IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Cardinal Brady’s resignation would signal an acceptance that priests answer to society and not just to the Church, says Malachi O’Doherty
Most of us, if we had been priests of Fr Sean Brady’s age in the 1970s, would have done as he did. The priest takes an oath of obedience to his bishop. Brady was assigned by his bishop to investigate a fellow cleric who was allegedly raping children and to report back.
He did everything that was expected of him by the only authority to which he had pledged himself answerable. He ascertained that the odious Brendan Smyth was, indeed, a paedophile priest making use of children for his sexual gratification. And he also spoke to two boys who had been abused in that way and he believed them. Then he swore them to secrecy.
All of this – in the practical, secular view of a later age – was what we would now call collusion in the cover-up of a vile crime. The manipulation of victims for the protection of an offender and of the institution to which that offender belonged.
But what was it in the mind of Sean Brady? It was the exercise of unquestioning obedience and loyalty. It was an outward expression of his faith in the power of the church to do the right thing.
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