The Irish Times - Saturday, July 23, 2011

As a well-written expression of the anger felt in contemporary Ireland about clerical sexual abuse, Enda Kenny’s speech is a masterpiece. Perhaps it took someone familiar with small-town and rural Ireland to capture the very particular torture of seeing a priest abuser continue to occupy a place of respect in a local community, writes BREDA O'BRIEN

Perhaps it took a practising Catholic to deliver sentences such as these: “Growing up, many of us in here learned we were part of a pilgrim church. Today, that church needs to be a penitent church. A church truly and deeply penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied. In the name of God. But for the good of the institution.”

This, too, was powerful. “This report tells us a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children.”

Nor could it be said that he exonerated the State. He spoke of “children and young adults reduced to human wreckage. Raising questions and issues of serious import for State agencies.”

But why, oh why, did he choose to say things like this? “Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic . . . as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.”

No one could doubt Enda Kenny’s sincerity. However, had he read the Cloyne report in full, it is doubtful that he could have reached the conclusion that the Vatican was in the business of obstructing a sovereign state.

The Cloyne report did not say that the Vatican tried to frustrate an inquiry. It does say that a 1997 letter from the papal nuncio, referring to a directive from the congregation on the clergy, “gave comfort and support to those who, like Monsignor O’Callaghan, dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy”.

The Cloyne report then goes on, in chapter four, to outline in meticulous detail subsequent Vatican documents in 2001 and 2010, which make it clear that the church is to co-operate with civil authorities, including this quote from the Guide to Understanding Basic CDF [Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith] Procedures concerning Sexual Abuse Allegations: “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.”

The Murphy report on the Dublin archdiocese did criticise the Vatican for not responding to a request for information. In my opinion, the Vatican was churlish and graceless by citing diplomatic protocol. But that does not constitute an attempt to frustrate.

If we want to express anger at a church that has been disgracefully slow in responding to the crime of child abuse, let me be first in the queue. If we want to criticise a style of communication more appropriate to the 19th century than the 21st, and a chronic inability to understand that the world no longer thinks in centuries but in seconds, let’s go for it. But if we want to take a quote from a 1990 document, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , and use it to imply that Pope Benedict thinks that the church should not co-operate with this State in the matter of reporting child abuse, leave me out.

An Taoiseach quoted Josef Ratzinger as saying: “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the church.”

At that point, we have left the truth behind. That passage concerns “polling public opinion to determine the proper thing to think or do” when it comes to theology. It has nothing to do with child abuse.

It is completely unfair to the Pope. Accuracy matters. Truth matters. If the church had been accurate and truthful from the beginning, think of the damage to children that would have been averted. If the bishops, even now, were willing to publish the results of audits, think of the good that would do.

The Irish church needs to stop hiding and come out and tell the truth, including the truth of the massive changes most of them have implemented. Refusing to do so leaves Archbishop Martin looking as if he is the only one serious about reform.

To criticise the Vatican harshly in the staunchly Catholic 1950s and 1960s would have taken real courage. In contrast, Enda Kenny’s attack on the Vatican was like someone offering to step into the ring with a Muhammad Ali with Parkinson’s rather than with the boxer at the height of his powers.

It is convenient to blame the Vatican, and God knows, with people like Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos (author of the 1997 document) as friends, the Vatican need never have another enemy.

Cloyne felt free to ignore the Vatican when it suited, just as it ignored Irish church guidelines. John Magee is not a monster. Denis O’Callaghan is an intelligent man.

Presumably, too, the directors of the Irish language school in Gweedore who continued to use a child abuser, Michael Ferry, for odd jobs are not monsters. None of them, however, grasped the absolute necessity to protect children.

Church, State, and some citizens failed to protect children. That is the reality we need to acknowledge with meticulous truthfulness to ensure that to the best of our ability, it does not happen again.



NOEL WHELAN

THE REACTION to every speech is always in the ear of the hearer. Some will inevitably dismiss Enda Kenny’s remarks during Wednesday’s Dáil debate on the Cloyne report as a populist attack upon an increasingly unpopular institution or as being motivated by political rather than policy considerations. The speech has already been dismissed by some as a polemic rather than as a contribution to debate.

