BigPond News
March 25, 2010
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/World/2010/03/25/Irish_Church_set_for_shake_up_444155.html
IRELAND -- Cardinal Sean Brady, the self-effacing head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, could yet become the biggest scalp of the country's clerical child abuse scandal, critics and commentators say.
The Vatican accepted the resignation Wednesday of bishop John Magee, the second senior cleric to quit in recent months, after two major inquiries into the abuse of children by Catholic priests.
But groups representing the victims of decades of sexual and physical abuse of children by priests, religious brothers and nuns say Brady himself has lost all credibility at the helm of a church reeling from the extent of the abuse.
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| Cardinal Brady the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, faces an uncertain future over the abuse scandal. |
'We need someone totally, totally uninvolved in the rape and torture of children,' said Christine Buckley, who herself was severely abused by nuns in a Catholic-run orphanage.
Brady has admitted he is a 'wounded healer' after it emerged that he had directly helped to cover up abuse inflicted by a serial paedophile priest three decades ago.
In his long-awaited letter to Irish Catholics published at the weekend, Pope Benedict XVI surprised many observers with the strength of his criticism of Irish bishops for the way they handled abuse allegations.
'Serious mistakes were made. All this has seriously undermined your credibility,' the pope said.
Any hopes Brady had of rising above the harrowing accounts of abuse vanished when a newspaper revealed court documents showing that as a 35-year-old priest in 1975 he met two children abused by the notorious Father Brendan Smyth.
Brady persuaded the two, a girl and a boy, to sign an oath of silence about their abuse and agree to talk to no-one about their interviews except authorised clergy.
He did not inform police and Smyth went on to abuse children in Ireland, Scotland and the United States before he was finally convicted 20 years later and jailed for a catalogue of sexual offences.
The Church has argued that the oaths were no longer binding once the investigation was completed and it was therefore not a cover-up.
Nevertheless Brady has admitted he is ashamed of his failings and apologised to those who suffered.
His critics are not satisfied however. They say his behaviour was emblematic of the veil of secrecy the Vatican threw over child abuse accusations for decades.
The resignation of bishop Magee came a year after he stood aside to allow an inquiry to examine allegations in the Cloyne diocese.
As he formally left office on Wednesday, Magee offered 'sincere apologies' for his actions and begged forgiveness from abuse victims.
Brady, 70, who is widely regarded as a modest man of integrity, indicated in his St Patrick's Day mass last week that he would consider his own position over the Easter period.
He asked whether there was any place in the Church's 'new beginning' for 'wounded healers, those who have made mistakes in their past to have a part in shaping the future'.
'I will reflect on what I have heard from those who have been hurt by abuse,' he said.
Buckley, a pioneer of the fight to gain recognition and compensation for victims, says Brady is irreparably tainted and must go.
'Why would a man of 35 or 36 take a statement from children aged 10 and 14? I'll tell you why -- to continue the cover-up,' she said.
She believes Brady missed a golden opportunity to reveal his involvement in the Smyth case when he was elevated to cardinal three years ago.
'Why didn't he do the honourable thing then and say what had happened? He could have left it to the people to decide and he may have received a lot of sympathy for that,' Buckley said.
Father Brian D'Arcy, a maverick priest based in Northern Ireland who writes a weekly column in an Irish tabloid, said the pope's intervention in the scandal had made Brady and senior figures extremely vulnerable.
'The pope's letter has left them as headless leaders, I don't think there is any other way to look at it,' he told AFP.
But Patsy McGarry, the religious correspondent of the Irish Times, argued that whether or not Brady resigned was a 'moot point'. It would come 'too late' to help repair the Irish Church's image.
'The Catholic Church in Ireland, as we have known it, is seriously damaged and probably beyond repair,' McGarry wrote last week. 'It is sinking and sinking fast.'
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