IRELAND
Sunday World
By Fr. Brian D’Arcy
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of a Child has brought Child Sexual Abuse issues to the fore in the Catholic Church once more.
From what I’ve read the United Nations watchdog for Children’s Rights produced a report which is practically a decade out of date.
For example a number of reports here in Ireland, most notably the Murphy Report, reached more radical conclusions years ago.
The Murphy Report identified the “systemic failure” within the structures of the Catholic Church as the root of much of the evil which destroyed so many children.
Murphy pointed out that until the philosophy behind the system changed other reforms will be little more than window dressing.
The United Nations Report fails to make that essential point. It highlights what most of us writing about this issue have said for over a decade, namely that defending the institutional structures of the Church became far more important than defending the innocence and rights of children for the leaders of the Catholic Church.
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