Archives for December 2009

We always knew Judge Yvonne Murphy's report into the handling of child abuse allegations in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin over a period of nearly four decades was going to be shocking, but few could have predicted just how devastating its findings would prove to be.

The 700-page report details 320 children's allegations of rape, molestation and sexual assaults against a representative sample of 46 priests between 1975 and 2004. The commission found that one priest raped or molested more than 100 children, while another admitted abusing children every two weeks for more than 25 years. Astonishingly, when church officials, or the police, learned of abuse allegations, they failed or refused to investigate, and successive archbishops of Dublin were found to have a "Don't ask, don't tell" attitude to child abuse. Instead of rescuing and protecting children, church authorities covered-up abuse and shelved investigations in an effort to protect the image of the church.

Ironically, their efforts have left the reputation of the Irish Catholic Church in tatters. Following publication of the Murphy Report, Fr Michael Canny, the spokesman for the Derry diocese, told the Irish Times, "There is no good in saying other than the truth: the Church at this state has no credibility, no standing and no moral authority."

We would never have discovered the extent of the conspiracy exposed in the Murphy Report without the tireless hard work of those victims and survivors who pressed for a full investigation, over many years, against intense resistance and opposition.

Marie Collins and Andrew Madden, pictured at a press conference following the publication of the Murphy Report, are two of the most outspoken and courageous campaigners for truth and justice to have emerged in Ireland for many years. They have become the faces and the voices of so many others who experienced abuse and then further abuse at the hands of priests and those who protected those priests. Marie, who was abused in the 1960s by a chaplain in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, identified in the Murphy report as Fr Edmondus, says she now feels vindicated by the report after what has been a "long road" for her and other campaigners. Andrew's decision to go public about the abuse he suffered at the hands of Fr Ivan Payne precipitated Judge Murphy's investigation.

Their dignity in the face of stonewalling, deception and misrepresentation is breathtaking. One cannot imagine the emotional price they have paid because of their courageous determination to speak truth to power. And one can only stand in awe of their ability to speak the truth with such clarity and grace. Every Irish person concerned about truth, justice and the protection of the vulnerable owes them an enormous debt of gratitude.

The BBC Will & Testament people of the year title for 2009 goes to Andrew Madden and Marie Collins.

1. Sex scandals rock the Catholic church. This was the most difficult year for the Irish Catholic Church for as long as anyone can remember. In May, the Ryan Report made headline news across the world when it revealed that rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in schools and orphanages run by the Irish church over seven decades. Two months earlier, Bishop John Magee was forced to "stand aside" from the management of his Cloyne diocese, in county Cork, after an investigation, published the previous December, found that his diocese had put children at risk by failing to follow child protection guidelines.

Things got considerably worse for the church with the publication, in November, of the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Dublin. Judge Yvonne Murphy chronicled an organised cover-up of child abuse allegations in the diocese spanning a period of nearly four decades. In the wake of the report's publication, there were unprecedented calls for the Pope's diplomatic representative, the Papal Nuncio, to be expelled from Ireland, after it emerged that he failed to correspond directly with the Commission of Investigation. Four bishops named in the report resigned, many said belatedly. A fifth bishop, Martin Drennan of Galway, has so far resisted the growing clamour for him to also step down.

The archbishops of Armagh and Dublin visited Pope Benedict, who expressed his sense of shame and outrage at what was exposed in the report, and Ireland was promised an historic pastoral letter from the pontiff setting out in detail how the church proposed to deal with the crisis. At the end of the year, commentators were predicting the greatest organisational shake-up of the Irish Catholic church for centuries. (Pictured: Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin with Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh, who resigned following publication of the child abuse report.)

2. Barack Obama reaches out to the Islamic world. In a major speech at Cairo University, the recently-inaugurated US president pledged a new beginning in his country's relationship with Muslims. The Nobel Peace Prize committee later identified the Cairo speech as one of the reasons why they had named Obama as their 2009 laureate.

3. Pope welcomes Anglicans into the fold - and a holocaust-denying bishop. When Pope Benedict generously created a new structure to welcome some disenchanted Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church, while permitting them to maintain much of their distinctive identity and liturgy, the move was seen by critics as an attempted annexation of Anglicanism.

The Vatican's attempt to reach out to ultra-conservative Catholics also backfired when the Pope inadvertently lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop (pictured, left).

Bishop Richard Williamson's views were widely available on the World Wide Web, but Vatican officials had failed to notice.

