ARCHBISHOP'S HOMILY:GREAT DAMAGE has been done to the credibility of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has said. "Irish religious culture has radically changed and has changed irreversibly. There will be no true renewal in the church until that fact is recognised," he said.
Speaking at Mass in Dublin’s Pro Cathedral yesterday he said his first thoughts on reading the Cloyne report, published last Wednesday, were about those abuse victims who organised and took part in the liturgy of lament and repentance in the Pro Cathedral last February.
“I asked myself: what are they thinking today? Are they asking themselves if that entire liturgy was just an empty show? Were they being used just to boost the image of the church? Were their renewed hopes just another illusion about a church which seems unable to reform itself? Was their hurt just being further compounded?” he asked.
As he reflected, “the first emotion that came to me was one of anger”. He was angry at how “children whose lives had been ruptured by abuse” were treated in Cloyne, and after guidelines had been agreed and put in
place.
He felt angry for the thousands of people in the Dublin archdiocese who helped ensure the church there was safe for children.
He was angry too that there were in Cloyne “and perhaps elsewhere” those “who placed their own views above the safeguarding of children, and seemingly without any second thought placed themselves outside and above the regime of safeguarding to which their diocese and the Irish bishops had committed themselves”. They had “put themselves even above and beyond the norms which the current pope himself has promulgated for the entire church”.
He recalled how “some years ago I was criticised in some church circles for speaking of strong forces still present in the church which ‘would prefer that the truth did not emerge’.” He had spoken then of signs “of subconscious denial on the part of many” about the extent of abuse which occurred in the church in Ireland “and how it was covered up”.
There were “other signs of rejection of a sense of responsibility for what had happened” and “that despite solid regulations and norms these are not being followed with the rigour required”, he had said then.
Today, the Catholic Church in Ireland was both a much safer place than it was even in the recent past and, on the other hand, it was the case “that despite words the church has not learned the lessons”.
Both statements were true, he said.
He repeated what he said at the liturgy of lament and repentance last February: “The church can never rest until the day in which the last victim has found his or her peace and he or she can rejoice in being fully the person that God in his plan wants them to be.” It was “a challenge for all”, he said.
“All of us need to have in place systems of verification and review which help us to identify mistakes made or areas where more can be done or things can be done better. We need to continue to build a co-operative climate where all the institutions of the church work in a constructive way together and with the institutions of the State, which bears the primary responsibility for child safeguarding in the country,” he said.
He thanked priests and people of the diocese who committed themselves to implementing child safeguarding policies and appealed to them “not to be become frustrated or indifferent”.
Good priests “who have ministered untarnished and generously”over the years “should not be made scapegoats and objects of hate”.
They deserved recognition for the good they do and needed “the support of their people”. To priests who had become demoralised and half-hearted, he appealed to them “not to give in to cynicism . . .”
But, “those in church and State who have acted wrongly or inadequately should assume accountability”.
