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	No Apology Can Right Such a Terrible Wrong By Terry Prone Herald November 27, 2009 http://www.herald.ie/opinion/no-apology-can-right-such-a-terrible-wrong-1956241.html Bishops voice regret but it means nothing if they do not take responsibilityThe ones who are still alive apologised, yesterday. From their posts outside Dublin or from retirement, they apologised. And those apologies from former Dublin Archbishops were instantly dismissed by victim groups. Part of the problem is the wording. It's remote-control remorse. They express "regret" over "any pain or hurt caused". They don't take ownership the way that smart man Diarmuid Martin takes ownership. They don't say "I'm sorry. Personally. I'm ashamed. And I know I should be ashamed." It's just vague regret for unowned -- and now cliched -- "hurt" and "pain". The Church was about eternity and the salvation of us all. It could not be threatened by weird stories from children about behaviour no sane man would ever engage in. Because the Church had to be protected, everything else fell in to place. First, cast doubts on the word of the child. Children make up stories, live in a fantasy world and seek attention, don't they? evil Therefore, if a child says that a priest known to be gentle and good with children did disgusting things to her, we, the hierarchy, cannot believe her. If our vocation is to protect the Church, we cannot believe her. The assumption sometimes made about the Bishops who moved paedophile priests around and covered up for them is that the Bishops knowingly did evil. The tragedy is that every one of them believed they were doing good. How could they not? For starters, they were inexperienced at dealing with children -- whereas the man accused by a child had loads of experience with children, and sometimes special training. It was easy to disbelieve the children and believe the man. Even when the man confessed, his superiors were trained to listen and absolve. To forgive on behalf of the God both of them served. Not only did they forgive, but they tried to understand. But they were faced with men who knew how to groom children -- and knew how to groom bishops. These men showed total remorse. Promised it would never happen again. Accepted a new posting. Meanwhile, the child was left stranded in a morass of contradictions. The priest they had adored and served before, during and after him doing these strange things to them was suddenly gone. Their parents seemed cowed by the contact with the Church. And if the gardai were even briefly involved, they seemed cowed, too. So the child was surrounded by censorious silence, left wondering what in him or her caused them to be singled out, fearful of every affectionate touch; filthied, lonely and lost. And when exposure of generations of raping and groping was inevitable, the top men talked to the wrong people. They talked to the lawyers, paid to protect the system, not the injured. They talked to the insurers to make sure the institution didn't run out of money. Today, those children, now grown up, hear the apologies but don't believe them. They know they were sacrificed in the interests of a system. They believe the officers of the church to be as evil as the men who molested them. The grim fact is that, even if the surviving Bishops can't find the right words to express their sorry, they are certainly suffering. Certainly being punished. Because they are watching the system brought to its knees; shamed and condemned. Everything they thought they stood for has crumbled, including their own reputations and sense of achievement. And nothing they can do can ever right the wrong they did -- even if they did it with the best of intentions.
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