PASTORAL LETTER 3                     
                       THE DUBLIN INQUIRY – A PERSONAL REFLECTION
                                       SUNDAY 29th NOVEMBER 2009

When I was growing up my father was very involved in the parish Church.  He earned his living by managing a pub in the city centre.  It meant that he had little free time and what time he had was spent helping in the parish.  Although my parents are dead for over a quarter of a century I can still hear my mother giving out to him for spending so much time in the Church.  In 1963 it was my father’s decision that I should become an altar boy.  I had  not the slightest interest in becoming an altar boy – not least because my uncle, who was a canon lawyer based in Rome, spent  his summer holidays with us and it would involve serving his 7a.m. Latin Mass each day. 

In those days it would not be unusual for large Dublin parishes to have twenty or thirty altar boys.  I was sent to the curate for the selection process and to my father’s anger was turned down.  Our family came from the Corporation houses (as distinct from the purchase houses) so my father took this rejection as one of snobbery.  However it was not until thirty years later that I read about this same priest being accused of outrageous sexual and physical abuse against children including the near choking to death of a child.  I don’t know what he was looking for in the selection process but I was fortunate to escape. If that had not been the case I might not be writing these words today.

Fast forward to the early nineties and I was working at University College Dublin.  I would go into the largest lecture theatre (holding 500 students) several times a day to meet the students and one particular morning everyone seemed to be reading their free copy of the Irish Times.  The lead article was the crimes committed against children by Fr. Brendan Smith.  It was my wake up call to clerical child sexual abuse.  I could not believe what I was reading.  Well, the Irish Church has come a long way since then!  I have asked myself many times if I knew in 1980, the year I was ordained, what  I know now would I have gone on for ministry in the priesthood.

The reality that innocent lives have been destroyed by priests of the Archdiocese of Dublin makes me sick beyond words and I can never know all that those children have suffered.  It is shocking to think that it took the media and some courageous victims to make the Irish Church, as institution, accountable.  These crimes of abuse and the institutional response remind us that we must never confuse the Gospel with the Church.  It is the pre-eminence of the Gospel that measures us, challenges us and indicts us.  Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is to be thanked for the leadership, commitment and example he has given in addressing the rape and destruction of innocent lives.  There can be no excuses, no rationalisations, no explanations only repentance, the seeking of forgiveness and the resolve to make every Church environment the safest of places for children. 

In the publication of the Dublin Inquiry:  the unimaginable has been seen; the unthinkable spoken, and the unbearable freed.  Thank God for all those who enabled this Inquiry to see the light of day.

John   Hassett