I WATCHED WITHOUT pleasure the excuse of an apology given yesterday to the media by Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, for his role in suppressing the truth about abuse of children in their care by Catholic priests. This followed an apologetic sermon in Armagh Cathedral which was the occasion for admitting that he was party to making two children take a vow of silence that they had been abused, leaving the offending priest to continue such abuse for eighteen years.
This immoral use of a holy vow may not, in fact, have been necessary. I know from the experience of having a brother who was abused, though not by a priest, that deep and abiding shame is what may induce a lifetime of  silence. My brother only told me what actually happened – we had suspected it for years – in his mid-fifties, and then when he was drunk. When he died a few years later the verdict was suicide but I called it murder, by an abuser half a century before.
The first and only time I saw his face at peace was in death. Only then did he look on the outside like the beautiful, creative spirit I knew to be within and despite his cruelties to me I knew why I had been right to love him all his life.  It’s a story I tell in my unpublished novel The Man Who Feared Rain.
I am quite sure that reading the pathetic, weak and I think cowardly apology from  Brady – he deserves no holy honorific and is not getting one from me – many family members of abused children like my brother will feel as angry and upset. They know the lifetime of suffering abuse can cause. It often remains an unhealed wound.
His explanation for why he has not stepped down – and seems not yet to be planning to do so – is a familiar one to any who have heard the weasel words of some clergy, who ought perhaps to do one thing but find it advantageous to do another. He is,  he is quoted as saying, ‘discerning the will of the Holy Spirit’ in this matter before making a decision.
A form of morally limp  decision making which reminds me of something in a family diary we once had dating back to the mid-19th century. The gentleman, on my grandmother’s side, was an Anglican priest. Before we get to the key bit it’s worth me saying that the other bit I remember is that he had to pray for his wife when she was caught trying to pass off margarine as butter at the local fete. Hmmm! Not good! Soon after, and not connected with this small deceit, he was offered a better (and better paid) job. Instead of writing, ‘Great! More money! And I can get away from this horrible place and its vile little fetes! Yippee!’ he wrote screeds – and I mean screeds – on how troubled his conscience was about the possibility that he might have to leave his present flock for pastures new and richer. Much ink was spilt on this dubious angst but finally he declared he had decided to put his trust, like Brady, in guidance from the Holy Spirit, or its Anglican equivalent.
As his reader I waited with bated breath as the diary days went by to see which way the Holy Spirit would vote. Then, Surprise! Surprise! It decided that he must leave the flock he claimed he had no wish to leave and move on… which he did with heavy heart, no doubt.
With this sorry family tale in mind I hope I will be forgiven for being cynical about Brady’s dialogue with the Holy Spirit and saying that I believe that he will continue in office for a little while yet.