The Ferns Report marks the conclusive failure of the system and attitude by which our hierarchy have chosen to govern our church since Vatican II.  Their failure to put in place structures that would have allowed a culture of openness, equal dignity, dialogue and enlightenment to develop has meant that a culture of deference, denial, inertia and secrecy was allowed to flourish in its place. 

It has taken the appalling suffering of children, and of their parents, to reveal this clearly - but so far there has been no recognition of the failure of the church system itself by those charged with leadership.  As a consequence it is now Ireland's secular institutions alone that can be trusted to ensure that children are safe in our church.  The failure of our hierarchy has therefore been a betrayal of their evangelical responsibility also, and a major cause of the anti-Catholic secularisation they have lamented.  

We now call upon our hierarchy to face squarely their own sins of abuse of trust and of power, to acknowledge the failure of a system, and to bring the whole people of God fully for the first time into the intellectual and administrative life of our church.

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DERRY CATHOLICS EXPRESS CONCERN TO ROME (22nd Oct, 2006)

Deeply concerned about a number of issues in their diocese of Derry, lay Catholic members of the organisation 'Voice of the Faithful' have reported these matters to Pope Benedict XVI and the Congregation for Bishops in Rome.

Dr Seamus Hegarty, Bishop of Derry, is currently in Rome, with all of Ireland's Catholic bishops, to discuss the problems of the Irish church with the Pope and the Curia. During this visit the Pope meets privately with every bishop.

In their report, Voice of the Faithful in Derry express concern to Rome over the following matters:

*  Dr Hegarty's failure to act on the recommendation made by Pope John Paul II to all Irish bishops in 1999 to set up structures which would give Ireland's lay Catholics a greater sense of belonging to their own church;

*  his failure to advance in the diocese proposals for support for victims of sexual abuse announced by all the Irish bishops in February 2005 in the document 'Towards Healing';
 
*  his failure to act on an undertaking he gave to the diocesan 'Ministry and Change' consultation group in 2003 to implement a model of collaborative ministry in the diocese (i.e. priests and people together);

*  the appointment of a priest of the diocese against whom two allegations of sexual abuse had been made to a role in counselling victims of sexual abuse in 2001;

*  contradictory statements made by Bishop Hegarty in a TV interview in February 2005, relating to diocesan contributions to an abuse compensation fund;
 
*  Dr Hegarty's failure to respond in 2004 to correspondence from 50 young members of a Derry Catholic youth movement;

*  his failure to make adequate provision for adult faith development in the diocese.

An abridged version of this VOTF (Ulster) report to Rome can be viewed on the organisation's website.
 

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CATHOLIC CLERICALISM AND CLERICAL CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

(A submission to the Irish state inquiry into clerical child sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin, submitted in March 2007.)

The Ferns Report had the following to say about lessons to be learned from the state inquiry into clerical child sexual abuse in the Ferns diocese that would help in the protection of children :

“Frequently it is the respect in which the abuser is held which affords the opportunity of perpetrating the crime and protects him from subsequent detection.” (‘Conclusions and Recommendations’ F 13)

The respect in which Catholic clergy are held is greatly influenced by the phenomenon known as clericalism. The protection of children within the church cannot therefore be fully achieved without an understanding of the role played by clericalism in clerical child sexual abuse.

The term 'clericalism' is used in this document to denote a presumption by too many Catholic clergy that they are entitled to the unquestioning compliance of lay members of their church. It denotes also a tendency on the part of some laity to grant that entitlement to their clergy.

Nowhere does Catholic teaching explicitly endorse this entitlement. In fact Catholic teaching emphasises the equal dignity of all members of the church. This is why Voice of the Faithful considers it vitally important to distinguish clericalism from Catholicism.

We in Voice of the Faithful believe that clericalism is:

(i) a contributory cause of clerical child sexual abuse (and therefore a danger to children);
(ii) a cause of the administrative abuse that has too often followed clerical child sexual abuse;
(iii) a continuing obstacle to child protection in the church;
(iv) an obstacle to healing and reconciliation.

(i) Clericalism as a contributory cause of clerical child sexual abuse

As an expectation on the part of the priest of compliance from Catholic children, and as a trained disposition towards compliance with clergy on the part of Catholic children, clericalism was and is an essential feature of the power-imbalance that led and leads to clerical child sexual abuse. The priest’s official roles as an interpreter of right and wrong, as an agent of divine forgiveness and as a Christ-figure, give an ordained paedophile or ephebophile a unique power to manipulate his Catholic child victim. This is especially true because of the likelihood that the child’s family will greatly reinforce this idealised image of the priest in the child’s mind. It is also this image of the priest that makes clerical sexual abuse uniquely damaging to the child’s belief system and spiritual identity.

(ii) Clericalism as a cause of the administrative abuse that has too often followed clerical child sexual abuse

It was primarily the desire not to ‘scandalise’ laity - i.e. to preserve our naive image of the priest and our compliant attitudes toward clergy - that led to the hiding of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse by too many bishops and the consequent endangerment of other children. It was also the desire to preserve the clerical institution that led bishops to adopt legal advice vis-á-vis victims that often caused further trauma to them. The administrative abuse that has so often followed sexual abuse is therefore also inseparable from clericalism.

