Anyone who has read my book (plug plug) will know I have an unusual story to tell on matters religious. But the plain truth is I was raised and confirmed a Roman Catholic in an Irish-Catholic enclave in Leeds. The symmetry of my early life was entirely bounded by Ireland (Cavan) and (ahem) God’s Own Country (aka Yorkshire). I have two cousins who are priests. One in Ireland, one in England.
As a fully paid-up humanist, while I no longer call myself a Catholic I do acknowledge that, at least from my own childhood, I have absolutely no unhappy memories which are associated with the Church. Quite the contrary. Some of the priests, nuns and lay people who populated my young Catholic life were unquestionably some of the finest I have ever met. In my early days everything I knew about the Roman Catholic Church told me it could only ever be a force for good in the world.
Sadly we now know the institution of the Church has been grievously culpable in relation to the protection of children. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church is no different from seemingly many other religious bodies both Christian and otherwise hardly diminishes that culpability, reminding us all humans are fallible and even the brightest sanctuaries can hold the darkest of secrets.
Individual Catholics, maybe particularly in Ireland (the part of the Catholic world I probably still know best) were profoundly disgusted and felt horribly let down by what we now know happened. People to whom they habitually looked for moral leadership were found to be seriously wanting and in fact were making things worse by attempting to cover up or deny serious failings because of worries about damage to the reputation of the Church, or with more immediately worldly concerns about legal liabilities, in other words money.
All that said, from my personal observation I have absolutely no doubt the core of the Roman Catholic Church is driven by an ethical and moral purpose. It aspires to the highest standards, particularly in relation to the lives of children.
Is there any contemporary evidence for saying that? Yes there is. The Church now has a Safeguarding Commission and I have just read its first Annual Report on “Church Policies and Procedures for Safeguarding”. On page 7 in the acknowledgements we see a list of those who contributed to writing the report. There are several well known heavy hitters led by the redoubtable Maud de Boer-Buquicchio who chairs the Safeguarding Commission’s Annual Report Team. It was even better to see the Commission recognise its debt to the victims who found the courage to speak up and speak to them.
It is a substantial document. There is no point me trying to summarise it in a blog, please read it yourselves, but I will highlight four of the pillars of the Church’s “Mandate and Vision”
- Truth
- Justice
- Reparations
- Guarantees of nonrecurrence
Even the most secular of readers will agree these are solid, worthy and achievable objectives.
Will there be failures in the future? Almost certainly.
What we will all be looking to see is how quickly any failures are spotted and stopped and, crucially, what happens next.
Desiderata 