Bruce Arnold
Irish Independent, 22 July 2011
Enda Kenny’s speech on Wednesday has been rightly praised for its dramatic challenges to the Pope and the Vatican over the hypocrisy of the Holy See in respect of child abuse in Ireland. Long overdue, it is no less commendable for that. The speech has also been dealt with, almost exclusively, in the context of Ireland’s relationship with the Papacy on this issue.
The speech however represented, in addition, a breathtaking rearrangement of domestic politics. It is wrong to see it as belated. This administration, led by Enda Kenny, has been swift to define a new child abuse policy and a new set of aims.
In dealing with this aspect – which in the long run will prove of greater importance than battling with the Vatican – I am not playing down the importance of the changed and, one hopes, irreversible new relationship between Ireland and Rome. But in fairness to many politicians over the past decade we have witnessed, in that period, two distinct approaches.
One of these was a Fianna Fail fudge, half-protective of the Church, and it prevailed because they were in power. The other approach repeatedly questioned what was being done and its purposes. David Quinn’s mention yesterday of mandatory reporting, in this respect, is a red herring designed to confuse issues and blame the Rainbow coalition for failures when the facts had not fully emerged and when all the main revelations about abuse, apart from the various courageous documentaries, had yet to emerge. Kevin Myers, on the same page, makes the same mistake of confusing the narrative.
Secretive clerical sexual abuse has been a blight on the lives of generations of young people during the whole life of the State. It became a public issue in 1998 and the subject of direct State action beginning with Bertie Ahern’s ‘so-called’ Apology of 11 May 1999. That was followed by legislation setting up a process of recompense and investigation, firstly of industrial school crime, then of diocesan abuse.
From the start this was deeply flawed. There was evidence of collusion between Church and State. The object was to protect the State and the Church against the potential tide of legal action by men and women who had been sexually abused in institutional care or in diocesan environments where the Church had also protected the priests. Children and their families were left unprotected by State law, by the police, by the Church itself of course, and by successive Fianna Fail administrations.
This was seen by many politicians on the opposition benches. Over more than a decade they repeatedly tried to get a better and fairer approach. I name some of them, beginning with Alan Shatter, but going on to add Richard Bruton, Roisin Shortall, Joan Burton, Pat Rabbitte, Frances Fitzgerald, Olwyn Enright, Phil Hogan, Jan O’Sullivan, Barry Desmond. There were other voices; all stood up to the Church and in debate after debate detailed the deeply suspect strategy of Fianna Fail. This was to silence and contain the abused and deliberately to avoid confronting the changes to the law that were required.
From the start of the Enda Kenny-led administration a new approach, sensibly handled by Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald, has been undertaken with a firmness and logic completely absent in Fianna Fail. Behind Enda Kenny’s speech this week lay a vital political commitment in Ireland to change the law and the system of reporting.
The deep and deserved criticism of the Vatican shows Enda Kenny transcending the domestic requirements but not ignoring them. They are already the declared intention of the two key ministers, Shatter and Fitzgerald.
We needed to clear the way for this new approach, making better sense of the required reality in diplomatic relations between the Vatican City and ourselves. We had to confront the deep and abiding authoritarian insolence and disrespect for this country that characterized the Church of Rome. It held remarkable sway in Ireland and did not hesitate to use it. It was not just Cloyne, as Kevin Myers seems to argue, it embraced the earlier Murphy Report and previous State investigations, including those by the police.
Alan Shatter has undertaken the framing of new laws. Frances Fitzgerald faces a more difficult task. Changing the law is a vital underpinning of child protection but is by no means a panacea. Child abuse in sport, under HSE care, in education, in foster homes, in institutional care, as well as within the family – as a recent court conviction exemplified – demands widespread and multiple levels of social care and vigilance. It needs resources and regulation. She will have to be pragmatic as well as principled. The Constitution would be inappropriate as her first port of call. What she does will be keenly watched after literally years of debate and discussion reaching no adequate conclusion.
Without this week’s speech the Government’s task would be more difficult. With it, an important line has been drawn. We won’t catch up on the wasted years. Three previous administrations have floundered and prevaricated while the country watched one abuse story succeed another, one judge after another wrestle with institutional abuse, clerical and diocesan abuse, flawed remedies, imperfect and legally inadequate guidelines. The present government members, in opposition, waited patiently.
