The two senior churchmen have dramatically different approaches to the scandal, writes Mary Raftery
The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, issues periodic public statements updating the statistics on priests against whom allegations of child sexual abuse have been made over the past 50 years. It is a habit that would have been anathema to his predecessor, Cardinal Desmond Connell. It is also a practice that starkly contradicts the cardinal's own version of the extent of clerical child abuse in Dublin.
Dr Martin's most recent figures indicate that a trawl through diocesan files shows that so far there are allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse against 147 priests who have served in Dublin since 1940.
In 2002, Desmond Connell responded to the furore created by RTÉ Prime Time's "Cardinal Secrets" by stating that as far back as 1995 he had himself ordered the diocesan files to be examined. The result of this was that he passed the names of 17 priests on to the Garda.
The gulf that exists between Cardinal Connell's mere 17 priests accused of child abuse, and the figure of 147 and rising, is but one manifestation of the dramatic differences between two of the country's most senior Catholic churchmen in their approach to the clerical child abuse scandal.
It is this conflict which erupted on Thursday with Cardinal Connell's application to the courts to vindicate what he claims is his right to privilege over thousands of documents which Dr Martin has passed over to the State-appointed commission of inquiry into child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
To understand the nature of the documents the cardinal now seeks to keep secret, one has to go back to the key year of 1995. Almost every week there were revelations of allegations of child sexual abuse against priests all over the State, but particularly in Dublin.
They culminated in the allegation that Desmond Connell (then archbishop of Dublin) told a deliberate lie - something he has always vehemently denied.
The controversy concerned the compensation payment to Andrew Madden, a victim of paedophile Fr Ivan Payne and the first person in Ireland to talk publicly about his abuse as a child by a priest.
In an RTÉ interview, archbishop Connell said he had never paid out compensation to anyone abused by a priest of the archdiocese. Madden listened with incredulity. He had already been paid compensation of IR£30,000.The archbishop subsequently defended himself by explaining that the sum paid to Madden was a loan to Payne from the archdiocese rather than a direct payout. But the damage was done and the archbishop was exposed as having been at best elastic with the truth.
Lawyers were involved throughout this case, and it is likely that most of the records (as in hundreds of other cases) could be defined as falling within the category of legal documentation over which Cardinal Connell is now claiming privilege.
Should he succeed, it is probable that the mechanics of the strategy he adopted during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s on the child sex abuse scandal in the archdiocese may remain forever hidden.
In particular, we may never discover what caused the Church's insurance company to take such fright in that same year of 1995, particularly as Cardinal Connell is also understood to have included documentation related to insurance matters within his claim of privilege.
The issue of insurance was one which caused a furore when it was revealed by Patsy McGarry of this newspaper in 2003. He discovered that almost all dioceses in the State had taken out specific insurance against child sex abuse claims as early as 1987. What made this so remarkable were the regularly repeated claims by bishops throughout the 1990s that they knew nothing about the issue of child sexual abuse by priests, had never heard of such a thing until very recently. Even as late as 2002, archbishop Connell was using this as an excuse for his lack of action in the face of numerous allegations. What appalled people most was the evidence that the church knew enough to act to protect its own assets, but not to protect children from assaults by priests.
We now know that in 1995, as victim after victim came forward, the church's insurance company, Church & General, pulled the plug. It bought out the policy for €4.3 million and refused to insure against any further historic claims. The reason, according to a 2003 statement from the bishops, was that "serious legal issues" had arisen.
The bishops did not explain the nature of these issues. We can speculate that insurance companies get agitated if they find that their clients may not have been fully open with them, but without the evidence contained in the Dublin diocesan files, handed over to the commission of inquiry by Dr Martin, and now under threat of being withheld by Cardinal Connell, we may never know how much the Dublin Archdiocese told its insurers about the extent of its knowledge of child sexual abuse.
One example of this kind of knowledge concerns the case of Mervyn Rundle, sexually abused as a child during the 1980s by Fr Thomas Naughton. Rundle was yet another of those who approached the archdiocese in 1995. It transpired that the archdiocese had a fat file on his abuser, detailing earlier complaints, and showing a pattern of transferring him from parish to parish. Of course, neither Rundle nor his family were told anything about this. He only discovered the truth in 2003 by suing the Church, which after initial denials, eventually settled with him for a substantial sum.
Given that a majority of such cases became the subject of legal claims, the files concerning them could be construed as numbering among those which Cardinal Connell wishes to keep secret.
In the 1990s the strategy adopted by the archdiocese to deal with the scandal of child abuse by its priests could be said to be one of cover-up. Victims felt bullied and disbelieved. Allegations were denied. And when the crisis could no longer be contained, the bishops' behaviour - in many cases - was excused as having been based on legal advice. It is now that legal advice, the bedrock of the Dublin Archdiocese's strategy, which Cardinal Connell seeks to ensure will never be made public.
This is a fundamental challenge, not just to the public and the State's right to know, but also to the current, open approach of the archdiocese, evident in the willingness of Dr Martin to waive privilege on all documents. It begs the question as to who now speaks for the Irish Catholic Church on this issue.