"Jim Carroll will now rush to the dais and huffily insist that he never accused anyone at Tuam of murder"
You would make your case far better if, instead of claiming what I would "huffily" do, you directly answered some of the points made and not surround yourself with an army of straw men to slay.
The child molestations wre acts of individuals - nobody has claimed the church held rituals in which children were raped.
Those crimes were widely known about by other members of the clergy, who either ignored them and treated as eccentricities, or passed them on to a higher authority, who, by and large did nothing about them until thet got 'out of hand'.
The perpetrator would then be moved on to another parish, where he was allowed to continue his abusive behaviour.
If that got out of hand, he was sent abroad, often to Africa - out of sight.
This makes the church an accomplice to the crimes.
Since all this has come to light, the church has continually refused to co-operate with investigations; Mea Maxima Culpa, involving the abuse of deaf children, showed that Bishops refused to co-operate at the time, allowing the abuses to continue, and since then, has dragged its feet in allowing access to information which would bring all the facts into the open - this includes a massive amount of documentation held by the Vatican an refused access to.
These are criminal acts, and had they been carried out by education or hospital authorities, all those concerned would have long bee prosecuted and punished under the law - they certainly would never have been allowed to continue to hold positions of responsibility in society.
The contempt that officers of the church held ordinary people in has been a running theme in all of this.
When the parents of Smythe, the most prolific of the abusers, reported his abuses to the Bishop, they were told to go home and pray for the souls of their children - Smythe was allowed to continue.
Others were bullied into silence, or told that their children were liars - grotesque monsters.
Right up to the present day the Magdalene Nuns have shown no contrition, describing their victims as the "sweepings of the street" - they have refused point blank to pay a penny towards the pitiful compensation being paid out , leaving the taxpayers to foot the bill.
In many cases, the victims have been treated as criminals; a couple of years ago, one victim who turned up to church to protest at the inviting of a Bishop who actively covered up abusers, was booed and driven out of the church by the priest and congregation (we have our share of red-necks).
The Catholic church is rapidly earning the contempt of the people of Ireland, not just because of past behaviour, but by continuing contempt for the people of whom they once held sway.
They have lost the respect of the nation, and while you continue to prevaricate, you will have done the same here Joe (I refuse to lower myself to your appallingly 'surnames-only' behaviour grow up).
Jim Carroll