Watching Micheal Martin in the Dail on Wednesday I could think only of his culpability, as the main architect of Bertie Ahern’s deal with the Church in the setting up of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and of the Apology. These led on to the secretive and parsimonious redress system. The views taken by him and the Cabinet at the time were repeated by subsequent ministers and became key elements in the flawed approach to the countrywide problem of clerical sexual abuse. They were then repeated in the terms of reference for the first Murphy Report. Fianna Fail carries much guilt in all this.
Micheal Martin, on Wednesday, drew a line between the Cloyne Report and what he called ‘the significant role’ of the Church ‘respected and valued by both people of faith and the wider community’, claiming that Cloyne showed ‘a different picture’. So where was he when Ferns came to light? Successively in senior, even crucial government appointments, what did he do? And is he ashamed at how little was done?
We have wasted twelve years coming to this speech by Enda Kenny, a speech that focuses on the past but transcends the past and points us forward, not just in Church-State relations but in a vital act of political progress and sterner retribution than we have braved before.
Our incarceration in the Industrial schools was unconstitutional – the main flaw of the Ryan Report, as it was with the Kennedy Report in 1970, is that it didn’t look into the judiciary’s culpability in consigning thousands of children into the Gulag.
Enda and his Ministers must now move forward and dismantle the Indemnity Deal – a deal which continues to protect the religious orders/rogue employers, and their assets.
One role for the Irish Constitution was to set out potential protections for citizens from the (persecution of) State.
I assume that if this is indeed its role, a case could be made that the State/Church deal was against the interests of the majority of citizens, not only the abused.
If so, why doesn’t some Irish citizen who has been subject to this additional taxation caused by the above actions, as most obviously have, even though the level is not known by individual taxpayers, due to blatant discrimination against them in the favouring of one organisation by government.
Is this a situation where a taxpaying citizen could consider initiating
some form of constitutional action.
Take it a stage further and you can see that not only were taxpayers
discriminated against, the abused too, as taxpayers contributed financially to the imposition of financial retribution, the main punishment imposed on the Church (in reality, its contributing members,) who are, to my mind, allowing themselves to so be doubly taxed) from either current or historical payments.
But then, have we not been taught
that we always hurt the ones we love( most).
It is, to my mind, a strange situation where the guilty party is directly involved in the negotiation of their “sentence” before the details and extent and term of their activities is fully known.
It is even stranger that the “Payments are or were previously subsidised by
both taxpayers and members, all or mostly innocent of any deed related
to these cases.
The inner membership, the main financial beneficiaries remain mostly intact, while crying about their failed or failing financial situation after in
some cases, apparently delaying the payment (raised mainly from assets paid for by the people, both directly by transfer form government departments and indirectly by personal contribution) so these, church organisations, could take risks with monies that were easily identifiable as being required to meet the terms
of the unfair and privately arranged deal with a government whose members,I consider, mostly realised the impact of their dealings and who should therefore all be banned from holding any public office in future.
Any one of these government members, who have the audacity to claim ignorance, I would hold, can only support my opinion; as if they claim not to have failed morally, then they definitely failed the public in their role as politicians and so provide a confirmation for their future to be one who should not, and preferably cannot, be elected.
As we begin to approach the centenary of 1916, I feel some, if not all of the martyrs will realise how short of their inspirations and goals that they fell. They, as history now clearly shows, misunderstood the root cause of Ireland’s exploitation and so fell short in truly identifying the changes that would bring around their wish to create a Republic.
They not only allowed its longest serving and externally located inherited masters to remain in power, they appear to have helped the church to exploit their supposed position “for Ireland”.
I understand this to be an example of a case where it is not those who write history, it is more those (Christian Brothers) who taught history, that are provided the position to retain and control influence over the public by withholding or slanting the messages provided by information.
Organisations such as the Church operate in a different time frame to
us mere mortals of (70+) or even politicians 4-5 years (election cycles),
while I am sure that the expectations of the Vatican are that this is merely an inconvenient, if temporary, set back of a centenary or so and plenty of time to rewrite and so teach this current and historical outcome of the late 20th century as some form of persecution on the Church at some future time.
