Nothing illustrates the chasm between church thinking on clerical sex abuse and the public understanding of it than the apparent institutional 'blindness' to the suffering of victims, writes Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
It has been yet another truly awful year for the Catholic Church in Ireland and, as with other years over the past decade where the church is concerned, 2002 surpassed in wildest expectation any of its predecessors. This illustrated - again - the apparent unwillingness or inability of the church to get to grips with the depth and scale of its clerical child sex abuse problem.
But in no other year has its evasiveness in dealing with the issue been so starkly exposed. It is doubtful whether its standing among the Irish people has been so low. Nor is this peculiar to the church in Ireland.
The year began as it would continue, with revelation. In the US, in January, the Boston Globe ran a series of articles about the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the Boston archdiocese, and particularly by Cardinal Law. Using documents the church tried to keep from public view they precipitated an unprecedented crisis in the US church, leading eventually to the resignation of Cardinal Law as Archbishop of Boston earlier this month.
As a result of revelations, the US bishops and Rome finally agreed guidelines this month for the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations. In general the damage done to the US church has been incalculable. It began to dawn there, and elsewhere - as Cardinal Law himself said in April - "the crisis of clergy sexual abuse of minors is not just a media-driven or public-perception concern in the United States, but a very serious issue undermining the mission of the Catholic Church".
Four months earlier, the cardinal's lawyers had threatened legal action against the Boston Globe if it disclosed information in documents released by the courts and even if it asked questions of clergy involved.
It is a by-now familiar stratagem employed by church authorities, and despite which, with a ritual as familiar as others they conduct, they inevitably find themselves forced into public acknowledgements about the problem.
This seeming Janus-like approach of threat followed by public acknowledgment is not peculiar to the US church. Last January - named after the Roman two-faced god Janus - it was also revealed that in June, 2001, the Vatican circulated diocesan bishops with two documents, both in Latin. One directed that all allegations of clerical child sex abuse were to be referred to Rome. The other directed that both documents be kept secret. Neither document made reference to victims or to civil authorities being notified.
Last March, in his Holy Thursday message to priests, the Pope further illustrated this church "blindness" to victims. "As priests, we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis [the mystery of evil] at work in the world. Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice," he said.
There was a sole oblique reference to victims in that address. "As the church shows her concern for the victims and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations . . ."
Yes, it was a letter to priests, and the Pope's concern was with what priests' suffered indirectly because of clerical child sex abuse.
Later in the year, this "blind spot" by church authorities about victims was underlined in Ireland during a debate in October on the interpretation of Canon Law number 1395, which is overwhelmingly concerned with gentle treatment of the abuser. The victims get just a cursory nod: "In dealing with such cases, the ecclesiastical authority must tread very carefully, balancing the harm done to the victims, the rights of the cleric in canon law, and the overall good of the church in its striving for justice for all," it says.
Nothing illustrates the chasm between church thinking on this issue and the public understanding of it than this apparent institutional "blindness" to the suffering of victims. And nothing has so damaged the church since Reformation days.
Three TV programmes had a profound impact on the church in Ireland. In March, the BBC's Suing the Pope led to the resignation of Bishop Brendan Comiskey and the setting up of a Government investigation into which would be the best form of inquiry into clerical child sex abuse in Ferns diocese. The inquiry is to begin in the New Year. In response to that programme, the Catholic Bishops announced a commission which, with Judge Gillian Hussey in the chair, was to conduct an audit of the island's 26 dioceses, its religious congregations and missionary orders. to establish how clerical child sex abuse has been handled by the church's authorities. Last week Judge Hussey stepped down following the State's response to a later TV programme.
It wasCardinal Secrets, broadcast by RTE in October. It put tremendous pressure on Cardinal Connell to resign and led to Government pans for an inquiry with statutory power, into the handing of clerical child sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese and elsewhere in the Republic.
At the end of October, a BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight programme, Sins of Omission, exposed glaring inadequacies in the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Raphoe diocese over recent decades.
Last May, following weeks of media pressure, the bishops announced that the former president of the national seminary at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, Monsignor Míceál Ledwith, had been the subject of allegations of abusing a minor prior to his departure from the post in June, 1994. A court action by another man alleging abuse followed in 2000, they said.
It was also claimed that college trustee/bishops had received warning about Monsignor Ledwith's activities as far back as 1983/4 but ignored them. It was further alleged that when the then senior dean at the college, Father Gerard McGinnity, attempted to raise these concerns, he was effectively forced out. His clerical career was destroyed, it was claimed. Another inquiry was set up - this time by the church - to investigate.
Five inquiries were set up this year to investigate clerical child sex abuse - three State inquiries, plus a commission and another inquiry set up by the church itself - which must be a record. And now there are suggestions of a cover-up by the late Cardinal Conway of a priest's alleged involvement in the 1972 Claudy bombing.
This year will not be looked back on with fondness by senior Catholic Church figures in Ireland. Whether that will also be the fate of 2003, where they are concerned, it would be unwise to predict. There is hope - as with love, it springs eternal. But there is also strong belief that things will get worse before they get better.