In crisis-management terms, two months is the equivalent of several lifetimes. It should have been possible to produce a response within a week or at most two to the questions being asked. It was complicated by the fact that the unfortunate minor involved and his family probably live in terror that their identities will be revealed. The authorities may also have been worried about a legal challenge from Ledwith to any response they made. Nor would it be easy to track exactly what happened, in an organisanisation
'Garrisson Keillor, author of Lake Woebegon Days, says that Lutherans handle problems by staring reality in the eye and denying that it exists. Lutherans aren't the only ones." Those opening sentences were borrowed from Russell Shaw. His wry comments were inspired by some of his experiences as a press officer for many years for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States. Shaw could hardly be termed a revolutionary liberal. He says that his own favoured version of Catholicism "assigns religion an active and constructive social role but places a premium on orthodox doctrine."
Writing about religious communication, he says that the risk of giving scandal makes the issue of truthfulness even more acute for religious public relations than for public relations generally. People hold the church to a higher standard of truthfulness than they do the government or private business.
"The church's failures are correspondingly more damaging, not only to its own image and credibility but even to faith. It is unlikely that anyone has ever stopped going to Mass and receiving the sacraments because the government lied; but there certainly are cases where people have done this in reaction to what appeared to be officially sanctioned lying in the church."
That expression, "giving scandal" marks him as having received his religious education in an earlier era. It is not a phrase with which anyone under 35 would be familiar. The fear of "giving scandal" led to a tradition of keeping scandalous behaviour within the church quiet, because of the effect it might have on faith or morals. The point that he is making is that today scandal is much more likely to be given by failure to be open and truthful.
People are horrified by paedophilia but, repugnant as it is, they can just about get their heads around the fact that it happens. What they cannot cope with is fudging or lack of action by those in leadership positions in the church. It took my colleague, Patsy McGarry, two months of harrying to get responses to questions he was asking about the resignation of Micheál Ledwith from the presidency of Maynooth. When those answers came, they failed to deal with whether complaints had been made much earlier by seminarians, and whether those complaints had been ignored. Equally damaging was the allegation that priests had been exiled to the clerical equivalent of Siberia for speaking up about concerns which they had.
Not unsurprisingly, being given the runaround for two months about something which happened eight years ago led Patsy McGarry to conclude that the church was acting like any other ruthless corporate entity which acts to protect itself. The delay also shocks me, but for different reasons.
I believe the church is slowly moving beyond what Keillor describes as the Lutheran response. But it has neither the structures nor expertise to put its new understanding into practice. I dread the amount of hurt it will inflict and suffer as it begins to come to terms with a completely different way of being.
The irony of it is that the authorities appear to have dealt reasonably well with the allegation concerning the minor. Ledwith's bishop informed both the Garda and the health board. Ledwith has always strenuously denied any allegations against him. When Ledwith made a private settlement with the individual, it included a confidentiality clause which hampered further church investigations. When he retired and went to the United States, the bishop in the diocese to which he went was informed, and a new bishop was informed again in 2000. So far, it was by the book.
The amount of the settlement is galling in the context of some of the settlements made to those who have been abused. However, it is not huge in terms of a chief executive leaving his post under a cloud, but with nothing proven against him. The sad thing is that the delayed and incomplete response batters the church's credibility still further. No doubt some who were already drifting away from it will use the scandals to justify that. But there are many, many committed people who are shaken to their core by the seemingly endless stream of scandals emanating from their beloved church.
That is why the proposed national audit is so crucial. It has to be more than a quantifying of cases and an evaluation of procedure. It must initiate healing, and that will only happen if mistakes are frankly admitted and forgiveness sought, and it is clear that such mistakes will not be allowed to happen again.
Something more than a business model of auditing is required. Otherwise, the bishops run the risk of being castigated for doing too little, too late once again. As it is, anything they propose will be overshadowed by still unanswered questions regarding Maynooth. The bishops and Maynooth are inextricably linked in the public's mind. If clear answers to remaining questions about Maynooth are not given this week, there will be another media feeding frenzy. Painstaking work by the bishops will be wasted once again.
The truth about what happened in the past will come out anyway. The church has a choice between seeing it dragged out piecemeal by the media, with all the resulting disillusion and cynicism that evokes, or giving the truth freely and humbly.
The church is not a business, a corporation or a political entity. It exists primarily to bring a spiritual message. Yet to bring that message, it must abide by internal standards far higher than those demanded of others. In human terms, it would be impossible. But since when did the church rely just on human means?