The needs of victims of clerical sex abuse and reassuring an angry Catholic laity are not high up the Vatican's list of priorities, writes Father Tom Doyle
The uproar over the Prime Time revelations last week has made it abundantly clear that lay Catholics in Ireland have changed and changed for the better. Not only are they furious over the conspiratorial cover-up of the serial sex predators in their midst, but they are no longer afraid to vent the rage publicly. The target of this anger is Cardinal Connell and his associates, the men in whom total trust had been invested and who betrayed the people. Now the top agenda item is the cardinal's resignation. That probably won't happen.
Cardinal Connell's resignation has already been sent to the Pope as he was required to do so on his 75th birthday. Whether the Pope accepts his resignation offer is another matter. That decision, ultimately the Pope's, will be the subject of much discussion by high-level Vatican bureaucrats as well as the Papal Nuncio in Ireland.
While they have all given the required lip service expressing grave concern for the horrible things done to the victims, the fact is that the needs of the victims and the demands of the angry laity are not high on the Vatican's list of priorities to be given serious consideration.
The Vatican has known for years that Irish priests were sexually abusing children and getting away with it. They have known for years that bishops were shuffling these priests and thereby avoiding entanglements with the law. So why hasn't there been a mighty show of righteous indignation from the head office in Rome and a set of orders to the Irish hierarchy to stop everything else and tend to the victims?
The answer rests in the very nature of the Catholic church. The church is a monarchy and the values that are most important to the hierarchy are the preservation of the prestige and power of the ruling class. They've said all along that they kept the clergy sex abuse stories buried because they didn't want to cause scandal. But the greatest scandal has been the hierarchy's inaction and wilful cover-up, thus allowing the carnage to continue until it finally was exposed just a few years ago. Prime Time reminded the Irish church that the problem still exists and the heat is still on.
Cardinal Connell's resignation probably won't be accepted now or in the immediate future because the last thing the Vatican wants is to give the impression it is bowing to pressure from the secular media or an angry lay populace. The view in Rome is that the stability of the bishop and the appearance of secure control by the hierarchical system is most important. The church bureaucrats do not want the lay people to think they have any power and they certainly don't want the secular press to get the idea its coverage has any impact on the eternal and arcane mind of the collective Vatican soul-trust.
The Pope's advisers could speed the resignation along, as they did in the case of Archbishop Weakland in Milwaukie. He had been accused of a homosexual relationship, admitted it publicly and thus became a major embarrassment - so he had to go and go quickly.
Public knowledge of the cover-up of sexual predators among the clergy should also be a source of profound embarrassment to the Vatican but it's not. If it were, they would not have allowed it to go on in Ireland, the US and scores of other countries.
Even if Cardinal Connell were to resign, what then? If he quit now that would certainly salve the fury of a lot of people but it would not solve the fundamental problem.
Somewhere down the line this incredible mess has to result in real accountability on the part of the clergy and the hierarchy. That will only happen when the lay people realise they are mature, thinking adults in church matters and not dumb, obedient sheep. They have to realise there are no acceptable excuses for allowing sexual abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse or any other kind of abuse to go on.
A lot of people are upset by the scandal and would prefer it went away. Since it won't go away, they react with anger at the victims, the secular press and the church's critics.
Why? Sex abuse is evil! How can anyone condone it? Why? Because we have been led to believe that the institutional church is perfect and as such is rightfully the source of our spiritual security.
We have been conditioned never to question the clergy or the hierarchy because they always knew what was best. Pillars of the civil society such as the judiciary, law enforcement and even the press readily deferred to the power structures of the visible church because that was "for the good of the church".
One of the unplanned blessings of the abuse scandal has been the breakdown of the deeply entrenched belief that the "good of the church" means the "good of the clergy". The "good of the church" right now is, above all else, the good of the victims, their families, their supporters. It is the "good" of the angry, frustrated and shattered lay people whose trust has been betrayed. The church's leadership is finding it painfully hard to accept this new definition but it must or whatever shred of credibility might still exist will be blown away.
Where to from here? First, lay members of the Catholic Church should support a State inquiry to get at the whole truth of the matter. The church structures will never be able to clean the mess up by themselves because their primary agenda is self-preservation, not the welfare of the victims or their supporters.
This is not to say that the clergy and hierarchy are evil or totally duplicitous. They are part of the system just as the laity are and they have been conditioned to function, to rule, to direct from a belief that their security in power is absolutely essential to the existence of the true church. It's the fundamental understanding of what the church is that is changing. The power structure will remain hierarchical but what is happening is that the hierarchy is being forced to learn respect for the laity.
• Father Tom Doyle is an American priest working in Germany who has been campaigning on behalf of the victims of clerical sex abuse