The more I think about it, the more angry I feel. What is this bullshit the bishops have been peddling, about not understanding fully the seriousness of child sexual abuse? These same people fought tooth and nail to oppose the idea that Irish people should be allowed to use contraceptives, even in the context of marriage. When they lost that battle, they fought even harder to prevent the legalisation of the use of rubber johnnies by individuals who were not married. And when they lost that battle, they sought to have the sale of condoms confined to pharmacies, the better to ensure that people would find it too embarrassing or intimidating to seek them out and purchase them.

These issues were approached by the Church as if they were absolutely critical to the future of the human species – as if issues of sexual morality were in fact the crucial ones in this regard. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland have time and time again shown themselves to be resolutely opposed to people enjoying any kind of sexual fulfilment outside marriage. And inside marriage, they continue to insist that every sexual act should potentially be an act of procreation. They regard masturbation as a sin. And they de-bar their own priests and other religious operatives from indulging in any form of sexual pleasure whatsoever. Not to put too fine a point on it, these people are obsessed with stifling the natural sexual urges of people in their every simple, innocent, healthy manifestation. And yet, they claim that they didn’t understand fully the seriousness of such a filthy, cowardly act of sexual exploitation as child sexual abuse? I believe that this is a downright fucking lie, and that any priest or bishop who continues to claim it is a downright fucking liar.

They knew how serious it was – but they didn’t care because their attitude to children was always twisted and hypocritical. Their fundamental interest in children was this: they wanted to impose themselves and their crazy beliefs on people at the earliest possible moment. They still do. So they volunteered to take responsibility for educating the children of Ireland. I am not insulting the decent well-motivated individuals who undoubtedly exist in religious communities when I say that, as a policy, there was nothing remotely altruistic in this. They took on this task because it gave them a virtual carte blanche in relation to indoctrinating people into the role of footsoldiers in the Roman Catholic Church. And if children resisted, the policy was that they were prepared to threaten, intimidate and finally brutalise them into submission. Children’s role was to do what they were told. To bow down to the wishes and commands of what were, after all, the ultimate authority figures in Irish society. And if necessary to accept the physical violence which might be used to enforce the discipline involved.

In truth, it’s a short step from believing that you have the right to thump people around or beat them up to bend them to your will, to assuming that you can sexually molest them without fear of challenge or retribution. Underlying both is the arrogance which authoritarianism engenders. A priest or brother who beat people up or who sexually molested them could not be open to prosecution because their power had been vested in them by the Church and ultimately by God – and all the moreso because to have allowed them to be prosecuted would have risked undermining the power and authority of the Church itself. And so the institutional Church protected the criminals in soutanes, as a matter of policy.

The Catholic Church preached a gospel of non-violence while its agents – the clergy – practiced it systematically and relentlessly in schools. The Church preached a code of sexual restraint: is it any wonder that its agents, or some of them at least, violated it?

I’ve seen Brothers beat the living crap out of people, wasting and bruising them and in some cases drawing blood. By comparison, Fr. Brendan Smyth probably thought of himself as a lovely man, bearing gifts of sweets and cigarettes to girls in need of affection and gently fondling their genitals by way of an additional bonus. One form of violation is crude and overt. The other is sly and insidious. Both are utterly repugnant.

Agents of the Church got away with this kind of crime precisely because of the authority vested in them. They came to believe that they were above the law and, indeed, to a very large extent they were, in the Republic of Ireland. It took the RUC in the North to put Fr. Brendan Smyth away. Perhaps now the same organisation might consider the possibility of charging those who failed to report this rampant paedophile, or who shielded him, as accessories to his multiple crimes. Because this, I believe unequivocally, is what they were, knowingly leaving this dangerous man at large and, frequently, in charge of children, so that he could perpetrate further crimes.

Members of the clergy of any denomination, including bishops and Cardinals, cannot be above the law. It’s time to let them know, in no uncertain terms.

• Niall Stokes

Editor