BishopAccountability.org
	Bishop: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Culture Has Gone The Post November 27, 2009 http://thepost.ie/breakingnews/ireland/print/eymhgbauojsn/ The Catholic Church’s ’don’t ask, don’t tell’ cover-up culture exposed in a damning clerical abuse report is dead and gone, a senior cleric said today. Bishop Eamonn Walsh, deputy head of the Dublin Archdiocese, insisted clergy named and shamed in the devastating probe should not stay in their job. A three-year inquiry found paedophile priests got away with decades of horrific child sex abuse because the Catholic hierarchy, obsessed with secrecy, was granted police immunity. But Bishop Walsh said the culture of cover-up exposed by the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese no longer existed. “That’s gone and dead and gone and thank God it’s dead and gone,” the Bishop said. “And if it isn’t, wherever it isn’t dead and gone that person should be.” The senior cleric, former priest secretary to disgraced Bishops Kevin McNamara and now Cardinal Desmond Connell, said priests should not be allowed stay in their positions if they were not able to safeguard children. “I would be the first to say that anyone, including myself, if I were to be found not up to the job of protecting children, then that person should go,” he told RTE radio. “If people feel that their Bishop, their senior person, or whoever it is is not able to protect children properly then that person ought not to be in the job.” The devastating report by the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, three years in the making, found four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs and in some cases with the blessing of senior law enforcers. The inquiry uncovered a cosy relationship between the Church and authorities with senior gardai singled out for turning a blind eye and treating priests as untouchables. Bishop Walsh said one of the biggest faults of the church was that there was not proper communication between parishes, and when top clerics were informed of abuse they kept it to themselves. Meanwhile, helplines have experienced a surge in calls since the shocking report was published. The Health Service Executive said its National Counselling Service received 145 calls between 8am yesterday and 2am today, compared with a usual daily figure of three.
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