Paul Malpas

I have just seen a chink of light at the far end of this tunnel that us god fearing folk have gotten into.  A Catholic priest, Fr. Derek Smyth from Foxrock in Dublin has written a very thoughtful article published in todays Irish Times that tries to explain this discipline of omerta that has afflicted the Church and suggests and bravely suggests that all senior clerics who witnessed this child abuse should be honourable men and go.  I have written to him, enclosing my blog’s relevant pages so he has some insight into the thinking of us latter day Catholics.  The article appears below.

Priests are guilty by association for conforming to abuse

BY DEREK SMYTH

RITE & REASON: Why were we so silent on child abuse? Why didn’t we speak up?

IN ORDER to respond appropriately to those who were abused by priests, we need to explore clerical culture, since research attests that it does contribute to the promotion of immaturity, arrested development and irresponsibility.

For example, early research by Conrad Baars and Anna Terruwe on priesthood within western Europe and North America in 1971 revealed that only 10-15 per cent of priests were mature; 60-70 per cent suffered from a degree of emotional immaturity; and 20-25 per cent had serious psychiatric difficulties. Ironically, these findings were never acted on.

Culture is defined as a shared system of beliefs and values. It has within it a cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimension.

Clerical culture influences the way a priest or bishop may think about a certain issue, feel about it and respond to it. However, like any culture, its ills cannot be addressed solely from within. Think of Northern Ireland. It was with the support of outside sources, particularly George Mitchell, that the road towards peace began.

For clerical culture, new structures are not sufficient, as there appears to be an innate “abuse system” within this culture. Even though it may now be forced to address the issue of sexual abuse, “abuse” may rear its ugly face in other forms.

One disturbing aspect for me is what I call a “convenient silence”. Why were we so silent? Why didn’t we speak up?

It is also the question asked by the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the churches during the second World War. Bonhoeffer came, like most of us, from one of the mainline churches. However, as a result of a visit to the storefront churches in New York he would be changed forever.

Here he witnessed the spirit-filled worship of African- Americans. He was deeply moved as he remembered how they were captured, tortured, enslaved and here they were full of passion and hope in contrast to the sedate and passive ritual of his own church.

Despite being asked to stay in the safety of New York, he felt he had to return home to confront the Nazi movement in Germany.

He joined the Resistance and eventually was captured and executed by the Nazis.

For Bonhoeffer, one big question was: “Why were the churches so silent?”

I have observed the same silence, as in my time I have witnessed theologians being marginalised as Vatican II has been dismantled, and as the innocent in Ireland were sexually abused by brother priests. I am also part of this silence.

What causes this muteness that allows evil to flourish? It is my belief that people of my generation were conditioned by the church to distrust themselves.

Take, for example, a non-Catholic neighbour who died 40 years ago.

His/her Catholic friends were unable to pray in church with his grieving family. For most people at the time, this didn’t make sense.

Their own integrity was telling them that it was absurd.

However, such personal thoughts and beliefs were dismissed even to the point that people considered them sinful. In other words, we distrusted our own integrity and conformed with the directions of the church. And since we were made keep our thoughts to ourselves, we remained silent.

This behaviour was reinforced in our seminary training. We were conditioned to surrender to the institution, to the teachings, structures and disciplines of the church. Upon ordination we made a promise of obedience to the local bishop, and even our own letter of acceptance of a diocesan post was scripted for us.

Think of the docility of priests. A new bishop is appointed to a diocese and he decides to change direction.

The priests follow until another incumbent arrives and they are ready to go again in whatever direction he decides.

Tragically, it is within this culture that the governance of the church takes place and we are all guilty by association. Guilt by Association, Catholic Families, It may be convenient to suggest that the auxiliary bishops must step down, but surely it is more honest to ask all of our generation to step down, ensuring a new beginning for all.

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Dr Derek Smyth is a priest in Foxrock parish, Co Dublin. Prior to that he had been director of Emmanuel House, Santa Ana, California, where he worked as a psychotherapist.

My letter reads:-

Dear Fr. Derek,

It is with sadness that I write to you having read your brave, thoughtful and totally honest article in the Irish Times this morning, 9 February2010, which echoes the thoughts and feelings I have had recently.

