BishopAccountability.org
	Questions for Cardinal Brady The Irish Times March 16, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0316/1224266351775.html THAT THE clerical abuse scandal in the last few days should have reached up to touch both Cardinal Sean Brady and Pope Benedict, and has seen new abuse inquiries spread from Germany to the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, speaks with sad eloquence of the extent to which it has contaminated the Roman Catholic Church’s entire body, morally and organisationally. In both the cases of Fr Brendan Smyth in the diocese of Kilmore and that of Father ‘H’ in Munich, in 1975 and 1980 respectively, the church authorities decided that an abusive priest would be dealt with internally, and in both imposed a vow of silence on the abused with disastrous effect. In both cases the process, now repudiated by the church, allowed the abuser to return to reoffend. The degree of culpable, direct responsibility of both Dr Brady, then just a priest who took evidence from the abused and then evaluated it on behalf of his bishop, and of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, whose deputy dealt with the case, is clearly disputable. Both were cogs in a process established under canon law and both can point to a failure of others. But does that absolve them as citizens of a duty of care and of obligations under the criminal law to notify the civil authorities? Had the Garda been informed then of Smyth’s abuse a subsequent 18-year trail of misery initiated by a man known to his order as a serial abuser since the 1940s could have been ended. Did the senior members of the Norbertine Order who attended one of Dr Brady’s interviews with an abused child really not give any intimation to him that they were dealing here with a man with a history? The church should publish his reports. The enforcement of silence was particularly pernicious. Msgr Charles J. Scicluna, the director of a tribunal inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal arm, over the weekend dismissed the idea that secrecy was imposed “in order to hide the facts”. Rather, he said, it “served to protect the good name of all the people involved, first and foremost, the victims themselves, then the accused priests who have the right, as everyone does, to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty”. That simply does not wash. Why then the continued silence even after adverse findings against a priest? And, as the Murphy report found, the Dublin archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, “at least until the mid 1990s were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities”. Ultimately, however, the questions which must be answered by Cardinal Brady are whether he can still speak with clear, untarnished authority on the abuse issue? Whether he can still convincingly lead his brother bishops out of the most profound crisis in the Irish church’s history? His authority to lead the Catholic church in Ireland is severely damaged.
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