Thursday, May 10, 2012

Colum Kenny: 'You never got to like it?' The answer to that sinister, suspicious, insinuating, abusive question remains 'No'

'You never got to like it?" 

That was one of the remarkable questions put to Brendan Boland when he was interrogated by priests in 1975 after reporting to the Catholic Church his sexual abuse at the hands of Fr Brendan Smyth.

"You never got to like it?" 

The question itself is abusive. It serves no obvious good purpose. 

I sought an explanation for it last week, but was told only that the entire exercise was intended "to gather evidence against the criminal priest". 

A spokesperson for Cardinal Sean Brady, who was present as a priest at that investigation in 1975, told me that Brady "did not construct those questions or ask those questions". 

But he was there and he signed off on them (as plain "John" and not "Sean" Brady).

"You never got to like it?" 

Being abused, that is. 

The answer that Boland gave to the three priests was an absolute "No". 

It was a question that might do-in the head of any victim of repeated violence, never mind the head of a teenager at puberty. 

What possible implication could there have been if he had answered "Yes"? 

That he shared the blame for his own rape? 

The undercurrent to this question, with its hint of erotic humiliation, raises a question about the institution that framed it, and about the nature of dominance and power within the organisation itself. 

The three priests who interviewed Brendan Boland knew full well that child sexual abuse was happening in Ireland. 

If others were not speaking about it because of fear or ignorance, what was the excuse of church authorities who knew of actual abuse?

Were Brady and his colleagues not dismayed when, one month after their own interview with victims of abuse, the Irish bishops published a highly significant and lengthy pastoral letter entitled Human Life Is Sacred? 

For nowhere throughout its 72 pages is sexual abuse mentioned. 

Nowhere are the clergy, religious or faithful to whom it is addressed alerted to the blasphemy and danger of child sex abuse that bishops knew was damaging some children's lives.

Many other subjects were set out in that major pastoral, which some saw as a political intervention aimed against reform of the civil law. 

The bishops warned about abortion, "the contraceptive mentality" and sex outside marriage. 

They spoke earnestly of love, "certain kinds of sex education", the evils of drink in family life, celibacy, social justice and even euthanasia. 

But the hierarchy made no specific reference in their 1975 pastoral to one phenomenon of which they, at least as much as anyone else, were aware.

Child sexual abuse. 

Why?

The pastoral letter of 1975 noted: "The church has centuries of experience in dealing with men in all cultures and in all conditions. All this wise experience lies behind her judgement on human beings."

The archbishops and bishops, in their collective wisdom in 1975, also pronounced: "If circumstances do not promise to a newly conceived child the quality of life to which its human dignity entitles it, then society has a strict duty to change the circumstances."

So was the "strict duty" of Fr John Brady, his civic and moral duty, not to change the circumstances of actual children whom he knew were at risk? 

He and his spokespeople last week seemed obsessed with legalities. 

He did his duty. 

He followed orders. 

Anything more was up to others.

Brady did not look back. He rose high. From all his public utterances, there is no evidence that it ever occurred to him to check in later years that the kids mentioned by Brendan
Boland as being at risk were now safe. 

Or if it did occur to him, he never acted to protect them after signing off on their interrogation. 

His problem is not that he did not go to the police immediately. 

It is that he never followed up as he might have.

But he did oblige teenager Boland, in the enforced absence of Boland's father, to
swear oaths that the boy would tell nobody what he had said. 

The sacred nature of family life did not extend to priests having to tell parents that their children were allegedly being raped.

A spokesman for the hierarchy has defended the process as being aimed at ensuring that an accused person could not undermine the inquiry. 

If a witness went around talking about what had happened to him or her then the accused might afterwards claim that witnesses somehow colluded.

But there is no equivalent oath of secrecy for people who make complaints to gardai in ordinary criminal cases. 

And the priests were not so determined to protect the integrity of their process that they ensured Brendan Smyth was stopped in his tracks. In fact, he went on raping for years.

Next month the Irish hierarchy will host a Eucharistic Congress, embarrassingly referred to in one widely distributed handout as "a Spiritual Olympics". 

This already looked like a top-down attempt to forge ahead as if no fundamental change is required in the Catholic Church.

But sex abuse is fundamentally about the abuse of power, and not just about sex. 

The exercise of power within their church remains a problem for Catholics. 

Already this year we have seen a Catholic headmistress closing her door in the face of a pregnant teenager and the Vatican censoring priests for their mildly dissenting views.

Last week's BBC documentary hit home partly because the reporter involved is the nephew of a priest, and most of those who appeared in it are ordinary Catholics or ex-Catholics living on both sides of the Border.

If some media are engaged in a witch hunt, the BBC was not. 

Most media are merely reflecting the concern of the majority of Irish Catholics, who in theory are as much a part of the church as is any cardinal.

Ordinary Catholics are dismayed by what has been wrought on their church by the hierarchy and by priests who did evil. 

They aspire to a compassionate and spiritual church, not "a Spiritual Olympics, a kind of Spring Show or a World Youth Day for Adults" as next month's congress in the RDS is described.

They do not agree with that minority of Catholics who defend their Christian church as a "club", and who ignore the theology and history of their own "catholic" (meaning universal) tradition. 

Most Irish Catholics disagree with Rome's silencing of priests. 

But it is the long silence of Sean Brady that now cries out. 

"You never got to like it?" was the sinister, suspicious, insinuating question that his team put to Brendan Boland. 

The answer is still 'No'.