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I think the bishop should seriously consider his position. Jovial - unlike our other discussions elsewhere this is a real case and not a conspiracy - though I note William's attempts to link him to the Vatican with his "secretary to three popes" line.

I think he should consider his position because of the timing of these events. They happened long after the issue had come to the fore, when protection guidelines were everywhere.

But, I do note once again the reluctance of many alleged victims to go to the police. And I think people, including bishops, can find it hard to break the trust of a victim who doesn't want to go the police. But they must, even if this seems like a second betrayal.

Smasher, I find your talk of guidelines so much cant.Why do they need legal guidelines to help them prevent child abuse, whats wrong with Christian ethics. As far as I can see the church has more dogmas on human sexuality than you could shake a stick at, yet they still could'nt see the great evil in their midst and do something about it.

Smasher: "I note William's attempts to link him to the Vatican with his "secretary to three popes" line."

Are you implying that William has his facts wrong and that he was NOT the secretary to three popes? Please tell us if that is the case. Otherwise, it seems an entirely pertinent fact to bring up in a report like this.

John this bishop is well known throughout Ireland. He is definately a former press sec to three popes in succession. It says so on his own website.

Thank you, PTL. Smasher is just being Smasher.

I didn't say it was untrue that he had been a papal secretary - I suggested that mentioning it was an attempt to link the issue with the Vatican. Have you guys any idea how journalists operate?

Now as to guidelines - the reasons guidelines are useful is because you have scenarios in which victims approach a priest or bishop and say something has happened but they don't want to go to the police and they are telling the bishop in confidence. At one time a bishop or priest would have felt duty bound to respect that confidence and that was one of the reasons for a lot of the trouble. Guidelines tell you to tell the victim - tough, if you didn't want the police to know you shouldn't have told me but now I'm off to phone the police pronto and you can deal with them.

"Have you guys any idea how journalists operate?"

Clearly not.

Smasher, funny you should pick on one particular aspect of the guidelines.The aspect, that the church used for years to hide behind. Of course they wanted everything kept "confidential" even when the victim did'nt, thats why they got people to sign legal agreements promising to stay quiet in return for "compensation". Have a look at the actions of Archbishop Connell in the nineties in Dublin to see how this worked. If you hurt the feelings of one victim but save another 40 potential victims from harm then surely that is the moral thing to do. A Humanist would recognise that in a second.
Look at the career of Father Brendan Smyth. If he could have been outed early enough then many many children would have been saved from future pain.

Okay - lets just all do away with guidelines and training and save a lot of money and time.

Nobledeebee - of course if that had happened everything would have been so much better and of course it would have been better to betray the confidence of the first victim but that's easy in retrospect. The question is the here and now and my point is this bishop hasn't learnt anything from what happened before. I don't think we're disagreeing on that, are we?

John at #8 - it is fairly common tabloid practice to take two unrelated facts and place them together in a paragraph to suggest more of connection than there is. I remember the Telegraph years ago runing a story "Adams at the Vatican" with two photos of Gerry Adams and the Pope.
Turned out he was on holiday in Rome and not at some private audience with the Pope.

I just think it interesting in the context of other postings and discussions trying to propose a Vatican inspired conspiracy on child abuse that William chose to put that reference, that fact, in a story about the Bishop of Cloyne.

Att John Wright

John you left the discussion on Pascal's Wager just when it was beginning to get interesting

:-(

OT

The age of consent in the Vatican state is 12. It is the lowest in Europe.

In the light of all the paedophile cases, I am surprised that there have not been more questions about that age of consent. Surely that unacceptably low age of consent is sending out the wrong message to all the employees throughout the Vatican empire? It is time that it was brought into line with the rest of Europe.

Oldredeyes - think you are talking through your hat.

Smasher,

The Vatican state was created in 1929 in a deal between the fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and Pope Pius XI, the equally fascist church leader. The Vatican state adopted the laws of fascist Italy at that time, including an age of consent at 12 years old. Italy has since ceased to be fascist and has rewritten its laws on age of consent. But the Vatican state, as an independent legislature, has retained the old laws.

