O'Reilly urges Church to fight back on abuse

Thursday May 5th 2005

THERE is "a very strong case for a counter-attack" by the Church over the issue of child sex abuse, Sir Anthony O'Reilly has stated.

Sir Anthony says in an interview with the religious monthly, 'The Word', that the scandals have "reduced the prestige of priests and bishops to a level which is utterly undeserved".

Referring to his time in Belvedere College, he states: "I never heard of a single case of sex abuse and I never heard any of my companions talk about it. So I have to say that it was probably in special enclosed situations like orphanages or reformatory schools, but certainly in day-schools it was not something that I was aware of."

He says: "The inevitable effect has been to impoverish, and indeed paralyse the Church in parts of America, where people are litigious beyond description and where many lawyers are ambulance-chasers and have gone after the Church in a big way.

"In Ireland, priests must have found it extremely upsetting being tarred with a global brush. I have a cousin, a priest. I have discussed this with him and it seems to me that the prestige of the Church and the confidence with which it addresses issues in society has been affected more than it should have been by this."

He adds: "I believe there is a very strong case for a counter-attack. Lay people should get up in a pulpit, where appropriate, and say, like I have said, that they never had any knowledge or experience of it [sexual abuse] in their school life."

Turning to other areas of Church life, Sir Anthony says he is in favour of women priests. "I just can't understand why the Church hasn't embraced women priests as it is, especially when you look at the vocational pattern in this country and others - I believe there have been very few potential Jesuits enter the novitiate over the last five to ten years.

"The Church cannot exist without women priests and I might add that in many instances women are very well equipped to be priests."

He also believes that the Churches can still help to shape public debate and cites the issue of abortion in England where Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor of Westminster, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, recently joined forces to try to make abortion an election issue there for the first time in decades.

David Quinn
Religious and Social Affairs Correspondent

? Irish Independent