Sir, – Patsy McGarry (Opinion & Analysis, July 28th) gives a figure of €133.8 million for the total costs so far of the four statutory inquiries into clerical sex abuse.
Just as the religious orders have to contribute towards the costs of compensation to the survivors of institutional child abuse, surely the Holy See can at least contribute 50 per cent of the €133.4 million of Irish taxpayers’ money involved in these inquiries, which would not have been necessary had the Holy See been co-operative from the very beginning. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Patsy McGarry’s article “Why is the Vatican so miffed at reaction to Cloyne report?” should be pasted on every fridge in Ireland, lest we forget the fine detail. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Vincent Browne’s rant against the Catholic Church (Opinion & Analysis, July 27th) was so vitriolic that I was a little stunned. He started with a papal bull issued 502 years before I was born and hinged his entire tirade on it and similar utterances. He failed to show any balance or to present any of his arguments in the context of the prevailing culture and values at those particular times. Unfortunately, we cannot always view history, even church history, from a 21st-century perspective. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Taoiseach Enda Kenny continues to be lauded in the echo chambers of the media elite for his preposterous anti-Vatican tirade. Unfortunately, despite the incessant love-bombing, Mr Kenny’s intemperate, ill-judged, misdirected and factually inaccurate reaction is unlikely to do much long-term good, either for children or for anybody else.
I don’t recall Mr Kenny voicing such criticism in 1996 when he was in government, when his comments in relation to the Vatican would have been much closer to the mark, or indeed in 2002, from the safety of the Opposition benches.
Why now and why Cloyne? It hardly constitutes the worse recording of cases in the long and sorry litany of clerical and religious sexual abuse. Has he had a sudden divinely inspired revelation, or could it be that he is just another political opportunist, seeking to deflect attention from his own party’s mounting catalogue of cutbacks, broken promises and U-turns?
Mr Kenny’s newly demonstrated capacity to joust all day against Vatican windmills cannot hide the fact that he squirms like a worm before his overseas political overlords. Hosing criticism at the Vatican for the mistakes made in the Cloyne diocese, where church and State regulations were both ignored, achieves absolutely nothing other than to demonstrate that Mr Kenny has no interest in fair-mindedness or factual accuracy.
He may have won the praise of the church’s intractable critics, but I imagine most ordinary practising Catholics, of whom there are still quite a number, do not at all appreciate his wilful misrepresentations, especially his thinly veiled assault on the one man who has done more to root out clerical abuse than any other in the church, Pope Benedict.
If Mr Kenny had noted “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism – and the narcissism” that define our political class today, and especially our principal political parties, he might be better positioned to attempt to excise those perceived qualities elsewhere. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – In my work as an "agony columnist" with the Sunday Press– in spite of the sneers at such a job, it had more than its share of agony – I heard, though not extensively, of the abuse experienced by children within the family, neighbourhood and school.
What happens is that the family does not want to smear its own name and so the matter is kept secret. Nor does the family want to have trouble with close neighbours, where, say, the decent elderly parents do not know of the activities of their son, or perhaps the abuses of the father or uncle who has a youngish family of his own. “Keep it to yourself . . . don’t make trouble” was the regular message.
The Catholic Church has been behaving like a family. “Protect your own first.” There must be many priests who learned that in their own family. One woman said to me recently, “Why don’t we see the bishops in their hair-shirts, mitres laid aside, on pilgrimage to Lough Derg, along with the lay and clerical perpetrators, begging for forgiveness?”
Our priority must be to look after the children. Teach children how to speak to adults of such situations. Family members must report cases of abuse to the Garda. Save the children, not the abusers.
Pandora’s Box is only half-open. Some want to keep it that way. –
Yours, etc,
Sir, – The allegation made by Enda Kenny was that the Vatican attempted to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic. There is no foundation for this allegation. There is nothing in the Cloyne report to support this allegation. If he has information not included in the report, we should be told; if he has none, can he show the same courage he has shown on other issues by withdrawing the allegation and apologising to the Vatican? - Yours, etc,
Sir, – After years of mindless subservience to the whims of the Catholic Church by former administrations, we have, at last, a Government prepared to stand up for the rights of its young and vulnerable citizens.
I totally support the Taoiseach’s stance in this matter, and hope the necessary legislation will be enacted without delay, thus ensuring that the obscenities perpetrated in the the Cloyne dioceses can never happen again. – Yours, etc,