(iii) Clericalism as a continuing obstacle to child protection

Failure to identify clericalism as a factor in clerical sexual abuse and in subsequent administrative abuse, and to eradicate clericalism from the culture of the church, will mean that (i) and (ii) are likely to remain as disabling features of any system of child protection in the church. Catholic children will remain less safe than they should be if they continue to be trained to see the priest as an unquestionable authority. Failure to embrace the principle of immediate reporting to civil authorities of all allegations against church personnel (as recommended by the working group that prepared the document that was then adapted and published by the hierarchy as Our Children, Our Church), seems to us to embed clericalism in this document and to place Catholic children in continuing danger. Lay personnel selected to manage the church’s child protection system may all too easily tend to continue to comply with clerical wishes - e.g. in relation to the reporting of allegations to the civil authorities, unless unquestioning deference to clergy is identified as potentially dangerous.

(iv) Clericalism as an obstacle to healing and reconciliation

Our experience with victims is that they have totally lost their naivety towards clergy, see clericalism as an essential component of their abuser's former power over them, often see it also operating in their problems in seeking redress from the hierarchy - and are therefore totally incapable of seeing Christ ever again in a clericalist pastor or institution. So, their reconciliation with their church also demands that their church separate itself definitively from clericalism.

Conclusion

For all the reasons given above, we believe it to be especially important that lay Catholics should hear their hierarchy and clergy emphasising the difference between clericalism and Catholicism. We are convinced that the key to this differentiation is the abandonment by clergy of unaccountable status on administrative matters in the church, and the establishment of structures of accountability to laity to achieve this. The safety of Catholic children, the reconciliation of victims and the future health of our church, all hinge on this.

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Statement on NBSC Report of 19th Dec. 2008 on Cloyne Diocese - issued Dec. 20th 2008

(Explanatory note:  The National Board for Safeguarding Children had reported on Dec 19, 2008, that Cloyne diocese's procedures for safeguarding children were not in accordance with guidelines drawn up in the wake of the Ferns report, and were in some respects 'dangerous'.)

"The NBSC report on the management of two child protection cases in the diocese of Cloyne shows clearly that three years after the Ferns report in 2005, an Irish bishop had failed to ensure that the safety of the children of his diocese was paramount in the minds of all those answerable to him for the safety of Catholic children.  Other children were thereby still being endangered at this late date – despite the guidelines supposedly adopted by all Irish bishops in the wake of the Ferns report.

As Ireland became aware of the enormous harm caused by clerical sexual abuse of children fourteen years ago in 1994, when the present bishop of Cloyne, Dr John Magee, was already in office, his failure to learn over such a long period what every Catholic parent now instinctively understands renders him wholly incompetent to discharge his apostolic and pastoral role of safeguarding their children.  We therefore call upon him to resign this office immediately.

In the event of his failing to do so, we call upon the Holy Father, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, to exercise his supreme authority to request the resignation of Dr Magee. 

We also call upon the Holy Father to investigate and explain to the parents of all Catholic children why so many bishops in so many different parts of the world – from California to India – have failed their people in exactly the same way.  Every catastrophe calls for the most minute investigation into its causes, and the dereliction of their child safeguarding duty by so many highly placed servants of the church represents a greater moral catastrophe than our church has ever experienced in its past.

We also commend the CEO of the NBSC for his honest and forthright report and call urgently for the publication of the results of the NBSC audit of child protection provision in all Irish dioceses.  This report on Cloyne must automatically raise fears that other Irish dioceses  may still be in default of their child safeguarding obligations.

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Irish state commitment to child safety now seriously in question

The report by Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) published on Jan 7th, 2009 - of a purported audit of child safeguarding provision in all Irish Catholic dioceses - is a national disgrace. 

Although no Irish bishop had been willing to fill in a crucial section of a HSE questionnaire that would have revealed whether or not his diocese was in compliance with the church's own child safety guidelines adopted in 2005, the HSE nevertheless concluded that no diocese needed to be referred to the ongoing state commission of inquiry into the mishandling of clerical child abuse in Dublin archdiocese.

Had it not been for the damning report by the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) on Cloyne diocese published on Dec 19th, 2008, this HSE report would have amounted to Irish state connivance at practices in Cloyne that the NBSC has described as 'dangerous' - and no one in Ireland would be any the wiser.

Except the victims of this iniquitous behaviour, some of whom had triggered the NBSC report on Cloyne by reporting their concerns to the HSE or to the victim support organisation, One in Four  - and then to the NBSC.

The decision by Ireland’s Minister of State for Children Mr Barry Andrews to refer the diocese of Cloyne to the Dublin inquiry does not therefore go far enough.  There is an overwhelming need for a credible process of inquiry into existing child safeguarding practice, and into the handling of all allegations of clerical sexual abuse in recent decades, in every Irish diocese.

Combined with the NBSC report on Cloyne, this HSE report raises the most serious questions about the commitment of the leaders of both the Irish state and the Irish Catholic church to the safety of Irish Catholic children.

The support expressed last week by four other Irish Catholic bishops for Bishop Magee remaining in office is also disgraceful.  If these bishops believe it is acceptable for a bishop to make false statements on child safety issues, how can parents in their own dioceses trust anything they themselves say on the same issues?  Already grievously damaged by Bishop Magee’s behaviour, trust cannot be restored while he remains in office.

To help restore some degree of confidence, we call upon all Irish bishops to confirm immediately that, in accordance with their own guidelines, they have now referred all allegations of clerical child abuse in their records to the police in their respective state jurisdictions, and to the appropriate health authority.  And that they have also complied with central church directives on the reporting of such allegations to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - in particular the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II, Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela,  promulgated on April 30th, 2001.