Thread by @GibsonWrites

Before Sinead O’Connor disappears from the timeline I think it’s important in honoring her legacy and also getting the history and dynamic of the Catholic clergy abuse scandal to clarify a few things... 1/17

https://twitter.com/RickGarnett/status/1685412812997160960

One is that despite efforts to denigrate her and her actions in denouncing church abuse during her 1992 SNL appearance or even, as in Rick's case, to deny that she was addressing clergy abuse let’s be clear: she was talking about clergy abuse. 2/17

Just look: Sinead changed the lyrics of the Bob Marley song “War” that she performed to include child sex abuse as an injustice and she later said that shortly before the SNL gig ... 3/17

...she had read “an article about families who had been trying to lodge complaints against the church for sexual abuse, and they were being silenced.” I’m not sure it could be clearer: Sinead O'Connor was addressing abuse in the church of all kinds, esp child sex abuse ... 4/17

What is also troubling however is the notion conveyed in much of the coverage that Sinead O’Connor was prescient as well as prophetic, that she was denouncing clergy abuse that she knew about but few others did--until the 2002 Boston Globe revelations. That is not true. 5/17

In the US the first wave of clergy sex abuse revelations began in 1984 with reporting by Jason Berry and others on the Louisiana priest-abuser Gilbert Gauthé, which led to hundreds of other stories about clergy abuse elsewhere... 6/17

The revelations were such that the US bishops responded by adopting policy guidelines—not binding rules—to address the abuse crisis. This went on throughout the late 80s, along with assurances that all had been taken care of:

7/17bishop-accountability.org/archives/Demar…

Still, lawsuits and abuse cases remained news and in 1992 the notorious case of James Porter, a Boston priest with 100 victims, came went to trial. That prompted another round of what the USCCB called “tightening” of policies and promises that all would be well. 8/17

Indeed, so confident were the bishops that their reassurances would be accepted and the flock would remain loyal that in May 1992 Boston Cardinal Law could engage in some ecclesiastical grandstanding, saying ... 9/17

“The papers like to focus on the faults of a few…We deplore that.” Then Cardinal Law famously took the media itself to task for its coverage of Porter: “By all means we call down God’s power on the media, particularly the Globe.” 10/17

A few months later Jason Berry published “Lead Us Not into Temptation” about Father Tom Doyle and his efforts to push the bishops to fight abuse, including Doyle's 100-page manual on dealing with the crisis that was sent to all bishops in 1985. It quickly became public. 11/17

The issue and the extent of it was all well-known. So in October 1992 when Sinead O’Connor went on SNL and tore up John Paul II’s photo the era of plausible deniability was long past. She was being prophetic but not necessarily prescient... 12/17

What Sinead was prescient about was the “real enemy” of clericalism that would continue to resist and reject reforms—and that it was direct resistance from John Paul II that thwarted even the reforms the US bishops wanted to make, like laicizing abusers. 13/17

Except that Catholic leaders then and Catholic voices now condemned her action as “a gesture of hate” and classic “anti-Catholicism.” This is the context that is critical to understanding the watershed of 2002: 14/17

It wasn’t that the Globe uncovered news as much as its reporting showed the news of the previous 15 years was never dealt with despite the promises. The Globe’s coverage triggered people because they knew about the abuse before and had been told it had been taken care of. 15/17

Too many lay Catholics wanted to believe that it had been taken care of. 2002 showed that was not the case. Plus: the very church leaders who were constantly wagging their finger at the flock for their perceived sexual sins were in fact covering up sexual abuse. 16/17

So Sinead O’Connor was ahead of her time not in denouncing the church’s abuse of children—everyone knew about that—but in denouncing the culture of silence that would require decades to change. It is still an ongoing task, arguably the most important task. 17/17 FIN