IRELAND
Waterford Today
Wednesday, 9th May 2012
Here we go again. The Roman Catholic Church has gotten itself bogged down in yet another scandal surrounding the issue of child sexual abuse. This time however it is the head of the Church, The Primate of All Ireland Cardinal Brady that is in the firing line. It has emerged that he knew about the actions of perhaps the most notorious of Ireland’s paedophiles – they are many to choose from – Fr. Brendan Smyth and effectively he did nothing about it. There have been some, in the Church and outside of it, that have come to his defence. They say that he did as much as he could have done and that effectively there was nothing that he could have done at the time. Also, they point out, he did as much as anyone could and that the whole issue of priests who sexually abused children was handled differently back then and also that there was not as much information on the issue as there is now and that it is not fair to look at things that happened in the past using the standards that we have today. Those arguments might be well and good for some people but just how much water do they really hold? The first point, and perhaps the only point, is, since when did the rape of children become acceptable to those in the church?
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