Mary Kenny
Bishop George Bell was a notable Church of England bishop who might well have become Archbishop of Canterbury, but Winston Churchill disliked Bishop’s Bell’s opposition to aerial area bombing during World War II and probably blocked his candidature. Dr Bell described the bombing of unarmed women and children as “barbaric” in 1941. He was a lone voice, unsupported by his fellow Anglican bishops.
George Bell was a brave and just man: he had been an opponent of the Nazis since the early 1930s, had helped many German Christian and Jewish refugees. He had been an early pioneer, too, of the ecumenical movement.
As Dean of Canterbury, he had commissioned T.S. Eliot to write that terrific play about Thomas Beckett Murder in the Cathedral.
George Bell died in 1958, and in 1995 a posthumous complaint was made against him – that he had sometime in the 1940s sexually abused a female child. The accusation came from a single complainant, known only as ‘Carol’. It was uncorroborated by any other evidence but the Church of England issued a formal apology and paid out some £30,000 in compensations and legal costs.
Due process
Two London journalists, Peter Hitchens and Charles Moore, carried out a continuous campaign to re-examine the case against Bishop Bell, accusing the Church of England of rushing to judgement and besmirching the name of an honourable cleric without due process.
And shortly before Christmas an independent investigation, led by Lord Carlile QC, concluded that the Anglican church’s procedures in examining Carol’s case were “deeply flawed”. There was no proof that Bishop Bell was guilty of any offence. Lord Carlile’s report also questions the practice of treating complainants as “victims who must be believed” before any proper investigation of the validity of the complaint.
This is in line with what another distinguished British High Court Judge, Sir Richard Henriques, said recently. People should not be called ‘victims’ until it is proved they were the victim of a crime: they should be called complainants.
Some complainants, said Sir Richard, are indeed victims. But some are fantasists, and some are seeking compensation funds. Of course, proven victims should be apologised to and compensated, and perpetrators of the crime of sexual abuse should face full penalties.
But Bishop Bell’s case showed that a rush to judgement is also unwise.
There have been Catholic priests – in Britain and Ireland – whose reputations have also been stained by an unjust accusation, and the Church authorities have sometimes been more concerned to show they are responding to public anxiety about paedophilia than upholding the time-honoured principle that every individual is innocent until proved guilty.
Rushing to condemn an accused person is similar to its opposite – covering up accusations of crimes to preserve an institution’s reputation.
The review of Bishop Bell’s case was an interesting landmark ruling for 2017.
Not so bad after all…
Ireland is given a pretty good 2018 profile in The Economist’s annual pocket book of world figures. Ireland is an under-populated country (67.3 per sq mile, compared to the UK’s 265.2 or Germany’s 226.1), with an annual GDP growth of 6.5% (UK 2%, Italy 0.7%, France 0.9%, Finland 0%). Ireland is 92% Christian, life expectancy for women is 83.5 years, and fertility rate per woman is 2.0. There are just 0.6 divorces per thousand of the population – the fifth lowest in the world.
Ireland ties for third place with a number of countries for world lowest infant mortality, including Czech Republic, Finland, Norway and Italy.
Ireland has the ninth highest standard of living in the world, just after Norway and just above the Channel Islands, the US and Iceland. (Sweden, Denmark and Australia are lower.) Ireland is No.8 on the ‘Human Development Index’, which measures quality of life, just below the Netherlands and just above Iceland and Canada – Britain comes in at No.16. Ireland is also the ninth most equal country, just after Sweden and just before Finland.
Ireland is also No.9 among the 20 most democratic countries in the world. It is number 10 among the most peaceful, led by Iceland and New Zealand.
Ireland is No.4 in the world for attracting foreign investment, and No.6 for air travel, although, regretfully, we don’t appear at all in the table of railway passengers.
There are always plenty of commentators disparaging Ireland, but The Economist shows this country to be, on the whole, a progressive and open society.