The Pope was forced to admit that the bishop's rehabilitation had been badly handled, ordered him to recant, and said church officials would in future make greater use of the internet to avoid controversial decisions.

4. Anglicanism's first lesbian bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury begged them not to do it. But America's Episcopal Church drove a bus through the Anglican Communion's moratorium on the appointment of gay bishops with the election of the Reverend Canon Mary Glasspool as a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Los Angeles.

5. Megachurch in megatrouble. One of Northern Ireland's largest and best-known churches, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, was plunged into disarray when George McKim, the man named as the successor to Senior Pastor James McConnell (pictured), launched a breakaway church after a dispute about his succession. To date, hundreds of former Whitewellers have left to join the new Peoples Church, Newtownabbey, which now meets in a warehouse in Mallusk.

6. Presbyterian frustration. The Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Stafford Carson, expressed immense frustration at the government's failure to resolve the crisis facing the Presbyterian Mutual Society, a year after the society went into administration. In December, it emerged that talks with a bank interested in taking over the society are now "at an advanced stage". Presbyterian savers now hope for some good news in the new year.

7. Atheism on the buses. Ads reading "There's probably no God" appeared on buses across the country after the Athiest Bus Campaign raised more then £140,000 to counter Christian advertisements on London buses. Christian campaigners complained, unsuccessfully, to the Advertising Standards Authority, and Ron Heather, a Christian bus driver in Southampton, refused to drive any bus bearing the ads.

8. A red letter year. Evangelical Christians commemorated both the Great Revival of 1859, one of the pivotal events in Irish religious Ireland, and the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin (pictured), the founder of Presbyterianism. 1859 was also the year Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, which unleashed one of the great controversies of recent religious and cultural history: the battle between creationism and evolutionary accounts of human origins.

9. Creationist capital. While Darwin's anniversary was being marked by science campaigners across the world, research commissioned by the religious thinktank Theos revealed that 25 per cent of the adult population of Northern Ireland believe in some version of creationism, making us the creationist capital of the UK.

10. Prayers for pastors. The year ended with outpourings of prayer for the Bible teacher and writer Derick Bingham, in treatment after a leukaemia diagnosis, and the former Catholic primate Cardinal Cahal Daly, who remains critically ill in hospital.

Derick Bingham's published letters from his hospital bed, and his interview on BBC Radio Ulster about his fight with cancer, were widely regarded as inspiring and deeply moving.

92 year-old Cardinal Daly's serious illness prompted tributes from many church and political leaders, who recalled his strong commitment to Christian unity and his peace advocacy during some of the darkest days of the Troubles.

The former Church of Ireland Primate, Lord Eames said, "The prayers of a great many people are with him at this time".

Update (8pm): The Catholic Church in Ireland announced tonight that Cardinal Cahal Daly has died. Read the BBC's obituary here.

I've received many messages from listeners in response to last Sunday's interview with the Christian writer and preacher Derick Bingham. Practically all those messages include the words "inspiring" and "powerful".

Last February, Derick was diagnoised with acute myeloid leukemia. Since then, he has been through chemotheraphy and experimental drug treatment. In March, I wrote about my own memories of Derick as a preacher, and linked to the remarkable letters he has been writing on his blog. In our end of the year special edition of Sunday Sequence, I invited Derick to talk about this past year, he fight with cancer, and how it has affected his view of life and the possibility of death.

You can listen again to the programme here (the interview begins at 34 minutes).

In 2006, we named the scientist and culture warrior Richard Dawkins as our Person of the Year. In 2007, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shared the accolade as Person and Deputy Person of the Year. In 2008, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu (pictured), took the title.

Who should be the choice this year?

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On Radio 4 this week, John Waite investigated the restoration and conservation work undertaken by the Vatican Secret Archives laboratory, one of the world's most technologically advanced conservation labs. You can listen again to Protected By Faith here.

The network of Irish school principals says any bishop named in the Murphy Report and implicated in the mishandling of child abuse allegations should resign their positions as school patrons. The Irish Primary Principals' Network also described Bishop Donal Murphy's resignation as "belated". This intervention by professionals working at the coal face of education in Ireland can only increase pressure on the four serving bishops named in the report, who are understood to be considering their positions following Bishop Murray's resignation.

What we are witnessing now is the leadership of a national church in crisis. Individual bishops repeat their conviction to remain in office unless their continuation as bishops becomes a stumbling block for the church and its mission.

