As a former Catholic who left the Church in utter disgust over the sex abuse scandal at an early stage in the now worldwide story of abuse, I cannot help but have my "I told you so" moments as the scope of the abuse continues to grow exponentially and the involvement of the Vatican and less than pious Popes becomes increasingly well documented. Nowhere is the foul cesspool nature of the Church and its morally bankrupt hierarchy better on display than in Ireland. Yes, Ireland, once among the most Catholic of nations and a worldwide exporter of priests and Catholic immigrants. Now the government of Ireland is seeking $2 Billion - yes, billion with a "B" - from the Church as compensation for the rampant sexual abuse of children and minors by priest and the complicity of the bishops and hierarchy in covering up abuse and protecting the sexual predators. Here are highlights from Bloomberg.com:
Ireland is squeezing the Roman Catholic Church to hand over cash and real estate toward a 1.4 billion-euro ($2 billion) child-abuse bill amid the bitterest stand-off yet seen between the Vatican and the government.
In the sharpest language an Irish leader has ever used against the church, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said last month the Vatican’s handling of the scandals has been dominated by “elitism and narcissism.”
“The relationship between the state and the Vatican has never been worse,” David Quinn, a religious commentator who is also director of the Dublin-based Iona Institute, which promotes religion in society, said in an interview. “I struggle to think of a stronger attack by a Western European leader on the church than Enda Kenny’s.”
Kenny said the church needs to be “truly and deeply penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied” after three government reports on clerical abuse and cover-ups rocked one of Europe’s most devout societies. With the focus now moving to who compensates the victims in talks starting next month, the church’s riches and dominance of Ireland’s educational system face their most direct threat in the country’s modern history.
[Irish Prime Minister]Kenny’s education minister, Ruairi Quinn, will begin meetings in September with 18 religious orders to call on them to pay half the compensation bill for abuse in children’s homes they ran. The 2009 government-commissioned Ryan Report said abuse in those homes was “endemic.”
The orders have paid or offered about 300 million euros to date in cash and real estate, and Quinn is proposing that they hand over control of more land, including schools. About 90 percent of elementary schools remain Catholic-run, according to the Education Ministry.
“Quinn knows that control of the education system is key now and control is about both land and patronage,” said Inglis. “He’s now making the running, not the church.”
“The rape and torture of children were downplayed or managed, to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and reputation,” Kenny said in parliament on July 20.
Sadly, the Church needs to be treated similarly in many other countries across the globe. The question is not that the Church needs to be treated as the foul institution that it has proven itself to be, but rather one of when politicians will have the backbone to strip away the special privileges too long enjoyed by religious institutions.
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