Speechless. Aghast. Shock. Disgust. What words can adequately describe the reaction to the Irish Child Abuse Commission's report on the role of the Catholic Church in the rampant, prolonged and prolific abuse of Irish children? I’m not sure that there are any.

That the Catholic church is still in Ireland this morning and didn't disappear overnight in a flurry of papers and swirling vestments is a mystery. How can any Catholic clergy man or woman show their face in public? Moreover, why aren’t churches burning; vestments, behind which these monsters hid as 'people of God,' piled high in bonfires?

The words ‘endemic’ jumps out at you from the report released yesterday – ‘endemic abuse.’ By over 800 priests, brothers and nuns. This wasn’t (isn’t) the action of a few lone wolves, this was an entire pack which systematically preyed on our children. Innocent little children. Children born into poor families, who were subjected to patriarchal sadism at it’s worst. Children who when hurt had nobody to turn to; nobody to hold them to make the pain go away, no-one to dry their tears.

The Catholic Church may apologize; they may pay out millions; they may grovel and wear sack cloth; they may even blow their brains out. It means absolutely nothing. It is the hollow sound from beating an empty vessel. This is an evil that can not be fixed.

How do they repair irreparable damage? How do they heal the psyche of those to whom on one hand they represented God, while on the other, they raped and abused mercilessly? What kind of God would allow His representatives do that to His children? Jesus taught of love of children. These people's actions typify not Christ but the anti-Christ. They are not of God; they are of everything that is not God.

Ireland is but one small section of a worldwide religious franchise that is the Catholic Church. We cannot be expected to believe that this abuse – (for which the instigators and their protectors have a special place in hell) – is isolated. The Catholic Church is riddled with it like a stinking malignant cancer. To rid the world of the cancer, the world must also be rid of the source.

Decent men and women turn to the church for direction, guidance, inspiration and forgiveness. How can they do so again, knowing what is now known about the monster in the vestments on the altar or the teachers in their black robes of office? The terms ‘priest, brother, nun, Cardinal, Bishop’ are meaningless. Self imposed titles of grandeur that are undeserved and we now see, irrelevant.

So many questions. So few answers.

If you have the stomach for it you can read the entire report here available in html or pdf format. The Irish government, despite criticism, has done what it can and it has done it well. They obviously won’t nor can they please everybody. They did their best to get their arms around this beast and have paid the victims both in terms of financial compensation and in doing what they can to address the harm done. They should be commended as they faced this head on.

As a nation Ireland has a burden to bear. Not unlike the local witnesses who averted their eyes to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, many of those among us were all too aware of the evils that existed behind the bricks and mortar of supposed children’s sanctuaries. It cannot be ignored as something that 'happened in the past' or during a certain period of time. We as a Catholic people marched right in line ourselves, brow beaten by Mother Church. And for our blatant stupidity we are shamefully guilty and responsible to do something about it.

Rather than an end, this report should be a new beginning. To bring the guilty to justice; to attempt to heal wounds, although I’m not sure that is possible; to learn that human nature is not what we were taught in school. There are no fairy tales; but for a lot of Irish school children, only nightmares.

Irish Commission on Child Abuse Report
http://www.childabusecommission.ie/

Irish Abuse Report (Executive Summary)
http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/2009/childabusecommission/index.pdf


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