Ireland attacks confessional secrecy after Catholic sex abuse scandal
Ireland’s prime minister has said Catholic clerics would be prosecuted if they failed to tell the authorities about crimes disclosed during confession, the latest blow to the prestige of the once-dominant Church. A report this week found that the Church concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, and that clerics appeared to follow Church law rather than Irish guidelines to protect minors.
“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told journalists on Thursday, referring to the hooked staff held by Catholic bishops during religious services. Kenny said his government would submit legislation to parliament that could jail clerics for up to five years if they failed to report to authorities information about the abuse of children.
The law will override the confessional privilege in Church law that prevents clerics from sharing information, he said. A series of revelations of rape and beatings by members of religious orders and the priesthood in the past have shattered the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Thursday summoned the Pope’s representative, the papal nuncio, after the report said that the Vatican had undermined Irish guidelines on reporting sex abuse by referring to them as “study guidelines.”
“We consider it absolutely unacceptable that the Vatican intervened here in a way which had the effect of undermining the efforts to deal adequately with the issue of child sexual abuse,” Gilmore said. “We want a response from the Vatican.”
The report on the diocese of Cloyne in county Cork lists how the diocese failed to report all sexual abuse complaints to the police and did not report any complaints to the health authorities between 1996 and 2008. The bishop formerly responsible for the diocese, John Magee, who had previously served as private secretary to three popes, falsely told the authorities that he was reporting all abuse allegations to the police, the report said.
via Ireland attacks confessional privilege after scandal | Reuters.
Irish Catholic Church concealed child abuse even after new prevention rules in 1990s
A government-sponsored report said on Wednesday the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland continued to conceal the sexual abuse of children by priests even after it introduced rules in the mid-1990s to protect minors.
Revelations of rape and beatings by members of religious orders and the priesthood in the past have shattered the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Ireland. But the latest report into the handling of sex abuse claims in the diocese of Cloyne, in County Cork, shows that senior-ranking clergy were still trying to cover up abuse allegations almost until the present day.
“This is not a catalogue of failure from a different era. This is not about an Ireland of 50 years ago. This is about Ireland now,” Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald told a news conference.
The report, which focuses on 19 priests who allegedly abused children during a period from January 1996 to February 2009, lists how the diocese failed to report all sexual abuse complaints to the police and did not report any complaints to the health authorities between 1996 and 2008. The bishop formerly responsible for the diocese, John Magee, falsely told the authorities that he was reporting all abuse allegations to the police, the report said. He resigned in March last year after a Church investigation said his handling of abuse allegations had exposed children to risk.
The report also criticized the Vatican as “entirely unhelpful” in describing guidelines on how to deal with abuse accusations as “merely a study document.” The government will decide soon whether to summon the papal nuncio, the pope’s representative in Ireland, over the matter, Shatter said.
The report said that the Church’s own guidelines would have protected children had they been implemented. Complainants’ pain was compounded by the fact that their abusers appeared to have suffered no sanctions after the abuse had been revealed. One priest even officiated at the wedding of one of his victims.
This matter shocked the population of Ireland, especially since it was revealed that the Vatican had, in previous times, sent out an ultra-secret letter, written in Latin by Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was, the present Pope Benedict, ordering bishops worldwide to conceal child abuse from the civil authorities, and letting either the Vatican or the local Catholic Archbishops handle the matter. These letters became public, and it was also revealed that worldwide there were so many cases of priests abusing children that the Vatican was swamped in trying to deal with the matter. After the Irish Prime Minister made a strong emotional speech to Parliament on the matter, the Vatican responded by recalling its Ambassador (Papal Nuncio) to Ireland and publicly scolding the Prime Minister. It will be interesting to see what the Irish population will do in response. Will that, as the people of the German State of Bavaria did in response to a similar episode of widespread child abuse by Catholic priests and resign en-Mass from the Catholic Church, and then try to reform it from the outside ((Shades of Martin Luther))…?
C. ALEXANDER BROWN
FInancial crisis boosts European suicide rates, especially in Greece, Ireland
Suicides rates rose sharply in Europe in 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes, with the worst hit countries like Greece and Ireland seeing the most dramatic increases, researchers said on Friday. Rates of road deaths in the region fell during the same period, possibly because higher numbers of jobless people led to lower car use, according to an initial analysis of data from 10 European Union (EU) countries.
