Yesterday’s Sunday Business Post carried a story alleging that Bishop of Clogher, Joseph Duffy was involved in an internal church investigation of clerical sexual abuse. On this morning’s Today with Pat Kenny, Bishop Duffy refuted the paper’s claims that he was involved in internal investigations.

Whether the Sunday Business Post allegations are true or not, the upper echelons of the Irish Catholic Church on are the backfoot now like never before. Allegations of hush-hush agreements to copper-fast the silence of children that survived the ravages of clerical abuse have shaken the little faith that many people had in the Catholic Church.

Bishops, never known for radical departures from the Vatican’s hymn sheet, are company men. They are the most company of company men.  Could we point out radical bishops that has risen through the levels as a radical priest?

Just like any massive, multinational organisation navigating through the levels of the Catholic Church comes with only with politiking and keeping on message. And that message comes from Rome. A message that sieves through Canon Law and drips down the hierarchy.

So when I read and hear people say they are appalled that Bishops were not only aware of about cases of clerical abuse but questioned children and silenced without parental company and supervision but why should they expect action ?

A thinking, feeling, moral person would hope that the humanity of any and all people that find themselves presiding in a secret meeting to silence children about the horrors of clerical abuse would be moved to seek justice for that kids. To report wrong-doing. To stop rape. To protect children in the community. To be moral.

This is 180 degree turn from reporting to superiors and adhering to a central message of hierarchy. Right?

The strict adherence to hierarchical reporting up is the instinctual reflex of the Institutionalised. Such are the obligations of a company man.

Ignoring the legal system of host nations to peer into the back of their thousand-year-old copybook of Canon Law for their own rules. Again, the mantle of a company man is heavy.

So when the Pope Benedict points a finger of blame for clerical abuse at the door of secularism, one has to draw breath.

In recent decades, however, the church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society.

Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values.

All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.

Benedict goes onto blame the Second Vatican Council or rather, our interpretation of its teachings:

The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations.

He finishes with a flourish:

It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the church and her teachings.

Now, I could go on and on about where blame should lie. But blaming secularism, a societal device that enables the laws of men to enact a modicum of justice for abuses committed seems blind, angry and without base.

Secularism is the belief that the functions of religion and state should exist in entirely different spheres. For the purposes of society, secularism says that social order does not belong to religion, but rather should be within the responsibility of the state.

Benedict uses the word secularism in error here – what he means is that people no longer hang on the trappings of Catholicism. Mass attendance is down in the extreme. Observance of holy days are under threat. These are visible signs not of secularism, but of a tide of people moving away from the church.

Moralising and secularism trigger lots of interesting questions:

• Were the Pope’s attacks on secularism coming from Islam, they would be tagged as fundamentalist. Is there any difference?
• Moving to the moral authority of the church, how can Pope Benedict blame the modern movement of secularism when agents of his church have across the levels of ministry and through the generations, abused, covered up and moved and silenced victims of clerical abuse?
• How can Pope Benedict expect people to trust an organisation that ignores the laws of nations?

The choice is simply. Where do you stand? Does church rule or does state?

Pat Rabbitte, Labour’s Spokesman on Justice is on his feet in the Dail speaking about the end of deference to clergy in Irish society.

Church authorities have repeatedly claimed to have been, prior to the late 90s, on “a learning curve” in relation to child sexual abuse.  The Commission makes plain that “it does not accept the truth of such claims and assertions.” Despite 2,000 years of Papal statements on clerical child sexual abuse, the Vatican has made no statement on the Murphy Report. Worse, and notwithstanding the diplomatic niceties dwelt on by the Taoiseach on Tuesday, the Vatican authorities did not assist the Murphy Commission.

He sharpshoots on term de jour – “mental reservation”:

When the dictates of obsessive concern with secrecy were inadequate, it has emerged that there is a special dispensation for Bishops to lie.  The revelation by cardinal Connell of the device known as “mental reservation” confounds anything experienced in the political world.

Ministers on occasion evade and dodge and weave and mislead and deputies on occasion exaggerate.  But the word “lie” is not admissible in the Chamber and if a blatant untruth finds itself onto the record inadvertently or otherwise, the requirement is to put the record straight as quickly as may be.  But leading Churchmen can apparently, if the need arises, shelter behind “mental reservation.”

Given Cardinal Connell’s Drumcondra provenance when explaining the concept, I suppose we in this House should consider ourselves fortunate that “mental reservation” didn’t seep into the political water in Drumcondra.

He ends soberly with:

The Vatican is silent.  The Papal Nuncio is contemptuous.  Whatever happens, it is the end of the age of Deference.