The Catholic Church: Putting Themselves First Again

Once again, it has come to light how the Catholic Church has put itself before the interests of its congregation. We've had the years and years of abuse scandals, the Catholic Church spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to discriminate against the LGBT community rather than help those in need, and the recent statement by the church that they will deny services to the homeless and the poor in Washington DC if marriage equality becomes law there.

So, are we really surprised at anything the Catholics do? No, not really. Has it become quite clear that the church does not preach the word of god but rather spreads hate and discrimination? Indeed, it has.

A new report has come to light which finds that the Roman Catholic Church and the police in Ireland have systematically colluded in covering up decades of child sex abuse by priests in Dublin. and why have they covered it up, you ask?

According to the report it's because the church was concerned only with “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets.” That's right; their concern was the money, and their image, not the children molested over the tenures of four Dublin archbishops, which continued into the mid-1990s and beyond.

In a statement, the current archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, acknowledged the “revolting story” of abuses that the report detailed, saying, “No words of apology will ever be sufficient.” Truer words, sir, have never been spoken. How could the church ever apologize for finding the abuse and then continuing to let it happen rather than risk smearing the names of church leaders and then being forced to pay massive sums in restitution? How do you apologize for the rape of children over and over again?

But this isn't the only damning report of abuses by church officials. Just last May another report chronicled the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of orphans and foster children over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the vulnerable and the disadvantaged.

Apologize for that one, if you can.

And while that May report portrayed the church as broken, with guilt spread among many, this newest report attaches blame to those at the top. It reserved its harshest criticism for the Dublin police and four archbishops of Dublin: John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973; Dermot Ryan, who died in 1984; Kevin McNamara, who died in 1987; and Cardinal Desmond Connell, who retired in 2004. The report states that these four men knew of the abuse, but did nothing about it.

The report looked into the cases of 46 priests who had been the subject of molestation complaints from about 320 children from 1975 to 2004; of those 46, 11 have pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting children or have been convicted of that crime while the others are dead or have not been prosecuted.

But the report also blames the Irish police, who often referred abuse complaints back to the archdiocese for internal investigations. They sent the lambs back to the slaughterhouse. The Dublin police now say they regret regret their failure to act. “Because of acts or omissions, individuals who sought assistance did not always receive the level of response or protection which any citizen in trouble is entitled to expect,” Ireland’s police commissioner, Fachtna Murphy, said, adding he was “deeply sorry.”

Sorry. Sorry we took children who had been sexually assaulted by men they trusted and then sent them back to those same men again without investigation.

One priest admitted to abusing more than 100 children; one said he had abused, on average, a child every two weeks for 25 years; another parish priest, the Reverend James McNamee, whose case was included in the report, was rather well-known for his behavior over more than 30 years. Father McNamee died in 2002, professing that he had done nothing wrong.

But think of all those children left alone by the church to continue their abuse; all allowed to continue being around young children without any investigation by the police.

Apologies aren't enough, and no amount of money will ever make these, now grown, men feel safe in the church again. It's time the Catholic Church stopped apologizing and emptying its bank accounts; it's time they stood up for children, instead of letting them down.