Turning a blind eye can have lasting effect

ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin spoke on RTE Radio 1’s ‘Morning Ireland’ last Monday week about the meeting that was taking place later that week in the Vatican. Pope Francis called for all the presidents of the Catholic bishops’ conferences of the world to meet in the Vatican to discuss the issue of sexual abuse by clerics of minors and vulnerable adults.

Also at the meeting were 21 eastern rite patriarchs and a number of ‘superiors’ of religious congregations.

Like the late Charlie Haughey I’m not impressed with that word ‘superior’. Worse again, is the title given to the boss of the Dominican Order. He is called ‘Master’. Then again the title Master in academia is also archaic but maybe these days it has lost its meaning too?

On the ‘Morning Ireland’ programme, Diarmuid Martin asked why it had taken so long to sack Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

McCarrick was ordained an auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977 and was a bishop in a number of US dioceses until he retired as Archbishop of Washington in 2006 at the customary age of 75.

And even in that fact there is a hint that someone knew something. Many of the world’s bishops are left in situ for many years after they reach the retirement age of 75. It happens in Ireland, it happens everywhere. So, why did the Vatican act so quickly with McCarrick? Maybe there is a credibly perfect reason for his on-the-day retirement but I’m slow to go with that story.

For years there were rumours and stories about Theodore McCarrick and high clerics decided to turn a blind eye.

That’s the way it works in the church. It’s probably the way it works in all large organisations but it is particularly annoying to see how this is how life in the Catholic Church is.

Since the McCarrick story landed on the world’s media and then after his sacking as a priest many high clerics who worked close to McCarrick have denied knowing anything about his pro- clivities. Of course we should believe the words that people say but on this one I have to admit I find it most difficult to believe senior clerics in the United States had not heard rumours and stories about the bishop. It is correctly said that the worldwide Catholic Church has the best intelligence service in the world. And so it does. How come McCarrick had not turned up on the radar? Maybe the answer is that he was a senior person, a ‘superior’ and the people who were reporting him were little people. The church has a great knack in being far too deferential to ‘superior’ people.

What influence, what harm did the actions of McCarrick leave on the generations that follow him? What sort of people are attracted to a church that has people like McCarrick at the helm?

What happens for instance if bishops, provincials or vocations directors are paedophiles? Does it mean that they can have an inordinately bad influence on generations of clerics who have come to priesthood or religious life because of these men?

Just as politicians can damage a political party for generations, the same too can, does and is happening in the church.