By John Cooney
Irish Independent
March 22, 2010
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/john-cooney-papal-letter-has-fanned-flames-of-worldwide-fury-2106541.html
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| 'The Pope's letter will not lead most Irish Catholics to return to the sacraments' |
POPE Benedict has let down victims in his flawed Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland. He has fanned the flames of worldwide fury among church members at his failure to admit and apologise for his own culpability in covering up rapes of children by clergy.
Nor did the German Pontiff, who remains rigidly silent about media reports that he approved the transfer of a paedophile priest for therapy rather than reporting him to the police when he was Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, acknowledge the Vatican's leading role, as the command headquarters of more than one billion members, in a massive global cover-up.
However, in the first papal bull on the clerical abuse issue that is written plainly in readable language, Benedict lacerated the Irish bishops, his branch managers, for grave errors of judgement, "sometimes grievously", for failing to apply the secretive canon law requiring rapist priests to be defrocked.
Yet he did not red-card the bishops for failing to report abuse complaints to gardai stretching back to 1940, while ordering them to prevent future abuse and to "continue to co-operate with civil authorities".
Not only did the Pope not commend the Irish State for conducting the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy commissions which outed clerical abusers and the bishops' cover-ups, he trotted out the main excuse for the bishops' long inaction that was discredited by Judge Yvonne Murphy -- that they did not understand the scale or criminality of child abuse until recently.
His merciless but deserved public scolding of Irish bishops like bog-peasants was so savage that Cardinal Sean Brady and his colleagues -- excepting Archbishop Diarmuid Martin -- should send their resignations to Rome in the next postbag via the Papal Nuncio.
Benedict knows it was the Vatican that appointed Cardinal Brady, Cardinal Desmond Connell and Bishop John Magee, and further back Archbishops John Charles McQuaid, Dermot Ryan and Kevin McNamara. Most, if not all, of them would not have been on a ballot paper had priests and people of Armagh, Dublin and Cloyne been consulted.
Not only did Benedict not apologise for the refusals of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Papal Nuncio to respond to queries from the Murphy Commission, he has extended his remit into the sovereign jurisdiction of the Irish State by pledging to hold an Apostolic Visitation, a secretive, Vatican-led inspection of unspecified dioceses, religious orders and seminaries in Ireland.
This Ratzinger inquisition must shake the Cistercian-educated Taoiseach Brian Cowen out of his misguided neutrality of leaving unfit church leaders to sort out their own mess. It should galvanise him into mandating Murphy-style probes into Ireland's other dioceses such as is now being conducted in Cloyne.
"Full disclosure of the truth" is supported by Dr Diarmuid Martin as "the only way". As the prelate best placed to take over if Cardinal Brady resigns as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, Dr Martin, who was told to fall into line at last month's Rome summit, has characterised the letter as part of a process.
"The Pope, rightly I think, identified internal problems in the church which created this culture which favoured clergy and cover-up in the name of scandal," he said.
Dr Martin spoke of how the Catholic Church needs to be renewed in its mission. Hopefully, he will distance himself publicly from Benedict's crass analysis that secularisation of Irish society caused clerical abuse when it was pervert men of the cloth such as Brendan Smyth who abused innocent children.
Dr Martin could take the lead in being the first Irish bishop to respond to New York attorney Jerry Slevin's call for Benedict to summon before the end of the year a Third Vatican Council on the abuse crisis, whose reform agenda would rescind Pope Paul VI's 1967 birth-control ban which clouds the church for most Catholics.
Although Dr Martin claims the letter is part of a healing process, it is far from being the beginning of the healing process.
More accurate is the verdict of the Australian Catholica organisation for Catholics who have given up as well as those still practising in spite of deep misgivings. It said that Pope Benedict "squandered a heaven-sent opportunity to start to reverse the decline in morale and participation of recent decades".
Germans are angry that their abuse scandals are not mentioned, while in America, Barbara Dorris, director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, summed up the Ratzinger riddle neatly by saying: "The most powerful religious figure on the planet speaks of 'decisive action'. But he refuses to take any."
The Pope's gravest miscalculation in the letter is one of "simulated sternness", according to Terry McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishopaccountability.org, who noted: "Rather than announcing the resignations of Cardinal Brady and other complicit Irish bishops, the Pope merely commands them to 'acknowledge' the 'serious sins' against children and express sorrow."
There will be no return to the confession boxes and holy shrines by most Irish Catholics. The days of cul-de-sac Catholicism are over. Bring on Vatican Three.
Contact: cooneyjohn@eircom.net
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