“Even though we’re starting to see signs of a financial recovery, what we’re now also seeing is a human crisis. There’s likely to be a long tail of human suffering following the downturn,” said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Britain’s Cambridge University, who worked on the analysis.
Stuckler said he feared the social and health costs of the recent global economic downturn would turn out to be high. “We can already see that the countries facing the most severe financial reversals of fortune, such as Greece and Ireland, had greater rises in suicides,” he said. “And suicides are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of mental health problems. Suicide itself is a relatively rare event, but wherever you see a rise in suicides there is also a rise in failed suicide attempts and in new cases of depression.”
Analyzing data available so far, Stuckler and colleagues found that suicide rates were up 17 percent in Greece and 13 percent in Ireland. Unemployment increased by 2.6 percentage points — a 35 percent relative increase — between 2007 and 2009 across the EU as a whole, they said.
“The steady downward trend in suicide rates, seen…before 2007, reversed at once,” the researchers wrote.
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Ireland eyes Catholic religious orders’ properties to meet abuse damages costs
The Irish government asked religious orders on Tuesday to consider transferring buildings and land to the state to cover a 200 million euros shortfall in their contribution to a compensation fund for victims of abuse. The congregations agreed in 2009 to provide more compensation to victims of rape, beatings and slave labour in now defunct industrial schools they ran after the publication of a report into the abuse shocked the once devout Catholic country.
The government wants the congregations, including the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy, to contribute half of an estimated final compensation bill of 1.36 billion euros ($1.9 billion). The government has paid out around 1.3 billion euros in compensation so far.
“The congregations’ total offers fall well short, by several hundred million, of the 680 million contribution they should bear towards the cost of institutional residential child abuse,” Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn said in a statement.
To make up the gap, Quinn said he would seek the congregations’ agreement to a legal deal that would transfer ownership of school buildings and properties to the state currently owned by them. “I recognise that there are complex legal issues to be addressed to realise the transfer of school infrastructure,” he said. “Nevertheless I believe that this approach affords the congregations involved the opportunity to shoulder their share of the costs of responding to the horrendous wrongs suffered by children in their care, while at the same time, recognising the legitimate legacy of their contribution to Irish education.”
A spokeswoman for the Conference of Religious of Ireland, the umbrella group which represents the congregations, declined to comment.
Quinn said only two out of the 18 congregations had previously offered to help make up the shortfall.
During Ireland’s property boom, some religious orders sold tracts of land to developers for large sums. Quinn said religious orders had made about 600 million euros from property deals during the boom. “They realised values of the order of 600 million but we don’t know what is there now,” he told Irish state broadcaster RTE.
Ireland is finally getting it! You all gave your country away to the Roman Catholic Church and look how they cared for it. Deep Shame be upon them!
This is a good idea but not just the orders. The whole RCC is involved and they should take responsibility for the “spiritual murder” of all these precious innocents over the centuries.
Pope apologizes for “unspeakable crimes” of sexual abuse
Pope Benedict apologized to victims of sexual abuse on Saturday, saying pedophile priests had brought “shame and humiliation” on him and the entire Roman Catholic Church. It was the 83-year-old pontiff’s latest attempt to come to grips with the scandal that has rocked the 1.1 billion-member Church, particularly in Europe and the United States.
“I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes …,” he said in his sermon in Westminster Cathedral, the mother church for Roman Catholics in England and Wales and a symbol of the struggle of Catholics here in the late 19th century to assert their rights after the Reformation.
“I also acknowledge with you the shame and humiliation that all of us have suffered because of these sins,” he said, adding that he hoped “this chastisement” would contribute to the healing of the victims and the purification of the Church.
He has apologized before for sexual abuse by priests — such as in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland last March — and has acknowledged that the Church was slow to deal with the problem. But his comments on Saturday were among his most succinct to date.
The full quote from his sermon was: “Here too I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my hope that the power of Christ’s grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives. I also acknowledge, with you, the shame and humiliation which all of us have suffered because of these sins; and I invite you to offer it to the Lord with trust that this chastisement will contribute to the healing of the victims, the purification of the Church and the renewal of her age-old commitment to the education and care of young people. I express my gratitude for the efforts being made to address this problem responsibly, and I ask all of you to show your concern for the victims and solidarity with your priests.”