To do so is to miss the point. The purpose of Kenny’s speech was not to persuade or to debate, neither was it a comprehensive treatment of Government policy on church- State affairs, or on relations between Ireland and the Vatican.

What it was, above all else, was a clear statement of attitude. The new Government of Ireland has given notice that it is adopting a new and less deferential attitude to the Catholic Church and to the Vatican. That is a very healthy development.

Of course the Taoiseach’s speech was political – he is the country’s top politician after all – but it was not cynically so.

The Taoiseach and his advisers will have been conscious that his remarks would be portrayed as populist grandstanding by those who don’t want to accept the point he was making. By playing it straight in media management terms they did much to undermine that suggestion.

Instinctively, political handlers might have preferred to ensure that the press gallery and the Dáil benches were packed for the speech. They could have ensured this by ringing around in advance. They did not do so. They also resisted the temptation to trail the speech and its significance by leaking snippets to one of that morning’s newspapers. Instead they let the speech takes its place in the chronology of a news day that everybody expected to be dominated by the euro crisis and other stories. The absence of hype or advance billing gave the speech greater impact.

Others have criticised Kenny’s text on the basis that it was unfair to the current papacy or that the tone was wrong. Again, however, they miss the point. The current Vatican regime carries responsibility for the errors of its predecessors. Kenny’s tone if anything was too soft in the circumstances.

If, as is clear, this Government has made a strategic decision to adopt a more confrontational posture towards the Catholic Church leadership in general and the Vatican in particular, then the publication of the Cloyne report was the proper occasion for that change in approach to be marked.

The venue was appropriate. Kenny was right to do it in the chamber of parliament itself rather in a media statement or some kind of formal diplomatic demarche.

The fact that it was done at the level of the Taoiseach rather than by the Minister for Foreign Affairs or Minister for Justice was also appropriate. The revelations in the Cloyne report and previous such reports require that the church and the Vatican be confronted at head of government level.

Coming from Kenny it had the added dimension of coming from a senior politician who is also a practising Catholic. Since he was advancing the official Government position it should not matter whether the speaker has any faith, Catholic or otherwise, but in reality it does and it was Kenny himself who chose to emphasise that dimension. It would have been easier for those who wished to dismiss the speech to do so if it had come from a more secular politician or a non-Catholic.

While Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen condemned child abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops in equally trenchant terms, they were more cautious in their critique of the church senior management here and in Rome. The tone and language used by Kenny is in stark contrast to that used by Brian Cowen in December 2009 when the Murphy commission report into the Dublin diocese was published.

As I noted here at that time, Cowen’s most high-profile intervention as taoiseach in the intense public debate following the publication of that Murphy report had the effect of defending the Vatican’s actions rather than adequately communicating this country’s outrage at the church’s connivance in the covering up of crime.

It did not require much courage to say what Enda Kenny said this week. The institution against which he directed his remarks is no longer a political force. His views chimed with the overwhelming majority of Irish public opinion. However, unlike his predecessors, Kenny had both the inclination and the confidence to set aside the diplomatic niceties and state baldly the contempt that the people of Ireland have for the manner in which the Catholic Church has responded to these revelations.

In years to come, passages from this speech will be cited as marking a watershed in the relationship between Ireland and the Vatican. Historians will also be interested, however, in exploring how this speech came to be made. It will be fascinating to see if the Taoiseach and those involved with him in the preparation of his text chose to consult in advance with Irish diplomats at the Holy See or with other officials. One suspects that if they got such an opportunity the Irish permanent government advised a more cautious approach. If that was the case then Kenny was right to ignore it.

In his collection of 50 Great Irish Speeches the historian Richard Aldous makes the point that such speeches can be divided into two types: those of the head and those of the heart. Many, he says, display remarkable powers of analysis, “setting out rigorous arguments to influence opinion by sheer force of intellect”. Others, he says, gain their authority from the passion and context of their delivery and because they capture a public mood.

Enda Kenny’s speech this week clearly fits into the later category. It seems destined to make the cut for Aldous’s future editions.