The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has said he is "not a bit sorry" that the church is broken and battered. "It is far more close to what the church is about than when it was too powerful", he explained.
Dr Walsh was speaking during a question and answer session at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Priests of Ireland in Dublin yesterday.
While abuse of power was "an enormous question running right through society . . . it had been abused right across the church", he said.
Also on the panel was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey, who said: "Both of our churches had their time of arrogance and maybe we are all learning that that is not the way of Christ."
Support for the Belfast Agreement seemed to "dying" in the Protestant community in the North. "They seem to be losing their way on this."
Dr Walsh said if there was to be any healing in the North it had to be recognised on both sides that each had contributed to the breakdown of relationships. Referring to education there, he said: "I'm almost afraid to say it . . . what would integrated education do? I'm not going to say any more."
He felt that the bishops had a responsibility to examine whether something in the structures of the Catholic Church had led to the child abuse problem. This was a vital issue and there had not been sufficient discussion about it "among ourselves as bishops".
Dr Walsh was responding to a question from Ms Marie Keenan, of the Granada Institute, who said that from her work with clerical abusers two factors dominated: the issue of authority in their lives, as men in religious life, and sexuality. She wondered when the bishops were going to move on from apologising for the individual and instead examine the systemic or structural elements which might have contributed to the problem.
Both bishops acknowledged that there was a perception of lack of leadership from the churches. Dr Empey said that the exercise of authority in the Church of Ireland was very diffuse. Dr Walsh said he had to accept the criticisms about poor leadership. This was partly due to the process of selection [of bishops], among other things. Bishops tended to be primarily concerned with their own dioceses and there was always tension in a system where authority was vertical. "I think it is more vertical than it should be, theologically," he added.
Furthermore, tension could exist between the teachings of the magisterium and "what one may feel about a particular case", he said.
