Ena Reilly got a telephone call last Monday, for which you could say she had been waiting for 24 years. Ena is the indomitable mother of Ken Reilly, a survivor of clerical sex abuse. Along with Marie Collins, Ken had a very successful meeting with Cardinal Connell last week.
Afterwards, Cardinal Connell telephoned Ena to tell her how sorry he was for all she had been forced to go through, and reiterated that no priest who had sexually abused a child should be trusted again in any parish or ministry involving children.
Ena had turned to everyone in the church she could think of, in order to stop Father Tony Walsh harming anyone else. She continued to do so even when she met indifference and even resistance.
It is a mark of the nature of the woman that she received that telephone call graciously and was so moved by it. Another person might have said "Too late, Your Eminence," and put down the telephone.
Equally remarkable was the largeness of spirit demonstrated by the two survivors at last week's meeting, their willingness to listen one more time, to accept that things had changed, and to move forward from their planned march and call for Cardinal Connell's resignation. It is even more astonishing given the kind of devastation wreaked in their lives, not just by the abuse, but even more so by the way in which the abuse was dealt with.
It is a spirit often lacking in our world, where people can assume entrenched positions and presume bad faith in everything which the other side proposes. Where this happens, no growth or movement can occur.
It is very disappointing that the organisation Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) has reacted so negatively to the meeting between Cardinal Connell and the two survivors. Granted, it is hard to judge or blame them, because their scepticism surely stems from having been denied a voice for so long.
Yet it is troubling to see SOCA refer to setting up a child protection service as "sanctimonious claptrap", and that "child protection is not justice . . . The issue is abuse."
This is tantamount to saying that the focus must be kept on the past, even if this means that children are more at risk in the present as a result. If scorn is poured on every attempt of the church to move towards the ideal of acknowledging the past, making fair recompense and ensuring child safety for the future, it makes it harder for it to take risks, like Monday's meeting, and it slows the process of reform.
God knows, the church has a very large mountain to climb. This current crisis demonstrated that many of those in authority in the church may pay lip service to the idea of the church as all the people of God.
When it comes down to it, however, they still see priests, bishops and religious as the real church. Several priests have said to me that they feel that the official church was slow to really understand the impact of child abuse, because they were not reacting with the gut instincts of parents, who automatically think of their own children when they hear of harm to any child.
This seemed unduly harsh to me, because surely it does not require parenthood, only common humanity, to understand and identify with the pain of a child?
Yet it is possible that this is one of the downsides of celibacy. I am not an opponent of celibacy, but where it is over-exalted as a virtue, distortion occurs.
When people are sheltered to some extent from life's harsh realities, they can become out of touch, almost as if their emotions have become muffled. They can begin to identify more with the institution which provides them with their identity than with the issues which trouble lay people.
This is by no means true of all celibates, because like any vocation, celibacy can bring you closer in contact with your humanity if you allow it to do so. Yet there is a danger of institutionalisation, which can result in a caution, an unwillingness to take risks, like reaching out to people on a simple human level in an unguarded fashion. That is why Cardinal Connell deserves credit for Monday's meeting, for having the courage to step outside the usual institutional response.
That process can only be enhanced if the experience of lay people becomes central to the church, in reality and not just rhetoric. This should include the experience and instincts of women, but it is not only women who have something to give to this.
The church does not have a good record with regard to lay people. in recent times, the church commissions, which are composed almost entirely of lay people and of which Trocaire is perhaps the best known, were relocated to Maynooth, mostly from locations in Dublin. This caused untold disruption to lay people, who now have to commute, to juggle childcare and to suffer disruption of family life.
The communication of the whole process was very badly handled, with the result that in some of the smaller commissions everybody resigned. When some people complained, they were told that such moves were a fact of life for clergy, with no understanding being shown that a single male having to relocate, who does not have to worry about a mortgage or school runs, is an entirely different matter.
It seemed to be more about filling empty buildings in Maynooth than the needs of the commissions, some of which would have been much more efficient if they continued to operate from Dublin.
If there was another side to this story, the church signally failed to communicate it, and to convince the lay people who worked for it of the value of the move.
The meeting this week was a praiseworthy move, and all who took part in it deserve great credit.
Yet there are rough days ahead, as the State inquiry looms. Ken Reilly and Marie Collins were let down in the most fundamental fashion by their church, and yet have shown themselves willing to listen and to help in the process of reform.
It is now important to draw in other survivors, and other lay voices, so that the process can continue and deepen.