Joe;
"And Jim Carroll, I answered your hypothetical question about schools long ago. My answer was: Of course, action should be taken against people who commit crimes, no matter what institution they belong to."
And my reply was that this wasn't my question.
You are defending the part that the church (not the individual abusive priests) played in the abuse scandal. My question was, would you defend the school authorities and the heads of education similarly if they covered up the abuses on and passed the abusers on to other schools to continue abusing? Would you describe a scandal that was widespread through the school system as "a few bad apples".
If you are going to avoid answering these questions, I would be grateful if you would say so and save my having to ask them again and again.
In the same way, you have accused me and others of being unfair to the church:
"But day after day, over and over again, Jim Carroll and Smokey and mg and Fionn and others use the misdeeds of a few to condemn the entire Catholic Church"
and I have asked you to specify where. Can I assume that you are not going to respond to this one either?
It is beginning to dawn on me that none of you appear to have fully grasped what is happening here in Catholic Ireland, the 'Land of Saints and Scholars'.
We are being met three or four times a week, with articles questioning the role and the future of the church in the press - not the gutter press, but in the broadsheets, and not a few columns but pages-worth. The letter pages are carrying a running debate daily; not snide attacks but detailed and informed debate, criticising the former behavior of the church towards the children and deeply questioning the handling of the crisis - that really is what it is - a crisis. These are, in the main, not anti-church people, but devout Catholics whose faith has been shaken, and in some cases, totally dislodged.
On elderly lifelong churchgoer wrote recently that she can no longer look at a priest without thinking "I wonder was he at it".
Yes, some priests did bad things to children and others didn't, yes, fellow clerics did know about it and didn't report it but let it continue (there is no record of anybody within the church reporting abusive priests, or even criticising them seriously within the church, prior to the Ryan and Murphy enquiries).
From the top to the bottom, the hierarchy is handling this affair so badly that, as far as I can see, there is a very large question-mark hanging over the church and its future in Irish society.
Any damage to the church, in this matter, past and present, is entirely self-inflicted, and this will continue to be the case until decent Catholics come to terms with the situation and get a grip.
Jim Carroll