OPINION FROM A LURKER

From the comments to my post on Anglicans in England being received into the Roman Catholic Ordinariates:

Dear Grandmere Mimi

I'm usually a lurker, but I think I'll comment on this one.

I was at university in the UK, studying theology, when the whole issue of ordaining women started to become "hot". The truth of the matter is that, historically, the priesthood in the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Church has been nothing more than men's club designed to attract and retain an above average percentage of lazy males unwilling to work in the harsh, secular world.

In my time both at university and, much later, when I worked with a man who had left the Anglican Church over the issue and gone on to become ordained in the Orthodox Church, I have heard and read a number of theological arguments for an all-male priesthood, all of which hinge on the essential God-given nature of men and women.

What undermines all of these arguments, as far as I'm concerned, is the one thing that is hardly ever mentioned: the fact that in these churches priests are paid. And, in two of these churches, the Anglican and EO, the priest is also allowed to marry.

The effect of all of this is that a Christian man, but not a Christian woman, can choose to be a paid professional in an institution that is daubed as "Christ's Church".

In any argument and issue, it is always worth asking: who gains, in material terms, from this arrangement? (My emphasis)

As far as going over to Rome is concerned, by no means all stay - even David Virtue has had to admit this.

Jane Smith (Pretoria, South Africa)

Jane's commentary intrigued me so, that I decided to bump up her words to an opinion post.

The men's club label is difficult to dispute. In fact, I won't even try.

While the priesthood (along with the groves of academe) may tend to attract a fair number of lazy men who would have a difficult time making their way in the secular world, I'd estimate a higher percentage than Jane of men who enter the priesthood as idealists who wish to serve God and God's people.

I can't speak with authority about the Church of England or the Orthodox Church, but I've known a good many Roman Catholic priests and Episcopal priests, and I'd say the majority enter as idealists. Sadly, in far too many cases, (but not all!) the institution of the RCC drives good men to ruin or entirely out of the church. Less so in the Episcopal Church, in my experience, but the institution still takes its toll.

I have heard and read a number of theological arguments for an all-male priesthood, all of which hinge on the essential God-given nature of men and women.

Like Jane, I'm not impressed by the theological arguments about the God-given nature of men and women, which conclude that women are, by nature, unsuited to serve as clergy. The essential God-given nature of men and women is to be human. While I do not deny differences between men and women, the differences don't disqualify women to serve as clergy.

In any argument and issue, it is always worth asking: who gains, in material terms, from this arrangement?

The money quote (no pun intended), most certainly! Who benefits from the arrangements? And isn't it the status quo that is most often seen to be in need of protection? Whoever is in power, wants to retain power.

With regard to those who go over to Rome and then decide that they made a mistake, I suggest we leave the door open.

Jane, thanks for your commentary.

UPDATE: From IT in the comments:

I would certainly like to live in the the tidy sinecure of academe that is invoked here. That certainly isn't MY experience, where my research and grant-writing are more than a full time job, which I still have to combine with the other full time job of teaching and institutional administration that pays 9 months of my salary, and of course my national service responsibilities (reviewing, etc) to professional societies, journals, and funding organizations, including grant and paper review, committee service, and far too many plane trips.

I'm sure there are some living cushy lives of privilege, but they aren't in my building.

NOT "UNJUST DISCRIMINATION" TO FIRE GAYS - USCCB

In All Things at America Magazine posts a letter sent to the members of Congress by the USCCB (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) on Same-Sex Marriage and ENDA

The Catholic Church makes an important distinction between actions and inclination. While the Church is ardently opposed to all unjust discrimination on the grounds of sexual inclination, whether homosexual or heterosexual, it does teach that all sexual acts outside of a marriage between one man and one woman are morally wrong. The Catholic Church’s teaching cannot, therefore, be equated with “unjust discrimination,” because it is based on fundamental truths about the human person and personal conduct. Homosexual conduct is categorically closed to the transmission of life, and does not reflect or respect the personal complementarity of man and woman. In contrast to sexual conduct within marriage between one man and one woman—which does serve both the good of each married person and the good of society— heterosexual and homosexual conduct outside of marriage has no claim to special protection bythe state.

