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	Cloyne: the Triumph of a Corrupt Culture Irish Catholic July 19, 2011 http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/cloyne-triumph-corrupt-culture “All political lives,” Enoch Powell wrote, “unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure”. The same might be said for the ecclesiastical career of the now-disgraced former Bishop of Cloyne Dr John Magee. The man who served as leader of that diocese from 1987 until Pope Benedict XVI finally accepted his resignation last year has had quite the career path. Perhaps Cloyne seemed like a mere consolation prize for a cleric who had tasted the dizzy heights of power in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace as secretary to three Popes. It was never quite revealed why Dr Magee, who has admitted himself, had no knowledge whatsoever of Cork, was sent to the people of Cloyne in 1987. Former Papal secretaries are usually created Princes of the Church and rewarded with plush jobs in Rome of else selectively placed in a prestigious archdiocese usually in a capital city. With all due respect to the people of the ancient See of Cloyne, their diocese would not be viewed through a Roman lens in such a fashion. John Magee spoke often of his time in Rome. There was more than a glimmer in his eye when asked to recount yet another story about his time at the Vatican. It was such a story that first made him a protectionist in a tale of Vatican intrigue in 1978. The charismatic Pope John Paul I had died after only 33 days in office. A hastily-drafted communique was soon distributed to the international press recounting how the then Fr Magee had been distressed to find John Paul I dead in the Papal bed. The only problem was, Magee had not, in fact, discovered the dead Pontiff, it had been the Pope’s housekeeper, an Italian nun who had made the grisly discovery. Magee later admitted the actual turn of events however, not to be outdone; he continued to insist that he had found the Pope dead “I just didn’t find him first”! Ultimately it was to prove just another story in the endless repertoire that Magee deployed with such charm at dinner parties either in Ireland on oft-visits back to reminisce in the eternal city. He often speculated that the Pope would soon send for him to return to a high-profile job in Rome. The call never came. It was Magee’s love for Rome that provides the backdrop for what can only be described as one of the most-bizarre incidents recounted in Judge Yvonne Murphy’s 400-page report. A young man, given the pseudonym ‘Joseph’ by the commission, recalled how he had visited Bishop Magee in his palace in Cobh and the prelate had clasped him in a “prolonged tight embrace” before the bishop declared that he loved the boy and had had dreamt about him. At the time, the young man had felt the encounter to be “paternal”. He later felt differently and expressed his concerns that “maybe it wasn’t as innocent as I originally thought or assumed it was”. Magee later argued that it had been behaviour he had picked up while working in Rome. I must admit, having previously lived in Rome for several years, it is not behaviour that I would have ever considered to be normal. The Church’s own independent child safeguarding watchdog – the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church – conceded to Magee that the behaviour had not been criminal but nevertheless was inappropriate. The Cloyne Report makes it clear that John Magee had little or no interest in child protection within his diocese for almost 20 years. It is 2008 before the Commission found that Magee started to take a ‘hands-on’ approach to the issue. This is despite the fact that Magee admitted in his evidence that he had been made aware of child abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland shortly after his appointment in 1987. He chose, instead, to leave the handling of abuse to his powerful Vicar General Msgr. Denis O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan, according to the report, didn’t believe in the need to inform the Gardai and social services about allegations. The Vicar General’s dereliction of duty – to put it mildly - is made all the more depressing by the fact that the commission found he generally believed that the complainants had been telling the truth about the abuse they suffered. Now that the long-awaited report has been published focus must now move beyond Cloyne to the wider Irish hierarchy. Predictably, within minutes of Justice Minister Alan Shatter publishing the report yesterday the Catholic Primate Cardinal Sean Brady issued a statement from his Ara Coeli (gates of heaven) residence in Armagh in which the cardinal again repeated his apology and repeated “my shame and sorrow at what has happened”. The problem, of course, for the cardinal is that the Commission points out that Sean Brady publicly backed his “friend” John Magee on national radio in January 2009 just weeks after the publication of a damning report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) found Magee had operated a child protection regime that was “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”. Brady also knew about the inappropriate incident with the young man outlined above at the time of his stout defence of John Magee. Only Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was brave enough to risk the ire of his fellow prelates by going out on a limb in 2008 saying he thought Magee should go at that stage. This latest report offers a fascinating glimpse inside the usually highly-secretive world of meetings of the Irish hierarchy. After the Cloyne controversy broke in late 2008 the bishops’ conference met in emergency session at Maynooth to consider the fallout. Archbishop Martin remained adamant that Magee must go. Crucially, the report reveals, he was joined by a handful of other bishops in dissenting from the line that Cardinal Brady was trying to hold. Was Cardinal Brady, perhaps, haunted by his own past cover-up of abuse when he became aware of the activities of notorious abuser Fr Brendan Smyth in 1975 but refused to tell the gardai? Only Cardinal Brady truly known why he sacrificed so much in defending Magee as it became increasingly obvious that the Cloyne Bishop’s continued stewardship was untenable. Cardinal Brady’s support vocal support for Magee at the time – despite his expressions of remorse and regret now – surely makes his position as leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland increasingly untenable. Writing to Irish bishops in 2010 Pope Benedict starkly warned that their failures had “obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing.” It’s hard to argue. As the hard-pressed Catholics of Ireland – those who are still practicing - head out to Mass this Sunday morning they will again be contemplating the consequences of the unwillingness or inability of their leaders to respond properly to abuse and to show that the Church has learnt the lessons of this painful catastrophe. How much more can they take?
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