Whenever Church people made criticisms of other organizations, the reply often thrown at them was: “Put your own house in order first!”

I was reminded of this when Ian Elliott recently announced his retirement as chief executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board For Safeguarding Children. One newspaper’s religious correspondent tied-in his departure with the board’s largely positive audit of how Catholic dioceses were complying with best practice in this matter – and commented : “Yesterday’s reports were further proof that, where child protection is concerned, the Catholic Church in Ireland has finally ‘got it’. There could be no finer tribute to Mr. Elliott” (Patsy McGarry, Irish Times).

One of our bishops was similarly upbeat. “We have very good systems and structures in place, probably better than most organisations in the country, all kinds of protections, all kinds of reporting procedures, all kinds of ways of feeding back information… I think we’re not there yet, but we’ve come a long way…Even the expert people in psychology admit that they knew very little about child abuse back in the late 1980s, 1990s – until the late 1990s”.

It is the “not there yet” bit (the danger of complacency) which I wish to tease out – as well as that Not Yet Known element: “they knew very little”.

NOT KNOWN: DEPTH OF THE ADDICTION

What exactly do Church official claim they did not know? It was certainly not the occurrence of incidents of clerical child sexual abuse – which had been recorded over the centuries. And not fully known in the modern psychological sense, at times was the full depth of trauma affecting an abuse-victim’s whole future: However, the level of Church moral strictures pronounced against abuse should have alerted a potential perpetrator (a grave sin, a crime in church law subject to punishment right up to exclusion from the clerical state).

But the paramount Not Yet Known was a much more recent finding of psychology, namely: An addiction to sexually abusing children is very often not curable by short-term, or even by medium-term, therapy (or sometimes even by very long-term therapeutic treatment).

The immediate result was that ‘the expert people in psychology’ had no adequate grasp of just how difficult it is to rehabilitate a sex-abuser. Indeed, the 1970s and 1980s – to which most clerical offences date back – coincided with the era when the psychology community held a deep conviction that offenders without exception could be rehabilitated, even in the medium term. So the upshot was: The best professional advice on offer to an offending priest’s superior recommended that the man be given a second chance and a clean slate – in other words, that he be moved to a new position (or new parish).

I am not asking readers to believe that this happened in any particular percentage of cases. All I am saying is: In theory, there could have been a case where Church authorities then were acting in total good faith.

However, as the years went by – as evidence of re-offending piled up – the psychologists could not remain optimistic; and – come the 1990s – absolute ‘zero tolerance’ was becoming the watchword. And that is why any instance now surfacing of the re-assigning of an offending priest – especially even in the 1990s – is so disturbing. Certainly, there is no room for complacency (“we’re not there yet”).

STATE BODIES TOO ARE IRRESPONSIBLE

Yes, the official Church can be said to have put its house in order – by and large. And so it is now in a position to itself in turn say to other bodies criticizing it: “Put your own house in order first!”

The Church community had not been in a position ‘to cast the first stone’ – and in any case, where Church people are concerned more is expected. But all bodies now need to get their act together; and Church members can say to critics : “The search for bodies in the countryside around an industrial school like Letterfrack has been called off – not before its time. Could you yourselves now investigate how 200 youngsters died while in the care of the health boards ?”

Maeve Lewis, of One In Four, “is right to keep the spotlight on the Government – some of whose ministers were happy to criticise the Church…and then stay silent when it was revealed that the State was utterly failing many children on a daily basis” (Garry O’Sullivan, Irish Catholic).

“Haven’t we been curiously passionless when it comes to child protection?”, asks Alison O’Connor (Irish Independent). “The exception to this of course is clerical child abuse. In that instance we like to build up a big ball of righteous indignation about the failings of the Catholic Church. We’re not wrong in that instance – but we’re not right in our own attitude and approach, or lack of palpable outrage, in relation to how the State provides services on our behalf to vulnerable children.