An Irish bishop has finally apologised after describing paedophilia as ‘a friendship that had crossed a boundary line.’
Bishop John Kirby said sorry for his remarks in an open letter read at masses throughout the Clonfert diocese on Sunday.
In the address, Bishop Kirby said he had never intended to minimise the gravity of the crime and apologised especially to survivors of child abuse.
However, the Bishop has never considered his position at any stage of the controversy and claimed that his comments had been taken out of context.
Bishop Kirby said: “What I failed to appreciate sufficiently at that time was the addictive and repetitive compulsion of sexual abuse.
“Unfortunately, my words last week, separated from their context, came across negatively. I am very sorry for any anxiety or embarrassment that I may have caused to people.
“I may have given the general impression that I was somehow minimising the gravity of the criminal activity which we know to be child sexual abuse.
“This was never my intention and I wish to apologise, especially to all survivors, on this point.”
The Irish Independent reports that the letter was sent to 24 parishes in east Galway and parts of Roscommon and Offaly.
The bishop also admitted in the public letter that he had made a mistake over the transfers of two abuser priests to new parishes.
Bishop Kirby had made the remarks about paedophilia after the publishing of a report that criticised him for his role in moving two abuser priests in the mid-90s.
The report says that at the time of the report’s publication, Bishop Kirby said he thought paedophilia was ‘a friendship that crossed a boundary line’ and claimed that he believed he would solve the problem by separating the priest from the child.
Politicians, charity heads and even clergy called for his resignation.
The report into the safeguarding practices in the Clonfert Diocese found that the bishop had dealt ‘inappropriately’ with abuse allegations.
Bishop Kirby added: “I cannot apologise enough to survivors of abuse for the pain that you suffer. I utterly condemn the actions of the two priests, referred to in the review, who sexually abused in this diocese in the past.
“I take full responsibility for my actions. There is no question but I made serious mistakes in the early to mid-1990s by moving two priests who had abused into different parishes.”
11 Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.KatieMurphy | Sep 20, 2012, 07:31 AM EDT
BTW an interesting foot note. IMHO the Anglican church is really close of course to the Catholic churh. Anglican priests can marry but then they cannot become bishops. BTW we hear very little if anything about Anglicans molesting our children
KatieMurphy | Sep 20, 2012, 07:28 AM EDT
handsome68 - Pedophilia comes from something called "sexual immaturity". When normal sex is denied, made to be dirty etc,, some people ultimately go bad. They pick their victims of the age when they themselves were made to feel bad about normal reproductive sex etc.............Its the law of Unintended consequences - the church about 1000 AD prevented priests from marrying . The real reason was that being a priest in those days was like an independent contractor. People would pay them directly for blessings, funeral serices, communion etc,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,the church did the celibacy thing so it could marry the priest to the church and inherit his estate...............Remember the recent flap in England when the church tried to claim priests were independent contractors and the church wasnt responsible for their ruining childrens lives, to say nothing of how many kids committed suicide?.............BTW this also shows that the celibacy thing had nothing to do with Jesus 12 unmarried diesciples. Wouldnt Jesus want to have the priests help procreate life?
KatieMurphy | Sep 20, 2012, 07:19 AM EDT
the appology tridk is an old one. The bad people do something bad / horrid, knowing it will catch the headlines. after the damage is done, they appologize which doesnt reach many people. IN psychology its called "the bad is more powerful then the good.............Put these creaps aand in particular the heirarchy in the slammer. I've read that molesters get "special treatment in jail". Many criminals are people who were molested in one way or another - sexually, physically, even economically - eg extreme poverty...............Doest Pope Benedict have a stamp that says "EXcommunicated" on it?...................No wonder in Ireland the church is collapsing. and many other places as well.
KatieMurphy | Sep 19, 2012, 08:26 AM EDT
Send him to the Vatican to be with others of his kind who were "naive" or send him to jail where friendships sometimes cross the boundary line. Perhaps being on the receiving end with adults instead of the giving end with children would provide a different point of view.
IrelandNorth | Sep 19, 2012, 07:52 AM EDT
Anglo-Irish journalist Kevin Myres, (when writing his Irishman's Diary for Ireland's quality broadsheet - The Irish Times), once described the term "paedophile-ia-ic" as a misnomer. By which he meant that to truly love a child one would never exploit ones age disparity with it. Hence, sexual exploitation of a child isn't love-of-children, the love in this case being inappropriately erotic rather than agapic or caritic in nature. An infanto-centric theology administered by an occupationally narcissistic/arrestedly developed/celibacy imposed clerics, will never be anything other than problematical.
pilib04 | Sep 18, 2012, 04:06 PM EDT
He's not saying he was wrong, he's saying he was wrong to say it. Get these men out!
OmahaSeamus | Sep 18, 2012, 12:42 PM EDT
Why isn't this evil man in jail?
eiriamach | Sep 18, 2012, 12:36 PM EDT
WHY is he hanging onto his position in the Clonfert Diocese? What can he gain from it? Surely the parishioners can gain nothing but more humiliation and concern for the future.
CitizenWhy | Sep 18, 2012, 11:40 AM EDT
Someone with such poor training in moral reasoning should not be bishops. Most of them seem to have no moral intelligence.
handsome68 | Sep 18, 2012, 11:01 AM EDT
Sometimes I think that the education of these priests and religious simply might not have included teaching about crimes like pedophilia. That might have leave it open for them to sort of explore it, sort of in their own free time. I read once where a convicted pedophile said that a little girl (in this case) had "led him on" by the ease with which she opened her legs. I mean, you can't make this stuff up, unless you want to make this stuff up. There is simply no "excuse".
RichardP | Sep 18, 2012, 09:52 AM EDT
That's not an apology. After that length of time he was obviously cajoled or coerced into making a statement. He should have made it on television, on bended knee, but once again the RCC scores an own goal with a lame 'sorry' followed by excuses and 'I was taken out of context'. When will they ever learn?'