BishopAccountability.org
	The True Enemies of the Church Sunday Business Post November 29, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/the-true-enemies-of-the-church-45909.html After the Ryan Report and the Ferns Report, after Goldenbridge and Letterfrack, after Sean Fortune and Ivan Payne, after all the numerous others, the report by Judge Yvonne Murphy of the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese’s responses to child sexual abuse is, perhaps, not surprising. We have become familiar with the pattern of abuse, denial and cover-up, but this was still shocking. The complicity in criminal acts against children, from parish hall to bishop’s palace, is of an extent and an order that few suspected. Many will find it unforgivable. If this abuse and cover-up was happening to such an extent in Dublin, there is little doubt that it was happening in dioceses across the country. Judge Murphy finds that the sexual abuse of children by clerics was widespread and that the vast majority of priests turned a blind eye to it. We have almost certainly experienced an epidemic of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland. The true enemies of the Catholic Church are those who perpetrated the abuse on children. But those who turned a blind eye, who covered up and who, in failing to act against the abusers, facilitated the continuation of their crimes - these are also enemies of the Church. It is astonishing that so many of them should populate the higher echelons of the organisation. We should not forget or ignore the contribution of the Church to Ireland - in health and education and in many areas where the state declined or failed to act. Nor should we forget its services to the Third World, where tens of thousands of priests and nuns have dedicated their entire lives to helping those less fortunate than us. But the stain occasioned by the crimes of the many, not the few, born of a seemingly endemic sexual dysfunction, a myopic, clerical culture of blind obedience and deep moral equivalence, will mark the Irish Church forever. Contact: sbpost@iol.ie
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