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	Response to Clerical Child Abuse Report The Irish Times December 3, 2009 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/1203/1224259993549.html?via=rel Madam, – My instinct is to defend the church from unfounded attacks. But the revelations of the Murphy report are something else. The actions, or rather, for the most part, the inactions of the bishops named there are simply indefensible. At the very least, it would seem, all were guilty of negligence – some, such as Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick, whose behaviour was described as “inexcusable”, more than others. But all were deemed guilty of inaction, of failing to listen to their conscience, as Mary Raftery put it on radio and television. They were deemed guilty of putting the interests of the institution above the safety and welfare of children. Their failure to act when necessary, whatever the motivation, caused profound emotional damage to the victims of clerical sexual abuse and their families, and facilitated even more abuse. Their failure to act decisively has also, as Fr Tom Doyle, the American canon lawyer, said on Prime Time , caused untold spiritual damage to those entrusted to their pastoral care. To begin with, all bishops mentioned in the report should resign immediately from their current pastoral positions. The longer they delay in doing so, the greater the damage they will do to all faithful Catholics, and in particular to the survivors of abuse who are still paying the price for the sins of their priests and bishops. – Yours, etc, Rev Dr D VINCENT TWOMEY SVD, Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, Divine Word Missionaries, Maynooth, Co Kildare. Madam, – I have just finished cutting Bishop Donal Murray out of my child’s confirmation photographs taken in 1990. I couldn’t stomach the sight of him standing there, not a care in the world, his arm resting around the shoulders of my lovely, innocent child. It breaks my heart to think that on that day that was so happy for my children and me, Bishop Murray was exposing other lovely, innocent little children to the demonic practices of his cohorts. I’m a practising Catholic; one who is finding it very difficult to believe a word coming from the mouths of any bishop, priest, or the pope. None of them cared a whit for those little children, if they did they would have, if necessary, placed themselves between those “monsters” and their tiny prey. I have no doubt their minds were on more important things, like minding the church’s millions. I am a mother of retirement age, and feel sick every time I see any of those old reprobates on TV, their big heads swollen with self- indulgent piety. Where was Bishop Murray’s conscience in all of this, “his judgment of reason”? He was told and therefore knew that deeds were being done that ran contrary to the law of the land. Bishop Murray and the others are supposed to be “servants of God.” Poor God, what a disservice they’ve done him. He should resign immediately. – Yours, etc, LIZ BOWIE, Highthorn Park, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. Madam, – I am dumbfounded by Brian Cowen’s remarks reported in your paper today (December 2nd) regarding the Murphy report. Mr Cowen and his predecessors have all bowed to church influence and bullying. Had they been politicians of worth and standing, these horrors would never have been inflicted upon the children of Ireland to such a shameful extent. It sickens me that once more the game of politics is being played out, our Taoiseach is defending a institution which ignored decades of child abuse. I wonder if a school principal had ignored mass child abuse in a school, would the Taoiseach publicly defend this person and insist he or she should not be brought to justice, that it was a matter for the school to deal with and not the State? Heads must roll, the papal nuncio must leave our land. – Yours, etc, ANDREW HYLAND, South Circular Road, Dublin 8. Madam, – The Murphy report must surely confirm, if confirmation were needed, that the Catholic Church in its various guises is not a suitable organisation to be involved in the provision of any service to the young in this country and that it should be asked by Government to hand over to the State its schools, hospitals and other facilities. If it should refuse, then, what I imagine are necessary, constitutional changes should be proposed to permit their expropriation. The subsequent referendum would allow the people to have their say on this matter. – Yours, etc, GERRY MOORE, Donegal, Cobh, Co Cork. Madam, – It seems Brian O’Sullivan (December 2nd) may have inadvertently provided the bishops with what in the final analysis will prove the most fitting defence: we were only following orders. – Yours, etc, JASON MORDAUNT, Woodbrook Hall, Riverwood Road, Dublin 15. Madam, – The victims of clerical sexual abuse have borne the burden for long enough. It is time for the rest of us to take action. We can no longer expect either the bishops or the Taoiseach to do anything. Their response to the Murphy report shows us clearly that either they do not understand, or they do not care. There are two simple actions which every Catholic can take. 1. Stop attending Mass. 2. Stop donating money. – Yours, etc, CATHERINE BROPHY, Corke Abbey, Bray, Co Wicklow. Madam, – How is it that ordinary priests and nuns are not shouting out both in support of those who were violated, or in criticism of their brother religious, calling for complete and radical change? Except perhaps to apologise? Apologise for heinous crime? How can any of us have any respect for any of them? The institutional church is obviously deeply corrupt. They should be out there in sackcloth and ashes. There needs to be a new Reformation, but it may be too late? – Yours, etc, ANNE Le MARQUAND HARTIGAN, Northbrook Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. Madam, – The Pope, we learn, has written to his Irish bishops directing them to report, solely and exclusively, all matters pertaining to child abuse by their clergy, to the Vatican alone, and not to the civil authority. A second and following letter commanded total secrecy regarding both. The two letters were in Latin. May I suggest that it’s now time to convey the view of the Irish people in this ghastly matter in like language? Vox populi suprema lex; Causa finita est. – Yours, etc, DAVID GRANT, Pleasant Drive, Mount Pleasant, Waterford. Madam, – As any normal Christian and Catholic family would be, we are shocked and deeply angered by the lack of response of the most senior church men in Ireland, to the horrific and sustained