Joe asked "Now, tell me how your statement applies to rural Irish communities of 2014."

OK, so it applies a little less now than 30 years ago. But the church has lost ground only because of a succession of shameful episodes coming to light that it did everything in its power to suppress, and which would be quietly forgotten if Joe had his way.

If I were to put a date on when the hierarchy started to lose its grip, I'd say it was in 1992 with the revelation that Bishop Eamon Casey was the father of a grown-up son whose upbringing - like that of many other sons of clerics - had been part funded from church collecting plates. Even then, many in rural Ireland who had been taught to ostracise and condemn "fallen women" could not bring themselves to question a bishop, and for RTE's fawning Gay Byrne, Casey was still a fine man. But in Dublin, tee-shirts started to appear with advice to "Wear a condom, just in Casey" - the hierarchy's first real taste of open ridicule.

A couple of years later apparent church-state collusion concerning the imfamous paedophile Father Brendan Smyth brought the collapse of Ireland's government. That was followed by many more revelations of corruption and abuse, and evidence of the hierarchy's extraordinary tenacity in trying to protect its own interests.

And as Peter Laban noted, the church still works hard at getting into young minds. It seems you didn't know, Joe, that most people in Ireland have access only to Catholic schools. But then it seems there's quite a lot you did't know, like the fact that the last Magdalene asylum closed in 1996, some 30-odd years after Vatican II.

I know you have some experience of your church's operations beyond the US, so I am baffled that you persistently argue as though your US experiences are the norm.