Vatican-Ireland conflict on child abuse cover-up

This video from the USA is called Priest Sex Abuse: Sex Abuse Victims’ Groups Outraged By Vatican Decision to Clear Accused Priest.

From RTÉ News in Ireland:

Taoiseach in unprecedented attack on Vatican

Updated: 22:01, Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has strongly criticised the Vatican for what he said was an attempt to frustrate the Cloyne inquiry, accusing it of downplaying the rape of children to protect its power and reputation.

Mr Kenny was speaking during Dáil statements on the report. (Read)

Never before has a Taoiseach used such language in criticising the Catholic Church.

Mr Kenny told the Dáil that the Cloyne Report highlighted the ‘dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’

The rape and torture of children had been downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold, instead, the primacy of the institution, which are its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

The hierarchy had proved either unwilling or unable to address what he called the horrors uncovered in successive reports, a failure which he said must be devastating for so many good priests.

Mr Kenny said that the Catholic Church needed to be truly and deeply penitent for the wrongdoing it perpetrated, hid and denied.

‘Instead of listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal,’ Mr Kenny pointed out that the Vatican’s reaction had been to parse and analyse it, with the eye of a canon lawyer.

‘This position is the polar opposite of the radicalism, the humility and the compassion that the Church had been founded on.’

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said what was done was not just to avoid scandal – it involved the wilful refusal to respect basic moral and legal responsibilities.

Mr Martin said no-one had any excuse for not knowing what to do when there was even a suspicion of child abuse.

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the report shows it had learned nothing since the Fr Brendan Smith scandal.

O’Gorman praises ‘groundbreaking’ speech

Founder of One in Four, Colm O’Gorman has said there are not enough superlatives to describe Enda Kenny’s speech today.

He said it was groundbreaking and extraordinary and a speech that historians would hopefully refer to in the future as a defining moment when Ireland was offered the opportunity to become a Republic.

Mr O’Gorman said Mr Kenny’s words were uncompromising in their withering condemnation of the Vatican.

He said he had hoped for a speech like this for nearly ten years.

Archbishop criticises Catholic hierarchy

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said there are groups in the Vatican and the hierarchy who try to undermine and refuse to understand what is being done in terms of child protection.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One, he called these groups ‘a cabal’ who refused to recognise Vatican rules in the area.

So, the Vatican and extreme conservative “cabals” within it have managed to make the whole parliament of traditionally piously Roman Catholic Ireland their enemies. Including the ruling Fine Gael party of Enda Kenny, conservatives with historically close links to the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The tone and content of Kenny’s criticisms were unprecedented in the history of the Irish republic, whose 1937 constitution, created by Eamon de Valera, defined the “special position” of the Catholic Church in the Irish state: here.

Catholic Child Abuse in Northern Ireland: Hundreds Respond: here.

In a landmark judgment, the European Court of Human Rights found that the Irish State “had to have been aware of the level of sexual crime against minors through its prosecution of such crimes at a significant rate prior to the 1970s”: here.

US fundamentalist Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs Guilty of Child Rape: here.

Buddhist monk accused of raping young girls still overseeing temple, children: here.

Related articles

• Irish government minister comments on equal marriage by saying ‘we have had enough of this s**t’
• Taoiseach believes target for deal on Ireland’s legacy debt will be missed