abuse

By Diana Rusk
Irish News
03/11/09

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES:

FOR most of her life, 54-year-old Deirdre Harper has been petrified of water. She says the fear stems from an incident during her childhood when her head was repeatedly forced under water after she took a bath at the wrong time.

Other memories of those days include the time her face was pushed into urine-soaked sheets to punish her for wetting the bed.

Then there are the countless beatings she endured from a leather strap that hung near a string of Rosary beads and the times she was pulled up flights of stairs by her hair.

Deirdre was one of hundreds of disadvantaged children taken into the care of the religious order, the Sisters of Nazareth, and placed into Nazareth House in south Belfast.

Behind the red-bricked walls of the Ormeau Road building, some of the sisters charged with caring for the children are instead alleged to have subjected them to physical violence and mental abuse.

Decades later, nine former residents have made claims for compensation against the religious order.

The Sisters of Nazareth have already settled two claims while the remaining seven are being pursued through solicitors.

Deirdre is one of two other former residents who have instead dealt directly with the order to try to get some closure.

She also wants her story heard.

“A public apology from the Sisters of Nazareth and the Catholic Church would be a start,” the mother-of-two said.

“The abuse that went on in Nazareth House was horrendous.”

Deirdre, then O’Donoghue, was born in Limerick but moved to Belfast shortly after her air-traffic controller father developed an addiction to alcohol and lost his job.

She and her two elder sisters were removed from her family home by the NSPCC in 1959 and dispatched into the care of the Sisters of Nazareth.

“I was four years old and taken to the nursery department while my two older sisters were taken to another department,” she said.

“I could only see them through the iron gates in the yard which separated both departments. I would scream and cry for them to come to me but this was not allowed.

“My time in the nursery wasn’t too bad except for being away from my sisters. There was a nice nun in charge who would give me a cuddle when I was upset. The nightmare began when I left the nursery.”

An early photograph of Deirdre shows her smiling beside the other children in the home as they enjoy playing on a slide during a Christmas party.

In the background, however, she claims the reality was much different and that her childhood memories are filled with emotional terror.

She claims she was punished for wetting the bed, taking a bath at the wrong time and, when she ran away once, she was dragged by the hair up several flights of stairs and locked in a storeroom.

Presents given to her during brief stays with her aunt and uncle were taken away when she returned to Nazareth House and a strap that hung from the nun’s belt was used to beat her and the other children.

At night-time there were checks to ensure all the children slept on their backs with their arms crossed over their bodies – “so that if we died in our sleep we would go to heaven”.

“Saturdays were spent polishing floors. I was down on my knees doing my best to get a good shine on the floor,” she recalled.

“Whichever nun came to inspect my work, if it wasn’t good enough I was grabbed by my hair and swung about.”

Except for the brief outings to Ormeau Park where she “could be a child for a while”, she said she felt like a prisoner in the children’s home.

“The cruelty that went on behind those walls still haunts me now at the age of 54,” she said.

“I was a child who took the beatings and accepted it as the norm as it was all I knew.

“Seeing other children taking a beating was horrendous to watch knowing there was nothing we could do to help each other.”

The Poor Sisters of Nazareth were founded in the mid-19th century in Hammersmith, London, to take care of the young and the old. There were Nazareth Houses all over Britain, Ireland, Australia and South Africa.

The home on the Ormeau Road was opened in 1876 as a home for the children and the elderly. There was also a school on the site but all care for children stopped more than a quarter of a century ago.

Of the nuns that Deirdre claims abused her, two are dead, one is the subject of a civil case from another former resident and the fourth has been described by the order as being in “poor and frail health”.

During meetings with the order, the nuns were unable to give Deirdre any answers to her allegations blaming institutional practices at the time.

She has received an apology of sorts through a letter from Sr Mary Anne Monaghan, the superior-general of Nazareth House.

“I am pained and sorry that the years you spent in the care of Nazareth House have left you with unhappy memories,” it stated.

“I am sorry for anything that you feel was done to you by the Sisters of Nazareth that may have caused you suffering or anguish.

