Tony Flannery: The Judge and the Christian Brothers

For the past week the media have been full of the altercation between the judge and the Christian Brothers. I have been saddened by the whole affair. Sad, of course, for the many people whose lives were damaged by various forms of abuse at the hands of certain brothers.

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But also sad for the brothers themselves, the majority of whom did not abuse anybody, but gave great service in their schools, and opened up possibilities for generations of young men, especially in the second half of the last century.

I have believed for a long time that the nature of the Christian Brothers as an institution, and the formation they got in the last century, was a disaster waiting to happen. They recruited young boys, and took them into the institutional life of the brothers at as young as fourteen years of age. From the start they lived a very enclosed life. They were trained as teachers, both primary and secondary, but any education they got in spirituality or theology was usually very inadequate. More problematic, any chance to develop their personality and come to know themselves through those crucial teenage years was, I believe, even more inadequate. In those times, during which I was young myself, I look back now on the moral teaching of the Church as primitive to say the least. It was guilt inducing, and laced with the fear of a judgmental God and eternal punishment. All of this inevitably led to a great deal of repression and stunted emotional development. Of course not all members of the Christian Brothers suffered in this way. Some were able to rise above it and develop into full human beings. But we know now that many didn’t, and emotional and sexual frustrations emerged in unnatural and very damaging ways. This is why, while I abhor what some did to the young people in their charge, I am slow to stand in judgment over them. A lot of the blame must rest with Church teaching and practice at the time, and also the culture of the society in which we grew up.
What are left of the brothers now in Ireland are largely men in the later years of their lives, and what must it be like for them to have all this ignominy poured on them? Do they all deserve to be painted with the same brush? I was not educated by the brothers, but many of my generation were, and got a great start in life. I would have liked to have heard some of those voices raised in recent days reminding us that there is another side to the story of the brothers and their presence in the Irish education system.

My normal paper of choice is the Irish Times. I get it on my iPad in the morning. But I notice, sadly, that in recent times some of its commentators have become almost stridently moralistic, which comes across to me as very similar to the bishops of old. This has been especially the case in reporting the recent decision by the judge to have the names of all brothers, and former brothers, printed in a national newspaper. Their leader, Br. Gibson, is getting particular abuse. I don’t know how many times in the past week writers in the paper fulminated about his lack of Christianity and morality. His statement, which I thought made a great deal of sense, choosing mediation rather than very expensive legal processes which would benefit the legal profession far more than the abused, got the most cursory mention in the paper.
I am aware of people who wrote letters to the editor giving what I would regard as a more balanced view of the situation, but they weren’t published. The Christian Brothers now are the easiest of targets for the people on the moral high ground, of whom there are many today. I do agree that people who have been hurt in any way should be helped, in so far as that is possible, to find healing and peace. But that does not come through outright judgment and condemnation, no matter how large the award. For peace to come and rest on a person, the judgment needs to be flavoured with compassion and forgiveness. I have learned that from my own experience of child sexual abuse.