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Three weeks after the publication of the Dublin child abuse report, which described his mishandling of a child abuse allegation as 'inexcusable', the Bishop of Limerick has resigned. The announcement was made at 11 am today by the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference. This is the first resignation by a serving Catholic bishop named in the Murphy Report and implicated in a systemic cover-up of abuse allegations. Four other serving bishops are also named in the report and are said to be considering their position.

Bishop Murray's resignation follows criticism from a senior Catholic theologian, Fr Vincent Twomey, a friend and former student of Pope Benedict, who said, on last week's Sunday Sequence, that the failure of the bishops implicated in the Murphy Report to offer their resignations was a matter of "grave scandal".

In a legal assessment published on the blog of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University College Cork, Ireland, the writers argue that "It would seem unlikely that prosecutions in relation to institutional failures from that same time period would have a realistic prospect of success."

The authors look at the various laws in the Republic, during the period under examination in the report, and ask whether prosecutions could be brought against any church or civil officials for failing to protect children or placing children at risk.

Read their analysis here.

Fr Vincent Twomey's comments on this week's Sunday Sequence have generated a lot of comment in the press -- as you might expect when a senior cleric and leading moral theologian says it is now a 'grave scandal' that the bishops implicated in the Murphy Report have not resigned and expresses his frustration at the slowness of Cardinal Brady's response to the crisis.

Who is Vincent Twomey?, you might ask. You wouldn't be asking that if you were a Catholic priest in Ireland, because Professor Twomey taught moral theology to many of today's clergy; his own former doctoral supervisor, Joseph Ratzinger, is the current pope, and Twomey meets with Pope Benedict each September to study theology. Since last year, he has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Foundation. It is fair to say that no priest or bishop in Ireland knows the pope so well or so personally.

Vincent Twomey's theological and ecclesiastical reputation, gained over the past forty years, is of a safe pair of hands, a thoughtful conservative and consistently traditionalist voice. When Sunday Sequence marked the 40th anniversary of Humanae vitae, we invited Dr Twomey to debate the document's contents and legacy with the moral theologian Fr Charles Curran. Curran, a progressive voice in sexual ethics, was sacked by Pope John Paul II from a Catholic University, and stripped of his status as a Catholic teacher by the then Cardinal Ratzinger. Twomey was the obvious choice for that debate because he and Curran embody entirely contrasting approaches to moral theology and to the question of sexual ethics.

In other words, Vincent Twomey is a serious and substantial figure within the establishment of the Irish church. He is not a maverick; nor is he known for speaking incautiously. Yet here he is describing the Murphy Report as the equivalent, for Irish Catholicism, of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and making a very public call for the resignation of the five serving bishops named in the Muthat rphy Report.

Why is he speaking now? First, he has more freedom to speak than most priests in Ireland, because he is a member of an order (the Society of the Divine Word), rather than a diocesan priest, and his order is personally very supportive of his interventions. Second, he is now retired from his teaching position and retirement can bring a certain degree of institutional freedom. Thirdly, we might add, that Twomey is not a bishop. There was some talk of his elevation to the episcopal ranks when Down and Connor became vacant, but that was then, and this is now. You might say, Twomey has nothing now to lose, in terms of advancement, by remaining silent. A fourth, and very significant reason, is that has long campaigned, in newspaper articles and books, for a massive restructuring of the Irish church because he is convinced that the current situation is untenable. Ireland, with a Catholic population of 5 million, has almost as many dioceses and bishops as Germany, which has Catholic population of 30 million. As a consequence, he has argued, the quality of Ireland's bishops isn't what it could or should be.

Whatever his reasons, Vincent Twomey has spoken louder and more clearly about this crisis and what needs to be done in response to it than any other priest in Ireland.

The Archbishop of Canterbury begged them not to do it. But America's Episcopal Church have driven a bus through the Anglican Communion's moratorium on the election of gay bishops with the election of Canon Mary Glasspool as a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Los Angeles.

Traditionalist Anglicans in the United States are furious. They regard the Los Angeles decision as a repudiation of the Windor Continuation Groups's recommended moritorium and the election of non-celibate lesbian priest as an affront to biblical norms. The American Anglican Council urges all "bishops and standing committees, as well as those of all the dioceses, to withhold consent for the consecration of the Bishop Suffragan-elect of the Diocese of Los Angeles."