I firmly believe that their expectations are rooted in this form of
belief and that while none of us here contributing to the current level
of public condemnation will not be around to see if this was indeed correct,it remains with us to ensure that it will not become the case.
MM
It is all very well, to be positive, gracious, encouraging and optimistic, about the strong words spoken by the Taoiseach/Prime Minister recently about Rome, the Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict. Indeed they are welcome, appropriate and not one iota out of line or missing a beat.
But it is be just as well, to be reminded about 3 paramount things now:
First: the very same people drawing praise for their words and actions today, were alive, on the opposition benches, or learning their crafty trade as POLITICIANS, JOURNALISTS, REPORTERS AND SPEECH-WRITERS, when these scandals were being revealed, exposed to all, if not actually – and often it was the case – played out under their noses in their neighbourhoods, parishes, even in their own families. We have – they have – all been extremely well informed on the subject of abuse in the last twenty years+Plus, thanks to the Survivors testimonies in books or documentaries. They can’t say “they didn’t know”.
Secondly: the very same people drawing praise for their words and actions today, stalled, denied, waffled and smudged these issues as recently as a month ago, when none less than the European Court ACCUSED IRELAND of denying their wronged citizens, basic and internationally agreed HUMAN RIGHTS. Yes: what about the Magdalens? What about the Symphysiotomies? What about the NON-Catholics? What about the Catholics (as if their religion mattered) who carry – TO THIS DAY – a Criminal Record…..for being CHILDREN whose parents had the audacity to die, in labour or otherwise….. What about Women-Mothers-and-Wives, trampled in our Family Courts? What about the Family Courts themselves, where – in camera – CHILDREN THIS VERY DAY ARE BEING “BROKEN”, in ways more cruel than used with horses? What about the Victims themselves still today, asking for help and saying Trust Funds won’t work and Education / even Counselling is not what they need now? And what about the THOUSANDS still clamouring for Justice ALL OVER THE WORLD?
But Thirdly: the Irish PEOPLE themselves, have not raised their voices, raised their fists and shaken the ground, over these atrocities. It was OK for Women to start a revolution in Egypt ! It was A.OK for Teenagers to rise in Syria ! (and they didn’t have Ryan and Murphy Reports. It is absolutely NO SURPRISE the country is in such a state. This very apathy – of course it IS abuse on an entire POPULATION SCALE – is the absolute cause and reason for every woe in the nation. It is terrible – it WOULD BE TERRIBLE – and maybe it is NOT TOO LATE – if Ireland moved forward without learning that lesson. It is bad enough being a nation MORALLY-BANKRUPT, but let us not STAY THAT WAY. It is never too late to BE CONTRITE. And if in doubt, FOR OUR CHILDREN’S SAKE, go with the flow, trust the now-overwhelming evidence, and BE SORRY. BE VERY VERY SORRY from a genuine heart.
Ireland 2011 is a Land of Laws and Rights, right ?
And Children (will??) come first.
And the Constitution would be inappropriate as her (the Minister’s) first port of call….
REALLY….?????
“THERE CAN BE NO KEENER REVELATION OF A SOCIETY’S SOUL, THAN THE WAY IN WHICH IT TREATS ITS CHILDREN (Nelson Mandela)
The Constitution therefore, is her ABSOLUTE “FIRST PORT OF CALL”.
Because in Ireland – as we speak and protest and Oh! prepare…..
CHILDREN HAVE NO RIGHTS. REPEAT: NO….RIGHTS….
So the “promised” (forced and obliged by Europe!!) Constitutional Referendum on the RIGHT OF THE CHILD, is the ABSOLUTE KEY TO START CHANGE. Until now it has not been a foregone conclusion, as WE, in the Family, WE the adults and the PARENTS, have reserved for ourselves the right to know better for our children, and to dispense discipline OUR OWN WAY AND STYLE, FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. Well, it hasn’t worked, has it?
It is essential that this Referendum on the Right of the Child be passed.
So let us be positive, gracious, encouraging and optimistic (and give credit if we must),
AND LET’S DO THE “RIGHT THING” NOW.
And remember that
Justice must “BE SEEN”, to be done.