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'Where
privileged men had access to powerless children' is
one of those insightful little phrases woven almost
seamlessly into the fabric of a piece of writing.
Only when the eye involuntarily breaks its stride
passing over it and the mind is enlivened by what
has punctured the insipid content of endless texts
does the full potency of the word craft stake its
claim in the memory banks. Such phrases caress the
intellect to the point of providing it with a seemingly
instant clarity about a particular circumstance. The
author of this specific gem was Nuala O'Faolain and
she endowed it with the necessary clarity in which
to describe the power relationship that exists between
certain clergy - backed up by a powerful institutional
network - and young children.
O'Faolain
was commenting on the arch diocese of Boston which
had refused to halt one of its flesh loving fathers
in his pursuit of lust attacks against young children
- 130 in all were molested by the predator. The arch
diocese later had to furbish the police with the names
of 90 priests who had abused children in the previous
50 years. No doubt those who bombed Omagh will be
hoping that the public follow this example and show
similar latitude to them, in the certain knowledge
that they shall be long dead of natural causes before
their names are handed in.
O'Faolain's
article was set in the context of controversy raging
over the behaviour of the priestly pervert Sean Fortune.
The Catholic hierarchy throughout the 1970s and 1980s
placed him on a paedophile’s travelling circus.
Bishop Comiskey, more than anyone else acted as ringmaster
for the corrupting clown, declining to respond to
four separate allegations of abuse against young people
from 1984. A number of Fortune's victims allegedly
have committed suicide.
Since
the Fortune disclosures church credibility has plummeted
in inverse proportion to the rocketing of public ridicule
as the vesper’s nest is prodded. Yet there is
a measure of public self-denial in all of this; as
if it were a subject which, while there, should be
accepted silently rather than face a voluble discourse
about its existence. Only recently I was travelling
in a taxi when a friend, Aine, asked about the music
that seems to blare out from the back of my home when
she calls. I live right on the back of a local chapel.
I dislike the music because it invariably happens
on a Saturday evening when the child has just gone
over for the night. The noise wakes her and makes
her cranky. But we all must live and some noise pollution
in our cramped housing estates is unavoidable. But
in response to Aine I said, facetiously, that ‘the
priest gets himself a bottle of wine, an altar boy
and then parties all night.’ Being as irreverent
as myself Aine laughed but the taxi driver seemed
as if he was about to swerve off the road. While I
have never heard the faintest suggestion of any wrongdoing
involving the clergy where I live and the comment
was a joke, it was clear that the driver would have
felt much more comfortable had the topic been avoided
altogether. I was tempted to wind him up by divulging
that in my more intolerant moments I am tempted to
say that the abusers should be taken out and whipped
but it always dawns on me that many of them would
love it, shouting ‘yes, yes’ at the very
suggestion. That he resiled from my earlier comment
dissuaded me. Enough discomfort caused for one day.
Thankfully,
such self-denial is no longer as pervasive as it once
was given that there are other matters not related
to the clergy and child abuse about which to drift
into self-denial. People can even be heard openly
criticising the cardinal during mass. The Papal Knights
have so far been unable to lance what they regard
as the boil of increasing dissent.
But
as Fintan O’Toole intimates such inability has
come only lately. Arguing that sexual molestation
of children by Irish priests stretches back at least
decades he claims ‘these crimes were indeed very
well understood but the knowledge was deliberately
suppressed.’ No where has this been more evident
than with the smothering of the Carrigan report of
1931. O’Toole writes:
It
pointed to ‘an alarming amount of sexual crime,
increasing yearly, a feature of which was the large
number of cases of criminal interference with girls
and children from 16 years downwards, including
many cases of children under 10 years.’ It
also suggested that less than 15 per cent of these
cases were brought to court. ‘The frequency
of assaults on young children is to some degree
attributable to the impunity on which culprits may
reckon.’
He
goes on to make the point that this situation prevailed
every bit as much in the dark days of the 1990s as
it did in the 1930s:
There
are still parents who have been ostracised in local
communities because they made complaints about abusive
priests. There is still a deep reservoir of wilful
ignorance that will not go away unless others as
well as the bishops take responsibility.
Although
a non-believer, I was honoured to address the Maranatha
Christian community this morning. During our exchange
I went the full distance in accepting their view that
punishment beatings were a terrible wrong although
I dissented from their position that the rationale
behind such beatings can always be traced to the need
of the few to maintain control over the many. Nevertheless,
it is the type of activity that has allowed republicanism
to assume an image described by one critic as that
of 'a baseball bat smeared with blood.' Also, it has
in part lay behind calls for the disbandment of the
IRA. Such attitudes if prompted by a concern for youth
are hardly disreputable. But to keep faith with consistency
I suggested to the assembled Christains that as our
young people are currently under greater threat from
Catholic priests than IRA volunteers why not disband
the Catholic Church? Would society be any the poorer
if we did? Children would certainly be much safer.
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