Madam, - I write in relation to the letter of November 3rd from Dr Michael Mullaney, who was a canon law adviser to the Ferns Inquiry, concerning my references on radio to the appalling treatment of paedophilia and child sex abuse in the book, Canon Law: Letter and Spirit, which was published in late 1995.
Dr Mullaney asks us to accept that the views expressed on these subjects in that book were "only the opinion of one single individual". The truth is somewhat more complex than appears from his letter.
We are dealing here with a very major and prestigious volume of over 1,000 pages of commentary on the canon law which was published by the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland. It purported to have been compiled over a period of 12 years by "expert contributors" from Ireland, Britain and Canada and to be "not only pastoral but scholarly". It was targeted at bishops, priests and religious to whom it offered guidance on canon law interpretation and application.
The book stated that "in the course of its compilation, a vast amount of research and of academic endeavour has been employed by so many accomplished and dedicated canonists".
Far from being the opinion of one single individual, the passages to which I referred were the only commentaries in the book on the very important issues of paedophilia and abuse by clergy of children.
The book was edited by an editorial board which, presumably, read the text and took care to exclude any egregious error or any misstatement on important issues. The editorial board consisted of Monsignor Gerard Sheehy, one of Ireland's most senior canon lawyers, a president of two Dublin canon law courts and a consultor to the Roman Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of the Laws of the Church, who acted as chairman. The editors also included three other senior canon law judges, one of whom was Fr Aidan McGrath, then president of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, which had published the work.
The book is a continuous text and at no point does the editorial board disclaim or distance itself from the view of its "expert canonists".
It is true that in 2003, one of the editors, Fr Aidan McGrath, for the first time sought to publicly distance himself from some of the less palatable paragraphs to which I had then drawn public attention. In his article in the Irish Theological Quarterly that year, which was no doubt prompted by the publicity that I and The Irish Times had given to the treatment of the subject in the 1995 book, Fr McGrath merely mentions himself "as one who took part in the project".
He does not mention his own editorial responsibility for publishing this guidance for bishops and priests, or explain why he and his fellow members of the editorial board thought that it was appropriate to offer the views in question as guidance to the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church in a major work published by a prestigious Canon Law Society of which he was president.
He does mention the late Monsignor Gerard Sheehy as chairman of the editorial board, but not his own membership.
Was it that the editors failed to read the text? Or did not some or all of the editorial board consider that the commentary in question was good commentary and sound advice for bishops and priests? It is hard to understand how such a treatment of clerical paedophilia and child abuse could have escaped the attention of the editorial board.
To discover the identity of the author of the passages in question, the reader would have to consult a table at page 996 of the work. The text is definitely not labelled or offered as the opinion of one single individual.
Nor is Fr McGrath's Irish Theological Quarterly article in question the "robust critique" now claimed by Dr Mullaney. It is a light feather-duster of an article which draws the predictable distinction between law and commentary and avoids all editorial responsibility by attributing responsibility to a single contributor as though there was no editor.
But the fundamental question remains. Why were the attitudes embodied in the 1995 book so much more typical of the approach taken by bishops and clergy in the 20 years from 1975 to 1995?
The depressing conclusion is that the 1995 book was an absolutely accurate portrayal of the awful attitudes which brought us to this sorry state. From 1995 onwards, things began to improve, as Dr Mullaney claims, but by then most of the more spectacular damage had been done. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL McDOWELL TD, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.