Cardinal Brady still under criticism

The BBC reports that Cardinal Sean Brady has said that he will stay in his job in the face of calls for him to resign.

Cardinal Brady is accused of failing to act, after it was brought to his attention that a Roman Catholic priest was an abuser of children.   The same accusations have been levelled at the Pope, and a letter has been produced showing that he was aware of child abuse allegations in the United States some years ago.

The issue of senior members of the Catholic Church failing to act on allegations is a frequent complaint in civil claims against the church. In the recent case of MAGA v Trustees of the Birmingham Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church 2010 the Court of Appeal said that in relation to a breach of duty, in the mid 1970’s an allegation by one boy that a priest had fondled his genitals would not have been treated nearly as seriously then as it would be now. Until the 1970’s people were reluctant to believe that child sex abuse took place at all. Therefore a priest hearing such allegations would have been acting properly, according to the standards of the time, if he had taken the allegation up with the accused priest and provided he was given a convincing denial, he then took the matter no further.

However the Court also stressed that such a priest was plainly under a duty to keep a careful eye on the accused. In this case, if he had, he would have seen enough to know that action had to be taken. Instead he had averted his gaze and the abuse of the Claimant had been allowed to commence.