Just as every other group in our society, the Catholic Church enjoys the same rights to hold to its beliefs, organize itself around them, and argue for them in the public square. This is guaranteed by our Constitution. This includes the right to teach what it holds to be the truth concerning homosexual conduct—and to act as an employer consistent with that truth—without the threat of government sanction.

The USCCB continues to oppose “unjust discrimination” against people with a homosexual inclination, but we cannot support a bill – such as ENDA in its current form – that would legally affirm and specially protect any sexual conduct outside of marriage.

H/T to Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish, who says:

Notice that there is no attempt here to argue that straight people who violate church doctrine - anyone who masturbates or uses contraception, is divorced or re-married - should not be protected from discrimination. It is always just the gays who are the target, because their identity inherently proves their iniquity, while most straight people can hide theirs. Notice also that the focus here is entirely on the victims of discrimination, not the perpetrators.

So the church that emerged from a man who preached the story of the good Samaritan, is now in the business of identifying Samaritans and ensuring they remain the targets of discrimination in the workplace. It does not matter whether they are good at their job; their orientation, even if no one even knows it results in sodomy, is sufficient to allow them to be fired and no law be broken.

And what about the unmarried folks? Must each single employee affirm that she/he is not sexually active?

There are church laws and church laws - laws that must not be transgressed by the employees of Roman Catholic institutions and other laws that may be transgressed and will not trigger job termination. My goodness! That sounds an awful lot like "unjust discrimination".

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church has "...the right to teach what it holds to be the truth concerning homosexual conduct...", but the church does not have the right to impose those teachings on the rest of us who do not belong to the fold.

Not too very long ago, I included Andrew's blog in my Google Reader, but he more than monopolizes the space with his vast number of new posts. I say that only because I'm jealous of and daunted by his prolificity. Does he even take potty breaks?

Thanks to Wade for the link.

"A CHURCH MARY CAN LOVE"

From Nicholas Kristof's column at the New York Times titled "A Church Mary Can Love":

I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?

Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems. It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”

That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old boys’ clubs.
....

The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut. The same faith that was so pioneering that it had Junia as a female apostle way back in the first century can’t even have a woman as the lowliest parish priest. Female deacons, permitted for centuries, are banned today.

That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.
....

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.

Yes, there is the other Catholic Church, the church which does not get the headines, the church in which my family and friends remain and which they don't even recognize when they read the headlines, the church that serves the least amongst us, not only in mission fields abroad, but mission fields here at home, and carries on with the work of the Gospel in spite of the failures of their leadership.

To my family and friends within the Roman Catholic Church who remain to do the work of the Lord, I offer you my prayers, my encouragement, and my support. If I could ask one thing of you, and I freely admit that I, as an outsider, have no right to ask anything of you, and yet I am bold to do so: Please do not feel compelled to defend the indefensible. Tell me about your church on the ground. Tell me about your ministries. I see in my own town that God's kingdom is brought into reality right here and right now by faithful members of the Body of Christ, who are also faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church. Tell me your stories, for I know the good news is plentiful.

SCAPEGOATING? I REPORT, YOU DECIDE

Last Saturday, I posted a link to a story in the Guardian about an article that would appear today in a German news magazine on the child abuse scandal in the pope's former archdiocese. The excerpts below are from Der Spiegel.

Catholic Church officials assigned full responsibility for the reassignment of a known pedophilic priest to retired vicar general Gerhard Gruber who served as deputy to Joseph Ratzinger when he was archbishop. Gruber is now challenging a Church statement that he "acted on his own authority," a claim he says was never discussed with him.
....

