What I am going to say in this short article, I have said many times in the past fourteen years, but there is a sense in which I need to keep saying it. It is also provoked by a current dispute in the Irish political world, in which a politician is accusing his party of using what he called a “kangaroo court” in dealing with a dispute in which he is involved. For anyone who might not understand that phrase, a kangaroo court is the name sometimes given to one in which the defendant is not given any rights, but is treated unjustly in a court that is clearly stacked against him/her.
It brings me back again to my time, fourteen years ago now, when I was accused and condemned by the Vatican doctrinal body, then known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. My experience was that the process that was used against me was the epitome of a kangaroo court.
For a start I do not know who made the allegations against me, and who reported me to the CDF. I know that there were a number of people in Ireland at the time who made it their business to keep the CDF informed of anything they considered to be in any way unorthodox, as they understood orthodoxy. I was by no means the only one that was being reported in those years. But, apparently, what made my situation different is that also some senior member of the Irish Church, presumably a bishop, informed on me. I don’t know who that person might have been, but based on the fact that three of the Vatican congregations met to discuss my case, I was informed by someone in the know about these things that it had to come from high up in the Irish Church.
Because I am a member of a religious order, the Redemptorists, the CDF conducted the whole business through my superior general. They seemed to have believed that since they were dealing with my superior they were also dealing with me. So they didn’t seem to feel the need at any stage to actually talk to me directly, or to meet me and listen to my defence. That maybe would have some justification if the Redemptorists were a body with their own independent authority system. But they weren’t. They were very much under the control of the CDF, and were, I understood, under threat that if they did not do what they were told their superiors would be stood down and replaced by people chosen by the CDF. I have no reason to believe that this was not the case.
So the reality then was that the people with all the power, who were making and imposing all the decisions, would not engage with me. I did engage with my own superiors, but it was obvious to me early on that this was a waste of time, that they really had no influence on the situation.
So that is where the injustice lay, and why I refer to it as a ‘kangaroo court’. It’s actions towards me contained none of the basics of a just procedure.
This situation has remained the same for fourteen years. I have to a fair degree learned to live with it, and to move on with my life. But the effect of it has meant that I have largely lost all faith or trust in the authority system operating in our Church. In the fourteen years no Irish bishop has ever spoken out publicly about the way I was treated. I am not looking for them to agree with everything I have said and written. That is not the issue.
The issue is the injustice of the process, and that isn’t just about me, it brings the whole Church into disrepute. Indeed Pope Francis has been approached by a number of people on my behalf, with no response, which is also very disappointing for me, since I admire so much about what he has been doing as Pope.
I know that there is nothing in this article that I haven’t said and written many times since all this happened.
But that is what I will keep saying, that in some deep way inside myself I need to keep saying, so that the message may even survive my own demise, and may have some influence in the eventual change in the Church. Probably wishful thinking, but anyway……
So I keep beating the drum!