“It is a matter of profound regret to the Sisters and to me that your time with us has left you with those painful memories.

“Unfortunately we cannot change the past. I hope your contact with us over this last while will help ease, insofar as is possible, some of the hurt and distress you feel.

“I also hope that it may help you get on with your life, despite your pain, in a positive and fulfilling way.”

While some of those living in Nazareth House have come forward about their abuse, others are only beginning to gather the courage.

Stella Percival, originally from Randalstown, Co Antrim, only decided to look into her past earlier this year when she got a computer and learned how to use the internet.

She has never spoken to lawyers or sought compensation from the religious order.

The 57-year-old searched the term ‘Nazareth House’ and found a group of survivors of the regime speaking out about their childhoods.

“I was just a baby when my mother left me there. She was an unmarried mother and she later went to England to live,” she said.

“I was there from 1951, the year I was born, until I was 16. Even then I had to work for them for a year when I left school.

“The one thing I remember about the abuse was that I used to wet my bed until I was 13.

“We used to be terrified because we had to line up in the mornings outside the nuns room and we would get an awful beating if you did it.

“So we used to make our beds up and pretend we were dry so at night we would climb back into a soaking wet bed rather than face another beating.”

Like many children, she was frightened of the dark but she claims she was made to stand on a stage with the light switched off.

“I was so afraid because it was pitch black and I would be left there for hours at a time.”

“These experiences have affected my whole life.”

“I would like an apology for the terrible times we had in their care.

“I would not like a face-to-face meeting because I think I would feel too intimidated and would feel sick if I had to meet them after all these years.

“I would like the public to know how we were treated and I also think we should all get compensation.

“I know that people brought up in homes in the south of Ireland have received it and America and Australia so we should be entitled to it too.

“Some people have already got compensation and we were all in there at the same time so why not us?

“I do plan to put in for this myself. It is not greed. They ruined our life. I never went out for years and I was so brainwashed I was afraid of any one in charge. I could never speak up for myself. I was as timid as a mouse.

“One good thing that did come out of all that was that I swore my children would never experience anything like that and I would have died before they ever got taken into care.

“They made my life worth living.”

Sr Patricia Enright, a spokeswoman from the Sisters of Nazareth, said there have been complaints about the care of children at the Ormeau Road institution.

“Since 1995, nine former residents of Nazareth House, Belfast have made a claim for compensation against the Sisters of Nazareth,” she said.

“Two of those cases have been settled by the Sisters of Nazareth.

“The other cases are being handled by the solicitors for the claimants and the Sisters of Nazareth have engaged with them.

“Two other persons have made complaints to the sisters about their treatment in Nazareth House and the sisters have engaged with them also.”

[Jim]

Its shocking and these people should be brought to justice

[collina]

Nov 6, 2009 20:24:39 GMT Jim said:

Its shocking and these people should be brought to justice

Here, here.

[Wasp]

Church relationship with Irish society has itself been abusive

The Irish Times – Saturday, November 28, 2009

FINTAN O’TOOLE

OPINION: The Roman Catholic Church’s great achievement in Ireland has been to so disable our capacity to think about right and wrong that parents of abused children apologised for the abusing priest

IN HIS pastoral letter of February 1979, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Ryan drew attention to the “corruption of the young”. And he was quite specific about the forces that were responsible for it. He attacked “the modern era of enlightenment and permissiveness”, and stated that “the new frankness and openness in regard to sexual matters had not made people more healthy in mind and body, but less healthy”.

The corollary of Archbishop Ryan’s complaint was, of course, that a lack of frankness and openness in sexual matters would make for a healthier society, and would protect the young from corruption. Like the three other holders of the office scrutinised in the Murphy report, Ryan certainly practised the first part of what he preached. He was a great enemy of openness and frankness, and a great practitioner of the arts of evasion and cover-up. It was the second part of the formula – the protection of the young – that gave him trouble.

