CATHOLIC IRELAND - Sex, lies & accountability.

The allegation, made in a new biography of John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972, that this most powerful prelate in twentieth-century Ireland was a pedophile, has poured salt into an open wound in the Catholic church in Ireland. That wound was opened only in the past couple of years, but as yet it shows no sign of healing. The allegation is not well documented, but it is a measure of the controversy that swirled around McQuaid during his life that even an anonymous accusation (which, in effect, this is) has introduced a wide new seam of debate. Many well-known liberals, who engaged in fierce critiques of McQuaid while he was alive, have attacked the biographer's use of anonymous sources.

The fuss about the accuracy of the allegations continues apace, as the biography has been widely serialized. But many of the faithful, concluding that there is no smoke without fire, are simply averting their gaze in mute despair. Underlying this despair-mixed, on occasion, with anger-is a series of scandals involving physical and sexual abuse in church-run institutions which add up to a crisis of credibility in the institutional church.

Public and media interest in this hitherto unexplored area of Irish church life was given a major boost with the publication before Christmas of Suffer the Little Children (New Island Books), by two researchers-also the subject of a TV documentary-enumerating incidents of sexual and physical abuse in church-run institutions. Added to the growing material prosperity and secularization which are already undermining traditional religious loyalties and practices in Ireland, these revelations have contributed to a general air of impending, if not actual, crisis in the church.

The crisis of confidence among many priests and religious is palpable. They now feel deeply troubled by the continuing stream of revelations, and are all but terrified of showing friendship or affection in any physical manner to young people with whom their work brings them into contact.

The bishops have been stung by repeated allegations that they failed to fulfill their pastoral responsibilities adequately. In the light of allegations that complaints about some abusing priests had merely resulted in their being moved to pastoral duties elsewhere, the bishops, like their American counterparts before them, have now drawn up detailed guidelines designed to prevent a repetition of such occurrences, and have strengthened reporting systems and procedures.

In June of last year, the hierarchy decided at their summer conference in Maynooth to institute a class-action suit against the Irish Independent, a mass-circulation daily. The previous month, it had published an article inferring the church was responsible for the sexual abuse of children and the sexual indiscretions of priests and bishops over a period of thirty years. Lawyers contacted the paper on behalf of four bishops (selected as representatives of the country's four provinces) and have threatened to take further legal action if an apology is not forthcoming. It is ironic, considering that in December 1954, on the fiftieth anniversary of that paper's foundation, Archbishop McQuaid wrote to its editor to acknowledge the paper's "policy of distinctive loyalty toward the church."

Other responses have been more imaginative. One of them is that taken by Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, a small country diocese in County Clare on Ireland's western seaboard. Bishop Walsh, whose low-key but unmistakably liberal pronouncements on a number of issues have been winning him widespread media coverage, decided toward the end of last year that he would have to do something to indicate his acceptance of responsibility for many of the wrongs that had been committed in church institutions.

He has therefore embarked on a pilgrimage, traversing his diocese on foot at a rate of nine or ten miles a day, lodging in local houses and saying Mass in local churches wherever he stopped. At one level, it is certainly a gesture which has caught the public imagination. His sermons, when he preaches, are modest and open. This long public apology is done not with trumpets and fanfare, but with honesty and simplicity.

All of this has helped to underline one of the central dilemmas facing church institutions and officials in the current situation. Many of them wish to apologize but, in the current legal climate, are terrified of doing so for fear that they will find themselves swept away by a deluge of compensation claims.

And there is, deeper still, a slowness to face up to another aspect of the problem. This is the uncomfortable fact that many of the actions which are now coming to light were, quite simply, criminal offenses. Some of the defenses that have been mounted by church officials are based on the undoubted truth that, in many of the institutions concerned, the abuses were ultimately detected by colleagues or superiors and stopped. But the underlying implication is that the church was initially concerned only with the sinfulness of what happened, and blind to its criminality. What was a private, internal scandal has become an open, public one precisely because of the church's failure-so far-to accept fully all its responsibilities in the matter.

For many of the young people in the church's care at the time, it must be said, these church-run institutions provided a haven, however rough- hewn, from abusive parents and an uncaring society. Furthermore, the churches were often the only bodies offering such service in a society that preferred to contract out its social work to voluntary agencies. This implies a degree of culpability on the part of the state, which for decades offloaded the institutional care of many of its most vulnerable young people, without instituting appropriate systems of inspection or control. It may also have to answer.

People who say they have been abused have been calling on the church organizations concerned to release their files for public inspection. Files in the Department of Education, however, are revealing that, in many cases, this department was aware of abuse and did nothing about it. As a result, more than a hundred people have now instituted proceedings not only against the religious orders concerned, but against the state.

In the miasma of hurt and anger which surrounds the continuing stream of legal cases and revelations, it is difficult to discern, as yet, when and where the healing process will start. The only thing we can be sure of at this stage is that the church and state alike will emerge deeply chastened. With luck, they will also be renewed.

John Horgan teaches journalism at City University in Dublin.