Catholic Church Protected Evil & Condemned Children to Suffer Years of Sexual Abuse

Today was a landmark day for victims of the Catholic Church in Ireland with the publication of an independent Commission's report into child abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin from 1974 to 2004.
The report clearly shows that there was a deliberate cover up of clerical abuse by the Church authorities. The bishops saw their primary goal being to protect the financial assets and reputation of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. They gave no recognition of the sufferings being done to the children by their members. Those courageous few adults that tried to expose the evil being done by priests were condemned as liars and misfits. Time and time again, the ecclesiastical authorities malevolently moved the perpetrators away from the public glare to church positions in others parts of the country or abroad allowing them to continue to commit crimes against yet more innocent children.

'Above Suspicion'

The hierarchy openly felt that they were superior to the state and not accountable to civil law. Such a exalted opinion of themselves was probably shared by the majority of the populace for much of the 20th century who treated clerics as above suspicion because they were adjudged God's intermediaries. Certainly the police and other state institutions agreed, colluded with the cover-up and undertook no action when asked to do so by the victims.

Lack of 'Christianity' in the Catholic Church

As a practicing Christian and a lapsed member of the Catholic Church, it still astonishes me that the world's largest Christian church became so corrupt; that it deviated so much from the teachings of Christ; that it promoted, perpetuated and protected evil while preaching a message of 'love and peace to all mankind'; that clerics who took vows of chastity metamorphosed into serial paedophiles and rapists; that bishops, who were supposed to be followers of the Christ that lived the life of a pauper, lived in 'palaces' and called themselves 'princes'; that most priests and bishops, if not themselves practicing child abuse, knowingly turned a blind eye to these horrible acts and saw their role being to protect the perverts. By their actions and in-actions, they condemned generations of innocent children to a life of 'Hell on Earth'.

Condemned by the Bishop of Galway

In the early 1990s, I myself was publicly condemned by the then Bishop of Galway for allowing the sale of condoms on my pub premises. I was dismissed as a wrongdoer, as corrupting the morality of youth. The bishop said that I was ignoring a central tenet of church law which was that sex existed for 'procreation' and not for 'pleasure'. A few months after these attacks, the bishop fled Ireland when it was found out that he had a teenage child by his mistress! He was the first senior cleric to be exposed for having a sexual affair.
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I actually had and still have great respect for Bishop Casey. He was a good man on so many levels and I sure don't believe that having consensual sex with an adult woman is wrong.
Anyway, his actions paled into insignificance compared to what soon followed. It was only after the Casey affair, when the spotlight was turned for the first time onto the private lives of clerics, that it became public knowledge that hordes of rampant paedophiles were operating inside hallowed walls.
Today's report though dealt solely with a 30 year period in one archdiocese in Ireland. We can be sure that such abuse happened from the time that the Catholic Church began to monopolise power in the country (19th century) and when it was given responsibility for the physical and spiritual care of young people and the right to establish orphanages and schools. It is also true that this evil was exported to all areas of the world where Irish priests established missions, schools and churches.
This clerical wickedness has done so much to undermine the great acts of goodness and charity carried out by other Irish nuns, brothers and priests. But power and privilege as well as blind obedience to their whims by the populace turned too many of the clerics into monsters.

Time for Renewal

The Church must immediately undergo a period of renewal and return to living the teachings of Christ by fully embracing Liberation Theology and promoting Environmentalism. The Papal Nuncio, who refused to reply to the letters from the Commission, must be expelled from the country; the Pope must issue a public apology to the people of Ireland; the hierarchy should leave their 'Palaces' and cease to be known as 'Princes' or be addressed by aristocratic titles such as 'Your Grace' or 'Your Eminence'; celibacy for clerics should be optional and women should be admitted to the priesthood. For a male-only institution, which is against all the laws of nature, obviously became a breeding ground for paedophilia.