OPINION: Time to face up to societal abuse

It’s a difficult time to be a card carrying member of the Catholic Church. The recent Scoping Inquiry on Religious Schools is simply shocking. The hurt suffered by innocent children is devastating. It is so harrowing to even imagine the depths of pain and suffering meted out by people who professed faith in Jesus Christ. There are no words for that level of contradiction.
Those of us who escaped such experiences have no idea of the depth of agony, pain and betrayal felt by those who were victimised. To have to carry that pain for a generation, as many had to, is unimaginable. Too often they were not believed and their suffering was compounded. For some they had to watch helplessly as abusers were moved from one parish or school to another in a sick attempt to protect perpetrators rather than support the victims.
It wasn’t just Church authorities, but society at large, including successive governments, that thought nothing of heaping layer upon layer of pain on hearts and minds already shattered and broken. No one stood up. No one listened, Church or State. Both institutions bear the responsibility.
Hopefully, the forthcoming Commission of Investigation will be configured in such a way that victims set the parameters, not the wishes of the State or the fears of the Church. Our history on effective tribunals, inquiries and commissions has been haphazard, at best.
Senior politicians who take cheap pot-shots at the Church would do well to remember that it was religious women and men drawn from Irish families who stepped in to provide education to Irish children ahead of any State educational involvement. Those same families also supplied the women who became nursing sisters and provided healthcare to all long before the State ever accepted it had a responsibility to do so.
The same politicians are slow to admit that the State has a huge responsibility in all the tragedy of child abuse. In some cases, the State created a system that it gladly fed. It propped up a system that appeared to solve a ‘State problem’ even if in doing so it created other problems for children.
This is not to minimise or attempt to make any excuse for any abusive action carried out by a priest, brother or sister. There is not, and never will be, an excuse for abuse carried out by religious people.
Hearing senior ministers calling out the Church solves nothing. They weren’t as vociferous when Tusla revealed (as of May 9) that “23 children in the Separated Children Seeking International Protection service remain missing from care. Of these one child is missing since 2022, 13 from 2023, and nine to date in 2024”. These are children in State care, but there is no outcry from Government ministers about their own level of incompetence. Abuse in not confined to Church-run institutions.
Naturally, RTÉ and the usual Church-bashers within the media had a field day. It seems that it’s always acceptable to denigrate the Church, especially by our national broadcaster and certain strands of the national press.
Now is not the time for unconsidered reactions to a serious problem. It’s so easy to get involved in the blame game when the issue of abuse needs more than simple polarisation. It requires serious attention and serious supports. Reparation and healing are needed, not retribution.
Any further State probe needs to include ALL schools, not just religious schools. Abuse, in all its horrific incidents, was not confined to religious schools. It happened in all kinds of schools. Abuse, whether we like it or not, is a societal issue. Scapegoating a particular sector will justify our anger for a short period, but it won’t serve the best interests of victims. We can no longer avoid the core problem.
Writing recently, Pádraig McCarthy stated: “The Murphy [Dublin] report on the handling of allegations of abuse dealt overwhelmingly with how Dublin diocese handled allegations, while failing to scrutinise equally the handling of those cases by the State, which was also in the terms of reference. The result is a serious imbalance. We only find what we look for.”
All victims need to be heard, that’s the whole truth.