Friday, May 22, 2009

I haven't been able to get hold of a copy of the report yet but my mate Bock the Robber, the Limerick blogger, has produced a couple of summaries of both the report data and the witness statements which you can get here and here

Other than to point once again to the failure of indigenous Irish society, and the native bourgeois class in particular, to concern itself with anything more than its own survival, there are no words adequate to describe the reign of terror which the Catholic hierarchy presided over for so long.

That the Irish taxpayer is now footing the 1.3 billion Euro bill for the abuse carried out in its name by the Catholic theocracy, a fact which, since it is impossible to undo the damage done, I find even more galling. The very people who suffered will contribute to the compensation bill while the perpetrators will escape with their assets intact.

In my work on migrant mental health, I encountered so many Irish people whose problems ultimately resided in the psycho-social and sexual abuse they had experienced at the hands of brutal religious in Ireland. Their difficulties were often severely exacerbated by the fact that, because of their experiences, they were effectively excluded from the network of support which, without any sense of irony, the Catholic church provided to Irish migrants in Britain.

I wish there was a simple, adequate response that one could make at moments like this. I always refused the hell that Catholic teaching said I was destined for, but tonight I wish I could believe in a hell hot enough to hold and punish these evil-doers and the people who protected them for so long.

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