THE GRAND JURY REPORT

I have just read the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on child sex abuse in the Catholic church in the State of Pennsylvania. I have read the main report which runs to just over 300 pages, and skimmed the rest.

It is a disgusting document, the more so because it is a report by ordinary people who don't mince their words. Their outrage is palpable. The language is simple and direct and, as well as making the report very readable - if you have the stomach for it - increases its impact.

If that seems hard to understand, think about Julianne. She was taught without question that priests are superior to other adults, even superior to her own parents - because "they are God in the flesh." So when one of these flesh gods put his fingers in her vagina, who was she going to tell? Julianne was 14 when she was assaulted; now she's almost 70.

If that is not fairly direct language, I don't know what is. The point being discussed there is why it takes many of those abused so long to come forward and why the law should facilitate them when they do.

The style throughout is more like a conversation than a report. It is very direct and economical but no punches are pulled along the way.

Many readers are reported to have been upset at the sexual abuse passages. I found myself maybe less so. We here have been through so much of this. I was more upset by the reaction of the authorities than the abuse itself.

The report picks out a few examples of abusers from each diocese and retails their history in detail, reproducing original documents, most of which had been stored in secret archives until they were subpoenaed by the grand jury.

A summary version of every abuser is given in an appendix which runs to another 569 pages.

Morgan Costello

I couldn't help feeling I'd like to see a full report, on the lines of their examples, on Morgan Costello - his abusing but also the reactions of his superiors, his use of God and the little black book, his shielding by civil and canonical lawyers, his eventual defrocking, his subsequent accommodation by the diocese, his attempted trial, his death and why his funeral was private and the location of his grave not known.

Like many of the priests in the grand jury report he had direct access to altar boys, except in his initial assignment to the Cenacle convent in Killiney where we were under the wing of Mother Ross, God Bless her.

A narrow escape perhaps.

A Tale of Two Priests

Two priests from my youth whose lives took on very different shapes.

Above, Fr. Ken McCabe, whom I never met but who wrote me a story for the Shanganagh Valley News which I was editing in 1958. I heard no more from or about him until I read a piece in the Irish Times last year which told me, at least in part, what had happened to him since then. He blew the whistle on abuse in the Irish industrial schools and ran foul of both Church and State as a result.

He made a new start in London where he founded a home for boys in trouble, ministered there for forty years, and was attempting to replicate this in Ireland when he took ill. He died two months ago. He has been paid warm tributes on this site, in the Jesuit's Newsletter, and on a new Facebook page, set up after his death by some of those whose lives he helped to shape.

Below, Fr. Morgan Costello, whom I knew well. At least I thought I did. He was well in with the Diocese, wrote devotional pamphlets - including a life of Maria Goretti, and was chosen to promote the cause for canonisation of Edel Quinn and of Matt Talbot.

Two years ago, after an extensive police investigation, he was charged with indecently assaulting a young man in St. Catherine's in Meath St. in the late 1960s. In June of last year, the DPP decided not to pursue the charges. The DPP never gives a reason for this but Fr. Costello's first appearance in court was in a wheelchair, so his health was hardly the best and I don't know the condition of the alleged victim.

Two priests. Two very different outcomes.

Introibo ...

This is Fr. Morgan Costello.

As a young altar boy I served a load of his masses and a few Easter ceremonies. He was a young likeable priest on his first assignment. This was in a convent where he was chaplain around 1960.

It was around this time that he started writing religious pamphlets for Veritas, the Roman Catholic publishing company. The first pamphlet was a biography of Saint Maria Goretti, a young girl who had been killed while defending her virginity against an attempting rapist.

He moved from there to Castledermot, where I visited him and had a cup of tea and scones.

He moved from there to St. Catherine's, in Meath St. in Dublin's Liberties. I had meanwhile acquired a printing press and got an order from him for a book of baptism certificate blanks, which I duly provided, and fully filled in versions of which are now, no doubt, spread around the city and beyond.

That was the last I saw of him, but I was aware that he was well regarded in the Diocese. At least I assumed that to be the case, as he had been chosen to advance the causes for the beatification/canonisation of Edel Quinn and Matt Talbot.

And there my unremarkable story ends.

Until, that is, during the week in the course of a chat about the baptismal font in St. Catherine's, I mentioned his name to a former colleague. I was shocked when he indicated that Fr. Costello had been involved in abuse in Meath St.

I didn't pursue the matter then, but, today, I googled him and was further shocked and upset to find him charged with repeatedly buggering a young man, who was working in the church, over a period of two years (1967-69). He appeared in court in January 2010 and the case was listed for a hearing on 30 July 2012. The State has since decided not to prosecute the case and it is terminated. The Director of Public Prosecutions does not give reasons for such a move. Morgan Costello is no longer listed in the Dublin diocesan directory.

So why am I posting this when I wasn't the one abused?

I don't really know the answer. The initial shock has turned to anger. And I suppose, in a way, it just brings further home to me that the rational, relatively friendly, world I lived in as a youth has been falling apart in the last few years.

I worked in Jersey (CI) in 1961 and fell in love with the place. Now I find that while I was there, rampant child abuse was taking place in Haut de la Garenne and other places.

The church I grew up in has turned out to be rotten at the core. Even though perpetrated by a minority of priests, the scale of child sex abuse was enormous. Central HQ and others covered it up, and, at a broader level, have held on implacably to power, giving two fingers to the Second Vatican Council and jackbooting the faithfull in the face.

And, of course, there was more abuse, outside church and state institutions, in ordinary homes the length and breadth of the country.

The political system of governance which I had thought a democracy, in the full sense of that word, has turned out to be a sham and a scam.

The European Union, which I initially found inspiring, and which was meant, among other things, to be a counter weight to the USA, has turned out to be the lackey of the war mongering mad max USA administration. It has also failed in its duty of care to its citizens and has created one of the most horrible messes, short of outright war on the home front.

So there really isn't a lot of my youth, outside of my own family, whose integrity has not suffered over the last decades.

... ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.

Fat chance.