There is a serious anti-Catholic and anti-priest bias among sections of the media, including some in the national broadcaster, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has claimed.
This bias has led to a one-sided and unfair presentation of issues to do with Church and clergy in recent years, the association said in a statement today.
This, it said was "clear, both from the way the RTÉ Prime Time programme Mission to Prey'was produced and presented" last May and which defamed Fr Kevin Reynolds, but "also from the results of the survey commissioned by the Iona Institute regarding attitudes of people towards priests."
Fr Reynolds is an ACP member and the association was central to his successful defamation action against RTÉ last week.
The Iona Institute survey the association referred to found that of 1,000 Irish adults questioned last September, 42 per cent put the number of priests guilty of child abuse at over 20 per cent of all priests. Academic studies in the US have found that just 4 per cent of Catholic priests had been accused of child abuse between 1950 and 2002.
The ACP also expressed disappointment at “the way the statement of correction and apology (to Fr Reynolds) was presented by RTÉ on television and radio” on the completion of the defamation case last week.
It said that “for many years now both priests and religious have been reluctant to engage in the public debate on issues related to the Church, because they did not want to add to the suffering of those who were genuinely abused, but also because they believed they would not get a fair hearing.
“They realised that very often the critics of the Church were allowed free rein by the presenters of programmes, whereas Church people were aggressively questioned and harassed about everything they said. So they remained silent. It is clear now that this silence has not helped, and has contributed to the unbalanced view of Church personnel shown up in the recent survey. This policy need to be revisited.”
Furthermore, it said Church protocols dealing with the handling of allegations against priests are “seriously defective”.
It said: “If RTÉ can be criticised for not waiting a few weeks until such time as Kevin Reynolds had a chance to clear his name by taking the paternity test, as he had offered to do, surely the Church authorities should have been equally circumspect about any action that could be seen to imply guilt on his part.”
It also supported questions asked of RTÉ by the Irish Missionary Union (IMU) which queried why it decided to broadcast the false allegations against Fr Reynolds when he had agreed to undergo a paternity test to prove his innocence.
The IMU has also asked why RTÉ chose to confront Fr Reynolds in public view on church grounds after Mass on a First Communion day, what legal advice it was given before it broadcast the false allegation, and how it had tried to verify the original allegation
