News: Bishop apologizes over shock report

Comment: Why Irish church became so abusive

The report from the judicial commission into clergy child abuse in Ireland is horrible.

It is a stain on the country far greater than the recent economic collapse.

The sex abusers in the clergy had powerful helpers--- enablers, they call them in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The enablers were the state itself. The Department of Education is roundly criticized in the report. They stood idly by even when reports of child abuse were flooding their system. It is a disgraceful reality that should haunt all who hail from the Emerald Isle or love the land we sprang from.

That enabling continues to the present day. The first judge assigned the issue resigned in protest against the stonewalling of the church authorities and the government.

Only after a new judge took over did the stonewalling stop. Who knows how many stories of victims  are left forlorn and unknown in the wake of their obstructions?

It is not enough for the Bishops to apologize. This simply must  never happen again ---the tears and screams of the raped, the abused and the beaten cry down the years to us and this report at least gives them a small voice.

That was what they were, little kids, small children, remorselessly and savagely sexually abused and beaten by the very people society looked up to most. It is a rotten and disgusting  reality to try and grasp.

It is incredible to think how rampant that abuse was. At every level, among nuns,  priests and brothers it was a huge feature of life for decades beginning in the 1930s.

It brought the kind of horror and anger for young people and blighted a generation who never got the chance to know a normal childhood.

Apologists for the church will claim that it was only a few bad apples. It was not, the entire barrel was corrupt, as were the institutions of state set up to guard and safeguard the children

It is those children  we must feel so sorry for today, but also to acknowledge that the silence has been broken the truth has been told and the reality has hit home. Ireland will never be the same