In 1981, for example, Ryan sent a Father X as curate to Clogher Road church in the Dublin Corporation housing estate of Crumlin. He knew that this man was a dangerous and manipulative paedophile who was set on attacking children, as Ryan himself noted, “from six to 16”. He knew that X cultivated parents who involved themselves in school or parish activities so as to gain access to their children.

He knew that in one previous case, “Having got access to the home through this acquaintanceship, Father X abused a young son of six years of age.”

Yet not alone did Ryan send X to Crumlin to continue his assaults on children, but he colluded with the activities of his auxiliary bishop, James Kavanagh, in interfering in a criminal investigation into X’s behaviour, persuading one set of parents not to press charges against the priest.

As the commission concludes, Ryan took a “close personal interest” in the case of Fr X: “He protected Fr X to an extraordinary extent; he ensured, as far as he could, that very few people knew about his activities; it seems that the welfare of children simply did not play any part in his decisions.”

In attempting to come to terms with the institutionalised depravity of the Roman Catholic Church’s systematic collaboration with child abusers, it is useful to start by considering the contradiction between Ryan’s preaching about the “corruption of the young” and his role as a facilitator of sexual assaults on children.

Is there, indeed, a contradiction at all? Or are we not, rather, dealing with two sides of the same debased coin?

The arrogance and obscurantism of a church leadership that could rail against openness and frankness is in fact completely consistent with the same hierarchy’s consistent preference for secrecy over truth and for self-interest over the interests of children and families.


When all the numbing details of the report are absorbed, we have to reassemble the big picture of the institutional church’s relationship with Irish society. And we have to say that that relationship itself has been an abusive one. The church leadership behaved towards society with the same callousness, the same deviousness, the same exploitative mentality, and the same blindly egotistical pursuit of its own desires that an abuser shows towards his victim.

It is important to say that this is not a comment on the Catholic faith. “The Church,” as the report puts it, “is not only a religious organisation but also a human/civil instrument of control and power”. It is this second aspect – the instrument of control and power – that we have to understand.

We know that all institutions and subcultures have the capacity to create systems of denial and self-protection – think, for example, of the toleration of paedophiles within Irish swimming, or the support of artists and intellectuals for the child rapist Roman Polanski.

But in the case of the institutional Catholic Church we have an organisation with an unusually powerful mechanism of self-protection: the capacity to convince the society it is abusing to take part in the cover-up. The damage the church has done to Irish society lies in the ways it has involved that society in the maintenance of an abusive instrument of control and power.

It is easy to miss a central aspect of this whole scandal. The report is concerned with the actions of the church authorities and describes in damning detail their sense of being above the law of the land. (Cardinal Desmond Connell, for example, told the commission that “the greatest crisis in my position as Archbishop” was not, as might be imagined, his discovery of appalling criminality among his clergy, or even his own disingenuous public claims that “I have compensated nobody”, but the decision to allow gardaí access to diocesan files.) But it is striking that parents, teachers and wider communities seldom went to the police either.

This was not a matter of ignorance. It is clear that some of the paedophiles were not secretive and cunning, but reckless and flagrant. In the early 1970s, for example, Fr James McNamee, who had built a swimming pool in his house into which only young boys were allowed, was so notorious among the children in his Crumlin parish that “whenever the older boys in the area saw Fr McNamee, they either ran away or started throwing things and shouting insults at Fr McNamee. Apparently he was known as ‘Father smack my gee’.” If children were shouting abuse at a priest in 1970s Ireland, adults undoubtedly noticed. They must have known why.

Similarly, the appalling Patrick Maguire, who may have abused hundreds of children in Ireland, the UK and Japan, became, as the report notes, “astonishingly brazen”. He actually told the parents of a child he had just abused that the boy had a problem with his testicles. “Not surprisingly, the parents wondered how he had discovered that.”

