but they knew

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
but they knew what they were doing the

review of the Murphy Commission Report which investigated how the
state and the archdiocese of Dublin handled child abuse by priests
from 1974 to 2004 and quotes/extracts as seen in this weeks
newspapers.

All archbishops and many of the auxiliary bishops in Dublin handled
child sexual abuse complaints badly. None of the four archbishops
reported their knowledge of abuse to gardaí [the police] “throughout
the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s�.

Church authorities used the concept of “mental reservation�, which
allows senior clergy to mislead people without being guilty, in the
church’s eyes, of lying.

Senior members of the gardaí (the Irish police) regarded priests as
outside their remit, with some members reporting complaints to the
archdiocese instead of investigating them.

It said there were some courageous priests who brought complaints to
the attention of their superiors. But in general there was a “don’t
ask, don’t tell� policy.

The report states the archdiocese demonstrated an “obsessive concern
with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal,� while showing “little or
no concern for the welfare of the abused child.�

“The Dublin Archdiocese’s pre-occupations in dealing with cases of
child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance
of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation
of the Church, and the preservation of its assets.”

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