Popes Letter Does Little to Assuage Irish Anger, by John F Burns and Eamon Quinn, New York Times, March 21, 2010

Pope’s Letter Does Little to Assuage Irish Anger

By John F. Burns and Eamon Quinn
New York Times
March 21, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/world/europe/22ireland.html

IRELAND, DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI's weekend apology to sufferers of sexual abuse at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland met with a deeply skeptical and often angry response from many Catholics here on Sunday, with one prominent victim calling it ineffectual and demanding that the pope forcibly remove the head of the Irish church if he does not resign.

In the apology, Benedict expressed "shame and remorse" to victims and their families for "sinful and criminal" acts committed by members of the clergy. His apology, a pastoral letter, was read aloud at all weekend Masses in the 26 Catholic dioceses spread across the Irish Republic and the six British-governed counties of the north, and handed out in printed form to thousands of churchgoers.

Worshipers attending Mass in West Belfast. In interviews, many Catholics in Ireland said they shared abuse victims’ anger about the clerical scandals and cover-ups by bishops.
Photo by Peter Morrison

But in the apology, issued on Saturday, the pope did not require that Cardinal Sean Brady, who is the head of the Irish church, or any other church leaders be disciplined for their mistakes, as some victims had hoped. Nor did he clarify what critics in Ireland and elsewhere have said are contradictory Vatican rules about the procedures for investigating abuse cases within the church and church leaders' responsibility to inform civil authorities about offenses they uncover, a duty the pope reiterated strongly in his letter.

By remaining silent on the issue of punishment for top church figures implicated in what critics in Ireland have described as decades of cover-up, the pastoral letter appeared to have done little to assuage the dismay and anger of many in Ireland at years of revelations about pedophiles among priests and those who care for children. While Benedict called for forgiveness, a common response among worshipers and nonworshipers alike was that there would be no healing until at least some prominent church leaders resigned.

Many attending Mass over the weekend at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, the center of worship for the Dublin archdiocese, as well as others interviewed as they strolled in the spring sunshine in the Georgian heart of the city around St. Stephen's Green, said they shared victims' anger about the clerical scandals and cover-ups by bishops.

"I feel let down," said Hugh Keogh, 62, a Dublin insurance salesman. "It is one scandal on top of another. I do not think we have seen the last of this."

Catherine Flanagan, 38, a theatrical producer, said the pope's apology had come too late for the victims. "A lot of people are very angry," she said. "The pope is only taking action now because of the furor."

Adam Cunningham, an 18-year-old heading for a hip-hop concert with a friend, Shauna Hussey, said that although both of them had been educated at Catholic schools neither attended religious services any more because of the abuse scandal. "How can you believe in religion with all this going on?" Mr. Cunningham said.

One leading campaigner against clerical sexual abuse, Andrew Madden, a victim himself as a Dublin altar boy in the 1970s, said in a telephone interview that the pope's letter was a deeply inadequate Vatican response to three government-sponsored reports in recent years showing that church leaders in Ireland had repeatedly covered up scores of cases involving clerics under their authority.

Referring to the pope's call for healing within the church, Mr. Madden said it required "a certain level of arrogance" for church leaders to connive in sexual abuse by the priesthood "and then put yourself forward as part of the healing process."

But Mr. Madden, like many others in Ireland in recent days, reserved his strongest condemnation for Irish church leaders, particularly Cardinal Brady, 70, the Catholic primate of all Ireland. "Cardinal Brady and other bishops should resign or else be removed by the pope for their part in hiding abuses by clerics under their authority," he said.

On Saturday, the cardinal, speaking at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland, greeted the pope's pastoral letter "as the beginning of a great season and rebirth in the Irish church," and did not repeat his earlier offer to resign if the pope requested it.

When appointed to lead the Irish church, Cardinal Brady, who had spent 13 years working in the Vatican, was hailed as well suited to guiding the church after its battering in the abuse scandals. But church documents that surfaced this month revealed that Cardinal Brady conducted what a church statement described as a "canonical inquiry" in 1975 into abuse accusations that two boys in Northern Ireland made against the Rev. Brendan Smyth, who was publicly exposed years later as a serial abuser. Father Smyth was convicted of pedophile offenses twice in the 1990s, and died in prison.

The 1975 allegations were not reported to the police at the time, a failure that the Irish church, in statements in the past week, said was the responsibility of the bishop who oversaw the investigation, not of the then Reverend Brady, whom it described as a "notetaker."

The failure has led advocacy groups, and some in the Irish clergy, to say that Cardinal Brady bears some responsibility for the abuses Father Smyth committed for 15 years after the 1975 inquiry.

In a homily last week, the cardinal described himself as a "manager," not a church leader, at the time, but said that he was deeply "ashamed" of his actions. Many of his critics have said that he now stands tainted, along with other Irish bishops, by the pattern of secrecy, cover-up and relocations of those suspected of abuse that was revealed in recent years.

While the strongest current among those interviewed in Dublin on Sunday ran heavily against Benedict and Cardinal Brady, some welcomed the pope's message. The Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, a group representing children abused in child-care homes and residential schools managed by Roman Catholic orders, said in a statement that the apology was "unprecedented" and that the group welcomed the pope's commitment to intervene in the workings of the church in Ireland by sending an apostolic delegation to investigate the abuses.

In Rome, Benedict made no mention of the letter or the Irish abuse scandal in his weekly appearance from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square. But in what sounded like an indirect reference to the issue, he spoke of the church's teachings on forgiveness. Referring to Jesus, he said, "We humbly beg his forgiveness for our own failings, and we ask for the strength to grow in his holiness."