Yet in most cases, parents who knew their children had been abused went to the bishop, not to the Garda. There may have been a mistrust of the Garda (sometimes well founded), or a fear of exposure in the courts. But, in Archbishop Ryan’s internal notes on the Father X case there is a more extraordinary explanation: “The parents involved have, for the most part, reacted with what can only be described as incredible charity. In several cases, they were quite apologetic about having to discuss the matter and were as much concerned for the priest’s welfare as for their child and other children.” UNBELIEVABLE


This was the church’s great achievement in Ireland. It had so successfully disabled a society’s capacity to think for itself about right and wrong that it was the parents of an abused child, not the bishop who enabled that abuse, who were “quite apologetic”.

It had managed to create a flock who, in the face of an outrageous violation of trust, would be more concerned about the abuser than about those he had abused and might abuse in the future. It had inserted its own “instrument of control and power” so deeply into the minds of the faithful that they could scarcely even feel angry about the perpetration of disgusting crimes on their own children.

This is, of course, precisely what paedophiles do to the children they abuse. They convince them that they are the guilty ones. The well-meaning local priest to whom Marie Collins – who has been a key figure in bringing this scandal to light – disclosed the fact that she had been abused as a child in Crumlin children’s hospital, told her “not to feel any guilt about what had happened”. He then, however, told her that “if she had guilt I could give her absolution”.

The suggestion that the victim should be absolved of sin speaks for itself. And it had its effect – Marie Collins did not disclose the abuse again for a number of years.

This ultimate triumph of making the victims guilty and their parents apologetic produced both an underlying contempt for the laity (especially in the working-class parishes where abusers were generally sent) and a sense of belonging to an untouchable elite.

The religious superior of the serial abuser Patrick Maguire captured both when he advised him not to pay too much attention to the views of the therapist he was attending: “You are a priest and you should not allow any person other than yourself to conclude that you ought not remain in ministry, albeit a limited one. I am distrustful of the capacity of any layman or woman to know what it means to be a priest.”

What it meant to be a priest was that, in the eyes of the church authorities, you were held to a different standard than the mere layman or woman. It was not just that you were not subject to the law, but that you were not really subject to Catholic teaching either.

All the episcopal fulminations about sexual sin were for the benefit of the ordinary punters. For the priests, there was a much more tolerant attitude. While bleating about the permissive society, the archbishops were often flippant about the sexual crimes of the clergy. Cardinal Connell, for example, told Marie Collins that the action of an abuser in taking pictures of the genitalia of young girls in the hospital “was not serious as it only involved the taking of photographs”.

All of this did immense harm to the victims and to the church itself. But it also harmed Ireland as a whole. The abusive relationship between church and society in which people were induced to collude in the maintenance of a corrupt and cynical system of power and control screwed up the Irish relationship with authority.

It deeply damaged the democratic and republican notion that power comes from the people, by creating a culture of shame, of weakness and of collusion. It taught us to live with, and believe that we loved, an arrogant and unaccountable kind of authority.

If we are ever to awaken once and for all from the nightmare described by the commission, we have to unlearn that lesson and create forms of collective authority that are open, accountable, lawful and genuinely democratic.

[Blue Angel]

Over on a Catholic forum I've been talking about this with several other people from Ireland, including a Franciscan Brother, an Eastern Orthodox Clergyman and some others. The Franciscan Brother is deeply ashamed of the Irish Church right now, he went back to Dublin to work with young drug abusers after working in similar projects in America for many years. The EO clergyman has been saying he has had a number of Catholics looking to convert after they have researched his Church.

The Irish Church has acted in a truly appalling manner in this instance, they have brought scandal on the body of Christ and shamed Ireland and themselves. There can't be any sweeping all this back under the carpet and although those of us who call ourselves Christian must struggle to find forgiveness for even these actions we cannot ignore them and justice must be seen to be served.

[Wasp]

The Irish Church has acted in a truly appalling manner in this instance, they have brought scandal on the body of Christ and shamed Ireland and themselves. There can't be any sweeping all this back under the carpet and although those of us who call ourselves Christian must struggle to find forgiveness for even these actions we cannot ignore them and justice must be seen to be served.

BA no offence but this is not just about the irish Church, this is also about the head of the catholic church as in the vatican. The vatican used the excuse of the enquiry not going through the right channels, no channel would be wrong concerning such disgusting, shocking and perverted widespread behaviour.

