my experience of the Catholic Church in Ireland was only one week, and I did find it quite oppressive

I don't think you can get any sort of any country or place and the subtleties of how a society works in a week, Joe. It would take several years of being part of the community before you start getting a feel for the undercurrents.

Ireland may well be have the worst record for clerical abuse but do be too certain there will be a lot of places that will come close to it. The recent revelations of abuse in the Netherlands, Germany and other European countries are a good indication we haven't seen the end of it all by far.


There was an article in one of the papers recently that showed there were an awful high percentage of (European and US) priests that had allegations of abuse made against them stationed in Mexico, a country where paedophilia is apparently not punishable by law. Now how do you think that came about? Yet more allegations of the church sheltering known abusers were flying. It does make you wonder if we can really say it's all in the past.