With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the abuse horror that engulfed several generations of Irish children at the hands of clerics of the Catholic Church was inevitable because of the powerful factors that were in play.
Central to this was the very special position which the Catholic Church in Ireland came to occupy. After The War of Independence the economic establishment, Irish business, now out from under the immediate control of British imperialism, was utterly incapable of developing the economy.
This was why significant national industries like Bord Na Mona, the ESB and the Sugar Board had to be set up to develop an economic infrastructure. Irish capitalism was simply too weak to do this.
But the State was also politically weak arising from its failure to provide for the needs of its people. In the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, appalling poverty was rampant while emigration saw the State’s youth ‘exported like cattle’.
The economic establishment, and the political parties that represented its interests, desperately needed the Catholic Church to legitimise and support them. Catholic social teaching did just that, helping to avoid mass pressures building up for radical economic and socialist policies to resolve the crisis as happened in many European countries.
The Catholic Church was rewarded for its support with a special position granted to it in the 1937 de Valera Constitution.Concretely it was given control over the Education services for the most part and also over important parts of the Health Services especially the hospitals.
This position of power and rigid Catholic dogma which was accepted by a majority of the population, made the Church look like a dictatorship and it acted like a dictatorship. The careers of teachers, doctors, nurses and many other professionals depended on the good will of Church authorities, the bishops and priests. Those who stepped out of line were ruthlessly dealt with.
The political power of the Church was graphically demonstrated in the fortunes of the first interparty Government 1948-1951. Bitterly opposing the Mother and Child Scheme which sought to give automatic health cover to mothers and children, the Church held that it was against Catholic social teaching. The hierarchy feared that such a measure could loosen its own grip on health matters and lead to greater independence of people from its control. The Church’s opposition was enough to bring down the government as cowardly politicians refused to support Health Minister Noel Browne on the issue.
It was within this phenomenal power structure that Catholic clerical abuse of children developed. The ‘officer caste’ of the Church was exclusively male. It was composed of thousands of men who were forbidden to marry should they have wished, or indulge in sexual intimacy of any kind.
With important aspects of their human personalities thwarted by dogma, most notably in the areas of sex and sexuality, a crisis was inevitable for a certain cohort of these men and within some of this cohort crushed aspects of their personality found an outlet in the perverse abuse of children. The authority and power they exercised in areas of life peopled by children meant ready opportunities for the now clerical predators. Of course the absolute power of the institutions of the Church meant that the abusers would be covered for rather than have a local or national scandal that would call that power and authority of the whole institution into question.
The litany of horrors now revealed to have taken place in Dublin, following on from other litanies in Ferns and elsewhere, reveal a pattern of abuse that was endemic in areas of society where the Catholic Church held sway. And yet it must be said in justice that there were many men among the brothers and priests who, acting according to their lights took seriously as teachers the exhortation from the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament, ‘Those who instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all eternity.’ They gave generously of their times and abilities for the advancement of their students including many from marginalised strata in society.
Those who abused, and those more senior who let them go on abusing, and thereby destroying the lives of many children who could have been saved from this, must be called to account before the courts. Similarly Garda members who were negligent.
Of course no Church should ever have been handed control of the Education or Health systems any more than they would be charged with supplying running water to households. In Ireland the complete separation of Church and State is an urgent necessity. This means putting schools under democratic management of representatives of the State, parents, the community and students at Second Level.
Religious instruction should be independent of the Education system although facilities should be made available outside school hours for that purpose where parents request this.
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