The blame does not only lie with the irish church and you know it.

[Wasp]

BA here is a few points to ponder over concerning the vatican etc.

The Irish Times -

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Cowen shows he is 'second an Irishman, first a Catholic'


.................It is hardly unfair to suggest that in his doughty defence of the Vatican’s non-co-operation with a commission of this State, set up by a Government of which he was a member, our current Taoiseach has discovered he too is “an Irishman second”.

You might say the same of his dismissal of requests for him to call for the resignation of bishops currently in office and named in the Dublin report, as a matter for the church not the State.

Is it not truly remarkable that a Taoiseach of this State can be so sanguine about an institution whose officer class oversaw the mass cover-up of rape and abuse of children in this State?

And all this in the face of findings that this same institution, willy nilly, moved child rapists and child abusers hither and thither, without regard to the children they had or would destroy, as it protected itself. To be specific, the report concluded that “the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages”.

It continued that instead their focus “was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests.”

Instead of criticising the bishops, the Taoiseach pointed the finger at the commission in the Dáil last Tuesday. It was not “unreasonable to assume the Holy See was open to responding to a further approach through diplomatic channels” from the commission, he said. Similarly where the papal nuncio was concerned.

He said “neither is it unreasonable to assume that when the papal nuncio received correspondence from the commission, in February 2007 and earlier this year, both the present and previous papal nuncios believed the matter was more properly addressed by the diplomatic note”.

The Irish Times has learned that contacting the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in September 2006 the commission understood it was communicating with a church not a State. Similarly, in communicating with the papal nunciature in Dublin, it felt it was addressing the papal legate (pope’s spiritual representative) rather than the Vatican’s diplomatic representative.

As explained in its report, the commission felt constrained in communicating with the Vatican or papal nunciature to Ireland through diplomatic channels because of its own status as independent of this State. As its remit involved investigating how State agencies dealt with allegations of clerical child abuse, it felt constrained from using State diplomatic channels in dealing with Rome. It is also believed the commission was not consulted in preparation of the Taoiseach’s written reply on the matter which he read to the Dáil on Tuesday.

It is understood that though the commission wrote to the CDF in September 2006, it was March 2007 before the CDF responded to the Department of Foreign Affairs through the Irish Embassy to the Holy See, explaining its protocol difficulties. The papal nunciature in Dublin ignored all correspondence from the commission, in February 2007 and early 2009.

The commission was interested in the Vatican’s 1922 Crimen Solicitationis document, updated in 1962, which addressed clerical child abuse, and in its letter of May 2001 to all Catholic bishops worldwide.

Sent by then CDF prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela requested that all allegations of child sex abuse which had reached the threshold of “a semblance of truth” should be referred to the CDF in Rome.

The purpose of the letter, which was accompanied by separate correspondence also in Latin asking that it be kept secret, was to ensure a uniform response to the abuse issue, it was explained. According to the Dublin report the current chancellor of the Dublin archdiocese Mgr John Dolan told the commission that this 2001 CDF policy was later modified as “Rome was unable to deal with the vast number of referrals”.

AND

The Irish Times
Friday, December 4, 2009

O'Rourke rejects Cowen's defence of Vatican silence


Mary O'Rourke: criticised the 'discourtesy' of the Vatican and papal nuncio in not co-operating with the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

FIANNA FÁIL backbencher Mary O’Rourke has disagreed with the Taoiseach’s defence of the Vatican and papal nuncio who refused to co-operate with the Dublin diocesan report.

Ms O’Rourke, a former minister, referred to the “sheer discourtesy of a body called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or something with an equally convoluted title”.

She added: “This wonderful doctrine body, wherever it is, does not reply to letters.

“Consider the discourtesy of it, and the discourtesy of the head of the Vatican, parading around Ireland in his wonderful glitzy clothes, but not replying to letters and not seeing fit to talk to his counterpart . . . whoever that is. It is just not good enough.’’

