"Caught you red-handed, Jim, up to your usual tricks. Why don't you fight fair for a change?"
What on earth are you talking about Joe
The facts of clerical physical abuse have been with us for virtually all of my lifetime - the brutality of the Christian Brothers affected a number of my friend
A couple decades ago the horrors of the industrial schools were examined and exposed.
Clerical sexual abuse has been brought into the open, investigated, confirmed and has yet to be dealt with fully.
The extent of this will never be known due to the silence brought on by the shame of such abuse, but even what evidence there exists because of the Vatican's refusal to hand over documents
It is 20 years since The Magdalene laundries first hit the fan - those responsible are still refusing to acknowledge guilt or contribute to agreed compensation, and have now moved on to verbally abusing their victims.
Those of us who have commented on the latest horrors have made it clear, as have those who are in the process of examining them, that this is part of the ethos of the church - not something new - it is how the church behaved and, some of us believe, wou;d continue to behave if they were allowed to - it is taking the record of the accused into consideration before passing sentence (or in this case, before allowing the church to remain in positions where they could re-offend).
You dishonestly refer to "septic tanks" - you have never had the good grace or honesty to admit that it was I who warned against the use of such an emotive term, to the extent of producing a lengthy article on what these burial places might have been - I expressed my disgust at your suggestion that a septic tank was a suitable place for a burial - no more.
I also pointed out that it was possible that some of the bodies may have been Famine victims.      
When every one of these cases has been raised, you have stonewalled in defence of the church - every single one.
You blamed the parents for knowing about the sexual abuse and allowing it to take place.
On all these matters, you have claimed it as a thing of the past, committed by people now dead who are not here to defend themselves.
Nowhere have you held your hands up and accepted that the power invested in the church as an organisation was and remains wrong.
Peter, I and others have reacted to revelations that are daily coming out in our press, nothing more - may of these abuses have been known about for decades - the treatment of "illegitimate" (the term is a form of abuse in itself) children went on record in the 1940s and was not brought to public notice then
Extreme clerical brutality in education has been a known fact throughout my lifetime - never acted on.
Sexual abuse of children was treated as a fact of life throughout the church, but kept secret, never acted upon other than to pass on the perpetrators to other places when their abuse became excessive.
The revelations of these abuses are ongoing - we have yet to find if there is any basis for the suggestions of abuse of mental patients, or whether the government and administrators of these homes allowed the inmates to be used as guinea-pigs for the testing of untried drugs - all to come.
What are we expected to do - sit on our hands and say nothing until everl last case is done and dusted, and in the meantime allow the church to be held in respect and continue to give them access to the nations children - is that what you would do?
Jim Carroll