You can't fight the rot
Diarmuid Martin was wrong when he said 'forces' within the Church are covering up sex abuse cases. When it comes to clerical scandals, the entire edifice of Catholicism is corrupt
Eamonn McCann, 14 Jun 2010
Who are the "strong forces” within the Catholic Church that Dublin archbishop Diarmuid Martin believes are still trying to cover up the scale of clerical child sex abuse?
Four days before Dr. Martin's May 10th bombshell speech to the Knights of Columbanus in Dublin, Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of auxiliary bishop Francis Lagan of Derry. Dr. Lagan, it was explained, had reached retirement age, 75. But this wasn't the whole story. His resignation came in the wake of reports that former priest Gerard McCallion, convicted in the 1990s of a series of indecent assaults against children, is to face further child sex abuse claims.
Although convicted "only” of indecent assault, McCallion raped at least one little girl, and probably others, while serving in St. Mary's parish in the Creggan Estate. On the night in 1990 before McCallion arrived in the parish, Dr. Lagan came to the parochial house door to warn the priests to "keep an eye” on their new colleague and make sure he wasn't left alone with children.
It proved impossible for the priests to track McCallion 24/7. As a result, a number of innocent children were left brutalised, defiled, traumatised for life.
Clearly, Dr. Lagan had known in advance that something of this kind might happen. So, obviously, had the head of the religious institution in the South whence McCallion had come with health warning attached. So, too, following Lagan's visitation, had the priests who tried to shadow him around the estate.
After McCallion was bundled out of the diocese following complaints from parents, Church authorities, including the just-appointed Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, Cathal Daly, were made aware in terrible detail of his rape of a child. Daly alerted no outside authority. Instead, McCallion was again sequestered in a monastery in Waterford.
This is to say that material information regarding a crime of child rape was held by the head of the Irish Church, at least one bishop, a number of priests and the head of a major religious order, none of whom made any move to have the rapist arraigned before the courts or made accountable to civil society in any way whatsoever.
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