Gruber's friends say that the old man was only familiar with parts of the statement, that he was apparently being used as a scapegoat and that he was also under additional emotional pressure. To everyone's surprise, Gruber wrote an open letter in which he qualified the archdiocese's statement, writing that he did not sign any documents over which he had no influence. He also noted that he was "very upset" about the "manner in which the incidents were portrayed" by the archdiocese. "And the phrase 'acted on his own authority' also wasn't discussed with me," he wrote.

The archdiocese was unwilling to comment on the accusations, except to state it continued to believe that the former vicar general had acted on his own authority in the case of Peter H., and that he had admitted to having made mistakes. Gruber has gone on a trip to recuperate from "weeks that have been very stressful for me." His loyalty is greatly appreciated in Munich. Archbishop Reinhard Marx, Gruber writes, has sent him his best wishes and "expressed his appreciation for my 'participation'."

I report on the Guardian's report on Der Spiegel's report, and you decide.

FR. HANS KUNG'S LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Fr. Hans Kung in the Irish Times:

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

Kung lists the missed opportunities, the directions Benedict XVI could have taken and did not. He notes the regressive actions of the pope which moved the Roman Catholic Church away from the spirit of Vatican II.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

The letter is brilliant, and, in my opinion, demonstrates the words of a prophet. Fr. Kung lays out his suggestions for six steps to move forward to turn the dire situation around. The final step is for the pope to call an ecumenical council.

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.

Kung notes what I consider to be the pope's slap in the face to Anglicans.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

Although I've quoted large chunks of the letter, I suggest that you read the entire missive. I hope the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, including the Bishop of Rome, read the letter and give serious consideration to the implementation of Kung's suggestions.

ANOTHER INSIDER OPINION

About a week ago, I added Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish to my Google Reader. New posts appear on his blog with amazing speed. I haven't counted the average number of posts in a single day, but I'm sure it's quite high. His blog is exhausting but worth reading. I wonder - does Andrew even take bathroom breaks?

His post today titled Our Screwed Up Priests is spot on. I know that a good many of you disagree that celibacy and child abuse are related, but I stand by my opinion that there is a connection. By no means am I saying that mandatory celibacy is the sole cause of the abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church - just that enforced celibacy is in the equation.

Sullivan quotes from an interview on NPR with "Dr. Leslie Lothstein [who] has treated more than 300 Catholic priests" at one of the psychiatric centers to which priests were sent for treatment.

One of the biggest challenges in treating priests, Lothstein says, is that they don't have the same kind of sexual experiences -- or history of talking about such experiences -- that an ordinary adult may have. "Many of the priests tend to be psychosexually immature," he says. "They've never taken a course in healthy sexuality."

He says some of them have gone into minor seminary at age 14 and developed "a sense of self without having appropriate lines of dating, meeting other people, experimenting with touch, kissing, ordinary sexuality."

Back in the day, some boys entered seminary at age 13, when they finished elementary school, however I gather that now one must be 18, at the youngest, to be considered as a candidate for seminary.

Sullivan says:

If celibacy is a mature choice, it can be a wonderful act of self-giving. But when mandatory for all, it prevents many healthy men from entering the priesthood, offers a cover for those terrified of their own sexuality and thereby creates a priesthood dominated by the emotionally immature.

Exactly.

MARCIAL MACIEL OF THE LEGION OF CHRIST

From NOLA.com by Bruce Nolan:

Jason Berry, the New Orleans writer, reported this week that the founder of the Legion of Christ, a global order of Catholic priests, for years deployed lavish gifts and envelopes of cash to powerful Vatican cardinals and other officials to win support for his work before his eventual exposure as a predator.

Berry said the gifts help explain why the Rev. Marcial Maciel Delgollado and his fast-growing order enjoyed powerful allies at the Vatican, even after nine men filed formal charges in the late 1990s that he had sexually abused them as young seminarians.

The two-part report on Maciel’s gifts, published last week and Monday in the National Catholic Reporter, comes after the Legion’s admission last year that the charismatic Maciel led a secret life, fathered a daughter in his native Mexico and supported her and her mother with donations diverted from the Legion.

