Now, why post here about yet another abuse scandal? The litany of abuse and denial, the evasion and moving around of priests is something we have all seen before. There's a difference though: as has been pointed out by commentators of all sorts, including government ministers, this is not a report on a situation as it existed long ago, soemthing of the past. The Cloyne report covers a situation as it was found to exist up to 2008. This report is about the Catholic Church and how it handles child abuse in present day Ireland, after the earlier reports, after guidelines for handling situation like these were put in place. Did it make a difference? The majority of cases reported to the diocese were not reported to the gardaí, priests were moved around, the diocese did not implement the official guidelines, the Vatican did all it could to not cooperate with the inquiry.
Has anything changed?
Two government ministers have now declared publicly it is not possible to take the word of a Bishop on these matters, that the church essentially cannot be trusted to handle matters. It's a sad and sorry state of affairs.