I am a 64 yearold Manchester man, born, bred, reared and lived all my life in the Catholic faith.  I have been married for 38 years to my wife, Helen and we have six children.  A totally average decent Catholic family.  Our six children having been educated and brought up in the Church, have sadly eschewed their religion but not their integrity in the light of disclosures over the last few years.  In the wake of the Murphy Report and its chronicle of abuse, my wife and I sat down and talked and as we talked we realized how stupid we were for supporting the Institution of the Church, which, while teaching morality on the one hand, was dealing in immorality with the other, and worse, both hands knew what the other was doing.

We have, for the last five years, been living out our retirement in Boyle, Co. Roscommon after I had worked all my life in the construction industry in England and up to the end of November 2009 we were both totally enjoying our life and loved attending mass at our beautiful church of St. Joseph.  Recently as a hobby I started writing a daily blog whose commencement coincidentally tied in with the publication of the above Report, the subject of which returns to me almost on a daily basis as I keep reading of the antics of the bishops and senior priests as they try to wriggle out from under this yoke of collectiveness that Archbishop Martin has put on your diocese.

Because I feel that this blog is almost a diary of a half decent, very average Catholic man giving his thoughts and feelings over these last few months, I have taken the liberty of enclosing the relevant pages.  There must be many thousands like me who have not bothered to put their thoughts on paper, so I think it could be an interesting record of our tribulations over this period.  As you read these pages you might be put off by the crudeness of some of the script but building site language is what I am used to.  So please look beyond the words and at the fundamental grief we are all going through.  This emotion of grief at the Church’s behaviour is what a lot of us are suffering from and it has caused a damage that probably cannot be repaired in our lifetimes.

A I said in my first blog on this subject on 7 December 2009 entitled Once A Catholic I now follow my own integrity as regards living a Christian life and do not now attend a church.  I do not need a false and hollow institution and I am sure my God will think none the worse of me for it.

The Church I do not think understands the damage it has done to ours and younger generations and I note at the end of your article, you say that all clergy of a certain age should probably go, but if I was on the adjudicating panel you would be kept.  sincerity, honesty, bravery and intelligence is in short supply in this Church of ours and we need a little maturity to temper the ways of whoever fills the vacuum.  It is the Drennans and O’Mahoneys and the 25 clerics of Manresa retreat house and their ilk who should go.  Certainly give the laity their head, it is their Church and anyway the priest is like the white rhinoceros, he probably will not be around in 20 years time.  So bring on that day sooner rather than later and let us get used to it.

Yours Sincerely

Paul Malpas

As I said in The Slippery Church blog of 3 February 2010, the bog standard priest in the Archdiocese of Dublin is revolting. There is more fall-out after the O’Mahoney/Drennan schism at Maynooth a fortnight ago.  The ordinary priests of the diocese or at least 25 middle-aged and therefore senior priests are, according to Alison Healy in yesterday’s Irish Times, unhappy at the way Archbishop Martin has not shown any compassion towards the auxillary bishops of Dublin.

It seems that there was a meeting of these 25 mature Dublin priests at Manresa retreat house on 18 January 2010, the minutes of which appear in yesterday’s Irish Catholic newspaper.  This meeting of time-served priests was called to discuss the Murphy Report.  They said of the auxillary bishops that “a grave injustice had been done to men who had loyally served this diocese with selfless commitment and Christlike compassion”.  They also said that Archbishop Martin had tarnished the name of O’Mahoney and that the Church had not engaged in a “cover up”.  They also claimed that Archbishop Martin had a dictatorial manner.  No wonder I accused Archbishop Martin, in my blog Once A Catholic on 7 December 2009, of shilly shallying and talking mumbo jumbo.  With these type of men at your back you would need to watch every word.

Let us get this right.  It is a fact that there was wholesale sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin. The bishops knew about it, certainly the senior priests knew about it and the Murphy Report considers the majority of normal priests knew about it in one form or another but no hand was raised only the hand of the terror stricken abused who were kept quiet for years.  The Murphy Report has made all this public knowledge, the Government agree with it, the Gardai agree with it and Archbishop Martin to his credit has wholeheartedly embraced its findings.

It does show you however, the bishops and senior priests who have been basted with this scandal, this crime, are so remote from their people that unless they go, and go quickly, the Church will fall.  How can these priests say there was no “cover up”, when faced with the facts and the length of time this abuse was allowed to continue unhindered.

