Eamonn Casey’s criminality and betrayal of trust unveiled

The name of the late Bishop Eamonn Casey will always be drawn down whenever the Catholic Church’s brutal and suffocating – and thankfully, former – stranglehold on the people of this country is discussed.

Born in Firies, he became Fr Casey more than 70 years ago and it only took him 18 years to become the Bishop of Kerry in 1969. He was clearly a rising star in the Church, a man with a track record for dedicated service to Irish exiles in England.

His outgoing, bubbly and ‘man of action’ personality all added to the image of a cleric in tune with the emerging mood and rising tide of a much more confident Ireland. His well-known taste for fine wine and fast cars was overlooked as a kind of nod towards an acceptance of the need for a more modern church.

But, as we all know now, it was all a show, a fraud, a facade behind which lurked a much more sinister personality, that of a sexual predator. Eamonn Casey was a man who abused his own niece, a member of his own family; he had a lengthy and secret sexual relationship with his much-younger, distant American cousin Annie Murphy during his time as Bishop of Kerry in the early ‘70s. That relationship produced a little baby boy who he refused to acknowledge.

All this took place while outwardly he was a man of God and loyal to his priestly vows including celibacy.

He cynically confessed this relationship to priest colleagues and accepted absolution in the wilful absence of any resolution of amend; and then carried on regardless.

He betrayed the most pressing duty of a father to his child, which is to acknowledge, nurture, protect and care for your own flesh and blood. First, he wanted his son to be adopted and forgotten about, but when Annie Murphy refused he effectively banished his child into a life of secrecy in America with his mother.

He told Ms Murphy: “He’s not my son. He’s entirely yours now.”

Monday night’s RTÉ/Irish Mail on Sunday television documentary gave a full impression of the darkness that lurked in Eamonn Casey’s heart. For the reasons made clear in the documentary, he was a reprehensible character whose dreadful misbehaviour can never be redeemed by the good work he did in helping to found Trócaire and the personal physical courage he displayed during the murderous attack on those attending the funeral of Archbishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador in 1980.

Eamonn Casey is not the reason the Catholic Church has fallen into such disrepute – perhaps even irrelevance – here in Ireland and throughout the world. But he allows for the shorthand explanation as to why people have turned away, why today people are dealing direct with whatever spirituality they retain, why most people are ploughing their own furrows.

This week’s television documentary was a worthy and timely reminder of a gross betrayal of trust by Eamonn Casey on a personal level and of the same betrayal by the Church in this country and beyond.

The documentary tells us that we must never forget how we got here, lest we relax into some kind of self-maiming, ill-conceived act of forgiveness that may return quasi and/or actual civic authority to a Church that should never have had it in the first place.