John Charles Mcquaid

Church scandals: a catalogue of shame

The Catholic Church once rule a faithful Ireland with a velvet fist ... but a litany of scandals has changed all that:

In October 2005 the small Co Wexford diocese of Ferns was exposed for more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse on young boys and girls over 40 years.

The scandalous attacks and subsequent cover-ups focused on three clerics - Fr Sean Fortune, the most notorious abuser responsible for 26 assaults, Fr Donal Collins, a school principal, and Canon Martin Clancy, who fathered a child after raping a 14-year-old girl.

The inquiry revealed that bishops in the diocese failed to take precautions to protect children and gardai did not keep records of informal abuse complaints.

Published in May 2009, it catalogued four decades of cover-ups by the Catholic Church and the Government. Thousands of children in Church and State-run schools, homes and institutions were subjected to years of torture by priests and nuns.

The damning investigation by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse found disturbing and chronic sexual, physical and emotional attacks inflicted on disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned youngsters by both religious and lay staff. Chaired by High Court judge Sean Ryan , it found paedophilia was endemic in boys' industrial schools, with young pupils suffering rapes and floggings.

Serial abusers were also moved between schools each time their behaviour was uncovered.

Published in November 2009, the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese was as damning as any inquiry. Based on a sample 46 priests, it revealed a catalogue of paedophilia and subsequent cover-ups over three decades because the Catholic hierarchy was obsessed with secrecy and was effectively granted immunity by the police.

Four archbishops - John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell - did not hand over information on abusers and adopted a "protect at all costs" attitude.

The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, uncovered a cosy relationship between the Church and State authorities, with senior gardai singled out for turning a blind eye and treating priests as untouchables. It sparked calls for senior church figures named in the report to resign.

Limerick Bishop Donal Murray, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty, Dublin Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field all offered to stand down - Pope Benedict XVI did not accept the resignations of Bishops Walsh and Field.

The Cloyne Report - Science Musings Blog

Here we go again. This time it’s the release of the Cloyne Report , the latest in a series of official reports delineating the scope of the child abuse scandal in Ireland, its perpetration over decades by priests, brothers and nuns, and its cover up by bishops and the Vatican. The revelations go on and on as Ireland wakes from a long dark sleep. What darkened the Irish Church for so long was the power of an entrenched theocracy, as represented, for example, by the reactionary archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who ruled Catholic Ireland with an iron fist from 1940 to 1971. For McQuaid and others in the Irish hierarchy, the only source of truth was Holy Mother Church. Scientific humanism, secular democracy and feminism were archevils of the modern world. Better for the faithful to be poor, ignorant and endlessly pregnant than burn in hell. And woe betide any Irish Catholic, lay or religious, who got out of line; the hammer of orthodoxy came down with swift force. With intellectual freedom and prosperity came a cultural renaissance too. The arts and literature flourish as never before. I watched it all happen. When I first visited Dublin nearly forty years ago, it was a grey, gloomy, littered city. Today it is colorful, joyous and smart. This country, for all its current economic difficulties, is a showcase for the virtues of secular, scientific multiculturalism.

John Charles McQuaid, ruler of Catholic Ireland

John Charles McQuaid, the man and the mask

Wellsprings of the Faith

Studies, an Irish quarterly review

Bullán, an Irish studies journal