Merged: "Irish Church accused of abuse cover-up"

[Rrose Selavy]

Damning, indeed.....

Quote:

A damning report into child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticised the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the abuse. The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.
It found that the Church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.
It also said that state authorities facilitated the cover-up by allowing the Church to operate outside the law.

Reacting to the report, the current Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said "no words of apology would ever be sufficient" and offered "to each and every survivor my apology, sorrow and shame".
The "Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin" covered a period from 1975 to 2004.
It has laid bare a culture of concealment where church leaders prioritised the protection of their own institution above that of vulnerable children in their care.

More here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8381119.stm

[Hux]

Its the four or five Bishops that did their worst to cover it all up that really boils my piss. As guilty as the perverts in dog collars.

[Mark A. Siefert]

And Bill Donohue shows up to denounce the victims as liars and/or crybabies in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

[Darth Rotor]

Originally Posted by Hux

Its the four or five Bishops that did their worst to cover it all up that really boils my piss.

Yes. Of all the times for a penance to match the sin, the following penance might have been a great way for the Church officials to serve man:

"Say first three our Fathers and ten Hail Mary's. Then, take thee to the police station and confess thy sin to the detective on duty. Accept as God's just mercy your jail sentence, during which you may further serve God by bringing his Word to some sinners who really need it, as do you. Go forth, and sin no more."

Or something like that.

DR

[8den]

It may have escaped international attention but a stunning and damning report into under sexual abuse and the coverup of said abuse by senior church members in the archdiocese of Dublin occured over decades. To the degree that in 1987 the church sought insurance to protect it's assets from claims from those being abused, but never the less this abuse continued for decades afterwards and was habitually covered up, by the transfer of priests to different parishes.

This abuse was facilitated often by the cosy relationship the catholic clergy had with law enforcement, social services, education authorities, and even the Irish State.

This story is common place to most of us, what is interesting however is the explanation for some of the cover up.

It uses the concept of "mental reservations to justify the covering up, or to avoid confrontation with unpleasant facts, or difficult people;

Quote:

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying.


According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”.


It gives an example. “John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his curates. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his curates to answer the door. John asks the curate if the parish priest is in. The curate replies that he is not.”

The commission added: “This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the curate told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words '…to you’.”

A quite astonishing concept, and one that seems at odds with basic christian doctrine, but it goes on.

Quote:

It continued that Cardinal Desmond Connell had explained the concept to the commission as follows:

“Well, the general teaching about mental reservation is that you are not permitted to tell a lie. On the other hand, you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be – permitting that to happen, not willing that it happened, that would be lying. It really is a matter of trying to deal with extraordinarily difficult matters that may arise in social relations where people may ask questions that you simply cannot answer. Everybody knows that this kind of thing is liable to happen. So mental reservation is, in a sense, a way of answering without lying.”

Stunning isn't it?

Quote:

Example of how they experienced the use of such ‘mental reservaton’ by Church authorities in Dublin were supplied to the commission by Mrs Collins and fellow abuse victim Andrew Madden.


In Mrs Collins’s case, the Dublin archdiocese said in a 1997 press statement that it had co-operated with gardai where her complaint of abuse was concerned. She was upset by it as she had reason to believe otherwise. Her support priest Fr James Norman made inquiries and later told gardaí he that when he did so, the archdiocese replied “we never said we co-operated fully” - placing emphasis on the word ‘fully’ - with gardaí.

I'd frankly be staggered if anyone attempted to use this piece of logic in a court of law.

Quote:

He explained to Mr Madden he had told journalists “that diocesan funds ARE (report’s emphasis) not used for such a purpose; that he had not said that diocesan funds WERE not used for such a purpose. By using the present tense he had not excluded the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such purpose in the past. According to Mr Madden, Cardinal Connell considered that there was an enormous difference between the two.”


In May 1995, Cardinal Connell denied that diocesan funds were used in paying compensation to abuse victims. When it emerged on RTÉ in September that year that Ivan Payne was loaned €30,000 by the archdiocese to pay compensation to Mr Madden, Cardinal Connell still insisted this was not compensation by the archdiocese. He threatened to sue RTÉ, but did not do so.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...breaking86.htm

(It may require registration but is free)

The level of mental dexterity on display here is just breath taking, the fact that these people can lie so comprehensibly and consider themselves the moral compass of their communities at the same time requires a near Orwellian level of double think.