As you know, I’m not much of a Fianna Fail fan. But if there’s any Irish institution that outperforms the ghastliness of the Soldiers of Destiny it’s the Catholic Church. Here’s the latest reminder of that:
A letter to Ireland’s Roman Catholic bishops has been revealed by the broadcaster RTE that contradicts the Vatican’s frequent claim it has never instructed clergy to withhold evidence or suspicion of child abuse from police.
The 1997 letter documents rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to help police identify paedophile priests. Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II’s envoy to Ireland, it instructs bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”.
Storero wrote that canon law, whereby allegations and punishments are handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed”; any bishop who tried to go outside canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of being overturned on appeal in Rome.
And here’s one example of why this mattered:
A 2009 Irish state report found this actually happened with Tony Walsh, one of Dublin’s most notorious paedophiles, who exploited his role as an Elvis impersonator in a popular “All Priests Show” to get closer to children. In 1993, Walsh was defrocked by a secret church court, but successfully appealed to a Vatican court, and was reinstated in the priesthood in 1994. He raped a boy in a pub restroom that year. Walsh since has received a series of prison sentences, with a 12-year term imposed last month. Investigators estimate he raped or molested more than 100 children.
Revolting. And a reminder that the church was essentially a state-tolerated mafia. That is, it was granted the right to be a state within a state and even in its rare better moments it was over-ruled by the bosses who put everything – that is, mainly self-preservation – above simple decency.
If the Archbishop of Dublin really is surprised that the Irish attitude to religion is now “marked by ambivalence” then, well, he shouldn’t be.
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