"It was a bad thing. The people who did it should be punished, but they are now dead or in retirement homes."
Joe
You still don't get it, do you?
This has never been about "punishing dead people" nor should it be; it is about ascertaining that it should never happen again and making sure that the organisation that allowed it to happen should be removed from the positions it still hold which would allow such things to occur.
As far as the actual perpetrator, those who were a part of these obscenities should be exposed as the monsters they were, dead or alive as an example of extreme influence gone wrong.
Last year, two Magdalene nuns spoke of the Laundries – they referred to their job as "a calling from God", their victims as "sinners" and "the sweepings of the street" and they swept aside any suggestion that they had done wrong otr that they should, in any way, recompense those who suffered in their 'care'.
Their extremely wealthy order has so far refused point-blank to contribute to any payment to the ex-slaves they beat and abused for so long.
A bit rich for those to whom the confessional was an essential step on the 'pathway to Heaven'
The documentary, 'Mea Maxima Culpa' took the child abuse scandals far beyond 'a few bad apples', and showed conclusively how the Church hierarchy facilitated the rape of children over generations, and how the Vatican continues to deny possible closure (it can never be closed for many of those victims) by refusing access to contemporary documents.
Despite all the revelations, the Church is still demanding, (and holding on to), the right to educate the nation's children and it is still exercising malign influence over our laws and our lives.
Last year, politicians who chose to vote for new pregnancy termination laws which have brought Ireland reluctantly, somewhere into the middle of the twentieth century (still a way to go yet) were threatened with excommunication.
Girls are still leaving Ireland in their thousands to undergo medical procedures they can obtain legally on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The suggestion that the church rarely interfere in sexual affairs is a sick joke.
My generation, and generations before me, were brought up to regard sex as a necessary evil and to actually enjoy it is a sin ( I never received a religious education, but the influence of those around me who did was virtually impossible to avoid).
Regarding homosexuality, the 'modern' Church has yet to come to terms with the real world.
The Church, as an institution has lost any rights to influence our lives, especially the lives of or children, other than to offer spiritual advice – some of its members have lost any rights to describe themselves as human beings
The Church has given the phrase "Suffer the little children"
Jim Carroll
Breaking news has just revealed that another order of nuns has agreed to cooperate in enquiries on other sites of unmarked graves in three different locations in Ireland.