Church 'Fatherhood' Is an Empty One, Robbed of Humanity and Understanding
By Emer O'Kelly
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) published eight audits last Tuesday. The board is the organisation within the Catholic Church charged with ensuring that the sexual abuse horrors of the past are never repeated. The audits covered six dioceses (including Armagh), the order of St Patrick's Missionary Society (the Kiltegan fathers, based in Wicklow) and the Christian Brothers' day school sector. And it could be said that the overall impression is a good one. Lessons, as Cardinal Sean Brady said in reaction to the audit findings, are being learned. That statement, from a man who witnessed two children sworn to secrecy concerning their abuse by the late Brendan Smyth, in itself is progress. The defensive tone has gone. The acting head of the NBSCCC, Teresa Devlin, said the progress being made was "heartening". And after the years of self-justification and cover-up, nobody could deny this in the cases of all six dioceses under review, although there are alarming gaps. In Down and Connor, under the administration of Bishop Noel Treanor since 2008, 46 of 48 criteria for child protection were found to have been fully met, and the 14 concerns or allegations made against priests of the diocese during that period have been "properly managed". That is impressive, but not all dioceses emerge with such comparative honour. In Armagh, despite Cardinal Brady's remarks last Tuesday, the audit found that there is no evidence of a protocol being in place for respondent priests against whom there have been allegations, or about whom there were concerns, in cases where the civil process was not continuing. In Kerry, the auditors found that a priest known to have abused a large number of boys throughout his ministry was permitted to provide holiday cover in Kerry when he retired there. His activities had not been reported by his superiors to the Bishop of Kerry when he settled in the diocese. These may be isolated instances in the overall picture. But while some of the allegations have yet to be proven, they all, if true, represent instances of heartbreak and living hell for the victims, a hell from which they may never recover. And that is something which should give pause to anyone who wants to concentrate on the "bigger picture" for the sake of "fairness". There is no fairness in an abused child's life; there is no fairness in the mind and heart, what the church calls the soul, of an adult living with the memory of childhood abuse. That should not be forgotten. But the most alarm must be felt concerning two other audits: that of the St Patrick's Missionary Society and the Christian Brothers. The Kiltegan audit found that the order has been "challenged" by a "relatively high incidence of serious and ongoing abuse among its members". And horrifyingly, it was found to deal significantly differently with abuse allegations among its members here at home and those made against them in Africa. Since 1975, 50 allegations have been made against 14 of the society's priests (one has been convicted in the courts).
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