The order has also acknowledged that Maciel molested the seminarians. And it has not disputed the claims of two men in Mexico who said they are his sons by a second woman, also supported by donations to the Legion.

Jason Berry covered the child abuse stories in south Louisiana back in the 1980s. Links to stories by Berry from 1985 in the Acadiana Times on Gilbert Gauthé, a notorious priest-abuser are here and here.

Berry has also published books on the subject:

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Vows of Silence

ANOTHER VIEW FROM THE INSIDE

From Maureen Dowd at the New York Times:

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.

I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.

I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.

I may have to reverse my opinion of Maureen Dowd's writing in the NYT. For some time, I haven't liked a good many of her columns because her writing had become too flip, glib, and shallow to suit me, but this is the second excellent column in only a couple of weeks. Read the entire column. Maureen scores as she points out how the exclusion of women from the highest levels of authority causes dysfunction in the very structure of the Roman Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, I will no longer be able to read Maureen Dowd, when the NYT begins to levy a charge to read their online version.

Thanks to Ellie for the link.

UPPING THE ANTE

From the New York Times:

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.
....

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
....

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own private thoughts and was not “an official statement” from the Vatican.

Posted without commentary.

MORE ON THE CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

After so many posts that I've lost count, I'm pretty well played out with commentary on the child abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church throughout countries in Europe. Turns out that the abuse was not simply an anomaly in the materialist United States of America.

I probably have one more post in me before I reach true catharsis, a post outlining the worst of my personal grievances with the RCC, which may come in due time. For now I offer the best of the links which have come my way recently from the folks who truly keep Wounded Bird going, my faithful stringers. As I said in my comments, keep the cards and letters coming (preferably with cash enclosed), because I couldn't do this without you ;-). So. Instead of more commentary, I give you links and brief quotes from several news sources, to opinions and articles on the subject. I include one opinion column on the expulsion of two little girls from their Roman Catholic school because their mothers are lesbians.

From Andrew Brown's blog at the Guardian:

I said there was something extraordinary and rather shocking hidden in Mgr Charles Scicluna's interview last week. It's hidden in plain sight, so obvious that it has so far been invisible: there was no Vatican conspiracy. There was no Vatican cover-up.

Instead of one centrally ordered cover-up, there were hundreds of little local ones. They didn't require special regulations. They grew quite naturally out of the clerical culture. They worked by silence and omission rather than anything more obviously sinister. The scandal is going to be much worse as a result.

I'd concluded that the cover-up was handled from central command at the Vatican, because a similar pattern of protecting the institution rather than the children was evidenced in different parts of the world. Andrew Brown and Mgr Scicluna say otherwise, and they are probably right.

Thanks to Cathy and Lapin for the link.


From the New York Times:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

Thanks to Ann and Lapin.

The NYT's link to the documents of the lawsuits against Fr Lawrence Murphy contain information that is truly shocking.


From CNN:

An Irish bishop resigned amid a Catholic church sex abuse scandal, apologizing in a statement Wednesday for any abuse that occurred in his diocese.

Bishop John Magee of the diocese of Cloyne said he tendered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on March 9.

"I have been informed today that it has been accepted, and as I depart, I want to offer once again my sincere apologies to any person who has been abused by any priest of the Diocese of Cloyne during my time as bishop or at any time," Magee said in a statement posted on the diocese Web site.

Thanks to Ann.


From Patrick Boyle at The Huffington Post:

With depressing regularity, the men who run the Catholic Church do something that reminds me of why I'm part of the fastest growing religion in the country: Raised Catholic.

You know the type. Someone asks us what our religion is, and we act like you've stumped us on a game show. "Well," we explain, "I was raised Catholic, but ..."

The reasons for the "but" are many, and the archbishop of Denver just handed us another: He kicked two little girls out of Catholic school because they are being raised by a lesbian couple.

Thanks to Ann V.

A CAUTIONARY WORD....

