Pic: Brendan Smyth

Clerical Child Abuse: Sorry is Not Enough: Stop Them
Controlling Our Schools.

By his own admission, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland forced two boys , aged 14 and 15, to swear an oath of secrecy not reveal what the
paedophile priest  Brendan Smyth had done to them.

Even the legal system acknowledges that children cannot be
taken into custody and intimidated into making statements or swearing oaths.
But not the Catholic Church.

The Murphy Report summarised its motives as follows:

‘the maintenance
of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the
Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including
the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these
priorities.’

The child abuse
scandals are by no means confined to Ireland. In recent weeks, new abuse claims have surfaced on a near-daily basis in Germany and spread to Pope Benedict's Bavarian heartland.

Benedict was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich from 1977 to 1982 where many claims of abuse have been made. According to the
Catholic Church’s own rules, he was responsible for disciplining his priests.
Yet there were no reports of abuse made to civil authorities.

The Pope’s spokespersons have again rushed to
his defence, issuing statements to protect his ‘reputation’ and, of course, the
Vatican’s assets.

If Joseph Ratzinger and Sean Brady act in
exactly the same way, is it not because the institution of the Catholic Church
is rotten to the core?

CHURCH PROPERY AND SEXUALITY

In her pamphlet, Socialism and the
Churches, the Polish socialist, Rosa Luxembourg, offered an explanation
of how Christianity – which was orginally the religion of the poor – came to
degenerate.

The original Christians, who were persecuted by
the Roman empire, believed in communal ownership of property. One contemporary
writer described their practices

these do not believe in fortunes, but they preach
collective property and no one among them possesses more than the others. He
who wishes to enter their order is obliged to put his fortune into their common
property. That is why there is among them neither poverty nor luxury – all
possessing all in common like brothers.

In the Acts of
the Apostles (4:32, 34, 35) the following description of the first
community at Jerusalem appears: “no-one regarded as being his what belonged
to him; everything was in common. Those who possessed lands or houses, after
having sold them, brought the proceeds and laid them at the feet of the
Apostles. And to each was distributed according to his needs.”

From the 4^th Century onwards, however, the
Christian Church was accepted within the Roman empire and changed to suit its
elite. The right to elect bishops and to share in communal property was abolished.
The clergy gained greater control and from the 6^th century onwards
won the right to collect tithes – taxes on the poor.

By the Middle Ages, the Church had accumulated enormous
wealth and had formed a close alliance with the absolute monarchs. The institution
now mirrored the hierarchical structures of feudal society. Pope, cardinals,
bishops, deacons, and priests dovetailed with kings, princes, barons and
knights.

To preserve its wealth, the Catholic Church introduced rules
of celibacy. The rationale was perfectly simple and had nothing to do with the
teachings of Christ. If priests could not marry and have children, then wealth would
remain concentrated in the church.

Increasingly, the negative side of religion came to the fore
as humanity was deemed to be evil, sinful and in desperate need of ‘spiritual
guidance’. All the good qualities of human beings – the ability to love, to
forge solidarity, to create – were transferred on to a God who lived above in heaven.
The more God grew in power, the more humanity itself was demeaned as sinful and
base.

Human sexuality was a particular target. The
ability of two adults to enjoy each others’ bodies was seen as a dangerous
subversion of the power of God. Passion and reciprocal love detracted humility
and ‘giving yourself to God’. It subverted natural  order where life itself was
seen as ‘a gift’ from God.

The clergy made a virtue of their own celibacy
and spiritually elavated themselves over the rest of humanity – simply because
they claimed to have no sex.

This was always a fiction, of course, but it led
to a tradition where sexuality was seen as sinful, demeaning and messed up with
all manner of nonsense about power and obedience.

A pattern of child rape arose directly from
this terrible history. Children were particularly vulnerable because they could
be silenced by a clergy who pretended to have a special access to God above –
even while having the most distorted and sick images of human sexuality.

To be fair, only a  minority of priests broke
the strong social taboo on raping children. But those who did, knew that they
would be protected by vows of secrecy designed to protect holy reputations and
assets. They could also be forgiven by the institutional magic of ‘confession’.

The conspiracy of silence on child abuse therefore
goes very deep. It did not spring from a few bad eggs at the top. It did not
arise because of a lack of understanding of  ‘correct procedures’

It arose from an institution that survives
only by demeaning real human sensual and sexual feelings – while accumulating
wealth through hypocrisy.

In Ireland, the Catholic Church won huge power
over people because it was an ally of the state.

The state used the church to terrify the
children of the poor into social obedience. Working class children, for
example, were incarcerated in industrial schools and used as slave labour, simply
for missing days at school.

To this day, Cowen government is still
protecting the church and its assets. Recently, Education Minister, Batt O
Keefe, said  there is ‘no legal way’ to force the church to pay more than €128
million to its victims. Instead the Irish people will pay €1.2 billion to
prevent the dissolution of Church assets.

Fianna Fail, and their pathetric allies in the
Greens,  will not call for the resignation of Sean Brady or refuse to meet him
in any official capacity. Their only response for victims is to say ‘sorry’.

Only a movement of people power can change
this dreadful state of affairs.

We can no longer allow our chidren to be sent
to schools which are controlled by the same Bishops who have covered up child
abuse.

All primary and secondary school should be
immediately taken out of the hands of the clergy and put under the control of
elected parents and teachers represenatives.

Anything less than this modest measure would
be an insult to the thousands of children who were raped and abused by clerics.