SCOTLAND
The Observer
Kevin McKenna
The Observer, Saturday 10 August 2013
So the downfall of the Catholic church in Scotland didn’t occur at the hands of the Orangemen or the secular humanists of the church’s vivid imagination. All of the most grievous wounds it has suffered have turned out to be self-inflicted. The catalogue of sexual abuse by hundreds of priests stretching back decades; the sexual bullying of priests by its own cardinal; the cover-ups and intimidation of witnesses and victims – it didn’t need the assistance of any external agency to bring about the moral catastrophe that currently engulfs it.
The single beacon in this, the Scottish church’s darkest period, was provided by the most unlikely source. One of the victims of the sex abuse by priests at Fort Augustus Abbey School broke his anonymity last Sunday night and agreed to be interviewed on television. His words gave us a sense of the anger and humiliation he still felt more than 40 years after his torment. Yet he also possessed a dignity, courage and wisdom that has been entirely missing from the Scottish Catholic church and from Rome since the lid began to be lifted on this cesspit earlier this year.
This man was not impressed by the apology offered by the bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Gilbert, pointing out, correctly, that public opinion and widespread revulsion following BBC Scotland’s excellent investigation into abuse at Fort Augustus the previous week had dragged it from the church.
For any confession to be considered sincere and authentic, this brave man also pointed out, it has to be accompanied by “a firm purpose of amendment”. Nothing, though, in any of what has passed for a response from the church, has contained anything remotely like “a firm purpose of amendment”.
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