UCC historian Dr Gabriel Doherty The Church must look to its own failings in the wake of the report on the investigation into the mother and baby homes, says UCC historian Dr Gabriel Doherty.
Responding to the concern that Catholicism was being used as a scapegoat for what was a wider societal failing, Dr Doherty told The Irish Catholic that the Church must look at the “numerous ways” in which it failed to treat those who were entrusted to its care “according to the Gospel values that it championed then, and champions now”.
Acknowledging that the Church’s failure was not the only one at the time, Dr Doherty said that the Church “which aspired to be a light in and to the world cannot justify its own shortcomings with reference to the State practices and broader social attitudes that it helped to mould”.
“The public rhetoric of the Church of the time stressed the importance of mercy in its dealings with the women and children involved, but the actions behind closed doors of many of its professed members on many occasions was marked by an absence of that virtue, as well as being a betrayal of the wholly admirable precepts on which the orders to which they belonged were founded,” Dr Doherty said.
The fact that widespread failings were known to the leadership of orders and yet went uncorrected and unpunished “and thus (were) facilitated, and implicitly and explicitly encouraged” demonstrates that problems existed at a systemic level and were not confined to a few “bad apples”, as is often claimed, Dr Doherty asserts.
“The Church faces a difficult task in convincing both the Faithful and the growing number of its critics that it merits sympathetic understanding of the mistakes it made in this sphere (as in so many others) when that quality was conspicuous by its absence when it was most needed,” Dr Doherty said.
He commended the report on its “discerning” approach to criticism, and its measure in applying that criticism, saying that its inquisitive, rather than combative, style added to its credibility.