How can you threaten an abused child with hell?

Sunday Tribune, 21 March

Stop. I know what you're thinking. You've looked at the headline and you're saying "not another piece about the church". I know how you feel. Please don't skim by. This column isn't about the church – it's about us.
Last week, as Charlie Bird bounded around the Oval Office like a spaniel on heat, Barack Obama hinted he might visit Ireland. (If he leaves soon, he could sit beside Charlie on the plane home.)
On the same day, the papers reported that the Pope will not be visiting Northern Ireland on his trip to Britain. To some, this seems like he's skimming past our sodden little island – as if he's too embarrassed or too afraid to face us.
The announcement of his bypass coincided with Cardinal Sean Brady's apology for his part in the Fr Brendan Smyth cover-up. The cardinal said there needs to be an end to the "drip, drip, drip of revelations". His words didn't hold much water, as the revelations continued to seep out. By the end of the week, many of us had stopped listening.
The drip, drip, drip of abuse stories has brought us close to saturation point. You can only absorb so much misery before it runs off you like the rain in a Frank McCourt book.
On Thursday, RTÉ appeared to reinforce this saturation point theory. The Irish Independent reported the station had "refused" to screen a film about clerical abuse survivors. RTÉ claimed there was "not much appetite" for movies about the subject. The survivors were angry, but RTÉ's decision reflected a reality which is not just confined to clerical abuse.
How often do you find yourself reaching for the remote during the news? Nama, recession, repossessions. Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point.
Politicians use our saturation point to their advantage. They know if they brazen it out long enough, we will move on to something else.
For example, last week we learned that Bertie Ahern had almost doubled his number of foreign speaking engagements in 2009 to 16. Instead of being in the Dáil, he was earning a minimum of $40,000 for each Washington Speakers' Bureau gig he did.
Bertie is coining it by avoiding doing the work we pay him to do. Will he continue to do so? Yes, because most of us have reached saturation point hearing about him. Saturation point is also how he got away with helping the church cap compensation for abuse victims. Remember that?
Here's another example: will fellow politicians, Conor Lenihan and Mary-go-round Harney, continue to get away with their phenomenal junketeering? What do you think? They know we'll eventually reach saturation point and calm down.
This saturation point is turning clerical abuse into the new Troubles. It's becoming our number one switch-off. The reports have become page-turners, in the negative sense of the phrase. Every bomb drove us further away from headlines with 'north' in it. We reached saturation point – and the IRA knew it. For every drip, drip they needed what they called a "spectacular" to catch our attention again.
Last week's revelations were a spectacular. How could Brady listen to a child saying he was raped and not go to the gardaí? No protestation that the past is a different country can excuse it. There's no excusable time to allow a paedophile to stay at large.
Then there was the oath. How do you swear a child to secrecy on pain of losing their soul? How can you tell him that if he breaks his oath with the pope, his soul will spend eternity in hell with his abuser?
Has the church now 'forgiven' these victims for breaking that oath of silence? Has it given them back their souls?
Are there other dinosaur clerics like Msgr Maurice Dooley, who say they would refuse to hand over a paedophile priest to the gardaí? Is he a lone loose-cannon when it comes to Canon Law?
On Thursday I read about how an eight-year-old girl had been abused for 10 years by a priest in Derry. She had been silenced in an out-of-court settlement.
Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point. I closed the paper. Later, I wondered what that said about me. Am I a flawed person for not wanting to absorb any more misery?
The problem is that when you reach saturation point and stop reading their stories, the victims are silenced again. Their voices become tinnitus in your soul, constantly ringing but ignored. That's the sad reality.
Like the Troubles, the drip, drip of revelations is turning us away from headlines with 'church' in them. A 'spectacular' is needed. That spectacular must be Cardinal Brady's resignation.
Despite his failings, he is a good man. He has done nothing technically wrong, but could show leadership by martyring himself for the greater good. He may not restore the Catholic faith that's been lost, but he can restore some faith in the humanity of his church.
Next week is the last Sunday in Lent, which commemorates the welcome Jesus got when he entered Jerusalem. I wonder what reception the Pope would receive if he came to Ireland now. I suspect the Pope's Children will save the palms for Barack and the brickbats for Benedict.
Lent is an appropriate word to end with. Benedict's Irish Church appears to be living on borrowed time.

dkenny@tribune.ie

March 21, 2010