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	Taoiseach Went Further Than Voicing Anger By Breda O'brien Irish Times September 9, 2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0910/1224303846996.html THE BLOGGER known as the “Thirsty Gargoyle” has a link to a YouTube video of Stewart Lee, stand-up comedian and one of the authors of Jerry Springer – The Opera. Nothing odd about that, except that the link comes in the middle of a forensic analysis of the Cloyne report. In the clip, Lee tells about meeting a taxi driver who suggests that all homosexuals should be killed. When Lee challenges him quite mildly, the taxi driver’s retort is a dismissive, “Well, you can prove anything with facts, can’t you?” Lee loves this response, illustrating a certain mindset that finds facts confusing, and prefers to rely on instinct. I am reminded of Lee’s taxi driver when I hear the Taoiseach defending his post-Cloyne speech. He, and many of his apologists, have said that he was just giving voice to the anger and disgust felt by Irish people at the many failures of the church regarding clerical sexual abuse of children. If that was all he intended to do, why didn’t he just do that? Why did he refer to “as recently as three years ago, not three decades”? Why did he talk about the Vatican undermining a sovereign state? Why did he blatantly misuse a quote from Josef Ratzinger, and pretend it referred to the church not being subject to the norms of democratic states, when in fact it was about the need for theologians to do more than bow to current opinion? Why did he conveniently forget he was part of a Government that decided against mandatory reporting? Why did he not just say, as virtually every reasonable person has been saying for years, that we are sick of hearing of failure after failure by the church in relation to the safeguarding of children, and we want an end to it? I’m of the old-fashioned school that happens to think that facts matter. And the facts are that the Cloyne report says that the reaction to the framework document was “entirely unhelpful to any bishop who wanted to implement the agreed procedures”, and “those who thought like Monsignor O’Callaghan had their positions greatly strengthened” . In other words, it says that anyone who wanted to dodge implementing the framework document would have been able to point to the Vatican letter. However, the Cloyne report also says: “Throughout the period covered by this report there were clear church guidelines in place for dealing with complaints of child sexual abuse. There were Irish church guidelines issued in 1996, 2005 and 2009. Instructions were issued by the Vatican in 2001 and in 2010.” It says that the 2001 and 2010 Vatican instructions were clear on the need to report to civil authorities. In short, the 1997 letter had no impact on the practice of most of the Irish bishops. It says that the diocese of Cloyne ignored Vatican guidelines. Only one case was reported to Rome in the timeframe of the investigation. That priest was removed from priestly ministry by the Vatican. The clear implication is that people like Msgr O’Callaghan might have taken comfort from the 1997 letter, but not to the extent of actually implementing canon law or Vatican guidelines. Contrast the amount of commentary on the 1997 letter regarding the framework document with commentary on the acidic comments the Cloyne report made about the Office of the Minister for Children for failing to disclose legal advice from the Attorney General. The commission “notes that, in contrast, the church authorities provided the commission with its privileged documents”, as did the Garda and Health Service Executive. The Vatican may not have provided documents, but correctly said that the local church would. As the report shows, the Vatican was only being sent very selective material in any case. The Cloyne report is 421 pages long. The Taoiseach said it showed, unlike any other report, that the Vatican had undermined the State. The Vatican response is 25 pages long, one of which is dedicated to apologising for the evil crime of child abuse. Legalistic? Technical? One might consider it a model of brevity given the enormity of what it was accused of. Mind you, I would have loved to have seen in the Vatican response an admission that it really only got its act together in 2001, and that even when it did, the staff of the Vatican were overwhelmed and could not cope with the sheer volume of complaints. I wish a high-ranking Vatican cardinal had personally delivered the response to Ireland, instead of summoning the unfortunate third secretary who is now the highest-ranking official in the Irish Embassy to the Holy See. I wish the courage of every victim would be honoured by the Irish church being able to demonstrate it is now above reproach. But I also wish that the Taoiseach of my country had given controlled, dignified voice to the anger and sorrow of the Irish people while still managing to honour the facts. The Irish State has an abysmal record in relation to child abuse, and the HSE’s failures were documented as recently as three months ago, not three years (Hiqa’s report on Dublin North Central fostering service.) As Archbishop Martin said, “I don’t want to see a polarisation between church, State, voluntary groups – we all should be working together to see that children are protected.”
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