violence visited on the nation’s defenceless, helpless and innocent children, as detailed in the Murphy report. Save for Diarmuid Martin, their silence is deafening and speaks volumes for how much out of touch with the people, these relics of a long bygone age have become. Shame on them! Those evil predators amongst their clergy have preyed for many years on their countless victims — cunningly and with malice aforethought, using their “access all areas” collar to gain privileged and unsupervised access to their carefully selected targets. Their bosses over many years have wilfully hidden – indeed aided and abetted – serious, criminal activity of the most depraved kind and then, incredibly, moved them on to “pastures new” where they could start all over again and wreak their unforgivable havoc on a new and unsuspecting audience of innocent children. There is only one thing for it – hit them where it hurts. Parishioners of those men named in the Murphy report should not attend Mass next Sunday – or any future Sunday – in their local churches until all six of those excuses for men, have resigned. We are appalled by them and deeply distrustful now of the senior people in our church. Men of God, indeed. May God save our children from their evil kind. – Yours, etc, THE CURTIN FAMILY, Dollymount Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3. Madam, – Cardinal Connell’s exposition to the Murphy commission of the contorted “mental reservation” concept seems to have appalled/”shocked” some observers, including your own columnist Breda O’Brien (Opinion, November 28th). They thereby unwittingly proclaim their (relative) youth and innocence, God bless them. The “mental reservation” casuistry has long been a feature of Catholic moral theology. This was frequently illustrated in the “Notes and Queries” pages of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. These replies afforded me much inexpensive entertainment in my younger days, in the long nights after Samhain. However, it is a letter in your own correspondence columns many years ago that best reflects the convoluted Connell mentality – and in startlingly similar terms. On May 23rd 1953, a “Catholic layman” signing himself as “J.T.F.” and claiming considerable expertise in the area of morality-and-taxation, made the following priceless contribution which evoked no comment thereafter from professional theologians or revenue commissioners: “To the objection that to sign an incompleted declaration of income is to sign to a lie and therefore to sin, the answer is quite simple. It is that the authorities do not expect the complete declaration. They know that in practice virtually every taxpayer who is in a position to suppress part of his income will do so. Consequently, they are not in the formal sense “deceived” by an incomplete return, and the essence of a lie is deceit”. – Yours, etc, JOHN A MURPHY, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, University College Cork. Madam, – What a contrast on your Letters page (December 1st). Kevin Denny accurately hit the nail on the head, while Pat Brunicardi et al floundered in the mist of obfuscation. Des O’Malley stated, some years ago, – “I stand by the republic”. It’s about time we refused to doff the cap or bend the knee, be it to politician, banker or cleric! – Yours, etc, AIDAN CARROLL, Kilmallock, Co Limerick. Madam, – What were your own great “investigative” journalists doing during the past 60 years when these abuses were taking place; or was the press too, under the thumb of the bishops? – Yours, etc, MICHAEL KAVANAGH, Joseph Street, Wexford. Madam, – There were only six teachers in the secondary school I attended in northeast Donegal in the 1960s, four of whom were priests. Classes were small, most having fewer than 12 students. These should have been ideal teaching conditions where boys and teachers alike could have learned so much from each other. That, however, was not what happened. I remember senior maths and science classes being whittled down to a mere handful of boys, as the rest of us were terrified away from these subjects by the sadistic violence of one priest. This same “teacher” rarely taught a class, but used brute force on boys ranging in age from 12 to 16 years simply so that he could enjoy a quiet classroom. “Brute force” here meant boys being stretched across his desk and strapped, and this priest gave students two to four dozen wallops of his strap. Another of these priests regularly beat boys with a hurley stick and a strap. He also abused his position, both as a priest and a teacher, by having sexual relationships with at least one young female student from the local convent school. Yet another of these priests nicknamed his strap “Susie” and used it to terrify young boys in particular. More than once he battered students in front of the class until the blood flowed their face. What I remember most about my schooldays was not just the terror and the regularity of the beatings, but the camaraderie among the clerical teachers in such a small school where so much fear and hypocrisy reigned. Three out of four of these priests seemed to actually enjoy terrifying young boys. I bring this to the attention of your readers simply to ask if this was some sort of record? Certainly it is worth remembering that the abuse of clerical power and privilege extended well beyond State institutions where young children were incarcerated and so violently abused. It was the common experience of far too many defenceless boys and young men of my generation for whom secondary education was a profoundly damaging and terrifying experience. – Yours, etc, DR JIM Mac LAUGHLIN, Ashford Estate, The Lough, Cork. Madam, – The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) welcomes the publication of the Murphy report. The extent of the abuse of children and the cover up of the allegations against some of the priests and religious, the failure of senior clerics to report the abuse to the relevant State organisations and the collusion of some State agencies are of great concern. While we acknowledge the work to date of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in addressing these failures in the Dublin diocese, the IASW remains concerned that without enshrining the rights of the child into the Constitution, achieving the Government policy of ensuring the rights of the child are paramount will remain an aspiration and not a reality. The IASW plans to campaign for the necessary change in the Constitution. – Yours, etc, FRANK BROWNE, Communications co-ordinator, Irish Association of Social Workers, Pearse Street, Dublin
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