The Catholic Bishop of Elphin, Christopher Jones, has accused the media of being “unfair and unjust” to his Church through a concentration on the handling by Church authorities of the clerical child sex abuse issue.
"Could I just say with all this emphasis on cover-up, 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?,” he asked at a press conference in Maynooth today where the Irish Episcopal Conference was concluding its three-day Spring meeting.
“I object to the way the Church is being isolated and the focus on the Church,” he said “We know we’ve made mistakes. Of course we’ve made mistakes but why this huge isolation of the Church and this huge focus on cover-up in the Church when it has been going on for centuries.”
He continued that “it’s only now, for the first time ever, that victims have been given a voice to publicly express their pain and their suffering. And, before that, for centuries, no one spoke.”
The founder of psychology, Freud, was forced to withdraw comments about the high incidence of veneral disease among children, he said. "That’s the kind of cover-up that has gone on for centuries. I think you are unfair and unjust to the Church,” he said.
The Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey said: “There’s nobody disputing today that the way that the Catholic Church and its authorities handled this issue over a generation was a huge problem – it has been said 'catastrophic’, horrendous, you can put whatever kind of words on it , massively misguided, massively wrong.”
Both bishops rejected questions on Vatican complicity in the cover-up of clerical child sex abuse in Ireland , with Bishop McAreavey adding that “responsibility for the management of these cases in Ireland , is in Ireland .”
He said that in their meeting with the Pope and his advisors last month “one of the difficulties that bishops expressed was the fact that at times it wasn’t always possible to get clear guidance from the Holy See and there wasn’t always a consistent approach within the different Vatican departments.”
He also said letters sent by Pope Benedict in 2001, when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to all bishops instructing them to send all credible allegations of clerical child sex abuse to him for judication and that this was to be kept secret, had been “widely misinterpreted.”
The 2001 instruction “in now way precludes church authorities from carrying out their civil obligations in regard to reporting and co-operating fully with the civil authorities in relation to any offences regarding children,” Bishop McAreavey said.
He continued “This is one of those kind of canards that keeps emerging as if it was a self evident fact. Obviously, Rome is aware of this misinterpretation and the harm that this has done, or could potentially do, to the trust that people have in how the church deals with these matters. We appreciate hugely that the Holy See makes it clear that there is no endorsement for, or justification for a culture of non co-operation with the State with regard to these matters.”
His latter reference was to comments by Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi , as is reported in the media today.
Bishop Jones also expressed grave concern about the Civil Partnership Bill at the press conference. He said the bishops had discussed taken a Constitutional action against the Bill should it become law. “As you know marriage and the family are enshrined in the Constitution and the State has an obligation to protect and promote marriage and family life,” he said.
“We are really very concerned that the Civil Partnership Bill is going to undermine marriage by conferring all the rights on same sex unions as marriage, equating same sex union to marriage itself,” he said.
Where the refusal of the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to allow an opt out clause for people who had conscience problems when it came to association or involvement with same sex ceremonies he said the bishops were “very worried about that. Very worried.”