Read Mary Glasspool's personal statement here.

Canon Glasspool tells Ruth Gledhill, in an interview published today, that "of more than 1,000 e-mails she has received, only two had been hostile." Ruth will join us live on Sunday morning to talk about the implications of this latest episcopal election for the future of the Anglican Communion.

Pope Benedict has expressed outrage at the findings of the Dublin child abuse report, after a briefing today from the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, and has pledged to write a pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland setting out the church's strategy in response to the report.

The Vatican statement includes this telling sentence: "The Holy See takes very seriously the central issues raised by the Report, including questions concerning the governance of local Church leaders with ultimate responsibility for the pastoral care of children."

One might read this comment in a number of ways. Is this an indication that the Pope believes episcopal heads should roll? Or is this a careful effort to distance the Vatican from the decisions taken by Irish bishops? The phrase "ultimate responsibility" is striking because an outside observer might believe the Vatican bears ultimate responsibility for the pastoral care of children; but the statement places that responsibility, in this case, on the shoulders of Ireland's bishops.

Here is the full statement:

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Ireland's Catholic bishops have been studying the Murphy Report at their two-day Winter General Meeting in Maynooth. At the end of the gathering, the archbishops of Dublin and Armagh will travel to Rome for an audience with Pope Benedict. We wait to see if any episcopal resignations will be announced in either in Maynooth or in Rome.

Following their meeting today, the bishops released this statement:

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The Vatican's diplomatic representative in Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has made a conditional apology for the failure of the church to co-operate with the Murphy Commission. "If there was any mistake from our side," he said today, "we also apologise for this. But certainly there was no intention not to co-operate with, not to give co-operation to the Commission."

Speaking after a 45-minute meeting with the Irish foreign minister, the papal nuncio also pledged to co-operate with the separate inquiry into child abuse in the diocese of Cloyne. We wait to see if that co-operation will be offered directly to the Clyne commission, or whether diplomatic channels will eb considered necessary in that case also.

Much has been written about the religious and moral implications of the Murphy Report, but little as yet has been written about the political implications of the Commission's findings. In today's Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole, a former student of Cardinal Desmond Connell, registers this telling conclusion he draws from the report: Agents of a foreign state should not control Irish schools. He writes:

"The Vatican, in its refusal to deal with the Murphy commission on child abuse in the Dublin diocese, made it clear that it wishes to be regarded, not as a church organisation, but as a foreign state. Which raises the rather stark question: why do we allow a foreign state to appoint the patrons of our primary schools? If some weird vestige of colonial times decreed that the British monarch would appoint the ultimate legal controllers of almost 3,200 primary schools in our so-called republic, we would be literally up in arms. Why should we tolerate the weird vestige of an equally colonial mentality that allows a monarch in Rome to do just that?"

Read his article in full.

One of the bishops severely criticised in the Dublin child abuse report has resigned his position as head of a children's disability charity. Bishop Dermot O'Mahony (pictured), a former auxiliary bishop of Dublin, explained yesterday why he can no longer serve as president of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust:

"In view of the unfavourable criticisms of me by the Report of the Commission on the Sexual Abuse of Children by Priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin, which has now been published, and the continuing public controversy in its regard, I have decided to step down from this position and I hereby submit my resignation, to take immediate effect."

Bishop O'Mahony retired in 1996, at the age of 61, due to ill health. His mishandling of abuse allegations is catalogued in the Murphy Report, and also in Andrew Madden's memoir, Altar Boy, which tells the story of the church's failure to deal with the self-confessed child abuser Fr Ivan Payne. When Payne admitted that he had abused Andrew from the age of 12, Dermot O'Mahony assured Andrew that the church would deal with the matter. But the abuse allegations were shelved. A similar pattern of covering-up is repeated across many other stories recounted in the Murphy Report.

Victims and survivors will doubtlessly regard Bishop O'Mahony's decision to resign from a children's charity as entirely appropriate and long overdue. But the bishop's decision represents a willingness to accept some responsibility, even at this late stage, in the face of a damning report. We wait to see if the five serving bishops similarly implicated in this report will follow his example. Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick is expected to offer his resignation to Pope Benedict tomorrow (today is a public holiday in Italy). If and when he does resign, he will keep his title and the Irish Conference of Bishops will be required, under church law, to provide for him financially.

