Big Al Whittle says: what puzzles me Joe is why, when you are living in such a liberated society, you are so keen stick up for this church which has been up to all sorts of repressive skulduggery, for as long as anyone can remember.

I know about the skullduggery, Al. It does exist, and I have often had to deal with it. But skullduggery exists wherever you go - it's part of the reality of life. But my experience of the Catholic Church, like that of most Catholics I know, has been 96 percent good and four percent bad.

But it's the four percent that gets covered in the press, and in Internet forum discussions like this one.

#, you're not allowed to mention "complicity of the Irish people" here. I once dared to suggest that all those priests and nuns and cardinals were children of Irish mothers, and I was called a liar. The truth, they say, is that those priests and nuns were spawned in a tank in the Sistine Chapel, ordained, and delivered to Ireland in black submarines in the dark of night.

-Joe Offer-