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Irish Catholic Church: no time for a witch-hunt

Cardinal Seán Brady, majordomo of the Catholic church in Ireland, is in the dock of the court of public opinion following revelations that he was, as a priest in 1975, involved in silencing two young boys abused by notorious priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

Brady’s line manager, Pope Benedict XVI (his ultimate boss being The Man Who Lives In the Clouds) is himself reeling from allegations published by the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Germany that he mishandled similar cases.

As an ardent atheist and Irishman long concerned about the church’s role in Irish public life it is a strange spectacle watching the Catholic church squirm while seemingly endless revelations of sexual abuse by clergy hit the headlines, day after day. On on one level I am unsurprised: Catholic priests abusing children isn’t exactly news. On another level, though, I feel slightly disturbed by the prospect of an anti-clerical witch hunt.

The depth of feeling hit home to me on March 18, the day after Ireland’s national holiday St Patrick’s Day. I was in a corner shop and the young man behind the counter asked me what I thought of the whole affair. I shrugged my shoulders and said it wasn’t exactly news. He, though, was angry.

“As a Catholic I’m disgusted. I just can’t believe it,” he said, explaining that the church systematically covering-up abuse was shocking.

The scandals haven’t shaken my faith – I never had any to begin with. Even religious believers should find the church’s appalling behaviour an irrelevance. The church is a human institution and we all have feet of clay.

The Catholic church is indeed authoritarian and although Catholics don’t have a Protestant-like personal relationship with god, Catholic teaching is perfectly clear on the issue of ‘sinners’ holding office: the man and the office are not the same thing. Even the widely misunderstood concept of papal infallibility only applies when the pontiff speaks ex-cathedra (literally ‘from the chair’), something that has not been done since 1950 except for the canonisation of saints.

Given that I am an atheist and think the above is all a load of mystical codswallop – no less than papal bull – why do I care? Simply because accuracy matters.

Of course, having clay-footed bishops isn’t enough to excuse the history of the church’s abuse in Ireland, let alone revelations that the church has systematically covered-up serious cases of abuse all over the world for decades.

The truth is, I don’t know why so many priests seemed to have preyed on children, nor do I claim to know. I do think, however, that enforced chastity and celibacy has nothing to do with it – lots of people are unmarried and not having sexual relations and don’t attack anyone.

The Catholic church will have to sort itself out but how it goes about doing that, I don’t really care. Perhaps there is something in Catholicism’s authoritarian nature that is a problem, perhaps not. I am not a Catholic and so it’s none of my concern – or at least it wouldn’t be if Ireland could finally take control of the few remaining overlapping areas of church and state, such as education.

The problem with Catholic education in Ireland isn’t really the fault of the church. It was the Irish state that failed to take responsibility for education (and, for decades, healthcare), palming it off on the Church which, with its history of paedagogy and concerns for souls, was only all too willing to do the job. In short, Ireland’s post-revolutionary bourgeoisie let itself off the hook.

Today one is more likely to hear concerns about religious indoctrination from those that oppose Catholic education – but the idea of Catholic indoctrination is a difficult one to swallow. I received fourteen years of Catholic education and had rejected not only the church but Christianity itself by the time I was capable of independent rational thought.

What my education created was an atheist and, hopefully, a critical thinker. This was at the hands of the Christian Brothers, not the Jesuits who are famed for deep thought.

Of course, by the time I was attending, there was only a handful of the befrocked perfidious sacredotalists on the teaching staff and I myself was never taught by any of them. The point is, men in funny outfits or not, the Catholic church allowed me to get a decent education, something I would not have been able to get from the state.

The Catholic church is a complex organisation and I personally have no desire to defend it – after all, I do not even accept its most basic precepts as true – but one-dimensional critiques get us precisely nowhere.

The positive aspects of the church’s social role and its massive contribution to the arts over centuries past neither excuse its obvious failings nor do they make-up for the fact that I think it is, basically and fundamentally, wrong.

But it cannot be casually dismissed either.

8 thoughts on “Irish Catholic Church: no time for a witch-hunt

  1. Although it’s true that lots of people are unmarried and do not have sexual relations with children, such people are often unmarried by choice. There are people who would love nothing more than to live alone on a mountain with nothing but nature surrounding them.

    Catholics priests however, very often becomes their profession because their father also was a priest, or because it’s a tradition in the family. Or simply because they have passion for their religion. It’s a path to a job that is no more connecting to living in celibacy than being a fireman.