What of the other four serving bishops? Will they wait to see if the media cycle turns away from this crisis to report other matters? Or will they be booking flights to Rome too in the next few days? And what of the Pope's silence in response to this report? Presumably there are reasons for that silence, but they are not reasons that have been explained -- even through diplomatic channels -- to the Irish Foreign Minister. Micheál Martin has expressed his surprise and disappointment that "the pope has not responded yet to the appalling revelations of the Murphy inquiry." When the Pope does respond, will he express confidence in serving bishops who have been implicated in a conspiracy to cover-up the abuse of children?

Bishop Donal Murray (right), who was severely criticised in the Dublin child abuse report, has travelled to Rome and is expected to tender his resignation to Pope Benedict. The archbishops of Dublin and Armagh will also meet the Pope later this week to brief him on the implications of the report.

Bishop Murray's mishandling of a child abuse allegation was described by Judge Murphy, in her report, as "inexcusable". He is only one of five serving Catholic bishops in Ireland implicated in the report. The others are Bishop Jim Moriarty of Kildare and Leighlin diocese; Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway diocese; and the two Dublin auxiliary bishops, Bishop Ray Field and Bishop Éamonn Walsh.

Last week, one of Ireland's leading moral theologians, Fr Vincent Twomey, called on all five bishops to resign in response to the Murphy Report and described the hierarchy's response to the report's publication as "mind-bloggling".

all give bishops shared information during the period under investigation, and all were aware of the church's strategy in response to abuse claims, Professor Twomey believes their position today is untenable. Cardinal Sean Brady, in an interview with RTE this weekend, said he believes all five will do the right thing. This is being read as an encouragement to resign. Ireland's Catholic bishops will meet in Maynooth on Tuesday and Wednesday this week to examine the Murphy Report and make decisions about the way forward for the church. They have much to talk about. Every time I ask a bishop about resignations, I am, told that resignations will not be enough to deal with this. That is true; structural changes will be necessary too, with considerably more involvement by the laity in the decision-making of the future church. But the public -- and the Catholic faithful -- is telling the bishops very loudly and clearly this week that resignations are the bare minimum of a response to the failings exposed in the Murphy Report.

And not just the five bishops currently serving in Ireland. Cardinal Desmond Connell (pictured, left), whose response to the Murphy Commission is described in the report as "disruptive", is also severely criticised in the report. He is still a member of the College of Cardinals. He is a prince of the church, holding a position of honour in the church's hierarchy second only to the pope. Cardinal Connell is no longer in place as the archbishop of Dublin, but he is now the focus of increasing anger from Catholics demanding that their church do the right thing too.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Ireland's bishops will meet in St Patrick's College, Maynooth, to discuss their response to the clerical abuse crisis. Ahead of that meeting, Marie Collins, a survivor of clerical abuse in Dublin, has written an Open Letter to the bishops. This is the letter in full:

To Ireland's Catholic bishops: An Open Letter

The existence and use of a means to mislead and lie to individuals and the general public, known as Mental Reservation, has been confirmed [1] by a Cardinal of the Irish Catholic Church to the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese

Two instances of this method of misleading the people appear in the Commission's report, there may be many more, one was used in a press statement to the people in my case [2] and another was used in the case of survivor Andrew Madden [3]

The people of the Catholic Church in Ireland deserve to know that this means of lying with an easy conscience will never again be used by any member of the Irish Hierarchy or any other clerical member of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

I am asking that the Irish Bishops Conference issue a public statement immediately giving this assurance to the Irish people. This statement must be in clear language with no ambiguity and no use of Mental Reservation.

If no such statement is made we can draw our own conclusions.

Marie Collins
4 December 2009
Dublin Clerical Abuse Survivor

References

[1] 58.19/20 Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin
[2] 58.22 Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin
[3] 58.21 Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

The Ugandan government says their new anti-homosexuality bill seeks to strengthen "the nation's capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family." The bill's language ("committing the offence of aggravated homosexuality") reads like a bad joke, but there is nothing funny about a law that sponsors the execution of gay and lesbian people.

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Pressure is mounting on Bishop Donal Murray, whose response to child abuse allegations while auxiliary bishop of Dublin has been described by the official report as "inexcusable". Bishop Murray says he will wait to see if he carries the support of the people and priests of his current diocese, Limerick. As yet, we have not been told what mechanism for ascertaining the level of support the bishop might claim. Survivor groups have suggested that he check his conscience instead -- it might be a better guide in these circumstances.

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