Hostility Towards Church Makes Young Ashamed Of History - Archbishop
The Irish Times - Saturday, November 21, 1998 by ANDY POLLAK
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, has warned that "the climate of criticism and, at times, downright hostility towards the church" is making young people ashamed of their history and their Catholic past.
Addressing religious education teachers graduating from Mater Dei Institute in Dublin yesterday, Dr Connell said "a people ashamed of its history is a people deprived of identity and roots.
"A self-confident generation on the other hand is formed by teachers who are convinced of the values they seek to pass on and who know how to place inevitable human weakness in a perspective of justice, of compassion, of determination to do better in the future.
"None of what I say is intended to deny or diminish the heartrending abuses that occurred in Irish society and, when those abuses were perpetrated by people identified with the church, the scandal has been all the greater, but too little is heard about the historical context and the pitfalls of anachronism. A healthy society will acknowledge and take steps to remedy its past abuses, but its strength will come not from wholesale rejection of its past but from reliance on the forces that created the integrity of its tradition and rendered it attentive to advances in experience and knowledge."
Dr Connell warned against a distorted remembrance of the past, "a blinkered hindsight". He noted how little was heard about poverty in Ireland in the 1930s.
"Nobody has analysed the annual budgets over the last 50 years to help us guess how much support the State was able to provide for the task of caring for the destitute, a task which was accepted by generations of religious. The church, utterly dependent on the support of a Catholic, largely impoverished community, cared for the poor and the State was content so to leave it."
"Why do I say these things? For one reason only - to ask for justice towards the church and to challenge the kind of revisionism that is making our children ashamed of their past. This leaves them without a tradition to provide an identity, and rootless before accelerating winds of change. It will be your task to help restore pride in our Catholic heritage and to inspire renewed joy in our faith."
He said the 1937 Constitution was "now derided as a Catholic document, but I am proud of whatever may have been the Catholic influence that helped to shape it. In the darkness of the Europe of the time, from Spain to Soviet Russia, it was a beacon of light for its vindication of personal dignity and its firm assertion of natural rights against the inroads of political expediency.
"It is widely assumed that the influence of the Catholic Church was repressive, especially when judged in the light of our current permissive culture," he went on, "but more than 40 years after Parnell, the British - for similar reasons - dismissed their king from his throne in 1936, and now more than 100 years later, the heir to the throne is under discussion about his matrimonial prospects."
On the adoptions of Irish children by US Catholic families in the 1950s, Dr Connell said "they were roundly condemned in programme after programme for the cruelty perpetrated by the church in facilitating the removal of the children from the country.
"No doubt, with hindsight, one would be more careful today, but a few months later, the media hailed as a joyful event the adoption of a child from China. Apparently it was perverse to send children to a cognate culture, the United States, but altogether commendable to receive a child in Ireland from a totally alien culture. How far is this from hypocrisy?"
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/1998/1121/98112100032.html
The Irish Times - Tuesday, December 1, 1998 - Blaming The Clergy
Sir, - I read with disgust the article by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell (Rite and Reason, November 24th). Dr Connell claims young people are ashamed of their history due to a climate of criticism towards the church. I, as a young person, am proud to be Irish and of our past. However, I am ashamed at the way the Catholic Church has handled the child abuse cases that have happened in the past.
It is of no help to the victims of child abuse for the Catholic Hierarchy to bury their heads in the sand. As I write, a Christian brother has pleaded guilty to 53 charges of abusing young boys between 1977 and 1988. According to one of his victims he had denied this for the past five years and the church has yet not even apologised to this victim personally.
In his article, Dr Connell states that "little is heard about the historical context" and that we are "judging the past naively by present standards". He should concentrate his efforts on the victims of child abuse and not make any excuses for the abusers, from whatever part of history they came from.
Only a minority of the clergy have ever abused and we should be grateful to the Catholic church for providing the nation with a good education. But I wish Dr Connell would wake up to the sins of the past. -
Yours, etc.,
Eoin Desmond,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/1998/1201/98120100110.html
The Irish Times - Wednesday, December 2, 1998 - Blaming The Clergy
Sir, - Dr Desmond Connell delivered a speech to the graduates of the Mater Dei College which was printed in full in your paper in the Rite and Reason column: I read it looking for something that might been left out in the TV coverage of Dr Connell's speech. What I was looking for, and didn't find, was an apology.
Instead Dr Connell told us a number of things - in summary, "that the tendency to blame the Irish Church for all the ills of the past is damaging Irish society as a whole" - and he wants "to ask for justice towards the Church and to challenge the kind of revisionism that is making our children ashamed of their past".
Justice for the Church! Not once in Dr Connell's speech did he take the opportunity to apologise for the appalling behaviour of even one of his "chosen flock"; not once did he mention the many victims of Church abuse, who will have to live with the repercussions for the rest of their lives. What about justice for them, Dr Connell? Surely it's the abuses of the Church that have damaged Irish society, not the apportioning of blame!
Dr Connell referred to how hypocritical people are to complain about Church-arranged adoptions in the 1950s when people today are welcoming foreign adoptions. How can Dr Connell compare the two situations? The Church adoptions were shrouded in secrecy, arranged to "hide" the problem of births outside marriage. Today's foreign adoptions are conducted in an open and transparent way - not behind closed doors!
The Church is entitled, if it wishes, to pat itself on the back for the long list of great things it feels it was responsible for in the past, but Dr Connell needs to step out into the real Ireland of today, where the Irish people are no longer accepting Catholicism taught through fear, but now have the confidence to question Catholic teachings, and identify hypocrisy when they see it.
Once again Dr Connell has missed an opportunity to face up to the problems in the Catholic Church and accept the emergence of a more discerning Irish people.
Hopefully the graduates of Mater Dei who listened to his speech will show more compassion for Church victims and consider their welfare more seriously than Dr Connell has done up to now. -
Yours, etc.,
Sally Ann O' Donovan,
Adelaide Road,
Dublin 2.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/1998/1202/98120200101.html
The Irish Times - Friday, December 4, 1998 - Blaming The Clergy
Sir, - Perhaps Sally Ann O'Donovan (December 2nd) has not read the guidelines of the Irish Bishops' Conference, Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response, published almost three years ago (January 1996). The first statement in that document is the following:
"The Church has always had its limitations and sinfulness but child sexual abuse by priests and religious is one of the saddest manifestations of this reality. Such exploitation of the vulnerability of children is a betrayal of trust of the gravest kind.
"We express our shame and sorrow that such incidents of abuse have occurred. On behalf of the bishops, priests and religious we apologise to all who have suffered because of sexual abuse inflicted on them by priests and religious. We recognise the hurt and sense of isolation which those who have been victims of child sexual abuse by priests and religious have experienced."-
Yours, etc.,
Jim Cantwell,
Director,
Catholic Press and Information Office,
Dublin.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/1998/1204/98120400118.html
The Irish Times - Tuesday, December 8, 1998 - Blaming The Clergy
Sir, - In response to my criticisms of Dr Desmond Connell (December 2nd), Jim Cantwell, director of the Catholic Press Office, questions whether I have read the guidelines of the Irish Bishop's Conference (December 4th).
He misses the point. I'm not saying that the Church never apologised to victims. What I am saying and repeat is that I am critical of Dr Connell, and that in his speech he criticised the Irish people for "revisionism" in their memories of the Catholic Church. But he himself was being "revisionist", or maybe selective, by extolling the virtues of the Church while not at the same time mentioning the victims of its past.
To be blunt, Dr Connell's call for fair criticism from the Irish people should work both ways and more of his time should be spent trying to understand the hurt that people are experiencing, so honestly expressed by Stephen Kennedy (November 28th).
I hope the fact that Jim Cantwell had to repeat the church's apology in response to my letter might in some small way alleviate some of the disappointment of the victims, whom Dr Connell did not think necessary to acknowledge in his original speech.
These people have shown remarkable bravery in speaking out, and Dr Connell, as a Christian, should never forget to applaud that bravery at every public event he can. -
Yours, etc.,
Sally Ann O'Donovan,
Adelaide Road,
Dublin 2.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/1998/1208/98120800099.html