AND

The Irish Times

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Cowen failed to communicate country's outrage at child abuse

THE TAOISEACH’S comments on how the Vatican and its representative in Ireland dealt with requests for information from the Murphy commission was extraordinary on a number of levels.

Both the tenor and content of the Taoiseach’s remarks in the Dáil this week suggested he was not only seeking to explain the Vatican’s failure to respond to the commission’s request, but was also seeking to excuse and even justify that failure.

It is a shame that the Taoiseach’s most high-profile intervention in the intense public debate following the publication of the Murphy report sounded defensive of the Vatican rather than adequately communicating the country’s outrage at the church’s connivance in the covering up of crime.

The Murphy commission’s report details how in September 2006 it wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome seeking details of any reports of clerical child sexual abuse conveyed by the Dublin archdiocese. It says the congregation did not reply but contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs, stating the commission had not used appropriate diplomatic channels..........................It is disappointing that the Taoiseach did not comment on the fact that the Vatican, which can at times be the most efficient bureaucracy in the world, took six months to reply to a commission of inquiry which by law was operating within a fixed timetable. It is even more regrettable that the Taoiseach offered no Government view on whether the Vatican was correct in its contention that the commission could only deal with it through diplomatic channels.

The tone of the Taoiseach’s remarks suggests agreement with the Vatican. If so, he is very much mistaken. How could one possibly expect, in the first decade of the 21st century, that a commission inquiring into the covering up of clerical child sex abuse by both the Irish Catholic Church and State authorities should channel questions to the Vatican about communications from Dublin bishops through some convoluted inter-state diplomatic post bag process? The Taoiseach should have seen this Vatican ruse for what it was. The Vatican raised these outdated and inapplicable diplomatic protocols in order to stall and ultimately avoid co-operating with the commission’s investigations.

There is no requirement in international law that a commission inquiring into church affairs deal with the Vatican only through diplomatic channels. The documents sought were reports about church affairs sent from Dublin archbishops to superiors in Rome and had nothing to do with the Vatican’s relations with the Government.

...............There is no legal or diplomatic impediment to the Vatican or the papal nuncio telling the commission of inquiry what, if any, relevant documents they have about clerical abuse cases in the Dublin diocese.

In an ideal world, the response of a Vatican chastened by international clerical abuse scandals would have been to send a letter by reply attaching relevant documents and offering any other assistance required.

For the Vatican, insisting on outdated diplomatic privileges is more important than co-operating with an investigation into how child abuse by their priests was covered up.

The Government should confront them on this. Next week when he meets the papal nuncio, the Minister for Foreign Affairs will get the opportunity to do just that.

Shocking stuff right from the bottom of the catholic churchs chain to the very top, especially concerning the horrid crimes of sex abuse committted by priests and nuns, covered up and protected by not only church leaders in ireland but in the vatican itself. Shame on them protecting paedos, filth.

[Wasp]

The more I read of this the more I am shocked at the actions of this so called church and even more confused why people are not protesting by NOT attending mass throughout the world in countries affected by this perverted behaviour??

The Irish Times

Friday, December 4, 2009

Talks with Brown on sex abuse urged

MARIE O'HALLORANA

CALL has been made for the Government to engage in direct talks with British prime minister Gordon Brown and the Northern Ireland Executive to address allegations of child sexual abuse in the North.

“There is no reason to believe that clerical sexual abuse stopped at the Border,” said Fine Gael spokesman on children Alan Shatter.

He also accused the Taoiseach of “defending the indefensible” when he “excused the conduct” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the papal nuncio. Mr Shatter said “it is a scandal the congregation and the Vatican relied on diplomatic protocol to avoid providing information to the Murphy commission”.

He also called for the papal nuncio and the CDF to appear before the Oireachtas health committee and he said no issue of protocol prevented the papal nuncio responding to the Murphy commission by letter “even as a matter of courtesy”.

During a resumed debate on the Murphy report, Mr Shatter said it should be remembered that “the Catholic Church authorities exercise their mandate throughout the whole island of Ireland. No redress board has been established to pay compensation to victims of institutional abuse in Northern Ireland, nor has a commission been established to investigate allegations of child abuse by priests there.

