Stringsinger raises an interesting point. Ireland is a society and a nation that predates the Catholic Church and its presence in Ireland.

In the early years of catholicism in Ireland, it developed very much in isolation from Rome and indeed from the rest of Europe. After the first Norman incursions into Ireland in the 12th century, Ireland came increasingly under the domination of the English crown although this was a much more gradual process than merely stating the fact would suggest. By the time of the reformation, the church and the state in most European countries were closely linked. Bishops and the Pope held considerable power over the crowned heads of Europe and of course in countries like Spain, France, the Italian states and the countries of what was the Holy Roman Empire (later the Hapsburg Empire) that continued to be the case.

Ireland was different. By the time English domination in Ireland was firmly established (I suppose sometime between the time of Elizabeth the First and the death of Cromwell) the church was a vehicle by which Irish people expressed not only religious faith but also national identity. One of the reasons for this was that through most of Ireland, the church's contact with the people (especially in the countryside) was through monks and priests with links to monasteries. Indeed, from the time of St Patrick and later St Columba the power of the church and its evangelising mission would have been based largely around the monasteries which would have operated at some remove from the control of the Pope and had a very close connection with (especially) the rural population (Richard English's book 'Irish Freedom' has some interesting points about this although I think it's a very imperfect book otherwise).

What this means is that the church in Ireland developed a distinctly Irish character as a result of conditions specific to Ireland. This matters because much of the discussion on modern-day abuses by the church focuses on the abuse of power by the church in opposition to the population who were subjected to those abuses.

My view is slightly different. The church in Ireland developed the way it did because of the specific relationship between the church and the population. This means that the church was not an alien, outside force from the Irish people but rather that it sprang from among those people and its power was accrued not only by coercion but also by consent of the population, who regarded it not only as their spiritual guide but also as the custodian of their national, cultural and communal identity.

I think the importance of the church among the Irish diaspora is evidence of this. I also think there is some echo of this in the tendency of Irish communities to establish community and cultural organisations almost as soon as they arrive in a foreign society in any numbers, along with the tendency of those organisations to be hierarchical and to be dominated by small numbers of individuals for years on end. In other words, there is a strong tendency towards hierarchy in Irish society and institutions and that tendency has shaped the development of the church in Ireland at least to the same extent as Irish society has been shaped itself by the hierarchical nature of the church.