No doubt these are unpalatable facts for you to digest, but they are facts.

Similarly, the child abuse cases involving Catholic priests are also facts.

Time you woke up and smelt the fertiliser.

OT- sorry, where is that discussion again? I can't find the link to it.

Is anyone here aware that the Director of Public Prosecutions has stated that no action is to be taken regarding the allegations against the two priests? OR that the local Garda (police) Superintendent has stated that there are NO current investigations under way into alleged abuse by clerics in the Diocese of Cloyne?

Reporting that the Bishop has said that the allegations are "not proven" is hardly adaquate.

Bishop Magee is being demonised because he did not inform the police of alleged abuse even though the complainants said they did not want the police involved. If a person cannot have a private conversation with a Bishop (or Teacher, Doctor or Social Worker) without the latter making a beeline for the police station, why would they tell him anything in the first place? If that is what the Guidelines say, then they are useless.

Kilbarry you are missing the point. The rules are clear that the bishop was not at liberty to decide not to report the allegations to the police, even if the complainants said they did not want the police involved. Those rules were designed by the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the worldwide abuse scandal. The bishop failed at the first hurdle. The bishop should resign immediately.

Kilbarry1

I don't really know anything about this case or the guidelines of the Roman Catholic Church, however I will respond to one comment you made:

"If a person cannot have a private conversation with a Bishop (or Teacher, Doctor or Social Worker) without the latter making a beeline for the police station, why would they tell him anything in the first place?"

The thing is this, there isn't much that's 'private' anymore and indeed in particular cases, a bishop, teacher, doctor, social worker, and I might add to the list, counsellor, nurse, youth worker, classroom assistant etc. may often have to inform another that what they say CANNOT be kept private should a disclosure be made.

Peter Morrow is probably right - and this demonstrates the extent of the hysteria about child abuse. Actually it goes even furher than that. A CHILD would find it very difficult to speak privately to an adult anyway because every teacher, doctor etc has to have another person present to protect themselves from a false allegation. (And do you suppose the child can't figure out why the observer is there?)

Children tend to cling to their families - even to wildly disfunctional ones. However a young person who is being abused at home MAY bring himself to the point where he will speak privately to a favourite teacher. Current regulations governing teachers (and everyone else) dictate that he will be unable to do so. Nobody benefits from this hysteria - except paedophiles.

What seems to have happened in Cloyne is that the Bishop agreed tp listen to ADULT complainants who told him that they did not want the police informed. One of the complainants was himself a priest who said he had been abused in his youth by another priest. The Bishop agreed to talk to them. If he had refused to listen AND they were serious about not going to the police, then no-one would have heard anything. In what way would this have been an improvement?

This bishop failed in so many ways. He failed to follow the catholic church's new guidelines on child abuse for a start. There is no defence now for any bishop maintaining secrecy about child abuse allegations. The church's rules now tell bishops to bring in the police at the earliest opportunity. No bishop is able to investigate prima facie allegations. The bishop should resign. He has now thrown the church's policy in doubt and left outsiders wondering how many others have refused to follow the new rules. Hats off to Ian Elliott and his team for exposing this.

"GUIDELINES" are not laws or part of the 10 Commandments. One of the Commandments is not to tell lies. However if a madman with an axe asks me where somebody lives, I do not have a religious obligation to tell him the truth.

The same applies to secular law. Some years ago there was a proposal for legislation that would compel teachers, social workers etc to immediately report any suspicion of child abuse to the Gardai. The proposal was strongly supported by the ISPCC but as strongly opposed by the two Irish associations of Social Workers and Care Workers. The difference is that the ISPCC is an ADVOCACY organisation that presses for constitutional changes to protect children etc. OTOH it is the Social and Care Workers who would be left to face the enraged parents whom they had wrongly accused of child abuse. The proposed legal change did NOT go ahead. So those who work with children are left with a certain amount of discretion under the law.

Bishop Magee was approached by one of his own priests who alleged that he had been abused as a youth by another priest in the Cloyne diocese. He said that he did not want the police informed. I think that it was a perfectly reasonable decision for the Bishop to agree to the man's request. After all if he had not agreed then he would have been told nothing. The reason why mandatory reporting has not been made part of the LAW, is to allow for the exercise of common sence.

