Child Abuse CoverUp by Irish Catholic Leader Brady, by Heidi Lees Bell , ICM, March 15, 2010

Child Abuse Cover-Up by Irish Catholic Leader Brady

By Heidi Lees-Bell
ICM
March 15, 2010

http://news.icm.ac.uk/europe/child-abuse-cover-up-by-irish-catholic-leader-brady/5937/

IRELAND -- Ireland's Catholic Church leader has resisted calls to resign after it emerged that he was involved in meetings with child victims of sex abuse forced to sign an oath of secrecy.

Cardinal Seán Brady has faced demands to resign from his post as the most senior Irish Catholic cleric since Sunday (14 March 2010) – after it was revealed that he failed to notify authorities of sexual abuse by Father Brendan Smyth in 1975.

At the time, Brady was a secondary-school teacher, priest and part-time secretary to the late Bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan, and was directed to attend the meetings by the Bishop. The Catholic Church was investigating sex abuse complaints against Smyth – whose activities later led to the collapse of Albert Reynold's coalition government in 1994.

Irish Catholic leader Cardinal Brady continues to resist calls to resign despite being involved in the cover-up of child sex abuse in 1975.

In these meetings, two victims were forced to sign an oath of secrecy and Smyth was removed from the ministry. However, he then went on to abuse further children until he was imprisoned in 1994 – dying of a heart attack one month into his 12-year sentence.

He pleaded guilty to 74 charges of sexually assaulting 20 victims over a period of 35 years. If he had been convicted in the 1970s, many of the children involved would have been saved from this terrible abuse – and it is this knowledge that is angering so many, and making them call for Brady's immediate resignation.

Today, Cardinal Brady said on broadcaster RTE's Morning Ireland of the calls to resign, that "I've heard those calls, I don't think it was a resigning matter." In an RTE interview in December 2009, he said he would resign if he ever found children had been abused as a result of any failing on his part while a bishop or a manager – referring to this he commented: "Well, 30 years ago, 35 years ago, I was not a bishop, I was not a manager, I was a full-time secondary teacher and I was there taking evidence."

Yet in his very being a teacher, he should have shown even more responsibility and concern for the welfare of children, regardless of his authority or status. He has said a number of times that the interviews formed the basis of the action taken to remove Smyth from the pastoral ministry, and that he was not the "designated person" to report the issue to the civil authorities.

It is difficult to comprehend this decision-making from a man whose life and vocation is based around religion. It is not a matter of whose job it was to report it – it simply needed reporting and the man responsible for such awful crimes putting away in prison so he could not hurt any more children.

Yet the Catholic Church appears to operate on a different level, as Mary Rafferty describes in The Irish Times: 'What lies at the heart of the church's failures is not, as many people assume, the vow of celibacy – it is, rather, that of obedience.

'And obedience is writ large over the latest scandal to hit the church. Cardinal Seán Brady is at pains in his statement yesterday to emphasise that his involvement in the meetings at which victims of serial child rapist Brendan Smyth were asked to swear an oath of secrecy was "at the direction of bishop McKiernan", his then boss as bishop of Kilmore. Later in the statement, he adds that "as instructed", he passed all information to the bishop.

'The strong implication in this is that the cardinal is somehow relieved of his personal duty to act as a responsible citizen, to report a crime and to protect children, is breathtaking to those of us who live by and believe in the rules of the State.

'But then, remember that different drum that promises obedience – it beats a tattoo that says obey your superior, subjugate your will to his, do not question or hint at distrust, and above all do not ever place your own views or opinions above his. As the Irish Catholic Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors tells us: "Obedience is really…a willingness to let go of one's own agenda".'

However, as much as this culture of obedience goes some way to explain Cardinal Brady's lack of action, his behavior does not stand in the secular world where we have a responsibility as citizens and human beings to protect our children from evil.

Whether directly or not, Brady's actions led to the abuse of children by a man who should have been removed from society at the very instant he was proven to be guilty – and for that, surely there can be no question of a resignation from a man who has condemned others who have failed to act.

In December 2009, he said of Bishop Donal Murray's resignation following the Murphy Report, "I apologise again to all who were abused as children by priests, who were betrayed and who feel outraged by the failure of Church leadership in responding to their abuse. Their suffering must always be the primary consideration in any assessment of past failings, as a Church and as individuals."

Perhaps Brady needs to revisit these sentiments when assessing his own past failings.

Do you think Cardinal Seán Brady should resign? Let us know.