Child abuse scandals are a dive into the dark depths of institutional mentality. They take us to depths, into otherwise incomprehensible instincts.

This is what happened with the Catholic Church, and this is what happens now with Sinn Féin. And these probes land in the same place: in a mental abyss in which it is impossible to think about violent acts from the point of view of the victim.

As tempting as it may be, now is not the time to become complacent about the difficulties of a party whose default position is moral superiority. Like it or not, everyone on the island has a stake in Sinn Féin becoming a better, healthier, more open and democratic organisation.

It is likely to remain Northern Ireland’s largest party for a long time to come, and even if its (always arrogant) hopes of forming the Republic’s next government are now effectively dashed, it will remain a prominent party in Irish politics. State.

For the good of our democracy, we need much more than banal “training.” We need Sinn Féin to engage with its own collective id. He must investigate the motives and assumptions that allowed two party officials to write job recommendations for Michael McMonagle, who was questioned about (and later admitted to) child sex crimes, and for Mary Lou McDonald to (effectively) conceal the reasons resignation of Seanad party leader Niall Ó Donngail.

I fully agree that the majority of Sinn Féin members are genuinely disgusted by the revelations of this ongoing pattern of behaviour. But if so, they must ask themselves the most painful and uncomfortable question: what is it about our organization that perpetuates these patterns?

The answer cannot be given in bureaucratic language. In response to the McMonagle revelations, Macdonald resorted to the language of management consulting. She asked the party’s new general secretary to “immediately begin a complete review of governance procedures.”

We’ve been here before. Six years ago, in August 2018, after several local party councilors resigned due to what they described as a culture of intimidation in which unelected officials tried to impose their will on elected representatives, The Irish Times reported that “party leader Mary Lou McDonald has now appointed a senior figure in her team to review party structures and report back to the ard comhairle.”

Remind me what Albert Einstein (and Roy Keane) said about doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Structures and procedures matter, but not as much as mentality and culture. Sinn Féin’s governance is hierarchical and based on obedience. This is why it reacts to child abuse within its ranks more or less the same way as the Catholic hierarchy did. The abusive Party official, like the cruel priest, is one of us and should therefore be treated with compassion and understanding. Victimhood is an issue that must be resolved with the least damage to the trust of believers, whose simple faith should not be undermined by scandal.

MacDonald must initiate more than just a review of the party’s leadership. This is a complete and honest overhaul of the mindset that every act of insider violence must be viewed first from the perspective of the perpetrator. This habit is not accidental and is not connected with Sinn Féin’s past as the political wing of the IRA.

Deep in his DNA and still implicit in his thinking about the Troubles is a reflexive minimization of the victims’ suffering. By and large, sacrifices are an annoying inconvenience.

In both McMonagle and O Donngale we see kindness, care, attention – to them. McMonagle’s instinct was to ensure that his life would not be ruined by the mere fact that he was being investigated for trying to entice a child to have sex with him. The party helped him get a good job with the British Heart Foundation.

In the case of Ó Donnhaile, he was allowed to resign without giving a reason – sending inappropriate text messages to a 16-year-old Sinn Féin Ogre member. MacDonald praised his political contributions and said he hoped he could “overcome the health challenges he has had to face over the past few months.”

In her responses to the revelations last week, MacDonald continued to express her concerns about O Donngail’s mental health, without saying anything about the boy’s “health problems” who he was subjecting to unwanted attention. She refused to enter what the boy described in a statement to the Sunday Independent as the “dark spaces” of a teenager trying to cope with a deeply troubling situation.

The feeling of déjà vu is dizzying. MacDonald spoke on Morning Ireland about her work in all of this as being about “managing human behavior, failure, mistakes” rather than crime against or harming children.

And target Ó Donnhaila wrote on Sunday of feeling as he tried to force the party to act in early 2023 that he would have to confront “a titanic power dynamic that made me feel like I had no chance of being heard.” . Dress Cardinal MacDonald and her bishops in episcopal robes and we’ve all seen the movie.

MacDonald isn’t stupid—she’s extremely smart. So how do she and her senior colleagues ultimately manage to reinforce the “power dynamic” that is both Titanic and Titanic: the crushing of the victim, but also a metaphor for the party’s self-destructive arrogance? Because of the habit of glorifying criminals as heroes while keeping their victims as far from the surface of the collective consciousness as possible.

If you learn not to think too much about those your movement has killed and maimed, you will also learn not to see things as they appear and feel as victims of the unfortunate “mistakes” and “mistakes” of your comrades.