I've mentioned in the past that Ireland, which gave the Catholic church more privileges and greater deference than almost any other country in Europe, was rewarded for its devotion with one of the highest per-capita rates of child rape by priests than any other nation in the world. That scandal continues to unspool, and today there's another big update.
In 1996, in response to public outcry, a committee of Irish bishops drew up a policy which would have made it mandatory to report suspected sex predators among the clergy to the police. As I wrote back in January, the Vatican expressed strong reservations about this policy, warning that full disclosure of accusations to the civil authorities could interfere with internal church investigations (which, of course, it considered more important).
As a result, the mandatory-reporting policy, although it technically remained in force, was shelved by the bishops and never enforced. What happened next is no surprise: predator priests continued to abuse children, and the church continued to do nothing. As recently as 2009, parishioners were lodging complaints of abuse and molestation by members of the clergy.
The government now plans to introduce a law which would make it a crime for anyone, church officials included, to fail to report allegations of sex abuse to the civil authorities.
These are good first steps, but Ireland needs to go further. When the abuse scandal first broke, the government made a disastrous decision to protect the church by assuming almost all the liability for settlements to abuse victims. I hope they're giving serious consideration to reversing that decision by seizing and auctioning church property to pay compensation to the victims. I also hope that Irish officials will consider following the lead of the Philadelphia grand jury that recently returned indictments against church officials for protecting child molesters. There ought to be more than enough evidence already to file charges.
These are harsh measures, but the bishops have proven again and again that nothing less will suffice. They've shown countless times that they'll never act against child molesters on their own initiative. Their only loyalty is to the institution of the church, not to the people who attend it, and whenever anything happens that could embarrass the church, their first response will always, always be to deny, delay and cover up. They'll never take action unless they're forced to by the threat of criminal sanctions - arrests and prosecutions of bishops, seizure of church property to pay compensation to victims, and the like. The Catholic authorities are in need of a sharp reminder that they're subject to the law like everyone else, and I hope Ireland gives it to them. - http://www.daylightatheism.org...tican-continued.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07...1&pagewanted=all
Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church - Published: July 13, 2011
DUBLIN — The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the cover-up by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by the Irish government.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/...ional/i015058D74.DTL
Irish summon Vatican diplomat over abuse cover-up - Associated Press July 14, 2011
DUBLIN, Ireland -- Ireland's government summoned the Vatican's ambassador Thursday for a rare face-to-face confrontation to respond to a report showing Rome secretly discouraged Irish bishops from reporting pedophile priests to police.
Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore met Pope Benedict XVI's diplomat in Dublin a day after Irish investigators found that the Vatican in 1997 encouraged bishops to reject the Irish church's tough new child-protection rules.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who didn't attend the meeting, called the Vatican's role in placing the church's own canon law above Irish criminal law "absolutely disgraceful."