SEAN O'CONAILL,
Sir, - Ciaran Coleman insists (June 21st) that as the Catholic Hierarchy "hold positions of trust" they must "protect the system when confronted by the wrongdoings of some of their employees or members".
Yet those who finance the system, the laity, must see such behaviour as a gross breach of trust. Were the Hierarchy to agree with Mr Coleman that they were institutionally incapable of discharging their obligations to Catholic children, the institution simply could not survive. At present the Hierarchy, from the Pope down, are insisting otherwise - because the primary raison d'être of a bishop is pastoral rather than institutional. If he has no moral code to witness to, a bishop is redundant, as morality is his stock in trade.
I accept Mr Coleman's thesis as an explanation of how bishops have in fact behaved. If it is a moral defence of that behaviour, however, it ignores the essence of the nature of apostolic service in the Church - that it should witness solely to the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth.
Either way, this exchange underlines the importance of an acknowledgement from the bishops that they have been operating out of conflicting obligations - to the clerical institution on the one hand, and to children and older victims on the other. In other words, there is need for radical institutional change.
So far, no bishop has offered any explanation for the church's administrative immorality towards victims. This is why Catholic episcopal leadership is currently paralysed and impotent, from the Papacy down.
Already, priests and laity are being forced to conclude that the Church's superstructure has effectively collapsed in a moral sense, and that they themselves are all that remains of the witnessing Church. Whatever happens next, they will never forget this experience. - Yours, etc.,
SEAN O'CONAILL,
Greenhill Road,
Coleraine,
Co Derry.