Catholic Ireland Sex abuse scandals return to rock the church in Ireland. SHORT TAKE
Horgan, John
choice and a chance? What is wrong with vouchers for the poorest children in the most broken school systems? The usual reply from voucher oppo- nents might be called the supply argu-...
...Educa- bers: The average first-year teacher's urgent questions Edwards and Greention Secretary Richard Riley was right in salary is $25,735...
...All of this has helped to underline one of the central dilemmas facing church institutions and officials in the current situation...
...An education But voucher opponents need better aning the public schools, and there is no department official offered these num- swers than they've come up with to the cheap or easy way to do that...
...Educating the poorest children in our society is not necessarily work that profit-making institutions would take on...
...land...
...form...
...month, it had published an article inferring the church was People who say they have been abused have been callresponsible for the sexual abuse of children and the sexual ing on the church organizations concerned to release their indiscretions of priests and bishops over a period of thirty files for public inspection...
...Vouchers will not lead miraculously to the creation of thousands of new and vibrant schools...
...The usual reply from voucher opponents might be called the supply argument...
...Starting new schools is difficult and expensive...
...Furthermore, the churches were often toral duties elsewhere, the bishops, like their American coun- the only bodies offering such service in a society that preterparts before them, have now drawn up detailed guidelines ferred to contract out its social work to voluntary agencies...
...The bishops have been stung by repeated allegations that For many of the young people in the church's care at the they failed to fulfill their pastoral responsibilities adequately...
...Many of them wish to apologize but, in the current legal climate, are terrified of doing so for fear that they will find themselves swept away by a deluge of compensation claims...
...Vouchers are thus a false promise if they're offered as an alternative to public school reform...
...The previous to answer...
...cially for specialists, in exchange for more short-term balm, and as a prod to re- The problem is especially grave for rigorous standards...
...Guilt is not an education polhis State of American Education speech who go into computing can earn an av- icy...
...The only thing we can be sure of at this stage is that the country diocese in County Clare on Ireland's western church and state alike will emerge deeply chastened...
...0 graduates are now so high in the pri- $39,347...
...which for decades offloaded the institutional care of many of In June of last year, the hierarchy decided at their summer its most vulnerable young people, without instituting apconference in Maynooth to institute a class-action suit against propriate systems of inspection or control...
...What is wrong with vouchers for the poorest children in the most broken school systems...
...Files in the Department of Eduyears...
...They now feel deeply troubled by the continu- what happened, and blind to its criminality...
...Archbishop McQuaid wrote to its editor to acknowledge In the miasma of hurt and anger which surrounds the the paper's "policy of distinctive loyalty toward the church...
...It may also have the Irish Independent, a mass-circulation daily...
...As a and have threatened to take further legal action if an apology result, more than a hundred people have now instituted is not forthcoming...
...One of them to discern, as yet, when and where the healing process will is that taken by Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, a small start...
...What was a ing stream of revelations, and are all but terrified of showing private, internal scandal has become an open, public one friendship or affection in any physical manner to young precisely because of the church's failure-so far-to accept people with whom their work brings them into contact...
...continuing stream of legal cases and revelations, it is difficult Other responses have been more imaginative...
...This long public apology is done not with trumpets and fanfare, but with honesty and simplicity...
...Experienced teachers average our consciences...
...This is the uncomfortable fact that documentary-enumerating incidents of sexual and physi- many of the actions which are now coming to light were, cal abuse in church-run institutions...
...Lawyers contacted the paper on behalf of four bishops cation, however, are revealing that, in many cases, this de(selected as representatives of the country's four provinces) partment was aware of abuse and did nothing about it...
...in engineering, average what's happening to some of our poorest tended consequence of the booming starting pay is $42,862...
...fully all its responsibilities in the matter...
...But many of the faithful, concluding that there is no smoke withhe allegation, made in a new biography of John out fire, are simply averting their gaze in mute despair...
...Sex, lies & accountability The fuss about the accuracy of the allegations continues apace, as the biography has been widely serialized...
...and stopped...
...As a safety ers are bid away from the teaching mar- say they believe in market economics valve for parents who desperately need ket...
...But voucher advocates, their opponents say, are wrong to pretend that the K-12 education market is like every other market...
...The allegation of Irish church life was given a major boost with the publiis not well documented, but it is a measure of the contro- cation before Christmas of Suffer the Little Children (New Isversy that swirled around McQuaid during his life that even land Books), by two researchers-also the subject of a TV Commonweal 9 March 10, 2000 the end of last year that he would have to do something to indicate his acceptance of responsibility for many of the wrongs that had been committed in church institutions...
...t And there is, deeper still, a slowness to face up to another aspect of the problem...
...a computer systems analyst © 2000, Washington Post Writers Group an anonymous accusation (which, in effect, this is) has introduced a wide new seam of debate...
...Voucher advocates who these arguments are correct...
...Yes, in some cities, there are alternative schools-usually Catholic schools-whose tuitions are within the reach of what a voucher could pay for...
...time, it must be said, these church-run institutions provided In the light of allegations that complaints about some abus- a haven, however rough-hewn, from abusive parents and ing priests had merely resulted in their being moved to pas- an uncaring society...
...Riley's innovation was to suggest cannot deny what market logic tells us: alternatives to schools in catastrophic that teaching be turned into a full-year, We need higher pay for teachers, especondition, vouchers may work as a and better-paid, profession...
...Many well-known John Horgan liberals, who engaged in fierce critiques of McQuaid while he was alive, have attacked the biographer's use of anonyCATHOLIC IRELAND mous sources...
...But they are no substitute for fix- math and science teachers...
...designed to prevent a repetition of such occurrences, and This implies a degree of culpability on the part of the state, have strengthened reporting systems and procedures...
...His sermons, when he preaches, are modest and open...
...Commonweal 1 0 March 10, 2000...
...That wound was opened only in the past couple of Public and media interest in this hitherto unexplored area years, but as yet it shows no sign of healing...
...Some of the defenses that material prosperity and secularization which are already have been mounted by church officials are based on the unundermining traditional religious loyalties and practices in doubted truth that, in many of the institutions concerned, the Ireland, these revelations have contributed to a general air of abuses were ultimately detected by colleagues or superiors impending, if not actual, crisis in the church...
...With seaboard...
...Bishop Walsh, whose low-key but unmistakably luck, they will also be renewed...
...But if we don't feel guilty about last month to underscore one unin- erage of $40,920...
...UnCharles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin from derlying this despair-mixed, on occasion, with anger-is a 1940 to 1972, that this most powerful prelate in series of scandals involving physical and sexual abuse in twentieth-century Ireland was a pedophile, has church-run institutions which add up to a crisis of credibilpoured salt into an open wound in the Catholic church in Ire- ity in the institutional church...
...But the underlying implication is that the The crisis of confidence among many priests and religious church was initially concerned only with the sinfulness of is palpable...
...But new college grads field asked...
...Added to the growing quite simply, criminal offenses...
...Now consider this possibility: Both vate sector that potentially good teach- earns $63,072...
...It is ironic, considering that in December proceedings not only against the religious orders concerned, 1954, on the fiftieth anniversary of that paper's foundation, but against the state...
...He has therefore embarked on a pilgrimage, traversing his diocese on foot at a rate of nine or ten miles a day, lodging in local houses and saying Mass in local churches wherever he stopped...
...At one level, it is certainly a gesture which has caught the public imagination...
...El liberal pronouncements on a number of issues have been winning him widespread media coverage, decided toward John Horgan teaches journalism at City University in Dublin...
...The gap grows children, there's something wrong with economy: Rewards for new college over time...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
