JIM CANTWELL,
Madam, - In his article on clerical sex abuse in your News Review 2002 (December 28th) Patsy McGarry writes: "Later this 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 victim gets just a cursory nod: 'In dealing with such cases, the ecclesiastical authority must tread 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".
Not for the first time Patsy McGarry is quite inaccurate on this point. He confuses canon 1395 with a particular commentary on it. The canon is unequivocal: "A cleric who has offended against the sixth commandment, if the crime was committed by force, or by threats, or with a minor under the age of 16 years, is to be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state".
The passage quoted in the article is not part of the canon, but comes from a commentary on it in Canon Law: Letter and Spirit: A Practical Guide to the Code of Canon Law, edited by Mgr Gerard Sheehy. This was published in 1996, around the same time as Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response, the guidelines of the Irish Bishops' Conference. As a member of the Catholic Bishops' Advisory Committee which drafted these guidelines, I am in a position to know that the committee was aware of the commentary in the Practical Guide, but decisively and unanimously decided that our document should have a very different emphasis.
The committee's draft guidelines were unanimously endorsed by the Bishops' Conference at their meeting in the autumn of 1995 and became official policy.
The very first paragraph of these guidelines set the tone for the whole document: "A Church response to child sexual abuse by priests and religious must be founded on an acknowledgment of the wrong which has been done to those who have suffered abuse. It must be informed by an understanding of the hurt which such abuse imposes and of the long-term hard it may cause. It must be based on the need for the Church to do all that it can towards healing the hurt and repairing the harm".
Of the eight points which should underlie the Church's response, the guidelines give the following as No.1: "The safety and welfare of children should be the first and paramount consideration following an allegation of child sexual abuse". - Yours etc.,
JIM CANTWELL,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.