Statements on the Ferns Report - 10th November 2005

Statements on the Ferns Report – 10th November 2005-11-29

Mr. Norris: I am grateful to Senator Henry for
sharing time with me. This is not a pleasant
occasion or one on which anybody should gloat.
While nobody relishes the distress of a great institution
such as the Roman Catholic Church, it is
important that matters such as those addressed in
the Ferns report be exposed. I express my sympathy
on this occasion to the many decent priests
and members of religious orders and to the few
good and decent bishops, including Bishop Willie
Walsh, a remarkable and saintly man, Bishop
Eamonn Walsh in Ferns who appears to be doing
a good job, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of
the Dublin diocese, a decent, honourable and
fair man.
The Ferns report is devastating. The kinds of
comments being made and the attitude shown by
the Roman Catholic Church demonstrate that the
church has not changed — let us be honest in this
regard — and that the issue goes to the top of its
hierarchical structure, which the report examines.
It gives me no great pleasure to cite as an
example the late Pope John Paul II who, following
the departure of Cardinal Groer of Vienna
from his position as a result of a series of accusations
of molestation of seminarians which later
proved to be correct, wrote a letter to the Cardinal
to console him while maintaining a stony silence
towards the victims. The current Pope is
sheltering a person — he enjoys diplomatic
immunity in the Vatican — who established a
seminary in Mexico and is wanted by the authorities
there. Events such as these indicate where
the source of the trouble lies.
If one examines the appointments made in the
Catholic Church over the past 25 years, one finds
that people were appointed to senior positions on
the basis of their rigid orthodoxy in doctrinal
matters and their reactionary attitudes towards
modern developments in the understanding of
human sexuality. While no church has ever told
the truth about human sexuality, the worst
offender in this regard is the Roman Catholic
Church.
It is important that this Chamber highlight two
of the conclusions reached in the report, both of
which I will cite. On page 22, the report states:
“The Expert Group was unanimous in its view
that homosexuality is not a factor in increasing
the risk to children”. This is not what the church
is saying. It is trying to dislodge everything by
organising a witch-hunt against gay people,
including in seminaries in the United States. The
second conclusion is made on page 36, which
states: “The Expert Group was unanimous in its
view that the vow of celibacy contributed to the
problem of child sexual abuse in the Church”.
I honour Deputy Liz O’Donnell for her courageous
speech in the Da´ il yesterday and regret
that she was subjected to sniping partisan attacks
from other parties, including the Labour Party,
which should know better. The Deputy made an
important statement. Both Houses have a
responsibility in this matter. It has been stated
that the Catholic Church does not have a special
position in Ireland and is neither above the law
or exempt from its provisions. That is most definitely
not the case because the Houses recently
passed legislation giving the church exempt
status. Will the Minister of State please ask his
colleagues to re-examine this issue, particularly in
regard to the equality legislation, on which the
various churches approached the Government
and were granted exemptions from its operation?
As a result of this decision, decent people like me
can be fired from their jobs by the managers of
schools — priests — simply on the basis of their
sexual orientation. This is not tolerable and I am
no longer prepared to be part of a group whose
citizenship is defined as second class.
I find it astonishing that while people such as
me are considered unfit to teach children, others
who serially molest children in the most noxious
way escaped punishment, although their crimes
were known. Senator Henry is correct on this
matter as I also heard the Vincent Browne programme
last night. At least Father Twomey was
being honest when he stated his belief that the
bishops did not consider child sexual abuse a
crime. How extraordinary. On what planet were
the bishops living?
I was also astonished to read Father Twomey’s
article in The Irish Times and have written a letter
to the newspaper examining his piece because
he appears to argue that Vatican II and liberal
and progressive priests and theologians were
responsible for child abuse. If one looks at those
involved in these cases one will not find one progressive
or liberal theologian among them.
