Fallout from pedophilia:

...Furthermore, Reynolds had lost support when, in the absence of half his Cabinet and the Labor party membership, he nominated Whelehan to presidency of the High Court...

...In shame, he resigned...

...The abbot's resignation was something of areprise, on a smaller scale, of course, of the 1990 resignation of the archbishop of Saint John's, Newfoundland, Alphonsus L. Penney...

...We are a sinful church," the penitent archbishop candidly admitted...

...In Ireland, not only did the abbot resign but, the following month, Prime Minister Albert Reynolds as well, himself a victim of the awesome ramifications of this child molestation case...

...We fully accept our obligations in regard to the civil law and the need to cooperate with the civil authorities which have responsibilities for the investigation and the identification of child sexual abuse...

...At Maynooth, where the Irish bishops had gathered for their fall meeting, they offered an "unreserved" apology to the victims of clergy abuse, and to their families...

...The behavior of Father Smyth, a member of the Norbertine community since 1945 and a Norbertine priest since 1951, "perplexed and troubled our community over many years," according to a statement to the media by the former abbot...

...It was the day after Reynolds admitted that his former attorney general was to blame for the failure to extradite Smyth...

...Our anger, our pain, our anguish, our shame, are clear to the whole world...

...We feel the hurt of all those who have suffered, who have been hurt, and all those whose trust in priests or religious has been abused...

...No longer can episcopal silence, the quiet transfer of offenders, or the adroit chancery cover-up attempt to protect the church's image, at the sacrifice of its pastoral concern...

...In those years," he ruefully confessed, "frequent reassignment was often the way church authorities handled priest pedophiles and other problem priests....We now see how inadequate this approach actually was...

...The abbey, though, despite its peaceful and pastoral setting, is not tranquil these days...

...That is the message from Canada, Ireland, and the United States...

...Going up the hill to the abbey is like ascending the mythical mountain...

...Not all the bishops even responded to inquiries of the bishops' own Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse, chaired by Bishop John Kinney of Bismarck, North Dakota, where Smyth had once served...

...We always hoped that a combination of treatment, Father Smyth's intelligence, and the grace of God would enable Father Smyth to overcome the compulsive nature of his disorder...

...In the United States the Catholic bishops, who have grappled with this painful problem since 1988, with varying degrees of public acknowledgment, received at their November 1994 meeting in Washington detailed resource material to help them deal with such issues...

...At the same time, Cardinal Cahal Daly, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, who had been criticized for not taking action against a priest outside his jurisdiction, responded with anguished words: "I don't remember in my lifetime a more serious, a more painful, a more worrying and distressing time...

...The commission that he had appointed to investigate charges of clerical abuse, in its final report, faulted him for failing to act...

...This abuse apparently was not unkown to his superiors...

...Without referring specifically to the "pedophile priest" case, already the subject of searing scrutiny in the media, they acknowledged "past mistakes...

...REPORT ON IRELAND FALLOUT FROM PEDOPHILIA THE DOMINOES KEEP TUMBLING Just a few miles up the pot-holed road from Mount Nugent, a quiet village near Ireland's lovely Lough Sheelin, is Holy Trinity Abbey, home of the Nor-bertine religious community, in Kilnacrott, County Cavan...

...His resignation was precipitated by the Labor party's withdrawal of support of the coalition government, already beginning to disintegrate as the result of two previous political scandals, this time on the charge that Reynolds's former attorney general, Harry Whelehan, had outrageously neglected to act upon nine Northern Ireland warrants for the extradition of Father Smyth...

...We are naked...

...There he was beyond the power of Parliament (Dail Eireann) to question him...

...After only two days in his new post, however, Whelehan himself resigned...

...A few months later, in October, after details of the "pedophile priest" became known in the media, Father Kevin Smith, the abbot since 1969, resigned, admitting "many errors" in having transferred Smyth from parish to parish, from country to country-a trail that included assignments in Scotland and Wales, North Dakota and Rhode Island in the United States, and Northern Ireland and the Republic- in an attempt to stop his sexual abuse of children...

...E. LEO McMANNUS E. Leo McMannus is professor emeritus of English at Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, Florida.e, Miami, Florida...

...However, because each of the diocesan bishops is responsible only to the pope, and not to any national conference, the recommendations are only guidelines...

...Last June, one of its priests, Father Brendan Smyth, sixty-seven-who had voluntarily surrendered to civil authorities in Northern Ireland on a charge of child molestation-was tried and convicted, and began serving a four-year prison sentence in Magilligan prison in County Deny...

...Such moving from place to place, and covering-up the violations, was the way the problem used to be handled, the former abbot explained...

...In an editorial, "A moment of Truth in Ireland," the London Tablet concluded, "The Catholic church ought to lead opinion in these areas if it is being true to its message, but in fact it moves behind the times...