Acp Leadership Meets Irish Church’s Safeguarding Body

Association of Catholic Priests
March 5, 2014

http://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2014/03/meeting-between-acp-and-nbsccc/

At the invitation of Theresa Devlin, a meeting took place on 5 March between three members of the NBSCCC and two members of the Leadership Team of the ACP, Sean McDonagh and Tony Flannery.

The following items were raised by the ACP members:

1. Audits of dioceses and Religious Communities. We stressed that this put the members of the NBSCCC in a very powerful position, since, because of the publicity each tranche of audits receives, they amount to a public rating of the bishop or superior. And the content of the audit can have major impact on the lives of individual priests. We attempted to impress on them the seriousness of their role, and encouraged them to act with compassion.

2. We raised the difficulties around historical allegations, and the fact that many older priests are excluded from ministry because of a mistake or mistakes they made in their earlier life, and where there was no pattern of re-offending. We questioned the justice of this, and the witness it gives from a Church, one of whose core teachings is mercy and forgiveness.

3. We brought up once again the reality of false allegations, as we are experiencing them in our work with the ACP.

4. We acknowledged that the process by which priests are asked to step aside from ministry when an allegation is made against them has improved, and we discussed how it could be made even better.

We had what the politicians would call ‘a frank and open discussion’, and we did not agree on every issue. But we concluded that meetings between us are useful and important, and that they should be continued.

ACP Leadership

Clarification:

I wrote this report on behalf of the ACP. I fully accept that the word ‘mistake’ was not the best choice of word in the circumstances. Let me explain what I was attempting to say:

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, in a recent interview, described the traditional seminary training as very damaging of the human person, taking young men in to junior, followed by senior, seminary, and sending them out as priests in their mid-twenties with the emotional and sexual development of teenagers. “It was inevitable that they would be attracted to teenager”, he said.

At the meeting we were referring to cases like this, where these very immature young priests got into a relationship of this nature.

In some cases this was the only time in their lives that they crossed the line. There were no further allegations made against them.

I believe that depriving these men of ministry and publicly shaming them is a questionable form of justice.