Vatican rejects resignations of Irish bishops over child sex abuse scandal

Telegraph ^ | ugust 12 2010 | Rueters

[Cardhu]

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests in his archdiocese that Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field will remain in their jobs but will be given "revised responsibilities".

The bishops presented their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in December following a judge's damning report on the Dublin archdiocese that found the Catholic Church concealed the abuse of children by priests for three decades.

In the letter he said: "Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops."

The archbishop said they were "to be assigned revised responsibilities within the diocese."

"This means that they will be available to administer confirmation in any part of the diocese in the coming year," Martin added.

The report by judge Yvonne Murphy that sparked the bishops' offers to resign disclosed that archbishops had effectively turned a blind eye to cases of abuse in institutions run by the Catholic Church.

One priest admitted to sexually abusing more than 100 children, while another acknowledged that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years.

Bishops Walsh and Field initially rebuffed criticism of their alleged role in hushing up the abuse but eventually offered to quit after failing to receive public backing from Martin.

[Cardhu]

In March, the pope published an unprecedented pastoral letter to Irish Catholics that condemned those who committed the abuse, but refused to acknowledge any culpability on the Vatican's part.

[livius]

They’re not being allowed to resign because that lets them off the hook. They are being kept there to be available for legal actions and make them accept their responsibilities and fight on their own behalf, if they’re in the right. Bishops have too often been able to resign and walk away from their messes. However, you will note that they are not in charge of dioceses, but are simply being kept “on tap,” so to speak, in administrative positions.

[Cardhu]

There may be a little more to it than that - maybe some payback is involved.

"A damaging rift appeared in Ireland’s Catholic hierarchy as Archbishop Martin – who had opened secret church files to investigators – publicly called on clergy implicated in the state inquiry to step down."
(Irish Echo)

"Multiple speculations on the significance of the rejections have circulated in the news, with one Irish editor commenting that the Vatican was not pleased with Archbishop Martin's public clash with predecessors and other Church authorities. The archbishop, who was appointed in 2004 amid Ireland's child abuse scandals, has been outspoken against implicated Church officials who suppressed reports of abuse and transferred abusive priests to other parishes in the U.K. and the U.S.

Gary O'Sullivan, editor of the weekly Irish Catholic newspaper in Dublin told the AP that the “Vatican were not impressed with the way Diarmuid Martin went on PrimeTime (an Irish television news program) and called on other bishops to be accountable.”

"It's not the way business is done in Rome.”
(CNA)

It seems that the Vatican is not pleased with Archbishop Martin and this is a way of showing its displeasure.

[TSgt]

They’re not being allowed to resign because that lets them off the hook. They are being kept there to be available for legal actions and make them accept their responsibilities and fight on their own behalf, if they’re in the right. Bishops have too often been able to resign and walk away from their messes. However, you will note that they are not in charge of dioceses, but are simply being kept “on tap,” so to speak, in administrative positions.

Now that's a new spin I've never heard! Care to explain what the deal is with Law and Mahony?

Will the Vatican create a new office just for bishops who protected child rapists?

[livius]

Diarmuid Martin spent much of his career floating around the UN, the World Council of Churches and the IMF (yes, that’s right). He was a Vatican diplomat until 2003, when he was assigned coadjutor to the retiring Archbishop of Dublin.

He got to be Archbishop because he was the coadjutor and automatically succeeded when his predecessor resigned. He was formally appointed by JPII the year before the death of the latter, when JPII was already very sick. Since then, Benedict XVI has consistently refused to make him a cardinal.

He is only dubiously loyal to the Church’s teachings in a lot of areas but he usually manages to say it carefully and ambiguously enough so that he won’t be slapped down immediately.

He’s basically going on a finger-pointing campaign. He’s trying to do what Rembert Weakland did - shift the blame for everything to others. He has a grudge against BXVI for not naming him a Cardinal and has been consistently hostile to the Pope, who attempted to address the matter as a problem with the entire Irish system of Church governance instead of seeking out a couple of individuals to throw to the media.

[livius]

Mahony is retiring this year and a coadjutor (who will succeed him) has already been appointed. He was kept in place in LA because there were massive lawsuits going on and it was felt that he created the problem and therefore he would have to be responsible for handling it. There is, furthermore, the possibility that there will eventually be criminal charges against him in one of these cases (facilitating the escape of a child-molester to Mexico) and he is not being allowed to slip away.

Mahony was very popular with the press and local Dem politicians because he is very, very liberal, to put it mildly. However, even that popularity has been wearing thin in recent years, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out once he retires and if the criminal case ever gets moving.

One of the problems with Law was that the events did not happen under his watch, as they did with Mahony, but Law became responsible for them and their earlier mishandling by people who were no longer there (in some cases, because they were dead). He became a media target because he was perceived as relatively conservative, much more so than the bishops under whom the cases had actually happened, and also because some people clearly resented his attempts, bumbling as they may have been, to resolve certain situations from decades earlier. Because he was not particularly well-spoken and was clumsy in dealing with the media, it was very easy to make him the fall-guy for many years of mismanagement, and removing him and replacing him with somebody who was savvy enough to manage things more smoothly was probably a good decision. I don’t particularly like O’Malley, but he has been able to get through some of this backlog more effectively.

[TSgt]

The point is that there is too much tolerance for this behavior within the Catholic church.

Clergy who abuse children or have protected those who abuse children should be eliminated with extreme prejudice not reassigned to lesser duties or allowed to retire.

Otherwise it’s all smoke and mirrors and lip service.

[Venturer]

It appears that they are hiding the Bishops just like the Bishops hid the Homosexuals.

I don’t know if that is the fact, but that is the appearance.

[Campion]

Please give *specifics* of exactly what Field and Walsh are alleged to have done. As far as I have been able to determine, they did nothing wrong.

[Cardhu]

The report by judge Yvonne Murphy that sparked the bishops’ offers to resign disclosed that archbishops had effectively turned a blind eye to cases of abuse in institutions run by the Catholic Church.

Now Google it

[Campion]

I asked for specifics on what Field and Walsh had done. Field and Walsh aren't "archbishops", and never have been.

Do you believe in some sort of theory of collective guilt, or something? Google Field and Walsh and Murphy Report, and tell me what the specific charges are. I did, and came up with nothing.

[Cardhu]

Do you believe in some sort of theory of collective guilt, or something?

As you well know the thread is a news report - what I think or do not think is not germane to the guilt or innocence of the two bishops.

However, I have checked into the allegations and they do not seem to be substantiated in any way. Yet, the two bishops did resign as they were not supported by their hierarchy, Archbishop Martin.

Here is the only thing that I found concerning Bishop Walsh and that does not seem to be of any great importance.

The commission report refers to one particular allegation in one instance where you advised a woman to write to the chancellor. Did you report that to the Garda?

“Can I answer that very clearly. That was post the framework document (1996) and what I said to the woman . . . she rang me on a Saturday. She was a nun. She was a social worker and she said I have a concern, could you advise me? And I said what is it, and she said there is a priest who has offended and I said is he alive and she said he is. Is he in ministry, she said he is. Then you must act right away and this is how you proceed. You go to the chancellor who is the delegate and write to him and I will check to see he acts on it.

“He did act on it but it took about six months for the woman to actually get the name of the complainant and you can’t go to the guards with a third-party concern. So the spin that was put on that yesterday morning (in an article on Tuesday in The Irish Times by One in Four founder Colm O'Gorman) was most disingenuous and outrageous.”

You appear to be right in that there does not seem to be anything there that should cause a resignation, and in the case of Bishops Walsh and Field, it does seem to be a classic witch hunt.