BishopAccountability.org
	The Church and Child-rape By Oliver Kamm The Times May 22, 2009 http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/2009/05/the-church-and-childrape.html The details of a systematic campaign by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland to cover up the rape and torture (not merely, in the customary euphemism, the "abuse") of children are disturbing reading. But no aspect of it is more repugnant than this: "The Christian Brothers delayed the investigation for more than a year with a lawsuit that successfully defended their members' right to anonymity in all references in the report, even in cases in which individual Christian Brothers had been convicted of sexual and physical attacks on children." I recalled, and have dug out of the archives, a review (published in the Daily Telegraph, 29 March 1997) by the late Conor Cruise O'Brien, once an Irish Cabinet Minister, of a history of Ireland by the journalist Mary Kenny. This is how O'Brien, with immense prescience, concluded: "Mary Kenny's title has reference chiefly to the events of the last six year and the disillusion following the shock of repeated sexual scandals involving priests. Her account is frank about the actual scandals disclosed, but she rather underplays what has damaged the Church much more: the evidence of a prolonged and systematic cover-up, by the Church authorities, of paedophile activities by priests. They knew these activities were going on, but instead of removing from the paedophiles the priestly cover which gave them privileged access to their victims, they simply moved the abuser to another parish, there to carry on as before (and if necessary, be moved again elsewhere). In short, they put the avoidance of institutional scandal ahead of the protection of children entrusted to their care. Worse, they provided the wolves with sheep's clothing, facilitating their access to their prey. "That is the situation, the revelation of which has brought about the comprehensive - and richly earned - discrediting of the institutional Catholic Church in Ireland. I for one believe that the country and its children will be better for the end of the cover-up, and for the discrediting of an organisation which has disgraced itself. And we should remember that the first arrest of a priest for child abuse took place in Northern Ireland, not in the Republic. If that arrest, and the sentence that followed, had not happened, the cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy of child abuse in Ireland might still be continuing." The word "scandal" is often overplayed. But in this case, it is scarcely adequate to the evil that the Roman Catholic Church - not just some individual, errant priest - has done.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.