Seanad reportThe Catholic Church was behaving in a most cruel fashion by refusing church blessings to divorced people who re-married, the leader of the House, Mary O'Rourke, said. That was putting church law over civil law, she contended.
Mrs O'Rourke was responding to Brian Hayes, Fine Gael leader in the House, who said that the most vital issue for the Catholic Church, in the wake of the Ferns abuse report, was that canon law in this country could not supersede the law of the Oireachtas, and that there was no position of privilege for any group of churchmen or women over the citizens of this country.
Stating that she fully agreed with Mr Hayes's viewpoint, Mrs O'Rourke said she knew a couple who had made strenuous efforts to obtain a church blessing. They had been met with refusals in three parishes. "Imagine, people who go to church each Sunday.
"It's a terrible thing to do to anyone. That is church law, or canon law, over civil law, because they are not recognising that divorce is the law of the land." It was an awful disgrace for the church to stand above love and not to want to give a blessing to such people.
Reacting to the findings of the Ferns inquiry, Joe O'Toole (Ind) said that a priest who had edited a clerical magazine had been sacked by the hierarchy in 1989 because he wanted to introduce a debate on clerical child abuse. For his "sins" he had been cast to the farthest end of west Mayo.
In the 1960s and the 1970s the man who was now Pope, as head of the Congregation of the Faith, had issued an edict of Omerta to the Catholic Church authorities in every diocese in Europe advising them on how to deal with cases of clerical abuse, but with the condition that they were bound to silence.
Brendan Ryan (Lab) said they needed to know, among other things, whether a private institution had attempted to subvert the law of the land by swearing its members to silence.
"That's a criminal offence, if they did, and it's an interference with the sovereignty of the State. If people did that, they should be held to account."
Maurice Hayes (Ind) said he thanked God for people like Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Colm O'Gorman and those who had the courage to deal with the child abuse issue. He believed that it would be worthwhile looking at the experience in the North, "because we have been through this mill with many cases."
David Norris (Ind) said that the problems over the handling of clerical abuse went right to the very top - Rome. When Cardinal Groer had been suspended over a myriad of allegations that he had molested seminarians, Pope John Paul II had written him a letter of sympathy and had never uttered a word of comfort to the victims.