ARCHBISHOP DERMOT Clifford of Cashel has announced plans to hold a meeting of all priests in the Diocese of Cloyne next month to discuss the fallout and impact of the Commission of Investigation report into clerical child sexual abuse in the diocese.
A spokesman for Archbishop Clifford said yesterday the meeting would give the priests of the diocese the opportunity to discuss in detail the Cloyne report, which was produced by the Murphy commission and published last month by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter.
The meeting had not been held so far because it was peak holiday time, a number of priests were away and it would not be appropriate to hold such a meeting when not everyone would be able to attend, the spokesman said.
He pointed out that one section of the report had been withheld for legal reasons but the priests will be able to discuss the remainder of the report in some detail and get an opportunity to express their views on its impact on the diocese.
Archbishop Clifford’s spokesman was responding to comments made by the Association of Catholic Priests, some 25 members of which from Cloyne and the neighbouring Diocese of Cork and Ross met on Tuesday to voice their concern at the lack of leadership by the church.
Fr Eoin Whooley, parish priest in Barryroe in Cork and Ross, was one of the priests who attended the association’s meeting in Ovens in mid-Cork and he said morale among priests generally was very low in the wake of the publication of the report.
“The Cloyne report was something we could have done without. We felt we had moved on and we expected the church’s own guidelines on child protection would have been implemented, so it was very disappointing to discover that was not the case in Cloyne.
“Morale among priests is at a low ebb and there’s a real sense of exasperation but there’s also a sense of exasperation among the churchgoing public who are struggling, like us as priests, with this whole issue that the guidelines were not being implemented and we need to talk to them about this.”
Fr Joe McGuane, a priest in the Cloyne diocese, has challenged former bishop of Cloyne Dr John Magee, whose whereabouts are unknown, to return to Cloyne to answer criticisms that he failed properly to handle complaints of clerical child sexual abuse.
Fr McGuane said he believed Bishop Magee should return immediately to Cloyne to answer the criticisms of him, as failing to do so will only prolong the controversy that has dogged the diocese since the report was published.
“He should come back now and respond to what the Murphy report said about his failure to properly deal with complaints of child sexual abuse because if he doesn’t, it will continue to fester and will erupt again whenever he does return or is tracked down,” said Fr McGuane.
The priest, who is currently on indefinite leave for family reasons but acts as chaplain at St Raphael’s Centre in Youghal, said he believed the whole procedure to appoint bishops is wrong and called for priests with pastoral experience to be appointed bishops.
He said that hitherto bishops have been appointed who fully support traditional Catholic Church positions on issues such as papal infallibility, celibacy, opposition to women priests and the intrinsic evil of the contraceptive pill for married couples.
But few priests working in parishes would “score 100 per cent” on all these issues so are never considered as bishops and yet those with experience working as pastors in the community would make far more suitable candidates for ordination as bishops, he said.
“Bishop Magee was totally the wrong man for the job here in Cloyne,” he said.
“He had worked in Africa for six years but after that spent 20 years in the Vatican and had no experience of working in parishes.
“He was completely the wrong choice.”
