Dublin, Ireland - Decades of rampant abuse of thousands of children at the hands of priests and nuns in Ireland...
Two years of corrosive reports, studies, four resignations by bishops, an apology letter from Pope Benedict XVI last year and a visitation by leading international prelates....
And , yet, according to the Associated Press today, the pope now says it will take months more to decide what actions to take for "spiritual renewal" of the church in Ireland as the Vatican waits for the final version of one more report, due in 2012.
Small wonder the same story says Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin is getting impatient. He's been a singular voice speaking out for action on this since 2009.
Maureen Dowd lionizes Martin in her weekend New York Times column and lambastes the Vatican in the process:
In return for doing the right thing, he has been ostracized by fellow bishops in Ireland and snubbed by the Holy See.
Showing again that it prefers denial to remorse, the Vatican undermined Martin's call for accountability. In 2009, after the Irish government's 700-page Murphy report on sexual abuse came out, Pope Benedict XVI refused to accept the resignations of two Irish bishops who presided over dioceses where abuse cases were mishandled.
The following year, when Martin expected to be named cardinal, the pope passed him over.
Back when I could count on David Gibson's Disputations column in the late lamented Politics Daily to address, Gibson detailed the horrid extent of the culture of abuse in Ireland:
In May 2009 an investigative body known as the Ryan Commission released a report, nearly 10 years in the making, that detailed decades of systematic, horrific abuses of children in 60 residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools" operated by religious orders of nuns and brothers and funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education...
Then in November 2009 a government-sponsored probe of clerical child abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin released the so-called Murphy Report that chronicled the mishandling of some 325 sex abuse claims in the church from 1975-2004. The report said some bishops protected abusive priests and put the church's reputation and assets ahead of concern for children.
CAPTION
By Peter Morrison, AP
Martin has also had plenty to say about spiritual renewal in the church. Gibson quotes his speech at a February 2009 event:
What is clear to me is that young people in search for faith or in dialogue or even in conflict with the concept of faith, judge individuals and religious institutions in terms of integrity. They may feel little identity or affinity with institutional expressions of religion, but they can respect the personal integrity of those who belong to the institution or even those who have leadership within institutions. If however they perceive the Church as an institution standing up for its own institutional interests, then they will be unmerciful in their rejection and hostility.
Martin's comments are worth keeping in mind as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in June addresses revisions to its own policies on dealing with the abuse crisis that shocked the nation in 2002.
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bishops, brings some perspective to the American experience, freshly in the news with a new report on the causes and context of abuse. She blogs at Huffington Post:
Even in the worst days of abuse, however, it was an estimated four percent of priests who abused. Obviously there should have been no abuse, but it is unfair to ignore the fact that abusers constituted a small percentage of priests. When it comes to abusers smearing the reputations of dedicated, clean-living clerics, never has so much damage been done by so few.