1 Earlier in the week, the BBC screened a one-hour television programme about a priest in the diocese of Rapphoe, in the north-west of Ireland, who abused young boys and girls. During the hour, the presenter made plain that the priest's activities had been known, that the bishop's reaction had been to move the priest from one parish to another. One man described how he had been abused and how he had given the priest's name and the names of other victims to a panel of priests. The panel which included Fr Sean Brady, who is now the cardinal-archbishop of Armagh.
2 A shocking tale. A priest who abused youngsters, the recollections of some of those children, the failure of the bishop to prevent further abuse once they had been told, orally and in writing, about the priest - such were the elements of the tale. The programme, in the persons of the maker/presenter and a nationally-known commentator, sought to explain something of the power and position of the RC Church in 'Catholic Ireland'. Archival film of the 1932 Eurcharistic Congress in Dublin was used. So too, in contrast, was more recent film of extracts from Enda Kenny's speech to the Dail. Subsequent to that speech, the Republic of Ireland severed diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
3 The tale was so shocking, the conduct of the Church - the professional members - so cruel, that it did not require embellishment. Had the programme been broadcast on radio, there would have been no scope for photographs of Donegal landscapes and seascapes. No reddish skies overlooking undeveloped, primitive lakes and rias. In addition, there might have been no mood music either. Instead, the listeners might have heard the main witnesses, the presenter and commentator, and others without the distraction of those land- and seascapes, without the distraction of the music. The shocking tale could have been delivered as a Radio 4 programme.
3.1 However once the decision to taken to make a television programme, then those distracting additions follow. Programme time will be allocated to the pictures. The music will be added. There will be the impulse to aid the narrative by the inclusion of the contrived meeting, for instance, when, as in the programme, one of the men who was abused is filmed as he walks towards another man, a childhood friend, who was also abused. The other man is shown looking out to sea. He turns, the two men utter their lines of surprised greeting. Ah.
4 Meanwhile, whatever the merits of one medium compared with another, the substance of the programme remains to be addressed. The cardinal-archbishop of Armagh is not answerable to the Catholics-at-large. Commentators say that he is damaged, that his moral authority has been shot away. After all, he was a member of a panel which questioned one of the boys, which excluded the boy's father, from the interrogation, and which recorded the boy's testimony, including the names of other boys. Yet that priest, now the cardinal-archbishop, (and the other priests) did not blow the whistle, to use the contemporary phrase, when it became evident to them that their superiors at the time were not acting as they should have done. As a result, the abusing priest continued to abuse.
5 Of course the people should rise up. Of course they should throw the rascal out. Of course they won't. Instead, I expect there to be a silence from the Holy See, the appointment of a coajutor, the subsequent resignation, in due time, of the present cardinal-archbishop. We'll see.
6 And the imperatives which bear upon a television programme-maker? Yes, yes I acknowledge them. It might have been though that the tale was so strong that the presenter could have said 'Let's just hold back on the music and the sunset over loch-whatsitsname.
