Jill Stephenson and Andrew Hook
Professor Tom Devine
On Sunday, when the allegations against Cardinal Keith O’Brien broke in the Observer newspaper, I was on duty in the church at St Andrews for five o’clock mass. As I handed out the order for mass I didn’t discuss the matter with parishioners; nor was it a subject when I went into the sacristy and the priest was preparing for the service. Before I left I lit two candles, one for the cardinal, the other for his four accusers.
But prayer cannot disperse my puzzlement and unease, because there are questions arising out of this story which I have not seen or heard being raised by the many commentators. We are informed that Cardinal O’Brien has had allegations of ‘inappropriate behaviour’, an ‘inappropriate relationship’, an ‘inappropriate approach’, ‘inappropriate contact’, and an ‘intimate situation’ (the Observer’s phrases *) made against him variously by three priests and a former priest, and that their allegations were given to the pope’s representative in the UK, Antonio Mennini, in early February.
The earliest of the allegations dates back to 1980, when the cardinal was rector of St Andrew’s College, Drygrange, and spiritual director of a then 20-year-old seminarian, who claims that O’Brien made an ‘inappropriate approach’ * after night prayers. The complainant said he was too frightened to report the incident, and suffered a change of personality, becoming depressed. He was ordained, but told Mennini that he resigned the priesthood when O’Brien was promoted to bishop. ‘I knew then he would always have power over me,’ the priest stated. ‘It was assumed I left the priesthood to get married. I did not. I left to preserve my integrity.’ (The complainant is now married).
The second complainant, designated ‘Priest A’ by the Observer, stated that he was settled in a parish when, he alleges, he was visited by O’Brien and ‘inappropriate contact’ * between the two took place.
The third complainant, ‘Priest B’, alleges that when starting his ministry in the 1980s he was invited to spend a week ‘getting to know’ O’Brien (by then the archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh) at his official residence in Edinburgh. ‘Priest B’s’ statement alleges he found himself the object of ‘unwanted behaviour’ * by O’Brien after a late-night drinking session.
‘Priest C’ was a young priest being counselled by O’Brien for personal problems. His statement claims that O’Brien used night prayers as an excuse for ‘inappropriate contact’ *. The pair stayed in contact and priest C’s statement alleges the now cardinal engineered at least one other ‘intimate situation’ *. ‘Priest C’ said that O’Brien is charismatic, and being sought out by a superior who was supposed to be guiding him was troubling and flattering.
Let us subject the Observer article to textual analysis. This is not pedantry, since the difference in a letter or even a quotation mark can be significant. The esteemed literary critic F O Matthiesen’s fascination with and explanation of Herman Melville’s phrase ‘soiled fish of the sea’ in the novel ‘White Jacket’ was misguided. A compositor who set the novel had misread the word ‘coiled’.
I have put an asterisk against the phrases ‘’inappropriate behaviour,’ an ‘inappropriate relationship,’ an ‘inappropriate approach,’ ‘inappropriate contact,’ and an ‘intimate situation’ which are used in the Observer article because I am confused as to their origin and meaning. Were these phrases, which are not in quotation marks in the Observer article, actually used by the complainants, or are these generic phrases which are used widely in abuse allegations and which the newspaper used because it could not publish the explicit accusations?
We have been told that for ‘legal reasons’ the explicit nature of these allegations cannot be disclosed. This is – so far, at least, and likely to remain so – a civil and not a legal matter being investigated by the police. A statement by Cardinal O’Brien said that he is contesting the allegations and seeking legal advice.
Was the Observer given the specific details of the accusations by the former priest and three priests? If so, did the newspaper not publish them because of offense to public taste, or because of a possible legal challenge by the cardinal? But when, and to whom, will the specific details of these phrases be disclosed? To the Catholic Church’s investigators? To the cardinal’s lawyers? I contend that these generalised enigmatic allegations which have been placed in the public domain may create confusion, suspicion, and, in some quarters, salaciousness, to the cardinal’s disadvantage.
Why have the three unnamed priests and the former unnamed priest left it so long to complain to the Catholic Church about these alleged incidents, the majority of which occurred around 30 years ago? The former priest supplied a reason when he told the newspaper: ‘You have to understand the relationship between a bishop and a priest. At your ordination, you take a vow to be obedient to him. He’s more than your boss, more than the CEO of your company. He has immense power over you. He can move you, freeze you out, bring you into the fold…he controls every aspect of your life. You can’t just kick him in the balls’.
This unnamed man evidently left the church because of the cardinal’s alleged behaviour. The others remained, but kept silent. They seem to have been frightened of victimisation if they made an official complaint; yet by remaining silent surely they were aware that they could be exposing other priests to the same traumatic events which they alleged happened to them. Is there not a question of moral responsibility here, especially for a priest?
There are many more questions. When did the former priest and the three priests share their allegations between themselves against the cardinal? When did they decide to make collective complaints to the church authorities? When and why did they decide to speak to the Observer?
It has been stated that the allegations were made public to prevent the cardinal from going to Rome to vote in the election of a new pope. Were the complainants worried about the possibility that Cardinal O’Brien could be considered for the highest office in the Catholic Church? This is unrealistic, at his age, and given the competition from younger and far better known cardinals. The four accusers told the Observer of their fear that, if the cardinal went to Rome to participate in the election of a new pope, the Catholic Church would not address fully their complaints, so they did not trust their church.
But why were these allegations not brought to the attention of the church authorities before O’Brien, created a cardinal in 2003, went to Rome to take part in the 2005 papal conclave which elected Pope Benedict XV1, at a time when the church was beginning to take seriously allegations that some of their priests were abusers? Why were the complaints which pre-dated 1985 not made to the church when O’Brien was made archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in that year, and might therefore have stopped his appointment to prevent him having suzerainty over the priests in the diocese?
In the Scottish Review I have written candidly about my own experience of sexual abuse when I was at primary school, so I can speak with some authority about the effects of abuse on the victim, and agree entirely that the complaints of the abused must be taken seriously, irrespective of age. In the case of minors who have suffered abuse, it is proper to preserve their anonymity. But in recent years adults have not only spoken out, but named themselves as victims to encourage others who have been abused to come forward.
In the investigation which the Roman Catholic Church is said to be already carrying out into the allegations against O’Brien, are the details of the accusations, and the names of the accusers, to be kept from the cardinal and from the public? If so, silence will only stimulate more salacious interest in some quarters, and Cardinal Keith O’Brien, a broken man beyond the biblical span, his long spiritual service now in doubt through these allegations, will be denied the fairness that the legal process would have given him.
As the respected historian Professor Tom Devine has said: ‘in the cause of transparency and indeed fairness to all, it is now time for O’Brien’s anonymous accusers to step forward into the public domain. If Catholicism in Scotland is to move on from this tragic affair a number of serious questions urgently require frank and honest answers from all concerned. The nation’s Catholics deserve nothing less’.
Lorn Macintyre is a writer and poet
