....why this compulsion to dwell on the past? and why this obsession with sex?"
Joe, Joe, Joe,
We learn from the mistakes of the past - or some of us do.
Many of the victims of "the past" are still alive, have had their lives ruined and are entitled to some sort of recognition of that fact from the perpetrators of the crimes that blighted their lives.
Following the Holocaust, the survivors declared that such a thing should never happen again, they advocated that those responsible should be punished and their crimes revealed - they even set up museums in order that these events should be remembered.
Germany has made Holocaust denial a crime.
Would you deny them the right to have done this?
The church today - certainly here in Ireland - is fighting tooth-and-nail to maintain it's right to educate children.
It is using its (diminishing) power to control laws on homosexuality and on pregnancy termination, its main weapon in this being spiritual blackmail as it has lost its political clout.
You have ignored and refused to respond to every single salient point of these events.
Your church has yet to acknowledge the damage they did to peoples lives - they/you were dragged kicking and screaming, to answering for their part in child abuse, in the Laundries, the Industrial Schools, the "homes for fallen women" - the sale of children hasn't fueled yet, never mind taken off.
The Philomena Lee case didn't just uncover a past horrendous practice, but the continuing cruelty of the perpetrators right up to the present day - not in the dim and distant past - if you haven't, I suggest you go and see the film, if for no other reason that to prepare yourself for more of the same.
Those of us who lived under the influence of Catholicism were burdened with guilt for being what we were - that was always the church's 'thing', yet the church has not shown a shred of contrition for what it did - even those who have accepted it wish to male it a thing of the past.
""Jim, Jim, Jim"
If you go in for mantras Joe - try "never aain, never again, never again".