Prayers were said at all masses in Ferns on Sunday October 23rd, in anticipation of the publication the following day of a report into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations.
Newspapers spoke of a “sombre” atmosphere as “the faithful” were asked “to be open to the report and (to) learn from it as they face into the future”. Flummoxed exegetists failed to decipher the meaning of this. The seriousness with which the State took clerical sex abuse was signalled in July when An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, became the first head of government to meet new pope Benedict and Vatican secretary of state Sodano.
The Government said that discussions were held on "Northern Ireland, church-State dialogue and the European Constitution”. Maimed and raped children, it seemed, were not worth a mention. Sighs of relief came from Episcopal palaces. Maynooth reported that, “bucking the downward trend in vocations”, no fewer than 19 Irish youths signed up for the seminary this year, almost as many as for medieval French poetry at TCD. The Maynooth statistic was considered worthy of an Irish Times feature.
In 1965, Frank O’Connor reflected that an Irish person only became interesting when he or she “lost the faith”; now it’s interesting when a few find faith. John White, General Secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland, noted that the Conference of Religious Institutions was “notably silent” on feeder schools creaming off the best students, leaving gurrier classes to lump it.
No change there: the Church relinquished control of VECs back in 1930s, yet it continues to fight tigerishly to keep its grip on academic schools.
The church wants to shape people’s minds and screw their bodies. Wise Woman of the West, Mary Raftery, made the point “that fairly leaps out of the Murphy (Ferns) report...the question of access”. By controlling schools, the church gives paedophile priests access to children.
At the end of 2005, 19 out of 20 state-funded primary schools were controlled by unaccountable Catholic clerics.
In November, The Taoiseach declared the Church’s role in schools to be “indispensable,” saying “we” owe the Church big-time for its “dedication down through the years” to children.
Irish Times' columnist Breda O’Brien suggests it would be “sectarian” to exclude the Church of the Child Abusers from classrooms. Dear god.