Only 1 in 4 priests agree with cardinal
11 February 2008
Only a quarter of parish priests in Cardinal Desmond Connell’s diocese support him in his High Court battle to keep secret files on clerical child sex abuse under wraps.
A survey by Newstalk found that a mere 25% openly supported the cardinal’s stance while 45% openly opposed him, with the remaining 30% unable to make up their minds.
When asked to choose between Cardinal Connell and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, one of the cardinal’s strongest critics in the controversy, just 20% plumped for Connell while 42% backed Martin.
Again a sizeable proportion, 38%, said they would not take sides, but there were few undecided when the priests were asked if they thought the Catholic Church had been damaged by the affair — 74% said it had, 20% said no and just 6% had no opinion.
Half of the diocese’s 200 parish priests took part in the survey, the results of which are revealed as the issue returns to the High Court this morning where Cardinal Connell is challenging the commission’s investigation of the diocese’s handling of complaints of child abuse against clergy.
Last week he secured a temporary injunction prohibiting the commission from examining 5,586 files in its possession pending a full hearing of the opposing arguments. The matter comes back before the court today but the case could be adjourned further.
The cardinal says the information in the files was given under guarantee of secrecy and includes accounts from victims and unproved allegations against priests.
The files were provided to the commission by Archbishop Martin as part of the hand-over of many thousands of documents agreed by the diocese when the Government established the investigation.
Abuse survivor and victims’ campaigner Marie Collins said yesterday there was no suggestion that the commission would disclose any information about a victim who sought to keep their identity secret, or endanger any priest about whom unfounded allegations were made.
“He [Cardinal Connell] trusted his own lawyers with whatever it is he is worried about. Why can he not trust an independent and fully professional commission with the same information?” she said.
“No names were ever published by the Ferns inquiry and no names will be published by the commission here, so the suggestion that this is to protect victims is not really as solid as it seems.”
Priests questioned in the survey were less forthcoming about the views of their parishioners, with 77% saying they did not know who the parishioners backed.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten