In undiplomatic language (Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has) stated that the (Cloyne) Report “excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism [and] narcissism … that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day … The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’”. (Gerry O’Hanlon SJ, Eureka Street)

He supports this serious charge by the claim that “for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic … as little as three years ago, not three decades ago”.

It is clear that, whatever about the nuances of the allegations made — there is, for example, some puzzlement about his reference to Vatican interference “as little as three years ago” — Kenny has articulated well the anger of the Irish people towards the Vatican.

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(In) Ireland the already greatly weakened Church is an easy target and an attack upon it is bound to garner popular support. However Kenny’s sincere position as a practising Catholic offsets the charges of political opportunism.

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The Vatican itself has been on a learning curve on these matters. It seems to have been as late as 2010 (a good 14 years after the Irish Bishops made their position clear) that it came to the unequivocal recommendation that full cooperation with civil authorities is required.

The fact that the Vatican cannot confess its own tardiness and shortcomings in these matters (because of fear of legal proceedings, with attendant financial liabilities?), but comes across as washing its hands and blaming local hierarchies, underlies much of the anger that is felt in Ireland.

This points to the deeper issue underlying this whole saga, in Ireland and elsewhere in the Church. It would seem that the Vatican espouses the principle of subsidiarity when it suits — so, local churches are autonomous and responsible in their own regions in this matter of abuse. But in many other areas — for example, of the translation of the New Missal, the role of women in the church, the decision-making powers of laity — there is scant evidence of effective subsidiarity.

Brendan Hoban, founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland, noted that ‘Kenny has articulated another obvious truth about the Irish Catholic Church: that the domination of Rome is strangling the emergence of a people’s Church in Ireland’.

There is, of course, an important role for Rome and the papacy, but not at the expense of a vigorous local and regional autonomy: and, the basis for that, as Hoban goes on to say, ‘is to be found not in some revolutionary manual but in the documents of the Second Vatican Council’.

Perhaps, pace all the qualifications raised by critics, the Irish people — and many further afield — agree with Kenny because they too sense that our present model of Church is dysfunctional and requires radical renewal.

FULL STORY

Catholic Ireland’s watershed moment (Eureka Street)

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