Integrity in Public & Private Life
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:01PM
Belfast 13 March 2010
Malachi O’Doherty tells it well. We were hooked a minute into his talk about integrity in public and private life when he took us to west Belfast in the fifties and roads thronged with onlookers awaiting the arrival of Cardinal Conway’s stately convoy and the excitement of the crowd palpable. Fifty years ago and now almost unimaginable! A different era: a different people!
The illustration was an effective reminder of how changed our moral world is.
When he addressed us this morning we were waiting to hear what the Pope’s Pastoral Letter would contain and we were speculating on whether or not Cardinal Brady’s period of reflection would culminate this weekend with his resignation. The debate wasn’t primarily about the dreadful abuses in Catholic institutions but it’s as if the Church’s fall from grace exemplifies the moral wilderness we’re in. If you can’t trust one of the primary defenders of decent moral values, who can you trust?
Ireland, my one and only love, where God and Caesar are hand in glove: James Joyce.
There’s nothing new under sun and so it is with corruption in high places. But there’s been in recent times a remarkable confluence of unpleasant revelations about revered establishments and prominent people which has battered our confidence and made us unhealthily cynical.
Malachi titillated us when he talked about the super injunction, a legal procedure unknown to most of us, but familiar to politicians and others with powerful images to protect. It’s the uber- injunction that prevents our discovering who’s taken out an injunction against whom. So you think it’s all out there in the public domain? You’d be surprised to know who doesn’t want us talking! Malachi refrained from the naming of names. But we reacted to each of his hints imagining that we knew who the references were to.
His focus was primarily local and mainly northern with references to sackings in the Northern Ireland Water Service over contracts; the fiddling of MP’s expenses; the falling into private hands of an expansive brown field site at Nelson Street, Belfast, formerly held by the N.I. Housing Executive as a potential site for social housing etc. etc.
Malachi put some interesting spins on the questions surrounding Peter and Iris Robinson, Gerry Adams and Cardinal Brady.
Most of us would agree that it’s self-evident that sexual behaviour between consenting adults is a matter for the consenting parties, their families and their consciences but we’re rightly outraged and possibly satisfied when the misbehaving actors are self-appointed moral guardians for the rest of us. But isn’t that kind of moral hypocrisy endemic in this country? And everybody’s commenting on it as though it were something novel. Is it not more interesting to ask ourselves why we’re so preoccupied with the sexual shenanigans when we should be paying more attention to signs of political corruption and financial chicanery? And there’ll be more to come.
Wasn’t it interesting that the revelations about Gerry Adam’s family followed so swiftly on the Robinson affair? Do you believe this was a coincidence? Are there unseen spooks and puppet masters out there?
In the ‘Adams Case’ again we’re more fascinated with evidence of sexual impropriety in his family than his denial of being an IRA leader responsible for bombings, murders and ‘disappearances’. Do we care more about one activity than the other?
Malachi speculated that the Pope’s letter would not deal with the essential issues that have led to a plague of sexual abuse in the Church namely its lack of openness and transparency and the exclusion of the laity from the Church’s governance. He suggested that the Church’s own laws were a major contributing factor to the abuse and the protection of the abusers. In one sense Cardinal Brady had acted with integrity and that was in the context of Canon Law and in particular, Crimen Solicitationis, which requires leaders of the Church to deal with priests’ offences against morality within the rules of the Church.
What can we learn from the above?
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every institution has an unhealthy tendency towards expansion and self-protection. The importance of Transparency, Openness and Accountability in organizations including governments is paramount.
We ought to be thankful for a relatively free press. We could live in Russia where journalists are murdered with impunity or in Iran where they’re banged up without the decency of an open trial. We need a vigilant public and not one that’s satisfied with the inanities of reality TV.
Thomas Jefferson said, When people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fear their people there is liberty.
