Cloynes Report, Christianity, etc etc

I know there is a separate thread on the current scandals but I think this man's stance deserves a thread of its own. All he ever seems to think of is how the Catholic church has been so badly wronged by the media. While I would expect little else from the church's unofficial spin doctor, he seems more pissed off than ever now.





Irish Independent,

Friday July 15th



By David Quinn


HOW many people in Ireland know that the clerical abuse scandals peaked in the 1970s and 1980s? How many know that of the several hundred allegations received by the church in the last two years, almost none relate to incidents that happened in the last 10 years?
How many know that a large section of public opinion grossly overestimates the number of child abusers in the priesthood, as a Royal College of Surgeons survey some years ago ascertained?
How many know that Catholic priests are no more likely to abuse children than comparable groups, which is what 'Newsweek' magazine discovered when it contacted US insurance companies to determine whether they charged a higher risk premium for Catholic priests than for other clergy?
How many know that the Cloyne Report itself acknowledges that the church's child-protection guidelines are better than the State's guidelines? It says that compared with the church's guidelines, the State's are "less precise and more difficult to implement".
It would be safe to bet that only a small proportion of the public could correctly answer the above questions.
The reason for this is that our media have no interest in making the answers known so instead we have a public that believes the phenomenon of child abuse is a particularly and peculiarly Catholic one.
The Irish church has rightly been excoriated over its child-protection failings.
The Vatican is also in the firing line. It is in the firing line because it has never made the Irish church's child-protection policy a part of church, or canon law, thereby making it mandatory, and because it has opposed mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations.
But in these two regards, the State's failures are identical to the Vatican's. The Irish State's child-protection policy, Children First, is only now being given a statutory footing and only now is the State adopting a mandatory reporting policy.
So if the Vatican deserves to be in the firing line, so does the State. But it is not in the firing line to anything like the same extent. Why not?
In fact, the State's failings in the field of child protection are manifold but they have never resulted in anything like the coverage, and therefore in anything like the degree of public outrage, given to the church's failings.
For example, a few years ago the government released a three-volume report dealing with the implementation of Children First.
Of those surveyed for it, only 16pc said the Children First guidelines were working well. Only 27pc said that the guidelines in respect of the handling of abuse allegations received by the State were being properly adhered to.
Most incredibly of all, when asked whether the HSE and the gardai were "acting in accordance with the Children First guidelines", only 13pc said 'Yes'.
This is why child-protection expert Geoffrey Shannon told RTE's 'Morning Ireland' yesterday that the failure to properly implement Children First has been abject, and it is why he accused the HSE of adopting an "a la carte approach" to the guidelines.
Similarly, the new director for child and family services in the country, Gordon Jeyes, said recently that Ireland doesn't have "a proper child-protection system".
But while there has been huge pressure on the church to get its house in order, nothing like the same pressure has been put on the State, even though the State's failure to properly abide by its own guidelines has been abysmal.
Shannon is currently presiding over an investigation into the deaths of 200 children in the last 10 years who were in the care of the State, or who were known to the State's care services.
These deaths, from violence, suicide, drug overdose, from possibly preventable diseases, have received nothing like the publicity the church scandals have received, even though they are still happening.
Shannon's report is due out some time in the autumn. When it comes out, will there be a press conference presided over by government ministers as there was with the Cloyne Report?
Will RTE broadcast the press conference live? Will its programmes feature one inveterate critic of the HSE after another? Will the first 20 minutes of its news at both 6.01 and 9pm deal with the report as was the case on Wednesday when the Cloyne Report was published?
Will there be a 'Prime Time' special? Will RTE commission several emotionally charged, two-part documentaries cataloguing the circumstances in which some of the 200 children died?
Will HSE employees who abjectly failed to protect children have to resign, or at least be named, as has rightly happened in the case of the church? Will the RTE board ask the station why it gives so much coverage to the church's child-protection failings and so little to the State's failings by comparison?
The answer to all these questions is no, because the unpalatable truth is that the only child-protection failures deemed worthy of saturation coverage are the failures of the church.

Did I read this right? He's asking a tonne of rhetorical questions? Is he claiming Church is victim of media? Is he actually complaining about current the lack of discussion of report into the failures of state in caring for 200 children? Isn't that report yet to be published? Is he claiming to foresee the future? Is Dave Quinn a psychic?:eek:

Isnt the confessional seal issue a huge red herring to deflect attention? Its an interesting what if question that should be made clear for the future BUT the reactions of the bishops/monseignor in the cloyne report were not as a result of confessions.

robindch wrote: »

I'm sure the church will find a way around that law. It always has before.

Ignoring it tends to work.

Bob Cratchet wrote: »

How exactly does an anonymous confession reveal enough details to protect any child ? It's a politcal stunt by politians instead of convicting the abusers with the proof and evidence they have gathered in the reports.

anonymous? When I was a teen in secondary school we never had annonymous confessions. We would be face to face with the priest and I know that many priests give confessions to other priests in this manner also. So please stop talking $hite.

The point here is that priests still think they should not report a most henous crime because of religious laws that they seem to think override civil law.

Dades wrote: »

Out of curiosity what's the law regarding lay-people?

Say somebody confides in me that they abused a child - am I breaking the law if I don't report it?
Is there a legal (rather than the obvious moral) obligation on me to tell the Gardaí?

I was always under the impression that, at least in the UK, if you knew of a child being abused you had an obligation to report it. Now I am not so sure.

Perhaps it is one of those things that they think is so obviously, I mean really, if you found out about a child being raped would you really only report it if you were legally obligated to...

MrP