Undoubtedly there were good priests doing great acts of Christian work, but while they carried out these acts , they knew.  The numbers are to high to disregard and consider minimal, manageable and acceptable.  In the Dublin Archdiocese at the moment, according to their official website, there are about 650 practising priests.  The Murphy Report states that they received information about 180 abusing priests ( let us say that the falsely accused equalled the number who were not caught at it).  Therefore you can say 28% of priests in Dublin were abusers or to mollify this % a little; let us say that 20 years ago there was 100 more priests in the Archdiocese,say 750, that would suggest 24%.  Let us therefore say for ease of reckoning that the abusers were 25% of the roll.

There is an argument that says that the number of abusing priests is no more than in the lay world and therefore not unusual and should be acceptable.  I cannot accept that because I argue that the Church should have realized the position of a priest was one of responsibility and intimacy and an absolute goldmine for those with abuser tendencies.  There should have been some psychological filtration system in place to counteract this obvious attraction and therefore the % of abusers should have been nil or approaching same and certainly not 25% of the total.  What kind of religion preaches one thing and practices another.  And if the above figures are to be believed, 25% of mature lay men are abusers also and therefore 1 in 4 children are abused.  Someone, somewhere, shoot down my choplogic.  I cannot believe it.  I am totally dismayed.

Working on the principle that the above is wrong but that the facts are right, the answer is that the position of a priest is an absolute must for the determined abuser.  He has no need to hide behind a marriage or be coated with the dirty old man syndrome, he in fact can live out his dreams and desires to his hearts content, providing he is careful and grooms the right children.

The Church should have known and historically probably did and that is why there has been this systemic and atroposic failure and why Archbishop Martin or the Pope has to quickly organize a Night of the Long Knives.

Even now after all the revelations, after all the promises, after all the pleas of best practice the church is proving to be a slippery customer if you expect cooperation on matters priestly and sexual.  The hierarchy in the form of the majority of bishops do not agree with all the Murphy Report says and will not accept fully accountable child protection procedures in their dioceses.  As I have said before 19 of the 26 dioceses have priests in charge of this very sensitive area of child protection and the Report says that this responsibility should be handed over to properly trained professionals who have been strictly vetted.

With the example yesterday of Patrick Hughes, a priest with a self confessed attraction to altar boys, admitting his three year abuse of one boy after he had originally fled the country and was in hiding with the Church’s protection.  It wasl Archbishop Martin’s officewho  handed him over to the Guardai, who said in court that they “hsd been given the runaround by the Church authorities”.  The judge gave him a years imprisonment for the crime, the maximum being two years.  Presumably because Hughes had told the judge that he had weaned himself off altar boys.  On to what you might ask.  Coming down the track is the case of Ronald Bennett, accused of buggering boys at Gormanston College.  He has already served two and half years for previous offences in 2007.  He was also involved with the Irish Swimming Association.  He must have thought he was in heaven.  So why faced with this almost avalanche of perverted sexuality does the majority of the hierarchy seem to think that the Murphy Report and Archbishop Martin are wrong.

It seems that at the conference in Maynooth last week, held to establish the programme for the bishops papal interview in two weeks time, did this majority hit back at Archbishop Martin over his acceptance of the Murphy Report and not accept the fully accountable child protection procedures put in place in Dublin, in their own dioceses.  This split led by Drennan of Galway and O’Mahoney of Dublin seems to have a large majority of bishops on their side and they are moving to oust Archbishop Martin from his position after he wholeheartedly accepted the Report’s findings.  Even some influential priests are against the Report and want more considered imput from the clergy.  They consider Martin to be remote.  What they are asking for is a synod of priests to discuss any problems.

Unfortunately it is too late for second opinions, the cancer is too deep seated, surgery is necessary immediately.  What the clergy want could take years of anguished talk followed by the administration of lethargic treatment.  No, immediate surgery to remove these time stalled bishops, followed by a period of considered opinion and regeneration by both the clergy and the laity when the patient is on the road to recovery.

If however these bishops who mixed this carciogenic stew are allowed to have their own way and remove Archbishop Martin, then the Church in Ireland is lost.  The Pope has to be decisive and he has to act fast.  Let him pretend that for once in his life he is leading a blitzkrieg.

