It seems there is no end to the woes of the Catholic Church in Scotland in the wake of Cardinal O'Brien's abrupt departure.
The latest reports
in the media examine the Scottish Catholic Church's record on dealing
with historic allegations of child sex abuse by clergy, with one former
investigator hired by the Church in the mid-1990s now considering a
formal request to the police to investigate the Church's handling of
abuse cases.
The revelations confirm the now all too
familiar pattern of protecting the Church's reputation first and
foremost – allegations not taken seriously enough or simply dismissed,
offending priests quietly moved to another parish where they could
offend again, and the Church continuing to refer to the cover-up with
euphemisms like "errors" in handling cases.
The Church's first line of defence is to claim that it had tackled the problem when it introduced formal guidelines
in 1999 for the protection of children.
But it was only five years
earlier that O'Brien's predecessor Cardinal Winning had enraged lay
Catholics by stating that it was up to the victims of abuse to go to the police, not the Church authorities.
A spokesman for the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children observed at the time that the Church in Scotland had
"dealt with this issue in a shabby, damaging and incompetent way."
There is now emergent evidence that Cardinal Winning's view was the one
that still retained currency after 1999.
It gets no
better for the Church when the names of those dismissive of
investigators' concerns are recalled. The investigator appointed by the
Church in the mid-1990s suggested that the investigation remit be
widened to include "inappropriate relations" among the clergy.
Given the
recent revelations surrounding the 'inappropriate behaviour' of
Cardinal O'Brien with young priests and seminarians, this suggestion
seems to have been made with some merit.
But Bishop Roddy Wright of
Argyll and the Isles had, according to media reports, expressed his
disquiet at this.
Bishop Wright,
we now know, resigned shortly after this in the mid-1990s when it
became known he had fathered a child with a parishioner. He then
abandoned his diocese and his vocation to marry a divorcee.
No wonder
the Bishop had been uncomfortable at the prospect of an investigation of
'inappropriate relations' among the clergy. It is not hard to see now
that it may also have unsettled the then Archbishop of St Andrews &
Edinburgh, one Keith Patrick O'Brien.
Bishop Wright was not alone in his disavowal of priestly celibacy.
More recently we have had 'Father Flash'
Roddy MacNeill from the island of Barra (who had an affair with his
first cousin and is believed to be the father of her child) and Father Gerry Nugent
who admitted to having sex with Angelika Kluk, (subsequently murdered
by Peter Tobin who buried her body under the floor in Nugent's church,
St Patrick's, where he had been working).
There was also the case of Monsignor Creegan
in the Diocese of Dunkeld, whose long-term mistress confessed to her
affair with him after details of his illicit relationship with a second
woman came to light.
So it would seem that the headline in the Daily Telegraph of 8 March that some Scottish priests under O'Brien's watch were 'out of control sexually' would appear to be beyond challenge.
Another
inconvenient truth for the Scottish Church is that you can have as many
guidelines and policies as you want, but if bishops refuse to implement
them, they are worthless.
With the publication of the Nolan report in
2001, the Church boasted
that its 1999 actions had preceded Nolan by two years, and claimed that
"there is much sharing of information, expertise and resources among
the eight Scottish Dioceses.
There is also liaison between the Catholic
and Reformed Churches in Scotland and a developing relationship with
other Churches in Britain and Ireland."
Was the
Diocese of Cloyne in Ireland one of those with which this liaison
occurred?
For nowhere was the gulf between having procedures and
actually putting them into practice more evident than in the case of
Bishop John Magee in the Irish Diocese of Cloyne.
Magee's failures led
to the Irish Government's report
revealing that the Vatican considered the Irish bishops' child
protection policies and guidelines to be a 'study document', not a
definitive set of instructions and rules.
This in turn led to the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny's devastating speech
in the Irish Parliament in 2011, when among other stinging criticisms
of the Irish Catholic Church he noted the Cloyne report told "a tale of a
frankly brazen disregard for protecting children," and this even after
formal procedures had been put in place and reassuring noises as to
future full compliance had been made.
Now it seems
that a similar tale of guidelines and procedures being ignored has been
the case in Scotland under His Eminence Cardinal O'Brien's tenure.
In
2004, five years after the introduction of child protection guidelines
and seven years after the initial investigative report, the director of
child protection for the Catholic Church in Scotland found the system in disarray.
In
a detailed report on Scotland's eight dioceses, carried out between
December 2003 and March 2004, she found out that problem priests were
inadequately supervised and potentially dangerous to children and young
adults.
The report, entitled A Review of Child Protection Practices,
referred to the Church's 'secret archives' and stated: "There is no
consistent system of monitoring clergy who present, or may present, a
risk to children. Active cases requiring some further
action indicate
that unacceptable levels of risk to children may have been and could
remain present."
She resigned after just four months,
shortly after delivering her report to the Bishops.
Further allegations
of abuse are now appearing as more victims realise that they were not
alone in being abused by Catholic clergy, nor alone in having their
initial complaints summarily dismissed.
As Cardinal O'Brien is alleged
to have told one complainant at the time of his abuse by the notorious
Father Lynagh, "you are just another abused child, no-one will believe you."
But times change.
Earlier this month, Lord McConnell, Scotland's former First Minister,
told of his regret that almost ten years on since he made a landmark
apology to historic child abuse victims of the Catholic order the
Sisters of Nazareth, the victims had yet to see redress.
In an interview
with BBC Scotland, Lord McConnell said there had been "absolutely no
progress" on compensation for victims, and called on the Scottish
Government to "do the right thing".
As we await the
inevitable media-inspired 'Popefest' this week from the Vatican, we
wonder if the new Bishop of Rome will adopt a fresh approach to these
issues and take on the Herculean task of cleansing the Catholic
equivalent of the Augean stables.
We wonder if the Church, whether
globally or locally in Scotland, will at last grasp the full meaning of
the words transparency and accountability.
We wonder too if the Scottish
Government will front up to the challenge of announcing a full inquiry
of the sort announced last year by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Don't anyone hold their breath.