BishopAccountability.org
	Bishops Must Sacrifice Themselves to Fix Church By David Quinn Irish Independent December 4, 2009 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bishops-must-sacrifice-themselves-to-fix-church-1963993.html AS usual the publication of a report into clerical sex abuse is being used to advance all sorts of agendas, chief among them being the long-standing aim of secularists to drive the Church from education. That this would mean depriving ordinary Catholics, who have nothing to do with the scandals, of their schools turns not a hair on their head. Priests themselves are being portrayed as collectively suspect and threatening because of the rule of celibacy, as though non-celibates never abuse children. Ludicrously, calls are being made to expel the Papal Nuncio even though the present nuncio is in Ireland barely a year and was never asked for documentation by the Murphy Commission. We are also led to believe that women priests would have ensured that allegations of sex abuse would have been better handled when received by a diocese. But what is the evidence for this? An investigation last year into the implementation of the State's child protection policy, Children First, found that some social workers (of either sex presumably) would be reluctant to inform on a colleague if an abuse complaint was made against them. A report carried in the 'New York Times' in 2002 found that schools in America have frequently moved suspected abusers to another school without telling the receiving school. These teachers would also be of either sex and mainly non-celibate, we can safely assume. An Associated Press report a couple of years ago revealed that three insurance companies in the US deal each year with roughly 250 cases involving sexual misconduct by Protestant clergy against minors. Why point out any of this? Simply to demonstrate that attempts to link the abuse scandals to something that is peculiar to Catholicism itself are very wide of the mark. But also to clear the ground of such nonsense before coming to the main point of this article, which is that Church authorities have still not done enough to demonstrate that they have really learnt from past mistakes and to show that their uppermost concern is no longer self-preservation. In Limerick, Bishop Donal Murray hangs on to the reins of his diocese despite intense and growing moral pressure to resign -- from abuse victims, from the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, and from Fr Vincent Twomey, Ireland's leading moral theologian. On RTE's 'News at One' the other day, I remarked that if Bishop Murray believes he has good reasons for not resigning then he needs to give an interview on national radio, and not simply on local radio as he has already done, because his audience has to be the whole country, and not just Limerick. He ought to allow himself to be interviewed by someone tough, but fair-minded, like Sean O'Rourke. If the upshot of that interview is that most people (and not just the Church-bashers), still think he should go, then he should go. And if that causes a domino-effect in the hierarchy, then so be it. The truth of the matter is that anyone who was a bishop in the 1980s through to roughly the mid-1990s, almost certainly handled these allegations extremely badly. Any bishop, including those not named in the report, who knows he dealt with abuse allegations no differently than Donal Murray should resign. This could lead to the resignation of a quarter or more of the Irish hierarchy, but so be it. Not once since these scandals broke have the bishops shown themselves to be ahead of events. They have always reacted to events. Bishop Brendan Comiskey resigned virtually at the point of a gun. Earlier this year, Bishop John Magee effectively resigned as Bishop of Cloyne, again under intense pressure. If and when Donal Murray resigns, it will also be in response to pressure. The Church will gain no credit from it, and the victims no succour. But if six or eight bishops were to voluntarily resign under no immediate pressure, as a way of expiating (a good theological word that) for their mismanagement of abuse allegations, that would finally tell the public that lessons have been properly learned. THE effect could be cathartic. It would not wipe the slate entirely clean by any means, but it would go a long way towards doing so. It would help to finally draw a line under the past and to move forward. Christianity is ultimately about fresh starts and new beginnings. It is about acknowledging past wrongs, learning from them, seeking forgiveness for them, and then making amends. Making amends can often involve pain and sacrifice. Sometimes making a sacrifice is the only way to achieve a new beginning. Isn't that what Jesus did? The bishops who remain in office, but who are responsible for the mess the Church is in, have to put things right. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Church, for the sake of what's right. They must resign to give the rest of us the chance of a fresh start.
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