Is failing to report a crime not breaking the law? I'm not a legal expert but I thought all citizens were obliged to inform the police when they knew a crime had been committed.

I'm not a legal expert either but my understanding is that if a manager makes a false and RECKLESS allegation to the police he can be sued for defamation by the person he has accused. (Of course if he makes a false and MALICIOUS allegation he can be jailed.).

I think the proposed legal change a few years ago would have obliged the manager to report any suspicion of child abuse no matter how ill-founded AND would have made it impossible for the accused to sue. This was "Mandatory Reporting". Unless the manager was deliberately lying, he could not be taken to court.

Of course the ISPCC and "victims" groups like One in Four loved the idea. It would have enabled them to run riot. The people who did NOT love it, were the social workers and care workers who were dealing with difficult families. You can imagine the reaction of a parent who was subjected to such an allegation - especially after his solicitor told him that he had no legal avenue of redress. I think some would have found an ILLEGAL way of expressing their feelings - and be damned to the consequences.

Anyway the LEGAL change re Mandatory Reporting did not go through. I suspect that the problem with the Guidelines for protecting children is that they are are closer to Mandatory Reporting than to the existing laws regarding defamation and false reporting.

kilbarry - your view is all very true and logical, except that it goes against the guidelines the bishop himself already adopted. I agree it is very difficult for a person who wants to talk to someone about abuse - if they want confidentiality they need to use confidential phone services and not name names. Bishops must protect themselves and the Church from allegations of cover-up and conspiracy, however, unsustainable, and they must protect the Church from future lawsuits - and that means going straight to the police.

As for Italian laws - the Holy See accepts Italian laws which are not incompatable with Canon or other Church law. Under a new law signed by Pope Benedict on October 1, Vatican authorities will first examine Italian laws before deciding whether to adopt them, he wrote in Osservatore Romano. This came into force on 1 January 2009.

SmasherLagru - Yes I suspect that the problem is the Guidelines themselves. The current hysteria about child abuse has led to the establishment of absurd rules, that if taken literally, make it impossible for anyone to have a private conversation about abuse with any authority figure.

Regarding Hysteria: Since 1994, EIGHT Irish Bishops, including three Archbishops, have been the target of obscene sexual slanders in the media. Bishop Magee was the target on AT LEAST one occasion - In 1999 TV3 had to broadcast an apology for slandering him. However the first slander in 1994 may well have been aimed at Magee as well. The UK Guardian was forced to apologise for publishing lies about an un-named Irish Bishop. They thought they could get away with it by not publishing his name but they gave certain details that greatly reduced the number of possible targets - and so left themselves open to a class libel suit from the Bishops. The details given fit Bishop Magee!

The other Bishops are either deceased or retired. Thus Magee is the only serving Bishop to have been subjected to sexual slanders - and he was probably targetted twice! That could well explain why he did not adhere strictly to unreasonable Guidelines about child abuse!

Hi Guys, as someone who comes from the Industrial Schools, and would have a certain media interest and presence on this subject, can I make a comment. Bishop McGee was wrong, o.k, he didn't set out to activly leave children susceptible to child abuse, but neither did he follow the Church's own guidelines as set out in 'Time to Listen'.

Whether his head should roll for it or not is a discussion I'm not bothered with. It takes away from the far more serious issue - is the Catholic Church responding adequatly to the child abuse issue. I believe it is - now.

Section 5 of the HSE questionaire that was omitted for answering had very valid reasons for doing so. Aside from some individuals who did in the past not make appropriate responses, when the media lynch mob settle down, I feel we'll get a more balanced picture.

As regards the issue of disclosure of an allegation of abuse. From a personal point of view I've experienced a professional forced disclosure, and it caused far more harm, pain, and ongoing regrets than the actual abuse ever did.This by the way was from the secular field - not clerical.

Finally,Section 5 of 'Protection of Persons Reporting Child Abuse 1996 does provide a degree of protection against being sued for 'malicious reporting'.