It is obvious that the Church in Ireland as an Institution is in turmoil, with bishop turning on bishop, like wild cats in the jungle.  Yesterday the retired O’Mahoney retaliated against Archbishop Martin by having their personal correspondence printed out in the Irish Catholic  newspaper.  The thrust of his argument is that the Murphy Report is flawed and that the priests in the Dublin Archdiocese should start to question its findings and that he is dismayed that Martin did not support his priests.  This was after O’Mahoney was  asked to step down from various duties by the Archbishop whilst he considered his position after being severely criticized by the Report.

Two things stood out in this defence of his own actions.  Firstly he said that Archbishop Martin’s letter was the harshest communication he had ever received during his 50 year priesthood.  All I can say is that harsh deeds demand harsh words.  I think everyone in the known world has now accepted the cold fact that there was wholesale abuse of young children by catholic priests in this archdiocese.  O’Mahoney a;lso said that Archbishop Martin had been 31 years out of the diocese and he had no idea how traumatic it was for the priests that were there dealing with the abuse allegations without protocols to work to.  This piece of nonsense can be easily refuted by the fact that child sexual abuse was a crime 30 years ago and is still a crime today.  What protocols are necessary?

These denials and O’Mahony’s need to give his totally fragile defence to the press shows how bad a state the hierarchy’s thinking is in and how necessary it is for them all to go immediately.  Let the Church start again under Archbishop Martin’s leadership and let’s cut the crap.  O’Mahoney and Drennan today, Murray, Walsh, Field and Moriarty already back in the pavilion.  Only Willie Walsh who is going, Comiskey, O’Ceallaigh and Foristal to come, plus the last man Connell who should be promoted up the order and be dismissed as quickly as possible.  His record is attrocious.  That will do for a start in Dublin, but then there are another 25 dioceses to go, with Raphoe being a good place to start.  There was a lot of table tennis played in Donegal.

As Dublin tears itself apart, England looks as though it is going the same way, with the startling evidence coming out of the Iraq Enquiry, with the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, lying about or at least omitting the positions he held at the time.  Every lawyer in the Foreign Office was against the war and thought it illegal yet Jack ignored this advice and agreed with the Prime Minister Bliar who was hell bent on sucking President Bush’s lollipop.  Jack is now saying he was against the path to war.  The then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who happened to be a flatmate of Bliar’s in their youth was dead against the war and said that it certainly needed a second UN resolution to make it legal, changed his mind at the last minute when faced with Bliar’s obvious enthusiasm for blood.  Bliar must have agreed to pay his next month’s rent.  At the time this decision flew in the face of the advice that all the top international lawyers were giving and in fact caused two of them to resign their positions but it did allow Bliar to join Bush in the desert.  It reminds me of Hitler and his puny excuses for invading bits of Europe in 1938-9.

On top of this the details of Dr. David Kelly’s death and post-mortem have been put on hold for 70 years by Lord Hutton, who led the first and hopelessly inefficient first Iraq enquiry.  You remember Dr. Kelly, the expert on weapons of mass destruction who said that Bliar was sexing up the reports on Sadam Hussein’s weaponry.  He was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood in July 2003, a year or so before the Bliar was baptised into the Catholic Church.  Why if this so called mad scientist committed suicide as the enquiry said, why should the details of his death be kept secret for 70 years?

We have the Bliar in the box today, I wonder how he will live up to his name, because I suggest the Iraqui invasion in 2003 and subsequent death toll lies at the door of this recently baptized catholic and ranks as one of the great international crimes of the modern world, up there with the Holocaust and the Stalinist pogroms of the 1930s.

Cancel your diaries, fix your seats and log onto iraqinquiry.org.uk this morning for a live performance of the Bliar, but do not expect the truth.

I apologise for the non-appearance of this blog yesterday but halfway through its production the gremlins attacked and a score of viruses devoured my computer and caused it to cease.  However help was immediately on hand in the form of Tomas, tel no 0851344431 who came round, discovered the cause, saved what I thought was necessary and took the computer away and returned it four hours later in better than mint condition.  I am seriously happy with his immediate diagnosis, his service and his advice for the future.  He is here at your service in Boyle.  Any problems with your PCs or laptops get in touch and all your worries will disappear.  Thank you Tomas.