    So, your comparison isn’t quite valid.

  2. As a former Catholic I agree with everything you’ve said. Paedophiles exist in every organisation and it is no surprise they gravitate to an occupation which allows them an opportunity to indulge their desires, although this one does allow the perpetrator the enviable option of being able to threaten the victim with everlasting damnation if they tell.

    My problem is that the church has systematically covered it up. They have made themselves accomplices to the crime and stand further indicted by shifting priests to other parishes where they then allowed them to offend further.

    This would be no worse a cover up than many other organisations have indulged in but perpetrated by the Catholic Church, who have made it their mission to lecture us on morality, is rank hypocrisy.

    The paedophile priests should be jailed and so should those that enabled them.

  3. @ Drakim

    I would suggest that it IS the choice of individual priests to become celibate. They understand what it is they are getting into. It is made very clear in the seminaries and they are given repeated options to quit.
    As for following in their fathers footsteps, you do know what celibate means don’t you?
    I do agree though that priesthood and celibacy need have no more connection than any other profession. Many other religions have no need to insist on celibate priests. Why should Catholicism? I vaguely remember that it wasn’t required in the early Christian Church.

  4. @Ian Read

    Haha, good point about celebrate priests not having children. The example I was thinking of wasn’t a direct father->son relation but I didn’t realize paraphrasing it would make it illogical.

    Another aspect though is that celebrate priests aren’t just asked not to marry. They are also to not masturbate, or even have sexual thoughts at all!

    It’s pretty much accepted that sexuality is a basic aspects of humans. You can’t just take away that anymore than you can take away our wants and needs to socialize. You might have people here and there who can live nicely without any form of sexual release or social company or some other human aspect, but I think most suffer because of it. Considering how many priests who abuse their position like this (the numbers are quite staggering) I wonder how many are frustrated and unhappy but not to the point where they would molest somebody. And all that just because certain taboos in society are seen as holy and shouldn’t be removed, despite no real religous importance in the long run.

  5. The story about Cardinal Brady was in the public domain over a decade ago. This is a media created “scandal”.

    Regarding cover-ups. No one prevented parents or alleged victims from going to the police. If they choose to go to the Church INSTEAD OF the police – possibly because they wanted to avoid a public scandal – it is hardly surprising if Church authorities tried to sort things out themselves.

    If the parents of a girl, complain to the parents of a teenage boy about his behaviour with their young daughter, it is unlikely that the latter will report the matter to the Gardai. Similarly if someone complains to a company that one of their employees has defrauded him, it is likely that the company will deal with it internally – especially if the complainant says he does not want a court case.

    Moreover many of the allegations are clearly false. In Ireland today, there are about 10 organisations representing “victims” of child abuse. Every one of them was established AFTER the Government apology in May 1999 when it became clear that large amounts of “compensation” was going to be available. Some of them are the results of splits in the original organisations.

    Leading personnel in 4 of these groups have made allegations that children were murdered by the Christian Brothers or the Sisters of Mercy. ALL of these allegations have been shown to be false. This is not surprising as several relate to times when no child died of ANY cause! I coined the phrases “Murder of the Undead”and “Victimless Murders” to describe the latter claims – try Googling these. (They are our equivalent of the Satanic Ritual Abuse witch-hunt which we did not have.)

    I have a new website hhttp://www.irishsalem.com. There is an account of several of these allegations in the essay “Letter to Sunday Tribune re Child-Killing Allegations”
    http://www.irishsalem.com/irish-controversies/allegations-of-child-killing-1996to2005/SunTribune25May06.php

  6. Sorry the refernce to my website should read http://www.irishsalem.com

    Apart from the child-killing allegations, several Irish bishops have been falsely accused of sex offences – up to and including paedophilia. The media shrieked insults at the Bishops and then fell completely quiet when it became clear that the allegations were nonsence. The result is that most people have now completely forgotten about them. How many people remember what Gay Byrne said about Bishop Brendan Comiskey when the latter went to the USA in 1995 for treatment of his alcoholism? Gay didn’t believe it was for alcoholism at all!

    See article “8 Falsely Accused Bishops – The Innocent Who Merit an Explanation”
    http://www.irishsalem.com/irish-controversies/allegations-against-bishops-1994to2009/IrishBishops3.php

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