As a victim of sexual abuse by clergy myself, I can say that the hollow apologies by the Pope do absolutely nothing toward correcting the problem, protecting children, or for healing wounds. I wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger when I was involved in a lawsuit against the church in San Francisco in 2005,and asked him to remove the predator who molested me from a Catholic grammar school. Ratzinger left the priest who molested me in ministry with access to children clear up to the day of the jury guilty verdict I won against the priest in court.
Actions speak louder than words, and cleverly written apologies are nothing but validation that the Pope can read and write. If the Pope truly wanted to correct the atrocities and violations committed by the abusers in his
syndicate, he would remove all of the clerical abusers, and all of the bishops and cardinals who protected, promoted, shuffled, and harbored them.
But this has not happened, and never will. The clever hierarchy of the church will continue the hollow apology strategy for as long as there are those who still tolerate it.
Catholic Church and UK colluded in Northern Ireland bomb cover-up: report
The British government and the Roman Catholic Church colluded to protect a priest suspected of involvement in a 1972 bombing in Northern Ireland that killed 9 people, an official report said on Tuesday.
The Police Ombudsman’s report revealed that an Irish cardinal was involved in transferring Father James Chesney out of British-ruled Northern Ireland, highlighting again the role of the Church hierarchy in protecting priests against allegations of criminal activity.
The inquiry showed that Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw had a private “tete-a-tete” with Cardinal William Conway, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in 1972 in which they discussed the possibility of moving Chesney out of Northern Ireland.
“In the absence of explanation the actions of the senior RUC (police) officers, in seeking and accepting the government’s assistance in dealing with the problem of Father Chesney’s alleged wrongdoing, was by definition a collusive act,” the police ombudsman Al Hutchinson said in a statement. “The decision failed those who were murdered, injured and bereaved in the bombing.”
No one was ever charged or convicted for the triple car bomb attack on the village of Claudy, but the republican guerrilla group the IRA was assumed to be responsible. Those killed included a nine-year-old-girl and two teenage boys. Chesney always denied any involvement, although a sniffer dog found traces of explosive in his car when he was stopped at a checkpoint in September 1972.
Read the whole story here and tell us what you think. How does this look after all the revelations earlier this year about the Catholic Church covering up for sexually abusive priests?
Isn’t war against the religious? I don’t get it, crusade was violent and still nobody learns from the past
SPECIAL REPORT – In Irish schools, Catholic Church remains master
Roisin Hyde was five when she was hastily baptised a few days before she started primary school. Hyde’s parents were agnostic but because non-Catholics in Ireland had few other places to learn how to read and write, the family latched onto the only option they knew.
Thirty-five years on and Hyde, an architect in Dublin, is struggling over where to educate her own two-year-old son. It’s a dilemma faced by parents the world over. But in Ireland, where the Catholic Church runs more than nine in ten primary schools and half of all high schools, it’s a question that too often has just one answer.
“I would say that a lot of my friends, the only time they have been inside a church is to get their kids christened so they could go to the local school,” Hyde, 40, says. “I just feel so hypocritical doing it, going along for one day and then not attending.”
The reverence with which the Irish hold the Catholic Church had begun to fade even before the abuse scandals of recent years. As the economy boomed in the 1990s and 2000s, churches emptied. The abuse revelations have further undermined the Church’s authority and fractured trust, alienating committed believers as senior clergy have remained in their posts. Parents, politicians, and even church leaders have begun to call for a rollback of clerical power. Why should our children have to follow a creed just to get an education, many ask.
Despite these changing attitudes, the Catholic Church retains far more power in Ireland than in almost any other country in Europe. And nowhere is the Irish Church so deeply woven into the fabric of daily life than in education. The number of nuns and priests teaching may be down compared to a few decades ago, but the Church controls so many schools and writes so many of the rules its influence remains pervasive. In Ireland, “if it’s a state school, it’s Catholic. If it’s private, it’s usually Catholic,” Hyde says.
This lengthy special report on the continuing influence of the Catholic Church in Irish education was written by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Padraic Halpin and Andras Gergely in our Dublin bureau. Read the full report here.
Catholic sex abuse scandal fallout spreads in Europe
Fallout from the Catholic child sex abuse scandal spread across Europe on Thursday as the Vatican retired an Irish bishop, a German offered to step down and prelates in England and Wales apologised for the “terrible crimes” of priests.
