HEART BEAT:LIKE EVERYBODY else, I was profoundly disturbed by the Ryan report. Reading it was bad, listening to the survivors of the system relate their tales of terror and abuse was worse, writes MAURICE NELIGAN
The whole saga was a shocking indictment of our society as organised over this period. We will have more grief to face with the forthcoming publication of the report into similar abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has stressed there will be no hiding or obstruction any more. There is nowhere else to go. It’s almost as if the “12 steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous are to be played out by our clergy on a totally different platform.
Those speaking now are not the shameful clerics who set the stage. They are the good men and women in the religious life who have to speak out as step one in recognising and acknowledging the problem and then fairly facing it.
Further down the staircase comes sincere repentance and endeavours to make amends to those who suffered.
It is of course a much wider problem. It affects far more than our island of “saints and scholars”, where the sanctified brutalised the poor defenceless scholars and taught nothing but fear and hopelessness.
It occurred in North America, Australia and other places and the suspicion that Irish expatriates nourished these pernicious practices is difficult to banish from our minds.
This is not just a bad dream. It happened and we today have to cope with the aftermath and try to make sure that such can never happen again. There were major systems failures across our society, in the Catholic Church, the education system and some of its officials, the legal establishment and some of the judiciary.
There were lapses on the part of doctors and concerned carers who did not speak out when they knew full well that things were very wrong. All this is easy to say now and is being voiced repeatedly. To say it then and expect it to be believed was a different matter. To hope that remedial action would follow such revelation was a pious hope.
There were no intrusive media, there were no television documentaries, and there was nobody to speak for the children. We know now that there was a most unhealthy relationship between the Church and State and at that time woe would have befallen those who rocked the boat.
It seems incomprehensible now but it was what passed for reality then in a completely different world.
It was the world I grew up in, born into a middle class Catholic family in south Dublin. I can say with all honesty that my family, extended family, friends and acquaintances were totally unaware of this evil in our midst. It simply did not impinge upon us.
I am not a member of any Catholic organisation; just a rather inefficient foot soldier in the ranks and it is here that I come to the parapet. Throughout my life I have been in contact with Catholic clergy, both priests and nuns. The overwhelming majority were caring, conscientious people and some were positively inspiring.
I started my schooling in Willow Park and Blackrock College, then as now run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, a missionary and teaching Order. It was not always sweetness and light and corporal punishment with cane or strap was part of the deal. It was usually deserved and, if not inculcating love of learning, it certainly taught caution and self preservation. As we grew older we became more conscious of autocracy and the exercise of power by authority. It did not bother us unduly and if it upset some they usually had the sense to keep their mouths shut.
We began to ask questions and expected concrete answers. We demanded certainties capable of proof. The men we were asking did not belittle us, they knew that, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1).
There were Godly caring men among them, although thankfully not all the time.
I have remained close to many of this fine congregation throughout my life and I am the better for it. There were none of the problems that beset the less privileged at about the same time.
Medical qualification brought me into the realm of the Sisters of Mercy, beginning what turned out to be a career-long association with the Mater hospital. As every doctor knows, ward sisters can be tough, religious or not, and we certainly had our share.
God only knows what they thought of us. They were a community of strong women, zealous in their faith and in their service, and they expected the same commitment from their staff. In all my time among them I never heard of Goldenbridge, until Christine Buckley spoke out and the dominos began to fall.
I worked with nuns in the Bon Secours and in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children and I taught and worked with Medical Missionaries. I find it beyond belief that these good people had any knowledge of the crimes being committed by those who ostensibly walked beneath the same banner.
The foul people who perpetrated such abuse and those who concealed it have not alone hurt their victims but also those religious who were true to their calling and who, bewildered by what has happened, can only pray, as did St Teresa of Avila, “Alas O Lord, to what a state dost thou bring those who love Thee”.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon