SCOTLAND
The Guardian
Kevin McKenna
If Satan were ever to consider deploying a PR strategy to gloss over all his crimes and misdemeanours he could do worse than contact one of his oldest adversaries, the Catholic church in Scotland.
For more than two decades now, the church has been revealed to have been exhibiting behaviours and conduct that would have led to a full public inquiry and suspension of its activities pending the outcome. Yet, following decades of child sex abuse by several of its priests, and subsequent cover-up by its hierarchy, it has managed to escape proper scrutiny and any degree of accountability. I suppose we should all be grateful for the McLellan report into safeguarding practices in the Catholic church that was published last month; it reminded us what a whitewash looks like.
So soft and fluffy was the report that it should have been delivered with a big pink ribbon tied around it and pictures of Walt Disney characters on its cover. Barely concealing his relief at its contents, Philip Tartaglia, archbishop of Glasgow, offered a full public apology to the thousands of victims of sex abuse at the hands of many of his fellow priests. This alone was deemed to be sufficient for a pattern of behaviour that has been fundamentally evil and widespread. Inexplicably, Scottish society has chosen to look the other way and allow the Catholic hierarchy, a strange and dysfunctional grouping, simply to get on with implementing the recommendations of McLellan.
Andrew McLellan, a man of unimpeachable integrity and Christian charity, has been used as a patsy by the Catholic church in Scotland. He has insisted repeatedly since he was commissioned to write the report in 2013 that the terms of its remit did not include naming any guilty individuals or highlighting the church’s wilful denial over the preceding two decades or more. So, what was the point of the exercise?
Everything significant within McLellan simply repeated what the rest of us already knew: that there has been historical sex abuse within the Catholic church; that there has been a culture of denial in the church in dealing with it and that survivors of abuse have been badly treated when seeking support.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.