The Vatican said Pope Benedict, under criticism from victims for not doing enough about past cases of abuse by priests now being revealed, had accepted the resignation of Bishop James Moriarty, the third Irish bishop to leave over the scandal.
Moriarty said in a statement that he was auxiliary bishop of Dublin from 1991 to 2002, before child protection policies were implemented. “I accept that from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture,” he said. “I apologise to all survivors and their families.”
In Germany, Walter Mixa, who is bishop for Augsburg and for the German armed forces, offered to resign late on Wednesday after admitting he physically abused children decades ago. His diocese said he did this “to avert further damage to the Church and to allow a new start.”
Bishops in England and Wales issued an apology for the scandal and urged Catholics there to pray for the Church.
The scandal haunting the Catholic Church worldwide looks set to stay in the headlines for weeks to come.
Tom,
Another great article. Bravo. So are you ‘deflated’ that the Vatican is NOT coming after you as they are with the poor New York Times. <>
Tom, I am in the midst of a fascinating email ‘debate’ as to the role of the Holy Spirit in the election of popes, in particular Benedict XVI.
I, contend, given that Pope John Paul II makes three very explicit references to the Holy Spirit in his UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS Constitution that covers papal elections, that the Holy Spirit, at a MINIMUM, was aware that Benedict XVI was getting the necessary votes to be elected. To me that is a given. If, you don’t believe that, then you got to have the Holy Spirit watching CNN (or whichever channel YOU were reporting for) waiting to see if the smoke is black or white.
If you subscribe to the belief that the Holy Spirit has SOME hand in the election of a pope, then it leads you to wonder … “even despite the allegations about Cardinal Ratzinger re. scandal cover-up we are hearing today.”
Real curious what other think about this; i.e., role of the Holy Spirit in papal elections and the ramifications thereof when it came to the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
Thanks, Tom
Anura Guruge
P.S. http://www.popes-and-papacy.com/ has been totally revamped with more content, including a section titled “In Meus Mens”. (Tom, you must be rather proficient in Latin.)
Africa also suffers sex abuse by priests: Joburg RC archbishop
Sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a scourge in Africa as well as the Western countries where scandals have badly hurt the Vatican’s image, a leading African Catholic archbishop has said.
Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said the damage weakened the Church’s ability to speak out with moral authority in Africa, where it has at times been a rare voice challenging dictatorship, corruption and abuse of power.
“What happens in Ireland or in Germany or America affects us all,” Tlhagale said in a message on April 1 that was published this week on the website of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, which Tlhagale heads.
“It simply means that the misbehavior of priests in Africa has not been exposed to the same glare of the media as in other parts of the world,” he said. “I know that the Church in Africa, is inflicted by the same scourge.”
Read the full story here.
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Catholic bishops see campaign against Church over child sex abuse
The Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out for criticism of sexual abuse of children by priests and will not tolerate campaigns to discredit it, the powerful head of Italy’s bishops said on Monday. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco spoke to Italian bishops as the Vatican tried to stem a scandal gripping the Church that has swept across Europe.
Speaking two days after Pope Benedict apologised to victims of sexual abuse in Ireland, Bagnasco said the Church was “not afraid of the truth, however painful and detestable” but would not accept any “generalised campaigns to discredit it.”
As the scandal has spread in a number of European countries, some other bishops have also lambasted the media. “The cover-up has gone on for centuries, not just in the Church … it’s going on today in families, in communities, in societies. Why are you singling out the Church?” Bishop Christopher Jones of Elphin, Ireland, said last week.
Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg, Germany, decried “a campaign against the Church” in the media and accused journalists of biased reporting. “They (the media) are manipulating the people who sit in front of a television or open up a newspaper with their twisted and shortened reports,” he said.
Read the whole story here and tell us what you think. Is the Catholic Church being unfairly singled out? Or should it be held to a higher standard than secular institutions because it preaches the morality some priests have violated?
Drosaupan :What a wash.If we can not go to the media where should we go to find the news of the church’s pedophiles. Maybe we should go to the Archbishops and the pope. This is what was done in the past 70 years and look what it got the victims.The church is using every manipulation to throw the blame elsewhere like look at all the other offenders. It is not unlike a policeman stopping you for speeding and you tell him look at all the other speeders. You get the ticket. Control is powerful motivating tool
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