Investigate every Roman Catholic diocese in Ireland

Harold’s Cross in Dublin

Victims of priestly pedophilia have responded to revelations of a decades-long cover-up in the Dublin Archdiocese with a call for expansion of the investigation to every diocese in Ireland.

Tragically predictable, the Irish Catholic Church pooh pooed the victims. Auxiliary Bishop Eamon Walsh of Dublin huffed to Ireland On-Line that further investigation would be a bootless distraction from “consolidating our services.”

It sounds like a habitual reaction — even one that is intended to mislead. Over a span of three decades, four successive archbishops of Dublin responded to clerical child sexual abuse in their diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up.” Similarly, the Vatican refused to cooperate with the Murphy Commission investigation of a sample of 46 Dublin Archdiocese priests out of 102 against whom complaints has been made between 1975 and 2004.

Against that background, it is reasonable to ask if Walsh’s argument is fraught with the “mental reservation” the report revealed was abused by the Dublin Archdiocese clergy to frustrate inquiry and to mislead. For example, the report said:

Both Marie Collins and Andrew Madden independently furnished the Commission with examples of how [mental reservation] was deployed by the Archdiocese in dealing with their complaints. In 2003, Mr Madden was invited to meet Cardinal Connell. In the course of an informal chat Cardinal Connell did apologise for the whole handling of the Fr Ivan Payne case. He was however at pains to point out to Mr Madden that he did not lie about the use of diocesan funds in meeting Fr Payne‟s settlement with Mr Madden. He explained that when he was asked by journalists about the use of diocesan funds for the compensation of complainants of child sexual abuse, he had responded that diocesan funds are not used for such a purpose; that he had not said that diocesan funds were not used for such a purpose. By using the present tense, he had not excluded the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such purpose in the past. According to Mr Madden, Cardinal Connell considered that there was an enormous difference between the two.

Thus by cunning use of verb tense and omission, Connell used the most literal meaning of the words to create the false impression that diocesan funds had never been used. Yet with his interior knowledge of the meaning of the words he spoke, he was telling a truth his audience did not hear.

According to BBC, Bishop Walsh “told Bloomberg he was disappointed and surprised by the Vatican’s attitude” in failing to cooperate with the investigation of the Dublin Archdiocese. Whatever he actually meant by that.

We are not surprised, but we are nonetheless disappointed, by Walsh’s attitude. Without further investigation, Irish officials cannot hope to understand what they must do to fully awaken from a national nightmare awash in Catholic Church and state corruption. It is clear from the decades of history of similar scandals around the world that to delay full investigation is to further conceal. Walsh’s appeal to getting on with other business is an attempt rationalize an end to investigation, inevitably to serve some unstated church interest in suppressing scandal. Thus Walsh, like his predecessors, seeks concealment.

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Irish Times Timeline

How The Story Of Abuse In Catholic Church Institutions Emerged

BBC developed a Timeline: U.S. Catholic Church sex scandal

Yes, there are other denominations which engage in brazen cover-ups.