We must deal openly and honestly with grim truth about to face us

By R?n?n Mullen

TRUTH will out. Soon we will know the contents of Judge Frank Murphy's report into sex abuse in the diocese of Ferns.

It will be a very difficult time and a critical moment in the discussion about the role played by Church and State in the abuse of children.

The Ferns report will make for disturbing reading. The full ugly reality of sexual abuse will be laid bare, as well as the distressing incompetence of prominent churchmen, Government officials and senior garda?.

All this will be deeply unsettling for many people. The victims of abuse in Ferns will, to some extent, relive their trauma during the public discussion of what happened to them. Other abused people, whose personal story does not feature in the Ferns inquiry, will suffer as well. Some members of the public will feel intense anger.

Committed Catholics will feel a deep sense of shame, and they will worry that others will now reject the Church. Priests will feel uncertain as they encounter lay people in the parish or on the streets. They will ask themselves: "Do they suspect me and the clerical collar that I wear?"

Journalists and politicians will have hard things to say. There will be a lot of talk about the Church's canon law, and whether it played a role. Priestly celibacy will be in the firing line, too.

I addressed a group of priests recently on the subject of communicating the gospel in a time of challenge. On my way to the podium I met an old priest who had been of great assistance to me in my college days. "Try not to demoralise them too much," he whispered. "They are demoralised enough already."

He was partly right. Certainly, some priests are demoralised. I have met a few who believe that the less said about sex abuse now, the better.

One curate told me how the Irish bishops' Lenten pastoral letter, Towards Healing, was not distributed in his parish when it was published last February. His parish priest had taken one look at it, saw that it was about sex abuse in the Church, and said: "We can't be upsetting people with that."

No doubt, the PP could give reasons. He probably had lay people knocking at his door and complaining that the Church was going on too much about sex abuse. Sex abuse victims weren't the only ones who had suffered in the past, some would say.

Others would complain about a 'media agenda' to portray sex abuse as mainly a Church problem. But those same people who don't want to talk about the issue may also be the ones who don't want to pay a cent towards helping the Church compensate the victims. It's a type of selfish individualism. People dissociate themselves from their Church's efforts to own up to the wrongdoing of some of its members and to try and make amends. This refusal to face unpleasant realities does no service to the Church. It is an unfortunate hangover from that old culture of denial and evasion that contributed, in some cases, to the bad handling of sex abuse allegations by bishops.

But this attitude is not typical of the majority of priests and parishioners. Most Catholics - the serious ones anyway - want to face the hard facts, deal with the problem in a compassionate and constructive way, and get on with the business of converting themselves and others to the Christian gospel.

I think most priests fall into this category. Many will struggle to find the right words in coming weeks (who wouldn't?), but they know they must do so.

The facts about the abuse will speak for themselves. But when it comes to explaining why such evil was allowed to continue, and the relationship, if any, of celibacy, canon law and Church structures to this problem, most mass-goers will want to hear from their priests. They won't fully make up their minds until they do so.

That is why the pulpit will be such an important place in coming weeks.

There is a lot that needs to be said about solidarity with victims, responsible leadership and issues like sin, repentance, forgiveness and redemption. With so much important ground to cover, the pulpit should not be abused by incompetent communication, inadequate information, or silence.

PRIESTS should not assume that people will take their horror about the reality of clerical sexual abuse as read. Some Catholics still subscribe to an institutional, clericalist, mindset. They see the priest as part of the officer class of the Church and his silence may be seen as a refusal to face up to matters. Some people will want to tar all priests with the one brush. Only through good communication can that tendency be undermined.

Most people, however, are supportive of the priests they know. And that may lead to an equally serious temptation in a small number of priests to fall victim to a 'poor little me' syndrome, painting themselves as innocent victims of the sex scandals and hanging, in the words of one priest friend of mine, "the bishops out to fry". That's no good either. The first and primary responsibility of the Church is towards the actual victims of abuse. The job of a mature Christian community is then to acknowledge the reality of evil in our midst, reflect honestly on our own complicity, if any, and to work towards reformed behaviour in the future.

Over the coming weeks, good leadership in our parishes will be about helping people to see that responsibility for creating a better world always rests, to some extent, with all of us. It is never just someone else's problem.

Most priests will not have difficulty connecting with their parishioners if there is a genuine relationship, built up through years of good service and ministry, between them. But the relationship also contains a challenge. Priests generally have informed themselves about this issue.

The public, generally, has not. How then to restore calm and balance to discussion of this issue without appearing to be unsympathetic or in denial? For example, many people think that priests are more likely to abuse than others, and that celibacy is part of the reason.

But ministers of (any) religion constitute only 1.3% of abusers of Irish children, even though the media perception is that they are dominant. Celibacy, immaturely lived, might mask a propensity to abuse, perhaps even exacerbate it at times. But lived with holiness and maturity, and with proper spiritual guidance, it may also help a person overcome unhealthy tendencies. It can even set an example for a society where the early sexualisation of children is constantly before our eyes, with ever greater opportunities for the sexual exploitation of minors by immature adults.

These are the kind of nuances that many of us would like to see in the discussion about sex abuse that will inevitably follow this report. And much of the responsibility to set this tone will lie with the media. But priests themselves must set a standard in the way they communicate in parishes.

This is not a homily to be written on the night before.