I do not wish to go through all the cases, but
they are horrendous. Boys left bleeding went to
their mothers too ashamed to explain what had
happened, after which they committed suicide; it
is awful. One priest, when hearing a young girl’s
catechism, stuck his tongue in her ear and fiddled
with her. I wonder whether those people believed
in God at all. Even if I had that impulse, I would
be terrified to act upon it, and I regard it as a
blasphemy against everything that Christianity or
any other religion would hold dear. It is a very
painful matter.
I never realised that I had encountered Fr.
Sea´n Fortune. However, I recently saw a clip
from a programme on which I had appeared —
“Prime Time” or some such thing. I was
attempting to make a dignified case for changes
to the criminal law on homosexual behaviour but
was vehemently abused by a person in a Roman
collar who, with a smirk on his face, did his very
best to put me back in my box. It was Fr. Sea´n
Fortune, who at that very time was routinely
attacking children.
We must address this. I say again to the Minister
that he should examine the equality legislation.
We have surely gone beyond the time
when decent people like me cannot be teachers.
It is, of course, a question of behaviour. If someone
displayed a gay rights poster or tried to talk
to unprepared young children about such complicated
issues, that would be wrong, and those
responsible would deserve to be reprimanded and
disciplined. However, that should not happen
merely because of people’s lifestyles.
Among what I found most shocking, which
clearly contradicts the notion that the hierarchies
were unaware of the abuse, is the fact that, in
1984 in the United States, there was the case of
Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in Lafayette, Louisiana, which
received a great deal of publicity. A committee
was established by the church and produced a
document entitled, The Problem of Sexual Molestation
by Roman Catholic Clergy. Meeting the
Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible
Manner. The first matter on the agenda was to
take out insurance. I find it morally devastating
that the response to the knowledge that children
were routinely being attacked was to protect
material assets. That does not seem to me a very
spiritual way of handling the matter.
In the executive summary of the Ferns report,
the authors refer to Bishop Herlihy, saying that
he penalised a priest in respect of whom an allegation
had been made by transferring him to a
different post or diocese. I would not call that
penalising him, I would call it rewarding him. We
now know that when people were found to be at
this evil work, they were transferred to a place
where they happily went to play again, doing
exactly the same thing.
An Cathaoirleach: The Senator’s time is
almost over.
Mr. Norris: The behaviour is inappropriate. I
have great respect for many of the traditions of
all the various churches. People say that only 4%
or 5% of abuse cases relate to the clergy, but that
is statistically anomalous, since for that to be representative
of the general population, one would
have to have 200,000 priests in the country, and
1369 Ferns Report: 10 November 2005. Statements 1370
we do not have that many. There is a particular
problem in this case, and I commend to the Minister
the courageous words of Deputy O’Donnell.
There is still a great deal of doublespeak. One
of the problems of the Roman Catholic Church
in particular is that it has both a political and a
spiritual face. It is not appropriate that the Papal
Nuncio should be the doyen of the diplomatic
corps here. Neither is it appropriate that Cardinal
Ratzinger should issue statements instructing
democratically-elected politicians what way they
should vote on certain matters concerning sexuality,
a matter about which the church has always
lied. Those many honest voices within the church
who tried to tell it the truth were ruthlessly marginalised.
I have only one more point to make.
An Cathaoirleach: The Senator has exceeded
the time.
Mr. Norris: One must be equal in such matters.
I do not believe that there is quite the same
degree of sexual molestation in the Anglican
Church, for example, but there is a devastating
history, which has never been examined, of violent
physical abuse of children in Protestant
schools, including those that had expensive
boarding sections. People’s lives were destroyed,
and no one ever opens his mouth, since it is
almost as if the Protestant churches were a
reserved matter, like the white deer in Mallow
deserving special protection.
Let us have this debate right across the board,
examining all such matters. Let us tell the truth
but protect all citizens. We must re-examine those
malign provisions in the equality legislation,
which go against everything to do with the
concept.