With our sixth year students graduating I have not had much time or energy to blog. I am still busy but I'm taking a few moments to comment on the darkness revealed by the Inquiry into Child Abuse.
There is anger, hurt, embarassment, confusion, a sense of betrayal, a desire to deny, some 'blame-gaming' and a lot of pain around this. First two points I'd make is that the media are not a balanced or trustworthy source of information. They are too pressurized and eager for news to analyse or question their sources. Secondly is that those who can should read the report
here. I doubt many will read all 3,000 pages.
A teacher in the school where I work asked "What kind of society allowed this to happen?". What kind of Church? In the 1850's, not long after the famine, there were 77,000 children in the Irish workhouses and unknown numbers living rough and running wild. The British Government eager to deal with the problem established the Reformatory and Industrial school systems through Britain and Ireland. In Ireland the Catholic Church was in the process of rebuilding itself after the Penal era and wanted to keep the Irish Catholic. The Government wanted to keep the costs low and the Religious Orders wanted to be involved, to make a difference. It worked but at what price?
The myth out there is of 'Clerical child abuse' and the 'paedophile priest'. I want to make it clear that I find it appalling that anyone, especially a priest or religious, should do such things to a child, one of the most vulnerable of people. This was not about sex, it was about power and abusing that power at the expense of the weakest. Yet when one reads the report, at least for the girls, the single biggest abusers of children were laymen, the fathers and sons of homes to which the girls were sent either to work or on holiday. Lay people were involved in abuse in other ways - often through working in the homes and were often as vicious as any others.
People claim ignorance, that they did not know. Some knew - Bishops, priests, religious sisters and brothers, police, doctors, nurses, care-workers etc. They knew and said nothing.
If you haven't seen the film
Downfall you should. It's very good. It tells the story of Hitler's last days from the point of view of Traudl Junge his personal secretary. At the end of the film she speaks about her own involvement and her shock when she learned about the fate of the Jews. She talks about how she long denied she had any responsibility for what happened. Then one day she passed the plaque commemorating Sophie Scholl who, along with her brother and a friend, were executed for opposing the Nazi regime. She realised that Sophie had been the same age and that she could have found out but she chose not to. People in Ireland did not know because they did not ask. They did not ask because they did not want to know.
Irish society and the Irish Church forgot its ideals, became complacent, lacked not just the proper skills but the basic, genuine charity and compassion and failed to listen and to act. Indeed it penalised those who chose to do the right thing. It, we, were guilty of cowardice.
So we are all in need of God's mercy. We are, as Catholic Christians, part of the Body of Christ against whom these crimes have ultimately been committed. If one part sins all are affected. If one part is in pain and is hurting the rest cannot go on as normal. If one tries to isolate oneself from this and say "I am innocent, I was not involved" then one effectively cuts oneself off from the Body and from the Church.
People may object that it was a different time, a time when blind obedience was emphasized. Forgive me but that excuse was not accepted at Nuremberg so why should we accept it now? Sophie Scholl made it her business to find out. Sophie Scholl made it her business to speak out despite the Gestapo and informers. Where was Ireland's Sophie?
This Saturday the Gospel of the day invites us to hear Jesus' words "Whatever you ask of the Father in my Name He will give it to you." I say that we need to ask for the Holy Spirit and He bring with Him the gift of forgiveness. I say that we need to beg God for mercy and the grace of repentance and conversion of heart. I say we need the grace of taking the Gospel seriously and of making it the true measure in our lives not the mores of our society. I say we need to ask the Father for the courage to oppose evil and speak out.