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	A Preacher Speaks As Spin Doctor from the Pulpit By David Adams The Irish Times March 25, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0325/1224267012497.html Cardinal Sean Brady’s recent homily was self-serving and afforded only passing reference to the abused THE AMERICAN author and journalist Hunter S Thompson wrote in 1972 about Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign: “Jesus where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?” I’ve been wondering something similar about the child sex abuse scandals enveloping the Catholic Church. Where on earth will it all end? Is there anyone in the upper reaches of the church who hasn’t been involved in a cover-up of one kind or another? And how low will some of these people stoop to hang on to their positions? If Cardinal Sean Brady is anything to go by, the answer to my last question would appear to be this: just as low as it takes. The recent television footage of Brady being confronted over his role in imposing a vow of silence on two young victims of the monstrous paedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, was so embarrassing to watch, I felt sorry for him. Not a good media performer at the best of times, a crimson-faced and barely coherent Brady spluttered and stumbled as he grasped vainly for words to explain his actions and inactions to the viewing public. However, my sympathy began to wear thin when, in a flash of angry defiance just prior to marching off with his retinue, he declared he would only resign “if asked by the Holy Father”. This parting shot and the manner of it raised serious doubts about where his priorities lay. The only time he had shown any genuine emotion was when the possibility of him having to stand aside was raised. Solid proof of how determined he is to hang on to his position came a few days later when the cardinal delivered his St Patrick’s Day homily to a gathering of the faithful in Armagh. The contrast with his previous public performance could not have been starker. A shameless political spin doctor at the top of his game would have struggled to better the carefully crafted self-serving script that Brady delivered word-perfectly in Armagh. The homily had been heavily promoted beforehand, and continued to be afterwards, as primarily an apology to the two young victims he had sworn to silence. It was many things, but not that. Halfway through, there was only the briefest of nods in the direction of the wronged children, which amounted to a couple of qualified apologies from the cardinal and an expression of shame that – “35 years ago”, as he was careful to stress, he hadn’t lived up to his own standards. But the overarching theme was the self-acknowledged sinfulness and weaknesses of “wounded healers” such as St Patrick and St Peter. The suggestion of parallels with Brady and his own lapse couldn’t have been made plainer if he’d used a slide show and diagrams to illustrate the point. The net result, as intended, was the manufacture of a new “victim”: the cardinal himself. After having drawn “spontaneous” applause from the congregation for his supposed contrition, Brady appeared to smirk at the cameras as he made his way from the pulpit into the body of the church. And well he might have. Of his 830-word address, he had afforded the two youngsters he failed so dismally only four short sentences, yet he was being lauded by everyone around him for his Christian humility. The children had in fact been relegated to a mere supporting role. Their status as victims largely supplanted by Cardinal Brady himself in his successful attempt to be recast as a wounded healer on a par with some of the church’s most venerated saints. Despite it being spun in the opposite direction to the media, there was no indication that the cardinal intended to reflect on his position – which is hardly surprising considering he had just moved so decisively to secure it. Besides, as he declared to the media a few days earlier, he will only stand aside at the request of the pope. And given his own recently revealed failings as a bishop, the Holy Father is hardly best-placed to be demanding anyone’s resignation at the moment. There is another question of more fundamental importance than the future of Cardinal Brady that presents itself: what precisely do the civil authorities imagine their role to be in relation to child abuse and the church? The Ryan and Murphy reports, in particular, gave an insight into the scale of the problem, but there has been no follow-up. Why, for example, has no one ever been charged with perverting the course of justice by knowingly assisting an offender and/or concealing a crime? Why, at least, has there been no move on either side of the Border to assert the absolute primacy of civil law over canon law? Given what we now know, why have the authorities not launched a thorough investigation into every diocese on the island? Thus far they have behaved as though they are just disinterested observers – leaving the church to manage its own internal affairs, despite just such a lack of accountability to wider society being what allowed the abuse to flourish in the first place and remain undetected for so long.
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