“I am calling on the Government to engage directly in discussions with the Northern Ireland Executive, the Northern Ireland secretary of state and with Gordon Brown . . . to seek the creation of structures to address allegations of clerical and institutional abuse in Northern Ireland.”

Criticising Mr Cowen, he said that “by his words he was not, as Taoiseach of this Republic, acting in the interests of our people but displaying in this House the undue deference to those in church authority”.

Mr Shatter also criticised Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern when, as minister for foreign affairs, he “failed to follow up the letter received by his department” from the CDF, which said the Murphy commission did not go through the appropriate diplomatic channels.

He said the minister should have followed up the letter to “ensure that the Murphy commission received the information and documentation it was seeking. The only conclusion that can be reached is that this failure to act was another example of undue deference being shown to Rome.”

Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews said he would be presenting heads of a Bill to Government which would include a proposal that the Garda vetting unit, based in Thurles, be put on a statutory basis with responsibility for the management of all information on child abuse.

He said legal advice had been sought about the powers of the Health Service Executive (HSE) to investigate and deal with instances of child abuse perpetrated outside the family; it was found the executive had the requisite powers.

[Wasp]

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who trusts in me to lose faith, it would be better for that person to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck

[Blue Angel]

Just a point WASP, anyone who is a devout Catholic will naturally be first a Catholic and then an Irishman, Englishman, Ulsterman etc. as obviously they will see a belief in eternal things as more important than the temporary realities of Ireland and Ulster etc.

[Wasp]

Dec 6, 2009 14:49:23 GMT Blue Angel said:

Just a point WASP, anyone who is a devout Catholic will naturally be first a Catholic and then an Irishman, Englishman, Ulsterman etc. as obviously they will see a belief in eternal things as more important than the temporary realities of Ireland and Ulster etc.

Thats a fair enough point BA but is that all you have to say about what I posted??

[Wasp]

Medb Ruane: Old Ireland wants to believe the Vatican is behaving well . . .

New Ireland can't believe its ears

By Medb Ruane


Saturday December 05 2009

Thierry Henry's handball was an outrage so what can you do? Brian Cowen couldn't fix it but he had a word with Nicolas Sarkozy. Bad faith, Nicolas.

A contrast to his statement on the Vatican who are acting 'in good faith,' he claims, by not responding to the Murphy commission on the Dublin archdiocese.

The sight of an Irish Taoiseach expressing regret -- and delivering a robust defence of the Vatican's non-cooperation -- was infinitely more shocking than Thierry's foul play. It was a moment when two Irelands collided, never mind two states.

Old Ireland wanted to believe that the Vatican did have children's best interests at heart. New Ireland could hardly believe its ears.

The moment is defining, but not as Cowen or the Vatican may wish. It's one of the first occasions when the Church's political identity was distinguished from its sacramental role. The Vatican was named in the same way as the US or UK, with Pope Benedict a head of state like Barack Obama or Gordon Brown, except that only 117 men were eligible to vote in Benedict's election, rather than hundreds of millions in the other states.

Records show that the Vatican has not supported countries trying to untangle the web of deceit covering child abuse crimes. Ireland is yet another place left hanging.

But post-Cowen this week, Ireland is the only country to have expressed its 'regret' for giving any wrong impression about the Vatican.

Doesn't good faith make an expression of Pope Benedict's 'regret' more appropriate?

Cowen was the voice of Old Ireland, protecting the Church's reputation by speaking it into the official Dáil record.

He said that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the Papal Nuncio (Vatican ambassador) didn't respond to the Murphy commission because they were approached the wrong way.

"It is regrettable that the failure to acknowledge either letter has given rise to the impression the Holy See was refusing to cooperate with the commission," he went on.

This amounts to expressing the State's regret, which is a step away from apologising to the Vatican on behalf of the Irish people -- and in public.

The Murphy report is clear about its rationale: the CDF and nuncio were contacted because they are the relevant spiritual and ecclesiastical authorities. Inter-state protocol was not invoked, nor did anyone advise it.

