The Catholic Church has not learned from the Brendan Smyth scandal. The reaction to this week's 'Prime Time' revelations must be seen for what it is: a continuing evasion of responsibility, writes Fintan O'Toole
'Today superiors are less authoritarian than 10 years ago. For instance, I was given the choice whether to come here or not - and I was delighted at the chance. I don't look for strange places necessarily and I love to go back to places where I've worked - but a new experience wouldn't be turned down."
The speaker is an Irish Catholic priest. He is being interviewed by an American local newspaper, the Providence Evening Bulletin in Rhode Island in 1965. His name is Brendan Smyth. He is indeed delighted at the chance to go to new places, to enjoy new experiences, and to abuse new victims. His superiors in the Irish church know that he is a brutal paedophile. But they keep giving him the choice.
Smyth was sent home from Rhode Island in disgrace in 1968, after the local bishop discovered that he had been using his untrammelled access to boys and girls to violate as many as he could get his hands on. Yet he continued to be given the choices that delighted him. The people who set themselves up as the arbiters of morality and decency in Irish society let Smyth carry on until, in June 1994, he was finally convicted in Belfast on 17 charges of sexual assault against children.
Smyth's criminal career, exposed by Chris Moore for UTV, became one of the most sensational stories of the 1990s. The leader of the Irish church, Cardinal Cahal Daly suffered irreparable harm to his reputation when Moore revealed that he had known about Smyth's crimes and done nothing.
Cardinal Daly's 1991 letter to the family of one of Smyth's victims did more damage to the Irish Catholic Church than the Penal Laws: "There have been complaints about this priest before and once I had to speak to his Superior about him. It would seem that there has been no improvement. I shall speak with the Superior again." The Smyth scandal and Cardinal Daly's pathetic response dominated the headlines in late 1994 and early 1995. Yet, in 1996, the then Archbishop Desmond Connell was given a clear opportunity to show he had learned from the horrific mistakes of the past.
Parishioners of Father Noel Reynolds in Glendalough were complaining about his behaviour towards their children.
Reynolds, who subsequently admitted the abuse of around 100 victims, was removed from Glendalough. But in the summer of 1997, he was sent as chaplain to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, an institution which has a children's ward. The hospital authorities were not told of the previous complaints against him. The Dublin diocese was repeating precisely the same gross negligence that had allowed Smyth to ruin lives over the previous five decades.
Looking back, the fallout from the Smyth case is grimly ironic. Heads rolled at the very top, but none had mitres on them. Smyth indirectly brought down a Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, an entire government and the president of the High Court, Harry Whelehan. The Church authorities who bore vastly more responsibility for his career of crime paid no price.
Six years on, we are seeing the results of that escape. The lack of accountability, either moral or legal, has meant that the Catholic Church has not used those years to learn from the Brendan Smyth disaster. After Thursday night's Prime Time programme, we saw the same responses: the refusal of a Cardinal to accept personal responsibility, the hapless PR men looking like rabbits caught in the headlights, the linguistic evasions that fail to conceal the reality of institutional collusion with serial rapists.
Above all, there is the same set of excuses that we heard ad nauseam during the Smyth affair: we didn't understand that the desire to prey on children is a chronic addiction and we couldn't tell the police because we were bound by rules of confidentiality. These excuses have to be seen for what they are - a continuing evasion of responsibility.
It is simply untrue to say that the Church did not know the proper way to respond to allegations of abuse by clerics when Cardinal Connell took over in Dublin in 1988. A very detailed summary of the state of knowledge in the church was published in June 1985 in the main US Catholic newspaper the National Catholic Reporter, a publication that is, and was, obligatory reading for church administrators in the English-speaking world.
The document entitled The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner was prepared for the US hierarchy by Father Michael Peterson, Father Thomas Doyle and Father Ray Mouton.
Some of its conclusions are worth quoting because they leave no room for doubt about the seriousness of the problem and the right course of action. The use of capitals is from the original document:
"These are lifelong diseases for which there is now much hope for recovery and control of the disorders, but NO HOPE AT THIS POINT IN TIME for 'cure'."
"The ordinary [bishop of a diocese], if convinced initially . . . that the allegation has any possible merit or truth, should suspend immediately the cleric. This may be done without a trial and by means of an extra-judicial decree (Canon 1342).
. . . I would next suggest that the cleric be moved IMMEDIATELY from the parish rectory and into a retreat house, monastery, and bishop's residence."
"In most or all jurisdictions there are statutes which require that instances of child abuse be reported to the civil authorities. The failure to do so can result in civil and/or criminal penalties."
"The effects of sexual abuse of children by adults are long lasting and go well into adulthood. This is well documented, though it may well be difficult to predict the extent of the effects in particular cases. We are speaking not only of psychological effects but also the spiritual effects since the perpetrators of the abuse are priests or clerics. This will no doubt have a profound effect on the faith lives of the victims, their families and others in the community."
The argument that the diocesan authorities could not co-operate with the Garda in bringing abusing priests to justice because the priests had made admissions in confidence is no less disingenuous. Again, a straightforward quotation from the 1980s is enough to show how spurious the excuse really is. It is from the 1987 book Puppets of Utopia by the then Bishop of Limerick, Jeremiah Newman.
Newman is writing about a contemporary moral dilemma, the question of whether doctors should inform the authorities that one of their patients has AIDS. Quoting the Catholic theologian Bernard Haring, he insists that the ordinary requirements of confidentiality can, and indeed must, be set aside when there is a danger to the public: "Every patient should be aware that when he reveals his condition to a physician, the doctor can never be a willing accomplice to crime by an unjustified silence. Secrecy can never become a taboo."
If, in the eyes of the Irish bishops, a doctor has an obligation to inform the authorities when a patient has an infectious disease, how come a bishop doesn't have an obligation to inform the authorities when he knows that a serial rapist is on the loose? And if a doctor who fails in this duty is "a willing accomplice to crime", what does that make a bishop who sends an abuser back out into a position of control over children? The answer to that question is obvious, and it is precisely as accomplices to crime that the Church authorities must be regarded.
Whatever shred of an excuse they might have had before the Smyth scandal of 1994 was ripped asunder in the storm of outrage, disbelief and disgust that followed it. What we are dealing with, then, is a determination to defend the narrow self-interest of the institution so deeply ingrained that it has in fact shaken the foundations of the institution itself.
In this sense, the pitifully inadequate response of Cardinal Connell is explicable only in the context of the wider church. The reactionary, authoritarian culture of John Paul II's papacy has strongly reinforced a long-standing impulse to put the institution first and such concepts as truth and justice a distant second.
An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter put it well last May, when the American Catholic Church was struggling with revelations of its collusion in sex crimes: "The church's way of governing . . . is a system of control and secrecy - a closed network that has placed more importance on maintaining its authority and guarding its image than protecting the needs of its most vulnerable members. A patronage system traceable to feudal times and even earlier, it has a deeply ingrained need . . . to present a united front, with the result that obedience can have greater value than compassion."
This culture is embodied in Cardinal Connell himself. As the editorial went on: "It's no secret that this papacy has selected leaders (bishops and cardinals) at least in part for their willingness to be good followers - to agree, conform or keep quiet."
Chosen and promoted for his impeccable conformity, the Cardinal seems emotionally and psychologically incapable of thinking in terms other than the short-term demands of damage limitation. His tragedy is that this notion of damage limitation is actually doing untold damage to the institution he loves. The tragedy of the victims is that, in his inability to acknowledge that obvious truth, the Cardinal cannot truly acknowledge them.