Last night I did a brief interview with Paul Clarke on UTV and came
away (as I often do from broadcasts) feeling deeply dissatisfied with
my contribution. And as so often happens, it wasn’t what I said that
left me banging my head on the steering wheel, it was what I hadn’t
said.
The topic was the latest revelations about the hundreds of children whom Brendan Smyth abused
before he was ordained a priest and throughout his life as a priest.
His is a notorious case and one that has done cruel and irreparable
damage to the lives of so many. But the focus on Smyth and the damage he
and other priests have done to the Catholic Church and the children
they violated raises, I think, more general questions, some of which I think I have the answer to and some of which I don’t.