The reasons why the Vatican is now trying to insist on protocol may connect with an appeal before the US Supreme Court, after a lower court ruled that victims could sue the Vatican for crimes committed by an Irish-born priest.

The Vatican could be obliged to pay out millions if the Supreme Court affirms the judgement.

As a trained solicitor, Cowen must realise that the issue of compensating victims here is crucial to both church and state.

He belonged to the Bertie Ahern government that signed off on a deal with the religious orders obliging the State to pay almost all. It cost dearly.

The Irish State is already on the edge of bankruptcy. While victims deserve compensation (and justice) the consequences will be catastrophic if any Vatican power plays shift the burden onto the Irish State.

The Jesuitical thinking behind Cowen's 'regret' is rather curious, as is the decision to put it on the official record.

Somewhat like the doctrine of 'mental reservation' Desmond Connell explained to the Murphy commission, the notion of the Irish State's 'regret' depends on ignoring the real-time contacts and human network behind the whole saga. For example, you'd have to forget that Desmond Connell was the serving Dublin archbishop in the period before Murphy was set up. You'd have to forget that he was then promoted to the CDF to whom Murphy wrote.

And, of course, you'd have to separate out the Church's sacramental role by using etiquette as a pretext for it not stepping up to the plate.

It becomes complicated. You'd also have to assume that the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs were either sloppy or stupid because they, apparently, should have known better. As would be the Irish cardinals, archbishops and bishops who forgot or simply didn't realise that they were part of a foreign state.

Most of all, you'd have to imagine Pope Benedict and his College of Cardinals as so uncaring that they let Irish investigators and their own people muddle through the horror stories, while tsk-tsking about the silly Irish not knowing Vatican rules. (Benedict was head of the CDF previously.)

This would be a picture of such contempt it is hardly imaginable. It would betray hundreds of years of loyalty and devotion by Irish Catholics, never mind showing devilish disrespect to the Irish State.

It would also mock the friendships and social contacts between Vatican officials, Church leaders and Irish dignitaries -- such as the charming dinner John Cooney mentioned recently between Giuseppe Leanza, the ambassador/nuncio and Dermot McCarthy, Brian Cowen's secretary-general.

Cowen's defence of the Vatican may be the sound of Old Ireland in its dying days. It illuminates the unhealthy enmeshing of Church and State. It insults every citizen, especially the victims.

But in so doing, he may have created one line of a legal defence that could protect the Vatican from claims by Irish citizens. Yet again, a politician's Catholicism may cost the State dearly.

- Medb Ruane

Irish Independent

[Blue Angel]

Dec 6, 2009 19:33:03 GMT Wasp said:

Dec 6, 2009 14:49:23 GMT Blue Angel said:

Just a point WASP, anyone who is a devout Catholic will naturally be first a Catholic and then an Irishman, Englishman, Ulsterman etc. as obviously they will see a belief in eternal things as more important than the temporary realities of Ireland and Ulster etc.

Thats a fair enough point BA but is that all you have to say about what I posted??

No, I figure you are owed more than that considering how long we have known each other in our ongoing love/hate relationship. I was just doing the Christmas shopping the other day, as there is NO way I am getting caught up in the crowds of people doing it at the last minute. I have done all the gifts via internet shopping this year and I only need to go to the supermarket now to stock up for food for the big day itself and new years - no turkey will be appearing on this year menu's as everyone here hates it, it will be duck with orange and fruit stuffing this year and a mixture of Russian and Irish cooking. And not turkey.

On the actual subject I need time to put my thoughts in order, In the other forum I am mainly using there are a number of Irish posters and if you can bear visiting it you might the reactions of dissapointment and hurt of interest, particularly one lady who has summed things up well in her posts thus far. If you go to the secular new section of that forum there are a number of threads on the issue.

forums.catholic.com/usercp.php

[Republic]

The Vatican is little more than a hostile state and such be treated as such by all right thinking govts.

[Wasp]

I joined the site BA under the name waspie as it wouldnt let me read the link you provided.