Cloyne: a comment on Holy See's response

David Quinn is religious affairs commentator in Ireland and columnist with 'The Irish Independent'. In an interview with Emer McCarthy he gives us his reaction to the Holy See's response to the Cloyne Report.
Asked by Emer what he sees as a decisive issue in the response David Quinn replies that at first reading the report is lengthy, well considered, forensic and polite in tone.

He then points to the understandable anger at the Church for its mishandling of the clerical sex abuse scandal, highlighting how the Vatican had to respond to the specific charges made against it : " To me the most important part of this document is the proper interpretation of a letter that was sent in 1997, via the office of the papal nuncio in Dublin , to the Bishops conveying the response of the Congregation for the Clergy ...and it was a response to the Irish Bishops' 1969 guidelines on the child protection issue”.

“This it seems to me is the letter that has caused a lot of the anger directed specifically at the Vatican and brought about the accusation by the Irish government that the Vatican interfered in the law of the land. Now to me an objective reading of that letter says there's only one possible passage in it that could be charged in that way and that is where there's a reservation expressed by the Congregation of the Clergy about mandatory reporting. But there is no law in Ireland that requires mandatory reporting and in fact back in 1997 ...that government considered mandatory reporting and decided not to go ahead with it...in other words the Vatican's reservations about mandatory reporting was shared by the government. And indeed no subsequent Irish government has introduced mandatory reporting in all the years since 1997 and it is only now in the last month, post the Cloyne report coming out, that the government is finally getting around to some version of mandatory reporting”.

“Therefore what law was the Vatican interfering with? The answer is, it wasn't. And that is the key point because the Irish government made a very serious charge against the Holy See saying it interfered with the law of the land. But if you actually try to find what law, there's no law that it interfered with. "

In this interview Emer also asks David Quinn how he feels the Holy See's response to the Cloyne Report will be perceived by the average Catholic in Ireland . And also as to how the ongoing issue of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland is going to impact on the people of this nation in the long run:

"...The anger is going to continue for quite a while yet, because as you say, there are various reports to come. These are not official government reports, but reports that have been compiled by the Bishop's own 'National Child Protection Office'. That's independent and has a good strong reputation that people respect...I think a great deal is actually going to depend on how the Vatican responds to the Apostolic Visitations that took place earlier this year.
David Quinn is also Director of the Iona Institute

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