From the comments to the post at Thinking Anglicans on Michael Poon's paper titled "The Anglican Communion as Communion of Churches: on the historic significance of the Anglican Covenant", comes a cautionary word from a member of the Roman Catholic Church:

Speaking as a very progressive Vatican II Catholic, the last thing Anglicans need is central authority and a magesterium. The Reformation was a good thing and millions of us are praying for a second Reformation in the Latin Rite Churches. The Bishop of Rome would be a nice unifying symbol but should have no more authority than any other bishop and he should be elected by lay people and clergy. The present system is in a state of decay and it is on the verge of imploding. Anglicans have a better system, especially Anglicans such as those in the American Episcopal Church. The minute fundamentalists try to force their views down the throats of their fellow Christians, is the minute the people of God need to stand up and say enough! May the structure of Anglican autonomy continue and show the rest of the Catholic and Orthodox world that this way is preferable and more in keeping with the early Church.

Posted by: Chris Smith on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 9:55pm GMT

Well-spoken, Chris Smith. Thank you.

Why is it that so many within the Anglican Communion cannot see the treasure that is the Anglican way? The creeds, common worship, and the bonds of affection are sufficient. If the bonds of affection are not present, the Covenant cannot force their presence. The Archbishop of Canterbury should be, as Chris says, "a nice unifying symbol but should have no more authority than any other bishop". And rather than a Covenant, we might consider Chris' other suggestion, "he should be elected by lay people and clergy".

Thanks to Lapin for drawing the comment to my attention.

THE SAGA OF CHILD ABUSE IN IRELAND CONTINUES

From the Belfast Telegraph:

Pressure was today piling on the Bishop of Derry over his involvement in an alleged compensation cover-up.

After revelations in the Belfast Telegraph yesterday over a settlement to an abuse victim, Dr Seamus Hegarty has confirmed that his diocese facilitated a confidentiality clause in an out-of-court settlement in 2000.

Dr Hegarty was one of three priests named in a confidential civil settlement after an eight-year-old girl was abused over a decade from 1979.

Read the rest of the article. Why now? Why the years of silence after the series of revelations of child abuse and cover-up by Roman Catholic clergy in the US? I left the Roman Catholic Church 14 years ago because of the local stories of child abuse and cover-up in my diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. With scant national media coverage, the story stayed under the radar for several years until stories of child abuse began to surface all over the US.

Why the several intervening years of relative quiet before the stories of abuse come to light in Europe, years during which the powers in the church were able to say that the abusive behavior was mainly confined to the US? I'm truly puzzled by the years-long gaps.

From several days ago in the Guardian:

Ireland's most senior Catholic cleric tonight faced down calls to resign after revealing that he was at a secret tribunal where sex abuse victims were made to take an oath of silence.

Cardinal Sean Brady said that he had attended two meetings in 1975 concerning Father Brendan Smyth, a notorious paedophile, where two of Smyth's victims signed an affidavit promising to discuss their claims only with a specified priest.
....

"Frankly I don't believe that this is a resigning matter," Brady said.

The tribunal was held behind closed doors in 1975. Smyth was accused of sexually abusing two 10-year-olds, but the church did not inform the gardai about the allegations at the time. It was only in 1994, after a documentary about Smyth, that the church admitted it had known about his paedophilia and moved him around Ireland, Britain and the US, where he continued to abuse children.

Eight and ten year old children! I want to let this story go, but I can't. It was no small thing for me to leave the church in which I had spent the greater part of my life, but I could not stay. When I went to mass, I was agitated to such an extent that I had to stop attending. I could not pay my tithe. When I went to write a check, my hand froze. I don't want this post to be all about me. What I suffered is nothing compared to the horrors that the children and their families suffered. So why do I go on about the matter? To show that the damage does not stop with the children who were abused and their families? To vent? I don't know, but a sense of horror akin to the horror I felt when the story of the abusive behavior first broke in my diocese wells up within. A flashback, one might say.

Lord, have mercy on us all!